December

I meant to be a better blogger, but time slips away.  December is always a busy month.  Tanner had a Christmas program  that was a lot of fun to watch.  I wish Vance's school had done the same thing.  We enjoyed going to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert this year.  They had the Sesame Street Muppets and Santino Fontana.  I don't think they could ever have a bad concert, but the guests made it especially fun this year.

We decided to focus on how we could share the gift of Jesus Christ this holiday season.  Tanner decided he wanted to do a Nativity scene picture, Porter decided to try and be nicer to his brothers, and Vance decided to be kinder to all people.

Here is Tanner's finished product.  We hung it up on the wall after he finished it.

 Porter has been a Sunbeam this year.  We are really sad that he will be getting new teachers come January because we've absolutely loved his teachers, especially one.  She has just gone above and beyond with her calling.  She brought Porter some peppermint play doh and he thinks it is so fun to play with.  We will miss her as his teacher.

 Vance turned 9 this year!  He is getting to be so grown up.  Stephen took the day off and we enjoyed it as a family.

 Vance wanted to go to the aquarium for his birthday so we did that.

 He was excited to get a basketball.  Porter said, "A basketball???  That's lame."  Guess it is a good thing it wasn't his birthday present.  Haha.

 We stayed home for Christmas aside from visiting with Stephen's family.  We had an enjoyable time being together as a family.  It is my favorite thing in the world.

Hopefully I will be a better blogger in the coming year!

Vance's Birthday slideshow

Happy 9th Birthday to my oldest son Vance!  We love him to pieces.  Here is a slideshow of pictures from the past year.

November

November has been flying by.  I can't believe that Thanksgiving is in a week!  One Monday we took a little time during FHE to do this little thankful craft.  It is funny how much larger Stephen's hand is compared to the rest of us.  I even put their rest of our hands up a little higher so it wasn't quite so bad.  I'm sure as the boys continue to grow someday a little project like this will show me with the smallest hands.  :)  Vance is only about 6 inches shorter than me or so and growing every second.

 The boys participated in our ward's primary program this past week.  I sat and watched.  It was the first time that I haven't been in primary in some form or another in a LONG time!  I was released from playing the piano for primary the end of September.  It was nice to watch the boys faces as they did their parts and not the back of their heads.  They all did a great job.

 Tanner got an honorable mention for his Reflections Art Project last night.  He worked really hard on this project.  He drew, outlined, colored, and did a little water color with it as well.  His cousin won a trophy and gets to go on to the district level competition.  Tanner seemed perfectly happy for her and I am glad he wasn't jealous.  They entered in the same category and it was the one with the most entries by far.  There age also included k-2nd grades.  Great job kiddos!  The theme was "The World Would be a better place" and Tanner thought our world would be a better place if we kept the oceans clean.  There are people trying to pick up and clean near the ocean in his picture.

Grandpa, Pumpkins and Halloween

My dad came for a little visit in October.  We don't get to see him or my mom too often so it was nice to have him here.  The boys enjoyed telling him all about the latest video game they are obsessed with (Pikmin 3) and we have been enjoying some Washington apples he brought.  :)

 We painted our pumpkins one day. Here are the boys with their pumpkins before they painted them.

Here they are after they painted them.

 Vance enjoyed making a jack-o-latern type pumpkin face.  I think he was channeling one he saw on "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown".

 Porter just had fun painting away.  I like the colors he picked to go with the orange pumpkin.

 Tanner made a Pikmin (of course).  :)

We took the boys to the aquarium in their costumes and they had a great time.  Everyone commented on our little R2-D2 and we even had a Slytherin comment on how nice our Harry Potter looked. 

The aquarium had pumpkins, spider webs, and skeletons throughout the place.  This fish really liked hanging out by this particular pumpkin.  It was funny.  Tanner is really good at coming up with funny poses to do for the camera.

Here are our Trunk or Treaters.  We went to Holly's church to trunk or treat again this year.  We had a good time with them.  This picture is of the boys in character which is why Porter is not smiling.

 My mother-in-law made the costumes again this year and as always did a fantastic job.  Vance is really good at picking out fun things to be for Halloween. I think he made the perfect Harry Potter and he had fun.  He's already worn the tie for church and for tie day at school.

Tanner spent a long time deciding what he wanted to be for Halloween.  He finally decided that a ninja sounded fun.  He used origami ninja stars and had fun in his school's Halloween parade and class party.

 Porter enjoyed being R2-D2.  We got tons of comments wherever we went when he was in costume.  My sister-in-law helped with the drawing and some of the painting.  He looked so cute in it.  I couldn't help, but giggle at him.  He had fun trying to make R2-D2 noises.

Temples, Scouts, Piano Guys, and more

September and October have been busy months.  I suppose that is fairly typical.  I've been taking a picture a week this year.  Some weeks I don't have much to choose from, but other weeks I can hardly pick because lots of things have happened.

 Porter and I are doing preschool regularly again now that things are more normal with Vance back in school and what not.  We usually only do it 2 or 3 times a week, but we have fun.  The picture above is him pretending to be a dinosaur.

 We love General Conference!  We've tried to make it a special time for our kids too so they get excited as well.  This year we had acquired enough white Legos pieces to all make temples.

On Sunday we let Stephen make a big one.  I think it turned out really nice!

 Vance had his first Pinewood Derby last week.  He had a lot of fun.  He made a Mario Kart looking car.  He got an award for being the "Sportiest".

 Tanner had a crazy hair day last week so I gelled it all crazy like, as crazy as a kid with short hair can have I suppose.  He still managed to look pretty cute.

 On the opposite side, I buzzed Porter's hair last week.  It had been getting quite long.

We are all very big fans of The Piano Guys and they were doing a book signing last week in Salt Lake City.  We debated back and forth on whether or not to go since it was a school night.  Thinking back on our debating now seems silly because of course it was worth it!  We got there about an hour before it started and were able to get a decent spot in line.  They were so nice!  I can't begin to tell you how personable each one of them was and how great they were with the kids.  I wish we could have talked to them longer, but I didn't want to hold anyone up.  We did get a picture of the kids with them though.

 Here they are with our signed goodies!

Tanner has had his front two teeth lose for a while and on Friday we pulled them out.  The new ones are coming in though so it won't be long before he has teeth there again.

 Last night we visited the pumpkin patch.  Here are the kids pulling their Jack-o-Lantern faces.  They had fun picking out their pumpkins.

Eye Surgery and Birthdays

September has been a whirlwind of a month so far.  I knew it would be, for one thing there are 7 birthdays between my family and Stephen's, one being our own cutie, Tanner.  I started doing preschool again with Porter.  We had to take a little break, but hopefully we will  be back to doing it on a regular basis from here on out.  One day we talked about apples.  This is a picture of him taste testing different kinds.

 Vance had eye muscle surgery on both of his eyes on September 11th.  I was feeling pretty nervous having him go through it, but he did great.  Recovery was rough at first, but after about the 4th day things got much better.  He decided he could open his eyes and that really helped.  I am so excited for him to live his life with out any more double vision, eye crossing issues.  I wish in a way we could have known that the less extreme options weren't going to work and had the surgery done 3 years ago.  Oh well, we can't go back in time.  His eyes look less red everyday and he is back to his normal school routine.

 Here is Vance the day after surgery.  His eyes hurt quite a bit so using a damp wash cloth at the beginning helped.  His Aunt Kimberly gave him the cute gold dragon and the hospital gave him the Green Latern blanket.

 Here he is feeling more normal.  I think he enjoyed being at home playing once he started feeling better.  However, he did become restless.

 Here he is a week after his surgery going back to school.

On Saturday we celebrated Tanner's 7th birthday.  He had a Lego Movie theme and I decorated his cake with candy that looks like Legos.  We try to make their birthdays a special day and enjoy some family time.  We had a little get together with some extended family at the church.

Here are some more birthday celebration pictures.

Happy Birthday Tanner!

Happy 7th Birthday Tanner!  Here is Tanner's birthday video.  Things here have been crazy and kind of weird, but I will post more about what has been going on at a later date.  I am grateful to have Tanner in our lives.  He is smart and funny.  He keeps me on my toes.

Back to School

Well, since the boys have been back in school for nearly two weeks I guess I should blog their back to school pictures from the first day.  :)

 Vance is in 3rd grade this year.  I can hardly believe he is that old.  Time goes by so quickly.  He has a sweet teacher and he seems to be enjoying it.  He already had his first injury at school.  He was playing tag and watching the kid chasing instead of what was in front of him and ran his forehead straight into a pole.  He had a goose egg the size of a golf ball.  Thankfully it went down quickly and even the bruise is healing quickly.

 Tanner is in 1st grade.  I think that is the hardest year to adjust.  He is at a new school on top of learning to adjust to being in school all day.  Kindergarten is only half a day and they spend a lot of it playing so it has been interesting for him to stay all day and get things figured out.  He is in a program that I think will challenge his mind more and I am grateful for that.

 Porter is home for one more year before he goes to Kindergarten.  It has been interesting just having him and me around all day long, but fun too.  We are doing some preschool as well.  Crazy to think this will be my last year of doing preschool with my own kids.  He is a good reader and this year I am hoping to help him learn to write his name well.

Stephen will be moving to a day schedule at work starting next Monday.  We are really excited.  I am especially grateful that the two older boys will get to see him longer than just a little bit first thing in the mornings.