Christmas Sunday

I love Christmas Sunday. I love getting my girls all dressed up, and my handsome boy looking so fantastic. I love the Sunday music in church and listening to Tyler sing in the choir. I love being in primary as the kids got to act out the Nativity today, but most of all, I love that we all truly focus on what Christmas is about.

Trip to Salt Lake

Last Saturday Tyler and I got to head down to Salt Lake, just the 2 of us, for a BYU basketball game, some shopping, eating and checking out the Christmas lights at Temple Square. It was Awesome. So much fun to spend some alone time with each other, and a huge thank-you to both Grandmas for keeping the kids and making it a fun day for them too.

Here are a few highlights of the day.

We stopped first at Caffe Molisse, a recommendation from my parents. I loved it, and it was really a quaint little place.

This was Tyler's dish. Had a lot of potential, but it was a little bland, bummer. But it looks really good, huh?

I had gnocchi and it was amazing. I loved it!

Tyler enjoying some yummy food. Look how skinny he looks.

Here we are at the game, such an awesome game. They played at the Energy Solutions arena, so it was pretty cool and they won beating Univ. of Arizona, Sweet!

A photo op after the game.

Then we headed over to the Gateway, that is one romantic fun place to go at Christmas time.

Then over to Temple Square. Can't beat that for holiday cheer. It was amazing and as much as I love my children, so much fun being there with just Tyler.

He's so cute.

The lights were awesome.

There were so many people there.

Isn't this beautiful?

Then we ended the day with dinner at Kneaders, so good. We each had a sandwich and split a piece of peppermint cheesecake. DIVINE!!!

Happy Birthday Mollie

Mollie turned 4 years old today, and what a fun day it was. You know birthdays are so much more fun when the kids are appreciative and not snotty about stuff and that was Mollie all day, just excited to be having a birthday and grateful for everything. I got so many sweet little kisses all day long.

Mollie rocks, it's that simple. She is fun and quite the little charmer. I thought I would mention a few things about her at this stage in her life for journal sake.

• She loves families; everything she plays with from marbles to stuffed animals, hair elastics to spoons, there have to be 3-5 of the item, so there is a family
• She is smart as a whip, and picks up on things that make us say, wow, didn't realize she was paying attention.
• She wished on a star the other night: "Wish I may wish I might, Oh, first star I see, can I please have a family of penguins, oh please, star, please for me...!" Thought I was going to fall over laughing, too funny.
• She is a picky eater unless it is tortillas with cheese, then she will eat 5 of them.
• She is surprising; as little as she is, she comes across so much older than she really is, she is very mature.

Here are some pictures from our fun little birthday party.


She decided a few months back that she wanted a Strawberry Shortcake birthday cake, so that's what we did. I love how it turned out, so much fun. The strawberries are made from fondant.

Family photo shoot

My sister Paula took our family pictures the other day and I love them. I am not posting the Christmas card pic, but here are a few of the other ones.

Sisters, Sisters, there were never such devoted sisters...

I am thankful for...

...my favorite kitchen tools; silicone brush, micro plane grater, immersion blender, Kitchenaid, ice cream scoop (that I never use for ice cream), and my non stick cooking mat.

I love these and right now while most of my kitchen is in storage, I am really missing some of them. I brought a few with me, but not all of them. Then there is the immersion blender, which is my mom's, I don't have one, but you can bet I will once we move out. I love this thing.

I am thankful for...Beautiful Idaho

The Hidden Lakes

We love living in Idaho, there are so many beautiful place right where we are living and we love to go on family walks as much as we can. Every once in a while, I remember to bring my camera along with me. One afternoon we wanted to hike (in the loosest sense of the word, we had a stroller, so let's not get too crazy) to the Hidden Lakes. It was such a fun hike/walk and we spent quite a bit of time watching the cliff divers (the insane cliff divers, I might add). It was awesome.

Seriously, who hikes with a baby in a stroller? We do.

The crew

It was such a bright day, kids looking hot in sunglasses.

We also love the Canyon Rim trail that runs all through Twin Falls. My favorite one is right behind Shoshone Falls, actually it is one of my favorite runs, straight up hill, but so beautiful.

The Snake River

Tyler and Ashtynn

I have no idea what they were doing here, but they had a really good time playing

Happy Halloween!

We went to the Trunk-or-Treat party and then trick or treating, it was such a beautiful evening, we had a really good time.

Reagan wanted to be a zombie and went in to character for his pictures. We had so much fun putting together this costume, what is it about being destructive that makes kids get so excited.

Elise wanted to be a Mermaid, so we put together her fins and a matching top, she loved being the color of the sea. We went to the school for the kids' parade and they were both so adorable.

When Mollie saw what we were doing for Elise, she quickly jumped on board with the idea of being a Mermaid too and I loved having them match. So pretty.

Ashtynn got to be my little black cat. Mainly because it is a no-brainer costume and she was too cute. Mollie went as a cat when she was this same age, so I guess that makes it tradition.

I love these little girls, need I say more.

Boo!

The end of our summer vacation

It's pretty sad when it's the end of October and I am finally getting around to posting the end of our trip to Michigan this summer. But I guess good things come to those who wait. So, here you go.

Henry Ford Museum

This is one of only 2 family pictures we took on this trip, sad that we didn't get more and sad that the girl taking it didn't get it in focus, aaagghh!

Carrie got us some tickets to the Rouge Factory tour, and when you are in Michigan cars are a big deal. So we jumped in the car and drove about an hour to Greenfield Village where the Henry Ford museum is and a number of other tourist activities. The Rouge Factory is about a 1o minute drive form there, so we got on the bus and rode over and then joined the tour; fascinating. It was amazing and as part of the tour we walked over the factory itself and go to watch them assemble the Ford F-150's. I would love to have been able to take all of my history classes on a field trip there. So cool.

Tyler, the kids and the infamous Henry Ford

This was inside the bus, it was a cool bus and they showed an historical film on the way that was very interesting.

Each of the kids picked their favorite vintage car and got to take a picture with it.
Reagan liked the 1949 Ford


Elise went for the 1956 Ford Thunderbird, sweet

And Mollie liked the class Ford V8

They also had some cool rubbings the kids got to try out. Sadly, this is the only area where we could take pictures, so there was a ton more on the tour, but they are pretty strict about photography.


On our way home we stopped at White Castle for some lunch, neither Tyler nor I have been there in years and it was fun to try it again.

Cook House

I figured I would include some pictures of our host's home, so here is Carrie's house, it is a beautiful home and in a gorgeous neighborhood. We had fun there enjoying family, frogs and fondue. Ok, not at the same time, but they were both pretty cool. The girls found some little frogs outside and were fascinated. One night Carrie treated us to fondue, a favorite in the Cook household and my kids were thrilled with the tradition.

So many trees, their back yard is a forest, very cool.

Here is the frog:

So cute!

Yahoo, chocolate fondue