Merry Christmas!

This Christmas we spent down in Georgia with Uncle Ed and Aunt Esther's family. We love them! The break was filled with games, puzzles, caroling and food.

While Brian was out in the yard with Kyrie he had a little mishap with the mud. His leg sunk into the mud up to his shin and took off his shoe. What a great dad!

Kyrie had a blast jumping on the neighbors tramp with Sam and dad. Santa brought our family a tramp this year for Christmas! Yahoo for Santa!Here is Kyrie admiring the tree ornamants.

While Callie chilled out on Sams bum.

Just Kyrie and mom, chillin by the Christmas tree.
Kyrie chillin with dad watching a movie.

We have been so blessed this Christmas, actually all year. We are so grateful for the Savior and His birth. We love all our family and friends and wish everyone a very merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving in Georgia

We went down to Georgia to spend Thanksgiving with Uncle Ed and Aunt Esther's family.

Kyrie and Elaina loved playing outside in the leafs. Perfect opportunity for a photo shoot.

Yeah, they are pretty dang cute!

Heather Weston was able to come down to Georgia, her husband was across the country.

So here is a lovely shot of myself, Amber (my cousin), and Heather, slaving away in the kitchen over pies. Oh, and by the way, they were deliciouse, just in case you were wondering.

Amber was kind enough to push the girls (Kyrie and Elaina) on their princess coach through the family room.

This was Elaina's stop, she was trying a moving dismount. She's very clever.

Grandma Jerry lives across the lake from Uncle Ed's so she was also able to join in on the Thanksgiving festivities.

We love Grandma!

Okay, Okay I've been Tagged!

So it appears I've been tagged by several people already and now it is my duty to tell all of you six things about myself. Here goes ...

1. I was raised in California, Modesto mostly. My family used to go to Santa Cruise on Saturdays to surf a lot. It was my bishop actually, that taught me how to surf. He was the one who told me to pee in my wet suit to keep warm, thanks Bishop Mills for the sound, but somewhat disgusting, advice.

2. Growing up we always went camping at Yosemite or Mammoth Lakes. I've had several encounters with bears on all my camping adventures. I also love to backpack, I even took a backpacking class at BYU-Idaho. I was able to backpack through the Olympic rainforest in Washington. Good times! My dad took some of the girls including myself and my brother and brother-in-law on a great backpacking trip in Yosemite where I was able to climb Clouds Rest. I always wanted to climb to the top of Half Dome, so someday I will.

3. I love reading! I usually average two novels/books a week. I read the last Harry Potter book in two days. I also don't mind reading the same book 4 or 5 times, spread out of course. If I didn't I would have ran out of reading material years ago.

4. I love to exercise! I love pilates and swimming! Kyrie actually loves doing pilates with me and she makes a great weight for lifting while I do squats.

5. I have insomnia. I actually haven't slept for a little over four days in a row now, so even though I'm here, I'm not all there.

6. It also seems I suffer from short term memory loss like Dory on Finding Fabio, I mean Nemo. I am constantly forgetting things. It might have to do with lack of sleep.

There. Now that I've shared some marvalous things with you, I will tag Sharee, Melanie, Tiffany, Brian, Leslie, and whoever else wants to be tagged. I don't know how many people I am supposed to tag so I'm just wingin it.

Party, Friends, & Family

This weekend was filled with 2 Halloween Party's, lots of backyard playing with dad, and good friends over for some good-old BBQ Sunday evening...
Here a a few pictures of the beautiful "snow white" (Kyrie) & "Cinderella" (Dania) at the class party.... There were plenty of juice boxes to go around so of course the kids had a ball... Dax (Dania's brother), was amazed at all of the unsupervised drinking that was going on without parent supervision...
Kyrie was all for showing off some of her new dance moves that she as been diligently working on over the past few weeks.
Neither Princess was too happy about sharing the spotlight but they couped rather well considering there were plenty of Princes to choose from...
Thanks to the Boarders, we got to dress up 2 nights in a row. Natalie went as a witch (not surprising considering the fact that she has pulled of this costume perfectly over the past 15 years), Kyrie was once again snow white (she figured that no one ever gets tired of calling her princess), and Brian went as one of the surgeons from DR. 90210 (I personally think it was a cop-out simply because the costume consisted of a pair of scrubs and a stethoscope... he looked like a plain old dental student to me... of course he thought other wise).

And for all of you who just can't get enough of the Kentucky kids... here are a couple of videos that show Kyrie and Friends in action.... And believe you me, it takes 2 parents to keep up with one active kid... Who knows how it is done with 2 or 3 or 4 or 15 kids... God Bless all the parents out there... Like Brian says, 1 kid and 2 parents allows for a nice double team, 2 kids and 2 parents means you have to play man to man, and 3 or more kids with just 2 parents means you have to move to a zone defense. Its funny because it always seems like a good zone defense at home seems more like a 'bump and run' to me.... Loves to all for Kentucky

ps. In no way shape or form am I trying to compete with Scott's blog-o-death... that thing takes the cake... It took me to sessions to get through it all.... keep up the awesome reporting Scott

Ball off the Bell.

Brian took me to the dental ball off the bell this year. We were able to eat at a great Italian place with some friends.




Girls will be girls! We had to get a picture of our shoes!
We also had to get a bathroom picture. Like I said, girls will be girls!

We went to dinner with some foxy ladies (all dental students too), Stacey, Lindsey, Britney, and Amanda (Right to left) there spouses, finaces, and boyfriends were there also, but this was a girls only bathroom picture, hello.

Brian and I at the ball having a great non-alcholic beverage.

Carving Pumpkins!

Today Brian surprised us girls after he had finished his pathology exam that he has been preparing for over the past 3 weeks with 3 large pumpkins. When he brought them in, Kyrie was so excited! She kept saying "wow" which is one of her new favorite words.

As usual, Kyrie was a big helper and of course had to help dad out with his pumpkin carving.

Kyrie also thought it would be helpful to eat the pumpkin guts. Yummy!

Kyrie was a fast learner and tried her hand at performing her first surgery... a pumpkin

Gut-otomy... there were very few procedural complications and minimal pumpkin juice loss.

Kyrie eventually got tired of such a restrictive job and moved onto the Pumpkin Autopsy... lab results are inconclusive...

AND THAT'S NOT ALL..... for all you true fans, here is some video of Kyrie and her fun family pumpkin carving FHE

Here are the finished products. From Left to Right. Natalie, Brian (go cards), Heather Weston.

#1 LSU.... NOT NO MORE.....CATS in 3rd OVERTIME...

This covenanted ticket was mine last Saturday night as I watched the 2nd greatest game in my college football craze in the Midwest... For those of you who remember the Louisville West Virgina game of last year with both teams coming into it in Week 9 of the season both 9-0.... that played out for a spectacular night at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium.... But on Saturday, the spot light was turned 80 miles due East to University of Kentucky's Commonwealth Stadium for the big show-down of #1 LSU Ti gars and the # 13 Kentucky Wild Cats.....

"Hey Kentucky boyea... get that corn out of my face....""Hey you in stripes.... Your making me look like a fool...." or maybe the LSU Head Coach realized that he didn't sleep in a Holiday-Inn last night.....With just 1:15 left in the 4th Kentucky's WR made this amazing catch as he feel to the Blue Grass...It looks like even the boyz headed to the NFL need dental work also... GOLD GRILL ANYONEThis picture says it all... either he is sad over the FACT that KENTUCKY just made one of the BIGGEST upsets of the year,,, or,,, he is covenanting to stay at a Holiday-Inn for the remaining away games.... What a blast it was to be here for such an awesome game....

Otter Creek

Here are the very manly men, doing what manly men do. Baking, oh hello, it's cooking over a fire, it's extremly dangerous as well as back breaking. Not to metion it takes mad skills. Brian made his awesome potatoes along with some awesome cobbler.

Yeah, it was pretty much the best.

Here are the camping mom's that pretty much rock! We are all pretty much stud muffins. Yeah, that's us.

The only time kyrie would sit still was for some bread and her bottle.
She is a roamer.
Dad and Kyrie setting up the fire for cooking.
Kyrie helped out wonderfully by blowing/spitting on the fire.
What can I say, our little girl is brilliant.

A lot of search and rescue took place between Kyrie and myself. She loves to wonder aimlessly through the woods. It left me no other choice but to search and rescue.
Kyrie and I had special bonding time on the camp out, it was my job to keep her from wondering off into the woods. I believe that she was well on her way to sharing Hansel and grettle fate, of being turned into a gingerbread girl, never to be heard from again. But, I stuck on that girl like a fly to fly paper and we were able to keep little Kyrie safe from her almost sure fate of ending up as a gingerbread girl.


We had to have a girls photo shoot. Yes, they all should be baby gap models, or children's place models. They have yet to be discovered.

Happy Helping Hands

On Sunday I decided to build a cake or something, and Kyrie wanted to lick the beaters from the whipped cream. Who doesn't love licking beaters, honestly? Kyrie also wanted to lick the bowl, which ended up being a little more complicated.

Kyrie posing with dad after her head was put underneath the kitchen faucet. Hello, we had to get the whipped cream out of her hair.

So Kyrie loves helping in the kitchen so much, that when I try to get her out she throws a lovely tantrum with all the bells and whistles. She doesn't leave anything out. The flayling arms are a must as well as the arched back and limp head. But my favorite is the stomping and destroying. So, to avoid these minor tantrums I let Kyrie work in the kitchen for as long as she likes, doing dishes, cleaning the floors, sliming the floors, lets throw a few breaks in there. You get the picture. All in all its a grand time in Natalie and Kyrie's kitchen of fun.

Bubbles!

Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles, my bubbles!

We finally got out the bubble machine and let Kyrie chase bubbles all over the backyard. She loved it! So did the neighbor kids!

So, Kyrie's new favorite thing is doing the dishes. She is happy to stand at the sink with a sponge for over thirty minutes at a time. It's great because now I can actually make dinner without her trying to jump in the oven.

Kentucky State Fair

We came....
We saw... We conquered...
Oh, and it was good!!!