Skiing at Brighton

While this was a few months ago, I thought I'd share a video of the Nicholas, Julia, and Eric skiing. Our good friend, and CEO of Winder Dairy, Mike Dutton, videoed them and his two kiddies: Anna and Jacob.
Julia is in pink without a helmet or poles. Nicholas is wearing a navy and tan coat w/ pale green ski pants. Eric is in a black jacket.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxX-MVYad30

This is their 2nd year of skiing. Eric informed the kids that they are better skiers than mom.... Oh, well... : )

Our family at Dustin & Julia's wedding reception March 2008

What a lovely day it was for all of us! My sister in law, Julia, let her photographer take pictures of each family! It was a lovely wedding and reception.

Spring Break/Wedding Nicholas

Nicholas had a blast with his cousins today! 7 1/2 years old.












Even Hugh had his day in the sun at the wedding!
7 months old









What a funny girl! Julia, 5 1/2 years.

Spring Break

On Wed. morning, we began our 4 hour trip to sunny St George, Utah. We had only made it to the freeway when Julia asked, " are we there yet?" Ok, I must say I thought she was joking, but she really wasn't. And about an hour down the road she asked "are we almost there?" It's not as if we haven't been to St George in the last few months, let alone how many times over the last 5 years!!! She knows it takes a while.... Ahhh, I was beginning to worry that this trip might be tooooo long for me....

At any rate, we made it safely, without too much fighting. haha! Hugh was great and hardly made a peep. What a sweet little baby!
We had great intentions of what we planned to do: go to Zion's National Park, watch the Imax, maybe hike around, see some falls, visit family..., and so on. However, we found ourselves at the pool where we forgot to put on sunscreen the first day and well, you can imagine the "Ooowww's", lounging around the hotel room, hanging out with aunts, uncles, cousins, brother, sisters, brothers in laws, sister in law, eating out, enjoying Isaac's homemade ice cream and BBQ dinner "Yum!", attending Ronny's vocal recital at Dixie College "So fun!", watching Joshua and Jakob's soccer games (the kids loved this), attending a wedding...


In Toquerville, at Linchfield Pond, April 19th. Ana with her cousin, Caleb going hand in hand over the bridge. I'm not sure what these 2 1/2 year olds were doing other than staying away from the geese and swans... Glad I caught this one on camera. : )

It was too funny watching Ana take on some swans and geese while waving a tulip at them and saying, "Go away! Go away!" (she's a feisty soul).

My sister, Diann and her baby, Elena, with Hugh and me at the wedding.


****attending the St George annual Kite Flying Festival, where Eric had the best time ever keeping his kite up and laughing as the wind would suddenly take his kite and wipe out other kites, etc... (Julia said she did not like it because it was too windy and her kite string broke),

"Let's go fly a kite! Up to the highest height!"

Ana and Hugh taking a break on this very windy day.

One night we found ourselves at Village Inn for dinner with Isaac and his kids, and Diann and Ronny and their kids. The hostess asked, "how many?" 15 was the count and we heard our server say, "Sweet!"
What was an especially fun and totally unexpected was the call we received from our little brother, Neil. As the entire table of 15 leaned towards Eric's speaker phone resting in the middle of the table, Neil read, "...you are called to labor in the California Santa Rosa Mission...!" We were so excited and happy. We were talking all at once, (boasting who had called the area), and hopefully not being too loud for the Village Inn people. It was neat that even though we are 1,000's of miles away from Neil, the 3 other siblings were able to be together for this. (By, the way Neil, we can't wait to see you in June!)


Friday night, April 18th, at Village Inn, just before Neil's mission call.
L-R
Isaac, Eric, Ana, Julia, Stephanie, Hugh, Joshua, Nicholas, Jakob, Alexia, Andrew is behind Caleb, Caleb, Diann, Elena, Ronny

So, that pretty much concludes our trip. We had a great time! Eric said he wished it was Wed. morning again, just so we could begin again.

Julia lost her 1st tooth!

Julia was so happy she lost her first tooth. She asked if the tooth fairy would come and of course we said "yes!" So, I pulled out my old Smurf tooth fairy pillow for her and let her put it by her pillow. She didn't seem to mind the little blue creatures; maybe that was because she and Nicholas said they had seen a cartoon of them recently or the pillow was mostly pink with a white ruffle. At any rate, the tooth fairy didn't come the first night. Nicholas told her that one time the tooth fairy didn't come for his tooth until the 2nd night. And Eric told her that sometimes the tooth fairy gets busy and doesn't have enough time to visit all the houses. So, she didn't worry too much because the tooth fairy did come the next night. She even asked if I was the tooth fairy and I could honestly say I was not! Then yesterday, she came home with a book from the school library titled "Dad, are you the tooth fairy?" We all had a good laugh!

Ok, Julia took this picture a few days ago and boy, does Hugh look cute?! It's not very often you find a picture of a baby and me. I think it's because I tend to take all the pictures.

Brothers hanging out

Nothing like having a big helper like Nicholas! He is such a great big brother, though he thinks he's the parent at times... Is it the oldest child syndrome? Still trying to figure that one out... Baby Hugh thinks Nicholas is great too as they sure do enjoy each other's company!

What a day, eh?

So, it was almost dinner time and we couldn't find Ana. Well, she had us fooled! She's by the garage door, of all places, having fallen asleep after sneaking into the goldfish crackers. Ahhh, they are her favorite snack these days. I must admit that the rug could not possibly be clean enough for napping on!!! Oh, well what can you do... : )

A Day in the Lives of a few Artists...

So, you can imagine that I finally broke down one day and let the kids break out the watercolors, however, not without a "do I have to wear an apron?" or "ok, I'll try not to spill the water because I know you don't like that mom..." Despite my constant nagging to be careful and to pay attention to where their arms and elbows are at any given time, the kids had a great time. We have to laugh because you can totally tell which child did which picture, don't you think? Ana has to remind everyone that she is the "tiny one" in Julia's. And since Hugh has only been in the family not quite 7 months, he was forgotten completely. But the kids told me it was okay... Is it though? HaHa!

Our 9-year Anniversary

So, Eric and I had our 9 year anniversary a few weeks ago and I must say, it's amazing what can happen in that amount of time...: college graduation, selling our 1st place, moving 2 times, buying a home, having 4 kids, learning how to garden and prune our many trees, seeing our many friends move away or even move back, and the list goes on... It's been fun, crazy, a little stressful, and wonderful~~~!! Here's to many more years together, Sweets! : ) Love you....