New Years 2011

We had so much fun this New Years. We went to our friends the Mason's (Thank you so much for having us Sara and David!!) Sara was really my first freind here in the Tri-Cities. Mariska loves their Daughter Sammy. They are really cute together!
How can you not love this face!!
I swear this boy is always eating
Happy New Year to you all!!!!! We love you and hope that 2011 is a great year!

Christmas 2010

This was the first Christmas that John and I have had without any family. It was very quiet. I missed being with family but it was really nice to be just us. We did something every night the week before Christmas as a family. It was fun to have a week full of family home evenings.
I was nuts this year and did the after Thanksgiving sale and basically got all of our Christmas done. It was nice to have it out of the way and the prices that I got everything made it worth the entire night without sleep. (That and John taking the kids to his brothers so I could catch up on the sleep that I missed.
We had our usual Christmas morning breakfast, Breakfast Pizza. I cannot imagine Christmas without the Breakfast Pizza. The kids slept until 9:00. I was awake at 8:00. I was way excited for Christmas morning this year. It was hard waiting that hour for the kids to get up. It reminded me of when I was growing up and having to wait for mom and dad to get up and say it was OK to go and open presents. We were never allowed to go into the living room until we had had family prayer. I really like that tradition and John and I will be using that with our kids. It is easy to do when you wake up before they do. :)
Mariska loved her Christmas PJ's, Jack was indifferent.
I was really surprised at Jack he tore into his presents. It probably was because of how excited Mariska was and he was feeding off of her. It was fun though.

I hope that you all had a grerat Christmas. Know we love and pray for you all!

Thanksgiving for Preschool

Mariska Loves Preschool!!! How could she not when they do such fun activities like this one. they are really fun kids to be around and Mariska has a great time.

Thanks for the pictures Karrie!!!

Success At Last!!

The last two years we have tried to do a ginger bread house. I say try because we failed miserably! Both times we ended up with something that looked more like an homage to Hurricane Katrina.
This year we finally figured it out. (Thank you mom!)


I did the frosting and Riska did parts of the candy. She was more interested in eating the candy!
Can't wait to do it again for Christmas!

Easter Time

I Love this time of year! The colors, the feelings that I feel. I love the clothes. This was Riska's Easter dress this year. Since Easter is next week and next week is General Conference we wore our Easter clothes today. For those who do not know what General Conference is. We do not go to our regular meetings on the weekend of General Conference. Instead we have the opportunity to hear our prophet and other leaders speak to us from the confrence center in Salt Lake City.

Jack is wearing a 12 month shirt and pant set. There is a tie that goes with it but Jack's neck is too big and we could not get the top button done up. Both kids looked really cute. We decide to go to the park and take pictures. Not sure if this was a good idea. Riska was more interested in the playground and refused to focus on the task at hand. Oh well it just shows off the personalities in our family.