HO HO HO Merry Christmas!

How cute is this?! The fire departments do parades around all the neighborhoods throughout the month. They have all the fire trucks and paramedics with their lights flashing and they go through the neighborhoods anouncing Santa on the bull horns and asking people to bring out any canned food or toys they want to donate. Anyway the parade route drove down our street and the girls were SO excited that Santa was going to drive by! They each had a bag of canned food and they even got dressed up for the event. They stood outside and waved and gave their food to the collectors and got candy canes. It was seriously SO cute and Lilly was SO excited. She couldn't stop talking about Santa ALL night. She kept saying, "Santa is coming" which sounded more like, "Sanna lethle cahmeen." She loved it. Santa was yelling HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS. So HO HO HO is another one of her favorite things to say tonight as well. I apologize for the pictures. I have a really bad camera and it is tough getting a decent picture especially at night.

Her eyes work!

Well this picture doesn't really have anything to do with Josey's eye appointment today but I thought it was cute! It actually snowed a little bit today. We were so excited. Okay it was more like sleet but it did actually have white flakes coming down at one point. Immediately Josey got her coat on and ran outside to catch some snow flakes on her tongue.

I took her to the eye doctor today. Apparently she had failed her school eye test recently and they suggested I take her to get screened. I was a little concerned given the shocker it was about Maddy's eyes when we took her in but I also thought that school eye screenings are not THAT reliable. Anyway I decided to be safe and get them checked for real. And miracle of miracle they said we needed NOTHING! I am so used to taking my children into the doctor and getting some catastrophic bad news about their health in some way that I just start assuming that it is going to happen. But the doctor gave her eyes a clean bill of health and said I don't have to bring her back for years. HALLELUJIAH! Finally a break! Josey wanted me to add in here that she was VERY brave to get eye drops in. She is very proud to have gotten her first eye drops and she did a good job letting the doctor administer them. She was VERY frightened but she did it anyway. Way to go Joselyn.

waste of money?

Okay what is up with my girls school pictures? These are the RE TAKES! I am debating getting my money back because they look so scraggly in the pictures. I swear they looked cute when they left and their hair looked brushed and some time between walking to the bus and taking this picture they became unkept. Do you think I should just get my money bakc and take them somewhere else to get their pictures taken? I just don't think they are very cute.

And what is that face? Didn't the technician see that it was a wierd face? She doesn't even look like she is smiling! She looks like she is in mid sentence. Anyway I need your opinions. Take them back or revell in the cuteness of their imperfections?

Twilight FYI

For those fellow Twilight lovers out there they have apparently cast Bella! This is her! Her name is Kristen Stewart and I think I like her as Bella! What do you think?

I feel the need to apologize for all the typos in that last post. I don't really want to take the time to fix all of them but I really need to start using the spell check feature and slow down trying to type it up. Thanks for filling in the missing letters in your head!

Happy Thanksgiving from scary Uncle Dustin!

The mustache

Well Dustin has been growing some facial hair for the last few weeks for the sole purpose of shaving it off to leave a beautiful full mustache for Thanksgiving. He told me that he was going to be the scary uncle at Thanksgiving this year. He was so proud of his mustache and wore it the entire week. He even dressed up and posed for pictures for everyone. The funniest part was that by the end of the week the novelty of the "stache" had worn off and I kinda forgot that he had it anymore. We were at the mall and he started talking to this man about BYU footbal for a minute, and all of a sudden I realize that my husband has A MUSTACHE! What must that man have been thinking? Who has a mustache? Dustin swears that a Hispanic family was making fun of him as well in the mall. I wasn't there I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised.


The boys had fun shooting clay pigeons out into the field.

THE drive

We have a ritual that Dustin started a long time ago that when we are on long road trip and we stop to stretch our legs he leads them in excercizes. So here they are in the Fred Meyer parking lot doing excersizes.( I just realized I don't know how to spell that word.)
Lilly even got into it. Dustin has no shame. He really doesn't care that we are in public and the girls love it.
We spotted some snow when we stopped to get gas and the girls just begged to play in it. So we let them run around in it for a minute. I didn't know Dustin was taking a picture (which is usually the case) and my face in that picture is HILARIOUS. It is a really wierd face if you blow it up!
Josey realized that snow is really really cold. She was quite upset by that.

eating lunch with the cousins.....and aunt Liz

I didn't get my camera out enough while we were there and these were the only pictures I got of all the cousins together. So here it is. They had fun though. They haven't seen each other for almost a year! That is way too long.
Lilly wanted to be a big girls as well.... of course.

Grandmas tree

We put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving and grandma let the girls help decorate it. This was our favorite game to play while we were there. The girls thought it was so fun and wanted to play it every night. Josey really liked it until it kept spitting cards out at her and them apparently her cards were my cards.

Lilly and Ava helped UNdecorate the tree mostly.

This was the only picture I could get with all the little cousins decorating the tree. Lilly and Ava were so funny. I think they thought they were supposed to take turns or something because one would go over by the tree and wait for the picture while the other one would walk away. I couldn't get them together.

the south hills light display

There is a house up in the hills behind Dustin's house and every year they put on the most AMAZING light display. I can't even imagine how much work it is to put up and take down all the lights. I didn't post any pictures of them because it just doesn't do it justice because you just can't see them very well. But we do it every year we are there and this year we went almost every night we were there. Sometimes they even have Santa there handing out candy canes. It is free but they welcome donations! This is not the most flattering picture of me given the fact that I had a sweater on uner that sweatershirt trying to keep warm but it is the only picture we got of our entire family together.

They even have a HUGE camel that you can feed carrots to. I am surprised my girls were brave enough to feed it because honestly it is HUGE!


Lilly wasn't to keen on the camel and from the look on Dustin's face I don't think he fel real com0fortable either.

It was so so SO cold! We tried to bundly up as much as we could but by the end you were just racing back to the car to thaw out your body!

love that pose Amanda!

The dried up canal

We went down into the canal that feeds water into the lake. Dustin brought a shovel and we cracked up all the ice to find any of the crawfish and fish that were trying to stay alive. I think we made the birds happy! All that was left of the water were a few puddles that were frozen over and TONS of fish were in there just waiting to die I guess. Kinda sad but it was still kinda fun!
Isn't that creepy!?

Josey actually wanted to HOLD all the little fishies! She would pick them up and get them back in the water. No fear! She loved them and I think she would have kissed them if we would have lt her. She wanted to bring them home.....obviously we said no.

Maddy wan't quite as adventerous. I think she finally did hold a fish at the end but just for a second. I don't blame her.