December 2009

This month has flown by -- and thank goodness that it as since I have been rather Grinchy! Christmas in a new place makes Christmas feel a little odd! We have missed all our PL family, but have enjoyed our time with our family here.

December started with a visit from MerriLein! She had a school board meeting in San Diego and I drove down to be with her. We had a great time (except for the part when we paid $20 for one of those street massages --our bodies were badly beaten....)

This picture was taken right before the beating. We were still smiling.

Next, out little Haylie turned 8! Where does the time go? We only let our girls have birthday parties on their even birthdays, so Haylie had really been looking forward to her big party. Unfortunately, since we just moved here, we had no friends to invite! Thank goodness for family! The Kendigs, Grandma and Uncle Blake all joined us for a fabulous party at Chuck E. Cheese!

Happy Birthday Haylie Mae!

Trevor's family made a trip from Utah to join Haylie on her special baptism day.

Haylie and her cousin, Makyla

Beautiful girl

Haylie and Trevor


Happy day!

Tavin (Trevor's brother), Kimmie, Warren (Kisha's (Trevor's sister) husband)

Yes, we made this all by ourselves!!

Poor Trevor works about 100 hours/week (no joke) so he falls asleep every time he sits down. Here he is spending some quality time with his Dad.

Our attempt of the annual picture by the tree.

Little baby Audra

Cute Katie!

Well, it's been quite a year! We started in Plumas Lake, moved in January to Camarillo and moved in October to Corona. Lots of packing and unpacking! To be honest, I am not one bit sad to see this year go! Here's to a more settled 2010!

Fudge and Fires

Trevor has been working a ton of hours and Haylie has been sick for a couple of days. We were feeling a bit cooped up (Audra's picture below is a good illustration of this), so we called Grandpa and Blake to ask them to come out for a visit this afternoon.

First thing first -- Blake to the rescue! My birthday balloon got away and has spent the past week on our ceiling. Blake used all of his super uncle powers and got it down....and provided plenty of entertainment in the process!

Next, we decided to get out the little Christmas tree and let the kids decorate it. The girls loved looking thru all of their ornaments and putting them on the tree. Although we were sweating as we decorated the tree (it was 81 degrees here today), the air cooled off once the sun went down. We opened all the windows and lit a fire!

After a yummy dinner (thanks Grandpa!) we made Grandpa's famous fudge. It's quite the science and it was pure chaos with all the little girls helping, but it sure is delicious!

More Pics from Halloween

I have a confession....this is the first year we've ever carved pumpkins. We really only did it because my Mom, Dad and Blake were here and they thought the kids should get to carve them. There are certain things that I try to keep from my kids for as long as possible (because they require work for me) and this is one of them.

So, thanks to Grandma and Unlce Blake, the carving was a success....

Haylie decided that on the actual Halloween night (as opposed to "Truck-or-Treat")

she wanted to be a witch. My BBF Whitney will probably recognize

this dress from when we were in the 3rd grade!

Glad Halloween is over....now we can get on to the real holidays!

Happy Halloween!

I love these babies -- and that is what Haylie and Katie are. Audra, on the other hand, refused to dress up....she insisted on wearing her pumpkin shirt and holding her new purse. She is a girls after my own heart!

Recap

Well, it seems like all I ever do on this old blog is "recap"! Things are settling down with us, so I think I may be able to get back on the blog band wagon. Here's an update:

Trevor passed his state exam a few weeks ago! Hip hip hooray! He studied and prayed his head off! We are so thankful for this blessing. In September he received word that he was going to be transferred to a facility in Upland. For the girls and I, that meant that after 2 months of being separated from Trevor, we were going to be all living under one roof again! We found a great house in Eastvale, which is about a 20 minute commute for Trevor.

Before we moved we had some good times with our Camarillo friends:

A trip to the LA Zoo with the Melines

Our last Sunday dinner with our wonderful Melines. Patrick makes the most yummy food in the world! I will miss it, but my waist won't!

Paige, Haylie and Bridgette. Haylie sure misses them!

We moved in on Tuesday, October 12 and didn't waste anytime. While Trevor was busy keeping up with his new building (working from about 6 am -10 pm daily) I was unpacking like a mad woman! I had good motivation because the Huhtalas were coming to visit us on Sunday! I loved to be with my sister friend Joalea (and her kids and husband were pretty fun too!)

We headed to San Diego for a day at LegoLand. We decided that anyone has not been to LegoLand, isn't missing a thing! Seriously, it costs almost as much as Disneyland and it is pretty lame.

Disneyland, on the other hand, did not disappoint! We went on Katrina's 8th birthday. The lines were short and the weather was great. Best of all, I've never seen a grown man be so happy about Disneyland. Jason thought he'd died and gone to heaven! It was very entertaining!

Time for a "jew box" break (that's what Audra calls them!)

Happy 8th birthday to Katrina!

Pretty cool girls!

And last, but not least, thru all this chaos in our lives, Audra decided that she is a big girl and potty trained herself! We are loving our new Elmo's World unders!

A Visit from Popper and Ali

We had a great visit from my brother Patrick (who I've always called Popper), Alison and their 2 darling little boys. Our family drove down to good old MV to spend some time together. The only real bummer was waking up in the middle of the night and hearing poor Blake (Dudie to us) barfing! But what family reunion would be complete without the stomach flu!?!?!

The little man enjoying an ice cream cone in Grandma's backyard.

Teeter totter, bread and water, wash your face with dirty water!

John Patrick and Audra -- Patrick and Kimmie look alikes :)

Grandma with all her babies getting ready for a good swim!!

All of us at Disneyland. Poor Blake had his head over the toilet still :(

What an honor!

Patrick takes the Toy Story ride quite seriously!

I took about 5 pictures and he has his tongue out in all of them.

I guess he figured if he concentrated

hard enough he would beat his 2 year old son!



5 Little Cousins

We had a great visit! Just wish it would have lasted longer!

Back to School

Haylie and Katie went back to school last week. Here they are on the 1st day. Audra was so sad that she couldn't go with them, and kept on asking all day, "Where my sisters go?"

Having just one little person home seems really weird. Today we went out to Underwood Family Farm to visit some of our animal friends.

The Guilt

The guilt of not updating my blog is killing me. Rather than try to update for the past 3 months, I am just going to give a quick picture update of the highlights of August...and then we'll go from there!

Katie turned 6! She was a really lucky girl this year and had 3 parties - one with our cousin's at Aunt Dori's (picture), one with our friends the Melines and one in Utah with her cousins!

The girls and I drove to Utah for my nieces baptism and stayed to play!

Trevor flew out the next week so that we could attend Ben and Whitney Szabo's wedding in Logan! Trevor was Ben's Bishop while he was a young man and when he went and returned from his mission. It was awesome to see him and his family!

Our girls got new school hair cuts.

We went horse back riding with Nana in Utah.

And now summer is coming to an end. We still don't know where we will be living, but we'll update you as soon as we know!