Silly kids

It's often hard to entertain two active, often hyper kids, but we have a lot of fun and love watching how silly Will and Kayla can be sometimes.

Kayla is constantly on the move, running from one activity to another. This picture was accidental, but captures her perfectly.


One of Kayla's favorite activities is having one of us read books to her. She also loves to pull our books off the shelves.


Lately Kayla has been interested in the big cupboard in the kitchen. She especially loves the peanut butter and syrup for some reason. Here she is with the peanut butter tower she made, and of course her cheesy smile.


A few weeks ago Bill and I went to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 3D. We brought home the glasses they gave us, and immediately Will and Kayla wanted to play with them.



Will and Daddy love doing things together, no matter what it is. Here they are building a Yogi Bear flying machine.



Life is certainly never dull in our house!

Christmas Day

We stayed home for Christmas this year, and Bobby and Susan were gone visiting her family, so we enjoyed a quiet morning with just our family. After enjoying homemade cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate/cider for breakfast we unwrapped presents. We received many wonderful gifts from family members, and Will and Kayla got a number of fun gifts from Santa and others.

Will's remote control truck


Kayla loved (and still loves) her new doll


A while ago Will started asking if he could have his own Book of Mormon to use when we read scriptures as a family, since he reads a verse almost completely by himself each day. So Bill grabbed a couple from the distribution center at the temple and gave one to both Will and Kayla. He even made them extra special by "engraving" (using a puff pen) their names on the front.


Later in the day we invited a few friends over for Christmas dinner. I didn't think to get out the camera while everyone was here, but here's a picture of all the yummy desserts we made.


All in all we had a great Christmas. We missed our families, of course, but enjoyed being together making our own memories and traditions.

Pre-Christmas activities

We had a busy month of December leading up to Christmas. Of course we did the traditional decorating of the tree, but this year it happened in shifts.

The family decorating the tree together


Daddy finishing up with the more fragile ornaments later


The finished product


Since we don't have a fireplace or a mantle, Bill gets pretty creative with where we hang our stockings.


Christmas is a fun time to bake yummy treats. Will saw a picture of reindeer cupcakes in a magazine and wanted to make some. They definitely didn't look like the ones in the picture, but they were still fun to make.


After putting the batter into the muffin tin, I realized we still had some left, so rather than making more cupcakes I decided to put the rest into a round cake pan and make these:


We were fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on who in the family you ask) to have a white Christmas. Will absolutely loves playing in the snow and building snowmen. Kayla tolerates it for a little while, but she seems to share her mom's aversion to really cold temperatures.