All Ready

The decorations are up, most of the shopping is done. Let the season begin!!

Picture Tag

Since there's not too much excitement going on at our house right now, I thought I'd finally do the picture tag that Carrie tagged me with a couple of months ago. I guess it's kind of appropriate now. This was right before Christmas last year (2007) when we rode Trax downtown to look at the lights. It was nice and cold but no snow. Some of us will hope for snow this year.

p.s. It was not a happy night in our house Saturday night when the cougars lost :(

For Your Amusement...

The other day Lauren and I were in the car running errands. We were listening to the radio station that is playing only Christmas music (I know, I know, some of you are saying it's too early but I don't care :). Anyway the song "Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music came on. After they sang, "When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad..." Lauren piped up from the back, "Mom, why do they sing about when the dog bites and the pee stains?" She couldn't understand why I couldn't stop laughing :)

Last night the kids wanted to hear Parley talk in Spanish (he served a mission in Mexico for two years). After rattling off a bunch of stuff in Spanish, Josh said that he wanted to hear how he laughs in Spanish. After Parley laughed naturally from the question, Josh said, "Huh, so that's how it sounds in Spanish."

And I couldn't leave out Taylor. He hasn't said anything too funny, although, lately he's been asking me all kinds of questions that I have to think hard about answering. Like "What is the scariest storm you've ever been in?" "What was the longest airplane ride you've taken?" "When were you the most scared that you've ever been?" Most of these I have no answer for :(

The Big 4 - Ohhhhhh!!

So Parley hit 40! It was a little traumatic, but not too bad for him. I guess having birthdays makes you reflect on where you are with your life and how you are, sometimes, not where you thought you'd be. I think he's doing great and I told him he's lucky because men just start looking distinguished as they get older, women, just look, well, OLD.

Any of you who know Parley, know that he doesn't love being the center of attention and all the fanfare that some others enjoy. I didn't think he'd really get into a big party or anything. Since his birthday was on a Sunday and he has lots of church stuff to do every Sunday I knew the only way to get him to have a "real" birthday was to take him away. As luck would have it, Lauren has a friend who's parents have a SWEET cabin up at Bear Lake (Utah/Idaho border). He didn't have cell phone coverage and there was no internet. It was wonderfully quiet. One other thing that made him happy, they had a satellite dish and so he was able to watch the BYU game on a big HDTV. It was fun. Happy Birthday Parley. Thanks for being so GREAT!!

Last One

Here's one last Halloween picture. At church we did trunk-or-treating and got waaayyy to much candy. Parley wanted to dress-up, too. He was having fun until someone told him he was wearing his head/sweat band like a girl :)

All Grown Up

It was a sad Halloween day for Parley. Lauren decided it would be more fun to trick-or-treat with her friends than with her family. I drove her up to Josie's house about 5:30 and she and Josie and Kirsten all went trick-0r-treating together with Josie's dad. She had a great time and was even too warm! She got lots of full-size candy bars and full cans of pop. Parley and I took the boys around. We don't usually get too many trick-or-treaters at our house so we just left a bowl on the porch with a note. There was even some still left when we got home.

Taylor was his usual BYU fan, but Josh wanted to be a Power Ranger. I borrowed the costume from Jen and just told him he was a Power Ranger. He never knew the difference :) The lady in the third picture is Josh's AWESOME preschool teacher. She has really helped him to come out of his shell this year. She even told me she takes pictures in class sometimes and he even smiles for them!

The Big 7-4

Last Wednesday Parley's mom turned 74. We went up to celebrate with Parley's sister Kim and family and his brother Bruce and his family. For those of you who don't know, she fell and broke her femur a little over 2 months ago (you can see the brace in the picture). She has been in a rehabilitation center for almost that whole time and has been such a trooper. Although they were so nice to her there, she was soooo ready to come home. After some finageling (sp?) she was finally able to come home the morning of her birthday. We had a fun time celebrating with her. Kim made an awesome cake!