school days

My friend and I take turns taking our kids to school or picking them up. It's a perfect arrangement especially if one of our little ones is napping. Usually I drive to school, but on rare occasions my friend does. We love sitting out front of the house waiting for the "school bus" to come. Riley is usually fairly indifferent when brother leaves but she is always happy when he comes home!

Sister

Riley is a crazy little girl. She is trouble most of the time with her high pitched screams and want to make a mess of everything, but she is also very sweet, willing to give loves and kisses and tenderly rockss her babies, trying to feed and sing to them.

She is a big mess maker, especially at mean time 

but that's only because she wants to feed herself now.

Feeding her Baby

Kisses

Riley LOVES bathtime! She splashes and plays forever 

and is usually upset when we get her out.

Riley has learned to fold her arms for prayer time.

One of my favorite things to do is watch Riley sleep. (Isn't it every mother's favorite to watch over their sleeping babies?) Riley is not a great sleeper, she still doesn't sleep through the night but at least she naps well during the day...most days.

Utah Fun

Our trip up to Utah was so fun. It also wasn't quite long enough...it never is. I think the best part of our trip, for me at least, was that Kameron got to come with us. Over the last year I've traveled up to Utah 6 times and only on this trip did Kam join me. While up north we pretty much just hung out with our family and that's exactly what we wanted to do!

The kids opened presents from Gram and Grampa.

Riley loved playing with Miss Harper.

We took a day trip to Logan to visit Great Grampa Henrie. 

The kids loved playing out in the snow and climbing on all of Grampa's big trucks.

Even though it was sooooo cold in Utah, we all loved playing 

in the snow and remembering what a real winter is like.

Which is the real Peter?

Cart Cart is 5!

My little boy is not so little anymore. He is growing up much to quickly. We were in Utah over Carter's birthday so we spent a lot of time celebrating with our family. First we Celebrated with the Henrie's by going out to dinner to not only celebrate Carter, but to celebrate Grampa's birthday too. 

Afterwards we enjoyed a cookie cake per request of the birthday boy.

Later during our stay, before heading back home, we got together with Bo and Pappy and Uncle Peter, Aunt Megan, Uncle Kris and Navy for some birthday bowling. Carter WON!

And more presents!

On our way home we stopped at Grampa and Gramma Johnsen's house where Gramma and Aunt Abi made yummy monster cupcakes for Carter!

Happy, Happy Birthday Mr. Cart! Can't believe you're 5!!!

Christmas: Baby's First

 We had a quiet Christmas at home this year. It was really fun to decorate the house and participate in daily activities together as a family counting down the days to Christmas. We attended parades, went to the movies, read stories, drove around looking at Christmas lights and slept by the tree.

On Christmas Eve our activity took us to the Springs Preserve to take a train ride with Santa. We also shared a special lunch together and ran a few last minute errands.

After getting home and eating dinner we had a special Family Home Evening about the similarities of Christ and Santa Clause and read the Nativity. We also did our gifts to Jesus together and then headed to bed.

We have a Precious Moments Nativity set that I set out and let the kids play with. Riley loved playing with the animals and the different figures. Her favorite was Jesus and he was almost always stuffed in her mouth.

Christmas morning came earlier than expected. This is the first year the boys were awake early. They must have been really excited! We had the kids wait at the top of the stairs before heading down to see what Santa had brought.

(We have been lucky that Riley is afraid of the stairs.)

We took a lot of video but not many pictures. I didn't get any of the boys with their gifts. The kids were definitely spoiled but they are really good kids and probably deserved it, well, most of it. Braden got a marble maze and special snow globe from Santa and a pogo-stick from Mom and Dad. Carter got an Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee rescue bot from Santa and Switch and Go Dino's from Mom and Dad. Miss Riley got new lovey's from Santa and A Princess Castle from Mom and Dad.

After opening presents and eating our traditional quiche and orange rolls we loaded in the car and headed north to spend the rest of our holiday with our families.

As we were driving Kameron and I talked about all the Christmas' we've celebrated together and we've decided that as nice as it was just being with our family, we missed having the chaos of our extended family with us. Hopefully we will be able to talk everyone (or at least some) into joining us for Christmas each year.