Randomly Selected Highlights From the Year

Just to go over some random events from the year:  

We painted the entire first floor of our house (that desperately needed it).  This was Katie's room when we finished.  

Here's a typical evening getting everyone to bed.  

 We had a fun trip to Glacier National Park with the Curtis family!  It was great to have cousins to play with in the mountains.  

One of the school mornings last spring, Jeremy accidentally took both sets of keys with him, so I ran a 5k, pushing all three of them in the stroller to get Katie to school on time.  We made it, but just barely.  

 Jeremy got a new truck this year.  Our old Dodge had hit a point that it was ready to die.  We're hoping this one lasts at least as long as that one did!  

 This was the second to last day of school for Katie.  

 At Glacier in June.  It was so pretty, but it was also a little chilly.  There's a reason it's the off season.   

 Off season did mean we had the entire lake to ourselves.  

 With a little egging on, nearly all of us got in the water.  It would have been warm if the wind wasn't blowing and the sun stayed out.....

 Uncle Russ ran a good ball game for everyone.  

 These girls love their cousins.  

 Doing my hair at night is the girls' strategy to stay up late.  I can't resist, it feels so nice.  

 All three of them are taking piano lessons now.  You can't see it clearly, but this is a song Katie wrote.  

 Another Glacier pic.  

 This level of dirtiness was just how it was at the family reunion.  I'm going to keep lobbying to hold it somewhere with water close by.  

 Sitting on top of a hay bail at the First Peoples' Buffalo Jump.  They still ask when we go by certain bluffs if the native americans ran buffaloes off of them.  

 This was a morning Sydney and Cora got to play in the Missouri shortly after dropping off their big sister at school.  

Christmas is Coming.....

We're almost to Christmas.  We went through some of our boxes a few months ago and found this lovely piece that Jeremy's grandma left him.  He and the girls had a great time decorating.  

 Our first cold snap hit right after Halloween.  Negative 18 degrees is a cold morning, and very cold to shovel in, but that didn't stop Sydney and Cora from wanting to "help."  

 We escaped the cold to visit family for Thanksgiving.  Too bad I take almost no pictures while I'm there, but we did get this one with my dad.  

 Sydney got a chance to give her cousin, Milo a little walk Thanksgiving morning.  

 The trip was even more fun for me because I left my kids with my mom, drove to Las Vegas, flew to Great Falls for a mandatory choir rehearsal, flew back the next day, stopped in St. George to see cousins I haven't for a while, then back to Cedar City.  I planned that fun adventure because this was the first year a community choir was put together to perform the first part of Handel's Messiah. I auditioned for and got the solo parts between "For Unto Us a Child is Born" and "Glory to God."  The performance was two nights after we got back from our trip.  It went very well and was a great way to start of the month of December.  

Fall

 Sydney has become miss independent with her new hair do.  She is very proud that she can bathe herself.  I took the twins for another hike to Memorial Falls for one of our good weather days.  

In a desperate attempt to recreate a New Hampshire pumpkin picking experience I drove the girls 3 hours to Bozeman to the closest pumpkin patch I could find.  It was really nothing like New Hampshire, but we did it and got our pumpkins.  Little did we know how many pumpkins we would have this year.   

Here was our one and only leaf pile before the wind blew it away.  

 Jeremy celebrated his 35th birthday.  I gave up making a cake and instead brought home a tasty ice cream cake.  

 Jeremy had the day off when Cora and Sydney's preschool went to a local nursery for a hay ride.  

 Their school also did a dance for us a few days later.  

 Halloween was a huge success for these girls.  That was the longest they've been out, but Cora got tired and walked home by herself (OK, so I was home and Jeremy was four houses away, but she was proud).  

First Days of School

I feel like we went from a three kids at home to three kids at school family in a nano-second.  Katie started 1st grade this year and Sydney and Cora go to preschool three days a week.  I can't believe how big they are!  

Our neighbors had their driveway repaved within the first few weeks of school and when they weren't in preschool, Cora and Syd were out there anytime they could be to watch all the work.  

Family Pictures

We did our family pictures in September, just after Sydney cut her hair.  I think we made it work.  It always helps to have a good photographer, like Wendy Parrish, to make us all feel beautiful.