Here's some pre-Christmas shots of playing in the backyard. It was fun to have a little snow to play in.

The snowman has a sad story. They worked on it so hard. After much trial and error with what to use as the mouth, they decided dog food worked best. Cameron had just put the last piece in and we all backed up to get a picture. And it collapsed in a heap. And the dogs started eating the dog food off the face. It was a sad moment. Cameron ran away in tears claiming it was all his fault. They couldn't see the humor in it like I did.

Go Cougars! Everyone donned their BYU attire for the bowl game that BYU won.

I'm going to try to get caught up on posting! Here is Devon's band concert. He did a great job!

Christmas was Merry! Here's to 2011!

We enjoyed everyone's visit. Wasn't quite to same without the Whittles,

but we love our growing family and

look forward to two additions in 2011!

Yippee!

The Graduates!

The next evening we went to Emily and Brett's graduation, and Sat. am was the commencement in the new BYU-I Center recently dedicated. It was a

very impressive site. It is similar to the conference center in Salt Lake, but holds 15,000 people instead of 20,000. We moved them down to Salt Lake in the afternoon. We visited with Kate and Clark and Mike's family, then headed for home on Monday, Dec. 20th.

Holiday Happenings

We started Dec. 15th, driving out to Rexburg for Emily and Brett's graduation. The 17th, Mike, Travis and I drove to West Yellowstone to snowmobile and stay at Three Bears Lodge. It was great fun, and a lot of beautiful scenery and wildlife to be seen! Driving the snowmobile was quite fun also.

please don't think we're total rednecks, but....

This is the rooster that's been waking us up at various time (3 am, 5 am, 6 am...). Even if it wasn't against city code to have a rooster, he'd have had to go anyway! So....I took care of him, and we had him for dinner:

He was actually quite a lean (yet delicious) little guy. And it wasn't fun. I'm glad I did it, and glad I know how to do it, but I do not look forward to doing this again. Killing things is not fun- there was a point where I was begging Rod to come over and do the killing part because I couldn't do it, but he refused! Once the rooster was dead, the rest wasn't so hard- it was just meat at that point.

The ironic thing? We were woken up by another crowing the next morning- so we have another one. I'm postphoning the inevitable. (I made sure this one was a rooster before taking care of him- I witnessed him crowing. The crowing that woke us up the next day was actually slightly different, apparently, roosters each have their own unique "voice". I haven't identified yet for sure which one this next one is. )

(and no, Lizzie didn't watch, though the night before she asked me, "can I do the killing?"....Um, should I be concerned???)

So I'm finding myself on the couch resting a lot lately....forming a baby in your belly while caring for three other kids takes a lot out of me I'm finding. It's becoming such commonplace I think the kids are starting to lose respect for mom sleeping on the couch. Sometimes absolutely no efforts are made by the kiddos to protect this sacred time! This is Abby with the latest infringement:

Also, we got guns! We've been shooting several times, and I must say, I really love my gun (as much as a girl can love a gun, anyway). It just feels molded perfectly to my hand, I love it! I took my concealed weapons permit class last Saturday, and, though a long 10 hours, thought it was definately worth the time. It was basically about safety, being a responsible firearms owner, and the legalities of carrying a concealed weapon. Before I get my permit, I have to "qualify", which basically means passing a shooting test, where I have to show I could hit what I'm aiming at! I plan on taking the test in Jan. or Feb.

So this my gun (Walther p22):

And this is Rod's (Smith and Wesson m&p 40):

Besides my becoming molded to the couch and becoming rednecks, we are enjoying the Christmas season around here, too. We've developed a tradition of getting our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. So we are enjoying the scent of pine, melodies of Christmas music (which always remind me of you, Mom!!), and delicious English Toffee! I love Christmas!! I love our tree, with all it's kid-made ornaments and ornaments from Grandma Gubler. I love the peacefulness, and the excitement of the kids. I love getting out our nativity sets, baking, and having the kids make paper chains so they'll stop asking me how many more days till Christmas. I love having clam chowder on Christmas Eve (I know me and mom are alone on this one), and I remember how dad would make the fire in the fireplace before we all go downstairs (from youngest to oldest, of course). One Christmas present that makes me smile is the year that Brooke gave me a bunch of clothes-all from her closet- for Christmas. And I was so excited. I still remember feeling sooooo lucky that my big sister would give me her hand-me-downs so willingly!

What do you guys remember about Christmas growing up???