Happy Birthday Kate!!

Happy Birthday Kate!
We love you and we are so thankful you are part of this family.
I love you because you are a great older sister, you are a good example of humility and patience. You are fun, smart, beautiful and funny.

"I love Aunt Kate because she always tells me I'm her favorite nephew, and she laughs at my wide open mouth all the time. " Love, Parker
{ok, the fav nephew thing isn't true but the other part is}

Why do YOU love Kate??

What a day!

It was the perfect day in San Francisco!
Delicious lunch at Fisherman's wharf!
A Cable car ride, with everyone adoring
the babies - I loved it.
We had such a fun time together - thanks girls!
I'm going to miss that Haley.

Daughters and Grandbabies!

Kate and high school/college friends!
We had such fun doing the shower for Kate - 3 mos. to go!
Haley and Parker chatting and playing. SO cute!
The Crowley kids - I love 'em!
Mike and Parker apparently saw something shocking!

We were in needs of a few laughs the other night, and came across this (clean!) SNL skit that had us in stitches:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/215177/saturday-night-live-british-movie

If you're poking around for more laughs, there's another one that's HILARIOUS with Michael Bolton...but be forewarned, there's a few cuss words.

Also, I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years! We enjoyed a great weekend with our friends Matt & Julie Mizukawa in St. George. They used to live in Las Vegas, then they moved to Tennessee for more schooling, and they've been there for the past 4 years. This past summer they moved to St George for good, and we went up this weekend to see their new house and enjoy the smorgasborge that is New Year's for them. Authentic Japanese fare was had in plenty- including restaurant-quality sushi- and was so fun. Matt's parents are incredibly hospitable and had about 50 people in their house! The kids had so much fun running around with all the kids there and we loved the great company and good food. And we were reminded again how beautiful St George is....we could definately live there!

My Boys and BYU

I know I'm a bit late on this, but here is Devon and Troy all suited up for the priesthood session of conference in October. Aren't they cute? I mean studly handsome :) Hard to believe he is 12. He enjoyed going to the session, especially out to dinner afterward with Troy.

In October the boys, along with all Troy's brothers, Glenn and 3 cousins all went to the BYU/Oregon State football game. They got a hotel and made a weekend out of it. They had a blast. After the game they watched it later that night, and Troy paused it on his iPad and took a picture when they showed up on TV. Pretty exciting stuff. You can see Devon standing with the brown sweater, a little of Cam sitting on the right of Dev. Ashlynn is on Dev's left, then Troy and Tyler. Nathans is behind Troy, you can see part of his hat. They rest of the crew were sitting a few rows back. Good thing no one was picking their nose.

And the highlight: One of the players before the game (Pendleton) gave the kids five. I love the smile on Devon's face, and I can tell Cam is smiling too. It was a big moment for them!

We have big BYU fans here in our house. They are trained young. Before football season, Troy actually puts all the televised games on the calendar, so I will know not to schedule any conflicting activities involving him. I have learned he is serious about that :)

Thanksgiving in St. George!

The guys had fun biking, golfing and shooting!
We did a great hike in Snow Canyon.
Parker and Hayley met for the first time.
Then there was the delicious food. Everything was yummy.
The weather was beautiful. Only thing missing were the Whittles.

Whittle Halloween

This post is a little unorganized...i lost a couple pics I uploaded, so I had to load them again, so things are sort of out of order. Scroll down to read about this Halloween post :)

Halloween was fun this year. Our ward didn't do the traditional trunk or treat, which I was a little bummed about. We had a chili dinner and the kids went from room to room for some carnival games. It was fun, but the downside was they got one or two pieces of candy for each game, and by the end of the night they probably went to 6 or 7 games...so that makes for a very small amount of candy. Which really, I shouldn't be bummed about, but let's face it, halloween is all about the candy. So the kids were bummed they didn't come home with much, so we took them around the neighborhood, which was really fun for them. We haven't really ever done that since we always had trunk or treat. To kick off our halloween evening, we had a spooky dinner with giant lips, mummy pizza's, creepy tendrils and a graveyard of fingers for dessert. Oh, and a beverage of witch's blood with skull ice cubes. The kids loved it. We had candles and halloween music too.

Cameron decided to stray from the usual Dracula and be a mummy, Audrey was a ballerina/fairy and then a Power Ranger. I love how Alex is showing you his 'muscles'!