Sunday, January 4, 2009

Christmas!

December was crazy! Not only is it one of the busiest times of the year for me at work, but it seems like every year there are more programs, more parties, more everything! Luckily, I love all of it (yes, even work...it's a huge accomplishment when the craziness is over)!
Josh's school does a Christmas program every year. This year, his class got to learn the first verse of Silent Night in sign language. It was really cool to see all of the kids signing. Here's Josh at the program getting ready to go on stage.
Next was the annual Christmas party with my girlfriends from highschool. I'm so glad that the five of us have stayed such good friends for so long!
Then we went to the Rapp family Christmas party...it had everything! Good food, a Talent Show for kids of all ages, Santa, Pinatas and a White Elephant trade. Tyler just had to choose the biggest box, which of course means the worst present. Yep, we were the lucky winners of a dinosaur computer monitor!On Christmas Eve, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Toronto's house for Christmas dinner and presents. The kids were all really excited to be able to open presents BEFORE Christmas and as always, had a great time playing with each other!
Mom was looking great and feeling pretty good after her surgery, poor Dad was sick and couldn't eat anything and the rest of the family who are still here in Utah are great! Here are some pics of the boys, Mom and Dad, Neil and Amy's family and Lyle and Megan's family.
...and finally, Christmas day! And like every other year, this was the "Best Christmas EVER!" according to the boys. :) It's all about electronics these days...digital cameras, handheld gaming systems and guitar hero. I love it! Setting everything up, helping the boys figure out the games, it's all really fun for me, so I'm just fine with electronics. It also means fewer presents to actually open (and wrap) since it's all so expensive, and I'm okay with that too. Never really liked the cleanup part of Christmas! ;-)
I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Halloween

Halloween was great, as always! This year, Josh wanted to be a Ninja and Tyler wanted to be Bumblebee, the Transformer. Ty and I went to Josh's Halloween parade at school and then I took the boys over to my office where a couple of my co-workers stole them from me and took them trick-or-treating around the office. They came back with a grocery bag full of candy, which ended up working out well because when we went out later that night around my parent's neighborhood, half of the people weren't home and then we got rained out! Luckily, the boys are still young enough that they have no idea how much candy they COULD have gotten! :)
Here are some pics of me and Ty at the parade, Josh in the parade, Josh and some of his classmates, Josh and Ty when they first got into their costumes and then Ty doing a little jig while I was trying to take his picture. The last picture has got to be my favorite of all time of Tyler...it totally shows his personality!

Shara

Might as well finish up the year while I'm at it, right? On October 8th, we lost our sweet 10 year-old boxer, Shara. Josh helped me put together a nice little photo album of her life with us, which we put out on Facebook. If I knew how to do a slideshow, I'd put it here, but I don't :), so you'll have to settle for just a few of my favorite pics of her.
Here we've got Shara pretending to snuggle up with Josh (he was about 1), just to get to his goldfish crackers, Shara dressed as SuperDog, my favorite picture of Shara with her bone and Shara and Josh on her last day with us.


It was a sad day for us, but we're happy to have had such a great dog in our family for as long as we did. We enjoyed every minute with her!

September Fun!

My good friend from Stockton, Liz, reminded me yesterday that I'm long overdue for adding new posts, so Liz, these are for you! :)

We had a busy September! Over Labor Day weekend, the boys and I took a drive up to Idaho to visit my two brothers and their families. The cousins are always excited to get together and this trip was no exception! The weather was pretty nice, so the boys played in Bryce and Stacey's pool a few times and one day we took them all to the zoo. The komodo dragon and giraffe slide were the big hits! Josh and Ty are looking forward to our next trip out there and although our road trip was fun and the boys were great, Ty keeps telling me that the next time we go out, we "really should fly Mom...on a boy plane" (meaning Delta, because it's blue). :)
A little later in September, Grandma and Grandpa Toronto met us at Josh's Elementary school to cheer him and his friends on as they ran laps to raise money for the school's reading program. Josh did a great job and Ty really wanted to be out there with him, so after the race was over, I set up a mini race with Ty and Grandpa so he could feel like he was involved. Tyler barely won...in Dad's defense though, he IS almost 60! ;-) I only got video of that one, but here are a couple of Josh and his friends stretching and getting ready to race!
At the end of September, I booked a weekend at our condo in Park City. We hung out in the condo watching movies and playing games on Friday night and on Saturday morning, DJ took the boys fishing while my team from work came up for a day retreat. The retreat was great...we made breakfast, had a session on stress and time management and then went up to the Park City Mountain Resort and rode the Alpine Slide and Alpine Coaster. It was so much fun that I wanted to take the boys up too, so we did! Here are some pics of Josh and Ty at the resort and on the way up the Alpine Coaster (it's much faster than it looks as you're watching!).