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!).

Optimist or Pessimist?

On Friday morning, the boys and I were eating breakfast in the kitchen and as always, we were singing silly songs. We happened to be singing the Bob the Builder theme song. For those of you who don't know it, the lyrics go something like "Bob the Builder, can we fix it? Bob the Builder, YES, WE CAN!".

So I would sing the first part and Ty would sing the "Yes, we can!" part. Josh thought it would be funny to interject a "No, we can't!" after Ty was done singing and without even thinking, I turned to him and jokingly said, "Pessimist!". Then, of course, I had to explain what a pessimist was and as we sang the song again and the boys sang their parts, I pointed to Ty and said "Optimist!", then pointed to Josh and said "Pessimist!".

Ty asked if we could sing it again, so I started off, the boys sang (giggled) their parts and Ty turned to Josh, pointed his little finger at him and with a completely straight face said, "Optimus Prime.". Josh and I both busted up laughing, which only encouraged Ty who continued calling Josh Optimus Prime and then proceeded in singing the Transformers theme song.

So from now on whenever anyone calls me an "Eternal Optimist" (you'd be surprised at how often I hear it at work), I won't be able to stop myself from bursting out into the Transformers theme song because after all, they must know that I'm really Optimus Prime!

The New 'Do!

Josh started 1st grade last week (much like me in high school, he was really excited to have school lunch...for the chocolate milk!), so Ty and I took him to get a haircut. I've been thinking about doing something with my hair (like I do every year, then chicken out) and was so impressed with the girl that cut Josh's that I asked her what she'd do with mine.

She told me what she thought would look good, I told her that I'd think about it, then I went back a week later (this past Monday) and let her chop it all off! It's an a-line cut, so the back is even shorter than the front. This is a big change for me...I can't even remember the last time my hair was even remotely short! When Ty saw my haircut, he begged to have one just like it. I told him that he would look weird with a girl haircut, but that we could go get his hair done too.

So here are the three of us with our new cuts! What do you think? :)

Josh's Birthday!

Well, Josh is 7...that's right, 7. Which can only mean one thing. I'm old. Just kidding! For Josh's birthday, we invited all of the cousins over for some fun in the yard with volleyball, the banzai waterslide and as always, a pinata!


Josh wanted an Indiana Jones birthday and I, of course, obliged (I don't know if any of you know just how big of a crush I had on Harrison Ford when I was younger). Josh decided that instead of cake, he wanted birthday pie, which means that he's turning into my Dad (who is always in the mood for cherry pie), so I got him his favorite, chocolate cream, and put little Indiana Jones figurines on top!

Josh has been bugging us for Nintendo DS for about a year now, so we finally got him one for his birthday. Needless to say, he thinks it's the coolest thing ever!

And since you can't have an Indiana Jones birthday without the famous whip, I got one of those too! Here's Tyler getting ready to whip the tree trunk!

Ty's Birthday

Ta Da!

Look who turned 4! Can you believe it? For Tyler's birthday, we took him to Jungle Jim's Playland in Fort Union. We spent the day riding on roller coasters, swings, bumper cars and airplanes. The boys also got hooked on skee-ball, which coincidentally is one of my very favorite amusement park games! :)

And don't forget the presents! There were plenty of Batman and Superman toys to rip open...the boy definitely loves his super heros!

HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY, TYLER!!!

Hawaii!!!

In April, we packed up the boys and headed to Hawaii! The boys did great on the plane and even got invited by the captain to go to the cockpit, take a tour and then talk over the loud speaker!

Our first stop was Oahu, where we stayed in a hotel on Waikiki beach. We walked along the beach, saw a whale from our balcony and got to see some hula dancers perform. At this point, Josh decided that he wanted a ukulele. Unfortunately, we didn't have room for one on the plane. ;-)

While on Oahu, we spent a day at a Sea Life park where we saw all kinds of animals, got to touch a shark, hold turtles, watch dolphin and sea lion shows and then we actually swam with the dolphins! This has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, so it was probably more exciting for me than anyone else!

After our adventure with the dolphins, we flew over to Kauai and drove up to the condo we were staying at in Princeville. It was amazing to me how you could look to one side of the road and see these beautiful green mountains and waterfalls and then look to the other side and see the ocean.

We spent a lot of time at the beach where Josh and Ty mastered the art of boogie boarding (really, they just rode the waves into the beach on their stomachs on a SpongeBob boogie board...it was way cute) and we snorkeled and saw some really cool fish.

Here's Josh riding the waves and Ty hanging out with me on the beach.