Now what? Oh,yeah, the holidays!

We have had a whirlwind month. Brynne, Phil and I have been participating in our stake production of "Savior of the World." It has been an amazing experience. Yes, it took a lot of time with rehearsals. Especially the last two weeks have been crazy with full run-thrus every night but Sunday and Monday. It's been late nights and little sleep, but it has also been weeks of miracles and experiences and an over-flowing of the spirit. There were few nights when someone in the cast wasn't moved to tears, and we've all seen it lots of times before.
It's been especially satisfying to see the growth in Brynne, who had to endure lots of standing and waiting and trying to be still. Her testimony has grown of the Savior and she recognizes scriptures now and associates them with scenes she saw in the play.

We are so blessed to have great neighbors and family that were so kind to take our boys those nights we were at the play. We appreciate them so much and literally could not have done it without them.




When all was done, Phil was eager to get his full beard off, but not before having a little fun with it. So he did the "Brother Brigham," but I thought it looked more like a leprechaun. Then it turned into an interesting "patch" on his chin. It's gone now!

New family pics

I love fall. It's my favorite time of the year. So, of course, it's my favorite time to do family pictures. We have a friend who is just starting out taking photos "professionally" (although you'd never know it) and we had her take our pictures this time. They were so fun. The kids did well, although they were cold and Rhys was sick. Here's a few.

Half a year to catch up on

I haven't added anything for months. Now I'm wondering where to begin.

Because I have so much to catch up on, I think I'll start at the most recent and go backwards. Halloween was so much fun a couple of days ago. We all dressed up. Phil and I dressed up for a murder mystery which was so much fun. He was a creepy carnival worker and I was a barmaid. For the actual evening of Halloween, Phil dressed up like a terrorist. He looked great since he was growing a beard for the play we are in. I was a mechanic. We all did our own thing this year. No group costume for us since the kids all had their own ideas about what to be.

Earlier in October we went to a condo for fall break. It would have been fun to have our friends go with us, but because everyone was sick, we just went. We literally watched TV and played games the whole time. The poor kids just didn't feel good. We still had a great time. We even ended up meeting up with our friend, purely by accident, no less, on our way down the canyon and had fun roasting marshmallows with them.




We capped off that weekend by riding motorcycles and a four-wheeler out at Five Mile Pass. We had fun, despite a pretty good crash by Phil. He tried to catch some air on a hill on the four-wheeler and succeeded, except for the landing. Ouch for his knee, elbow and back. Thank heavens he was wearing his helmet and gear. It could have been a lot worse.

I'm trying to win a trip to Disneyland with my family and needed to include a link to their site. It's a great avenue to know what's going on in the valley and to keep up with great ideas and new places to try. To enter it's http://www.sweetlifeinthevalley.com/2007/09/disneyland-giveaway-sweet-life-in.html. They also have a new site, http://www.outandaboutwiththefamily.com/.

Spring projects

You can tell it's spring. We have about 5 projects in mind, with one underway and once completed.

The one we got started on a couple of weeks ago is the fence. We are finally going to put up a fence so we can get the trailer out of the garage. I know, call us crazy.

So Phil's been amazing--designing, welding, cutting, painting, etc. Here he is welding the caps on the metal posts for the gates so they can swing open to get the trailer in and out, but also to hold the man-gate for the kids to access the back.

He had to paint the posts. He did that Saturday morning (like how they rigged it to paint all sides of them at once and make it look like a party!) and got the posts set Saturday evening, with the help of our great neighbors (Thanks Matt and Cody!).

As soon as it stops snowing, we'll be back at it again.

We also got the storage room all reorganized this week. We put more supports on the shelves and added a few more shelves, besides organizing the food in a more logical order. It's lots better.

Time flies

It's amazing to me that you don't post for a few days and suddenly, you've got all sorts of stuff to post about.


First off, for all who have asked, Cody's tonsilectomy and adenoidectomy surgery went well. He has been a trooper. It's been ouchy and ugly, with some sort of eye goop to top it off, but he's on the mend. The surgery only took about half an hour. His appetite has been nill, but he's finally getting a little hungry again after a week of mostly liquids. He's sleeping better though, and that's what counts.



We're done with our winter birthday mania. Everyone in our family has their birthdays between the middle of December and March 1, so it's a fun thing in the midst of the cold season. Cody and Brynne both designed their own cakes and helped decorate them. Brynne did hers all by herself! That was a lot of fun. We had high hopes of making a grand Star Wars cake for Rhys' birthday, but plans changed. So instead of using some of the great ideas that friends had suggested, we ended up drawing a simple R2-D2 on the cake in the 15 minutes we had before going to church. He loved it and that's all the matters.



We had the chance to go to the Draper Temple open house. That was a lot of fun for the kids and it's amazing inside. We loved doing that and can't wait for the Oquirrh Mountain Temple to be done.




Lastly, with the little bit of warmer weather we've been having the last few days, the boys have had a ball learning to ride their bikes without training wheels. They're champs--they're picking it up so quick. The only hard part is for us to try to keep up with them!

Cody's wild-ride month

So Cody has had a crazy month. At his yearly check-up, he got his eyes checked with a shapes chart. He was saying a star was a triangle and a heart was a square. Time to get his eyes checked. Sure enough, he needed glasses. We had to wait a whole week to actually get his glasses after getting his eyes checked and he was very excited to pick them up yesterday. It's been fun to hear him talk about how clearly he can see things now.

On top of that, we realized that he has sleep apnea. He's probably had it for a long time, from the symptoms and the resulting behaviors. So, he's getting his tonsils and adenoids out next Friday. Good thing there are some perks--like the ice cream, popsicles, yogurt diet that follows--or we'd never get him there.

The other kids are jealous, wondering why they can't get their tonsils out and be out of school for a week and get to be on the same diet. If only they knew...