Decorating Gingerbread houses

Today, we went to my friend Andrea's house for Family Home Evening. We had a lot of fun decorating gingerbread houses, talking to good friends; the Hatch's were there too.








Mckenna making a Gingerbread house.








Breanna, Mckenna, Ashley and Kyleigh making Gingerbread houses.











Kyler sitting with the little kids, helping them.









The final product from Mckenna and Kyler.

Christmas Tree design and the Holiday House Trappings

Our Tree after leaving the Forest with all the dressings.










Matt, Kyler, Mckenna and Devin decorating the tree.









Our dining room with the kids art work from over the years.








A mock-up of our house in Georgia.
I did this for one of Kyler's 3rd grade Choir performances.

Toy soliders that the boys made when they were in 2nd grade. It's funny though, because they went to 2 different school in different states and still did the same thing in the same grade.

Plant shelf in entry way.

Entry way view from staircase landing

Our house with the Christmas lights on.

Walking to the Front Door

Another Bit of artwork from the kids; this time Mckenna's reindeer story.

Mckenna's hands

Kyler's hands, and the Gingerbread people the kids made a few years ago
(all of this is in the Dining Room.)

Our Entryway

Our family room.

Our Fireplace mantel.

Matt and I at the age of seven.

The Kids at the age of 6 weeks.

Christmas tree hunting, friends and family love!

We went Christmas tree hunting on Sunday because Matt and I sat down trying to figuare out when we could go and that was the only day we didn't have major scheduling conflicts. Oh, Okay church is a major conflict, but if I had known that it would take an 1 1/2 to drive there and finding the tree, and drive back, we couldv'e gone to Church too, but usually it takes 3 or 4 hours to go find. It was fun because we had Madison with us, she had spent the night after her parents were gone until late Saturday night and she had never been to the Pine Valley mountains and so we were fortunate to be the first to show her the mountains! We love the mountains and so we hope to help her to love them too!

The sad thing is that on our way home we passed Angel for Animals ( the place where Roxey is,) and so Matt pulled over on the road so we could see if she was out in the yard, when we couldn't see her, Devin asked if we could pull into the parking lot. I said absolutley not, and Matt explained to Devin that if Roxey saw us, she would have to readjust to her environment there again. I just started crying because I have so much guilt about not taking care of the dog ourselves. I have nightmares about her getting out of the yard, getting hit by a car or being adopted by some really mean people. But when I hear what the Angel's lady says online about her being able to go out into the main perimeter with all the workers I guess I feel a little better, but I still feel really sad about not having her here at our house. I guess I loved her more than I would give my self permission to when she was with us...

After Lisa came and got Madison we put ourselves into high gear because we had company coming over. Our friends the Warrens have had us over to their house for dinner many times in the last year, they have each been in a play that our family has been and Sarah and Devin have become really good friends. Devin actually had a crush on Sarah about a year ago. He gave her a valentine gift last year, it was really cute, since Sarah is a year older than him. We had a yummy dinner; roasted Chicken, pork roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad, broccoli and delicious drinks. we had two main dishes because there were 11 of us and the chicken was really little, I wanted to make sure that we had enough food. I really worried about them coming over because they have 2 little children that are really rambunctious (they are 8 and 6 years old and yes, dad, I do worry about kids touching our stuff.) Emma and Luke were really good, they didn't touch anything without asking, they played really well with Mckenna and we didn't here from them for the whole evening. Having them over was really nice. We had great conversation, Matt and George watched NFL Football and Maleka, me and the kids laughed and laughed and laughed over the weirdest things. We will definately be doing it again soon!

I hope that you enjoy the pictures, I love the one of Matt giving me reindeer ears!

Christmas Tree hunting
friends
and loving family~ Priceless

Mckenna on stage finally!

Mckenna was so happy that the next day after Kristy's recital was the Dicken's Festival so that she could dance her little heart out, and yet, she said it still wasn't enough!

The cute pink hats the girls are wearing in their hip hop Christmas dance, I made for everyone. I had very sore hands that week since I made 20 hats! But they sure turned out cute for the girls and they loved them....


I was sitting to far back to get really great shots and most because of the movement was very blurry, but this is a look at a few that turned out okay....

Kristy's College Recital or Mckenna aching to dance on stage!

Mckenna attended her Ballet teacher's college dance recital today.
During the middle of the show, Mckenna said, "Mom, I just want to get up there and dance!" This was a performance that a lot of Mckenna's dance team decided to attend and we as mom's went also. It was fun because Kristy is also our neighbor and her sister and brother play the violin with Devin in a quartet that her mom put together as a favor to me, to get Devin to play more....

Kristy is an amazing dancer and we are sad that she will be leaving our studio to attend school at SUU in January. Mckenna is wondering who her new Ballet teacher will be?!
Thanks Kristy for helping Mckenna to have a stronger core and help to realize that she actually likes Ballet! 

Thanksgiving pictures

Turkey! Yummy!
But where is Sandi?
Well, her picture didn't turn out, it was blurry!
Sorry.

Family, TomKat weekend and Men in Black Movie night!

On Sunday Kyler decided that he wanted to watch Men in Black. The kids looked so cute laying down on the blankets that I had to take a picture. During the commercials the channel always gets changed to something else. Since it was the weekend of the TomKat wedding, Spike was playing all day Tom's Movies. So we also watched Days of Thunder. But only a few minutes since it is not a kid movie.

How does everyone feel about Tom & Katie Holmes getting married?
Does it bother you that he married after she gave birth to their baby, do you think they would have gotten married if she hadn't had a baby? Or does anyone even care. I find it very interesting that TVGUIDE channel has covered this for 2 weeks now: the preparations week and the wedding week. How many people have actually watched that channel- I scanned it for a second and then grew bored. Really who cares!
What are you feelings?

Surprise, Happy 16th Birthday, Devin!

Devin & Brittney Griffin

A Ton of Friends
Natalie (girl on couch on our left side of view,) & Brittney stayed but the rest of the girls left after the video.


More Friends
Mark, Jesse (the partner in Crime,)Trevor, Kyler and his friends


All the Adults: Jim Griffin in the white shirt, Tyler (the camera man,) Matt in the FSU shirt, Erik, and in the background Michelle and Trina (Erik and Jim's wives.)












Matt and his friends planned Devin's surprise party. It was great, I only had to pull things together, buy the supplies and they did the rest!

Here is what happened on his special day:
Matt took Devin and his friend Jesse to lunch at Wendys. During lunch, Ethan, Trevor and Paul (with Tyler as camera man in tow,) kidnapped Devin and Jesse and took them to the Halladay's house while they were blindfolded and interrogated. While the interrogation was going on Devin was told that he had to complete 5 tasks and that each task would take a certain amount of time and if all were completed in time then he would get $8 a task.
After the interrogation, Jim Griffin dressed as a chauffer gave devin his first task and his first shirt- orange with "Brittney give me a kiss" on it. HIs task was to go into the Halladay's house (where Michelle was having a YW activity and 15 girls were there,) and ask Brittney for a kiss. It was funny because Brittney was in the joke and made it really hard for him.

Task #2 Devin as taken to the city park where Matt had taken our wicker table and a chair, Kyler and his friends to serve Devin a food that he really hates. He had to eat a Hamburger with Ketchup. This may not be hard for most, but Devin really hates Ketchup. He almost barfed 2 times once on Tyler! Tyler told him that if he did barfed on him, he was going to be cleaning it up himself and then he was going to be pounded.

Task #3 was paint balling through and obsticle course where Ethan, Trevor and Paul set themselves up to fire at devin while he went through the course, with Jesse (and Tyler filming!)

Task #4 was Devin writing a poem at Jesse's house and then driven to Lin's the grocery store where he had to read it to 3 different women. This was probably the easiest because like his mother, he not afraid to talk to anyone!

Task #5 was the funniest task of all. Devin was given 2 choices. He could use the $8 to buy me an article of clothing, he could keep the $8 but he would have to try on women's clothing and so what does Devin (who really needs gas money,) pick? He chooses to keep the $8 and try on the clothes. But he had to go into the department store wearing a Hot Pink shirt that said " I wear women's clothing!" I had called a old ward member- Britney (yes, another Britney!) who work at Christensen's and was working that day and asked her to steer devin towards the most ugly and most girly clothes she had. Devin thought she look familiar but didn't recognize her! She lead him to some really nice stuff that is really sext for teenagers, and Devin had to try the clothes on.
As Jim was outside waiting for the boys to come out of the store, he noticed a guy carrying a really big camera and asked him if he would help play a joke on a kid who was on a 16 year old birthday scavenger hunt. The guy was game and went in to the store covering as a Newspaper report writing an article about EMO's (gothic dressing guys who wear very girly, tight pants.) He noticed Devin (who Jim had described to the guy,) and started taking pictures as Devin walked out of the dressing room with a floral skirt and a spaghetti strap floral tank top. It was really funny. The guy told Jim he would send him copies of the pictures when he had them developed. It will be interesting to see the pictures. Devin got a lot of really weird looks from customers of the store which made it even more funny.

Then after it was all over, Jim drove the boys to our house where all his friends (girls and guys,) were waiting for him. He was very surprised and went very red when he saw Brittney there (the kissing Brittney.) Then they watched the video, after that they ate cake, snacked, ate little caesar's pizza and then most of the girls except for Natalie and Brittney and a few of the guys left. But devin's closest friends stayed played games and then went to the Griffen's to watch a movie!
Devin was very surprised by the whole day and had a lot of fun after all the embarrasement was over!!! I secretly think that he like all of the attention though!

Nellis Air Show

The Airshow was a lot of fun, but not as much fun as the one we went to at Hill Air force base with Keith and Lynette's family last spring.

It is nice to go on Veteran's day and be reminded of what the soldiers went through during WWI and WWII and all the other wars, but we missed the great demonstration of the WWII fighters which is my favorite with the B52 Bombers. I love the sound of the older planes engines more than the super speed fighters of today. It was really nice to see the tricks though of the F-16's and the Thunderbirds. My favorite part of that demonstration is when a certain plane is not the focus and they are hanging out behind the scenes and are just doing whatever they want, that is where the fun is, the pilot just messing around by himself waiting for his turn, but he is doing turns, skydives and dips without anyone really paying attention, but I love that part and ALWAYS PAY ATTENTION! Our video at Hill Airforce was made up of mostly those behind the scene flights because as I said, they to me are more entertaining.

Hopefully, we can go to the next airshow that come up since they are what the boys love to do the most when spectating.