Happy Birthday Bryce!!!

This year we had a great week celebrating Bryce's birthday. He of course had to work on his birthday, but we celebrated as soon as he got home. For me it was a day of cooking, I was also cooking for my dinner group. I made Bryce's favorites: peppered steak, mesquite chicken, oven roasted potatoes, corn, berry jello salad, and garlic bread. When Bryce got home from work he was EXCITED to eat, especially the peppered steak. After dinner the kiddos and I gave Bryce his birthday gifts: the last two Harry Potter movies, a sports coat, slacks, and socks. Bryce was in need of some clothing items for work.

Tuesday night Chandra, Tonya, and I planned a birthday party for our hubbies. All three of their birthdays are within a week of each other, and we all did not realize it until this year. We had a great time eating cake and ice-cream with great friends!

Dustin, Collin, and Bryce...


Friday night Bryce and I went on a date, woohoo! We went to dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant, Chiang Mai and then to a movie, The Three Musketeers. We had a great night being together, just the two of us.




Happy Birthday Bryce, we love and appreciate you!

Ann & April turn 30...

Between us five girls mentioned in previous blogs many times, three of them have birthdays in December just a couple days apart. This year it was Ann, April, and Mary's 30th birthday. Mary (the one who lives in Australia) was unable to celebrate with us, but we missed her dearly. The plan was to eat dinner at Burger and Brew, enjoy cake and ice-cream, and then from there everyone could do what they wanted. Kristy and I went shopping a few days prior to get some fun things for the girls to wear during their night of celebrating. We all had a great time together. I took lots of pictures, but will only share my favorites.





After dinner, Bryce and I met up with his family and went to a Steelheads hockey game, we had a great time.

The 10 Virgins

I was asked months ago if I would be willing to participate in December's Relief Society weekday meeting, helping to retell the parable of the 10 virgins. I agreed to, but was quite nervous. I was assigned to be the 7th virgin, representing sins and pleasures of the world.
Each virgin was assigned a room to decorate, fitting their assigned virgins' personality. We each prepared a four minute script describing the virgins' lives and the choices each made before/after the bridegroom came. We all dressed in character and remained in character during the entire program.
Once the program started each virgin, in character with oil lamp in hand sat with the others as guests. There were three narrators who started the evening off prefacing the parable with various scriptures and information about the artist and how the idea came about in bringing this parable to life. At one point during the opening presentation the 10 virgins stood up and walked to their rooms. Meanwhile the other sisters broke up into five groups and visited each virgin in their decorated room round-robin style. The groups rotated between the foolish virgins first, and ended with the wise virgins. By the end each group had the opportunity to get to know each virgin a little better by listening to their story. We all met back together and ended with the three narrators sharing more scriptures and quotes.
Overall this was a wonderful experience, and I'm so thankful for the opportunity I had to be apart of it.

There is one lady missing, but I still wanted to take a picture of those who participated...

Ward Christmas Party!

Our ward Christmas party was AWESOME this year. We had so much fun with our new ward family. For dinner we had ham and potatoes cooked in the dutch oven, salad, rolls, and dessert. Kyra on her own tried the ham and loved it, yeah! After we had been eating for a bit a "special" visitor arrived, Santa. All the kiddos formed a line to sit on Santa's lap, get their picture taken, and receive a special treat. Kyra loved Santa this year compared to previous years, it was really sweet. We ended with the primary kiddos singing songs and acting out the true story of Christmas, it was perfect.

Kyra looking at baby Jesus in the manger, so precious...

Christmas Gift Exchange...

My BEST girlfriends and I celebrated Christmas early this year due to December being a super busy month. We went to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Yen Ching, exchanged gifts, and went to a fantastic movie, The Help.
Last year while celebrating Christmas it was suggested to start having monthly "girls night" for year 2011. Before we were getting together with families included, but realized we were not getting our girl time to chit chat, laugh, and just be girls. Anyways it was a HUGE success, and we made some great memories... eating dinner at Ann's house and chillaxin, going to McCall, eating out at The Creperie, eating great stir-fry and prepping calendars to make for our mamas, making our calendars and eating dessert, going to Something Borrowed and eating out at Legends, craft night with a yummy dessert, writing letters to Mary the Great, being girls and relaxing, and celebrating Christmas together. We always have the best time together no matter what we're doing. I look forward to what 2012 will bring.
Below there are only four of us in the photo, if we were ALL together there would be five, but Mary lives in Australia. We miss her everyday, especially when we get together for "girls night". Love and miss you always Mary!

Our Family Pictures...

I know it's been almost a year since I blogged, but I have an excellent excuse... We had NO internet. We now have internet and hopefully it's here to stay. I intend to blog about the big events that took place this last year, but it will definitely take some time. Anyways, I thought a perfect "returning to blogging" post would be to post our most recent family pictures.

Our family picture day was not an easy task, I wonder if it is for anyone. It's funny how you put so much time into getting your family ready for pictures, and then my sweet little Kyra refuses to smile for any picture, or wants to wander off and play elsewhere. I need to remember she is two no matter what situation we may be in at the time. Anyways we ended up getting a great family photo! I emailed two pictures to my sister-in-law (the only picture of Kyra smiling and another that the rest of us looked decent in) My sister-in-law pasted Kyra's smiling face onto the other photo and voila we got a family photo we were all happy with.




On family picture day we did not attempt to get individual pictures of the kids, so yesterday I tried all by myself in our own backyard. These were my favorites...

Kyra - 2 1/2 years old

Miles - 8 months old

Breaking Dawn

I LOVE these girls, we have so much fun together. We went to Breaking Dawn opening night. We of course made it a complete GIRLS night with dinner before at The Creperie, taking a few silly pictures while at the theatre, and sipping hot cocoa at Moxie Java afterwards.





Great night with great friends, thanks girls!

Trip to Eastern Idaho...

A couple weeks ago Bryce and I decided to go and visit his brothers and their families in Idaho Falls, Rexburg, and Jerome area over the holiday weekend. We had blast! Friday night we went to a Steelheads hockey game and hit the road right after. Although it was quite late, there was no traffic and Kyra did surprisingly well. We relaxed Saturday morning and later in the afternoon went sledding with everyone. We all had a great time playing in the snow, especially Kyra. Kyra also had fun playing with her cousins. We got to meet Brenna and Max, the newest additions to the Ellsworth family, who were both super cute. The weekend was filled with laughter, great meals, playing games, etc. Monday before leaving to go home we drove around Rexburg noticing all the new buildings that have gone up since we last visited. While visiting we also got to hang out with my little brother who just started his first semester at BYU-Idaho. Overall the weekend was wonderful, we had a great time making new memories.

New Year's Eve 2010!!!

Better late than never, right? We had a great time ringing in 2011 with some wonderful friends! Amber and Brady rounded up a group to get together at Brady's parents house. We all had a blast eating yummy treats, playing games, and laughing together. Kyra had a lot of fun too, and stayed up till 10:30. Happy New Year to everyone!!!

Hats and Forts

This last week we got a new freezer. With that freezer came a very big box and Kyra quickly fell in love. Add her favorite hat and she had hours and hours of fun.

Bryce's Chicken Tractor

Bryce has been building a chicken tractor in our garage off and on for the last month and a half. Well, he finished it and Tarek, Bryce's cousin brought over two chickens to try the place out. So far so good. Kyra loves it and I'm starting to warm up to the chickens. For the time being, we named the chickens Red and Grey.











They must of liked their new digs because we woke up the next morning and found our first egg! Yeah!

Christmas 2010!!!

Christmas this year was spent with my side of the family, and we had a great time celebrating. A lot of my family's traditions take place on Christmas Eve. We started the evening with our traditional "breakfast" dinner, it was sooooo yummy! This is a tradition that started when my dad was a boy growing up, and it has continued for many years and we ALL love it. Afterwards we all gathered in the family room for a Christmas story, our story this year was The Forgotten Carols. It was then time for all the kids to open one gift, each of them got pajamas. They all looked so cute in their new cozy pajamas. Kyra was starting to get sleepy, so we had her place her stocking on the table for Santa and she went night night. We then did the adult gift exchange. Our family had Brent, my younger brother. Recently Brent has bought a new I-phone and computer, so we decided to get him I-tunes gift cards, there were four cards in all. Bryce was in charge of the wrapping and wrapped each one differently, so Brent would not suspect they were all the same thing. My sister Lexie's family had our family. I got black boots, Bryce got some tools, and Kyra got a dress up kit. We were all very thankful. This year Bryce and I decided to stay the night at my parents house, so after everyone went home we played games with Brent and Brady. We all had a wonderful Christmas Eve night together! Thanks mom and dad for making it a memorable night!







Christmas morning was a lot of fun too. Kyra woke up about 8:00, so we took her downstairs and we collected our stockings. We went back upstairs to play with our stocking stuffers until everyone else woke up and was ready to open presents. Around 9:00 we all gathered in the living room to open presents. It was so fun to see Kyra's face light up with each gift she opened. We got Kyra a wooden block set, a Little People farm set, and Mr. Potato Head. Grandpa and Grandma got her musical toys, a toy phone, and books. She loved them all. Bryce and I had fun exchanging gifts, but got no pictures, so here are a few of Kyra. We relaxed most of the day as different groups within the family went to the movies. Everyone met back together for a nice Christmas dinner. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!