Let down your hair...

This is Kira's 7th birthday party. She was really excited for the new movie "Tangled". She wanted her dad to play it for her friends in the movie room. She was disappointed when we told her that it wouldn't be out of the theaters yet, so she settled with going to go see it as a family. We did end up having a Tangled party and just had to be as creative as possible at doing things that Rapunzle would do at a party!

The girls got to color Rapunzel poster with piles of hair to color (most of them said their hands hurt and couldn't finish the hair:) The boys colored wanted posters of Flynn Ryder, and they had to give him a nose, since in the movie they could never get his nose right.

Here is Kira playing the toilet paper princess game. I split the kids up into 3 teams and gave them all a roll of toilet paper. The had to pick one person to model and the others were designers. You never know what kids will like, but they went to town with this game, and when it was over they all wanted a turn to be the model.

Cute Lexi Gee, this was her teams' final product

This is Cambria Bybe, Kira's good friend from school. These girls took a while to nail down their concept!

Happy Savannah, from Kira's class also

Above and beyond my favorite! Logan looks thrilled to be in that position doesn't he? Logan is the only boy at home, and his mom told me he made her promise not to tell his dad that he dressed up like a princess that day! His team of boys were definitely the most creative and the e fastest too!

A little spin on a favorite: Pin the Hair on Rapunzel

Little Lizzie Gee is pretty close to the target here, but Seth spun them around so much they needed the voices of their friends to steer them in the right direction.

Cake!!! Kira saw this Tangled cake in the bakery window at Kohlers like a month before her birthday, and told me that was the cake she wanted. That made my job easy! I'm still getting used to this new camera and was unable to get a good shot here, oh well!

Karaoke was the final stage in our activities for the day. Now that Christmas is over and the girls been given so much, I'm not sure how important the karaoke machine was, but one day before a party my perspective wasn't so clear. The girls really did have alot of fun with it. Especially this little friend of Kira's, Payton. She is not shy with the microphone, it was cute. Hopefully we'll get the mic back out, we just have to turn that tv all the way around to plug it in. Not something mom can do by herself real well.

Man, what a great party. What a great day. What a great little girl we have in Kira. It was fun to meet some of her little friends!

Brynn's Nutcracker

There's our cute little soldier. I'd feel bad about Brynn having to spend most of her life at her ballet studio, but I really don't, because she loves it! She can't wait for school to be over with so she can get to dance. She can't wait to learn something new and then come home and give us all a personal performance and show us. I love the passion she has for dance, and I love that she puts her heart and soul into it! This year Brynn was a soldier that fights the "mouse king" and a candy cane. She normally dances about 9 hrs. a week, and with the nutcracker it added up to about 10 to 12 depending on the week. She loved it all! And Seth and I loved the extra driving too:) I was lucky to hang out with Brynn back stage for one performance to help. Some of the pics are bad because they are taken with my camera phone, oh well!

Brynn and her friend Rachel. This is their soldier make-up. Brynn was a busy girl back stage. Each day they had two shows; an evening and a matinee. So after being a soldier at the beginning of the show Brynn would have to wash all of her make-up off and then re-apply regular stage make-up for her candy cane dance. Then in the evening show she would repeat that whole process!! Her face looked kind of beat up by the time she got home and always had some of her white soldier make-up way up in her hair line.

Brynn's soldier group. From memory, some of the girls are: Lauren, Abbie, Hannah, Rachel and Bailey. I was supposed to be in charge of entertaining these girls while they were off stage, but they came fully equipped to entertain themselves. It was after the nutcracker that Brynn started asking for the big ticket electronics items. "So and so has a DS, so that would be fun to have and mom can you believe so and so has their own phone?" They all brought their own board games and treats (eventhough there was a strict no food allowed in the building rule). These girls didn't need me to lead their fun and it was going to be really hard to get Brynn to do her math in the midst of this circus backstage!

Brynn in her Candy Cane costume. She also did the whole dance with a striped hula hoop. She was also a candy cane last year, so the whole soldier thing was alot of fun for her! Kira came to see her and brought a little nutcracker as a present, she wouldn't let anyone else hold it. "It's my present for Brynn!" She gets so excited to see her up on stage. And figuring out which soldier she was among the others was not easy!

Halloween Saga 2010

It was time again for Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. We missed it last year and the girls were begging to go this year.

We had to get a shot in the giant chair. I couldn't convince Seth to hop up there for an entire family picture though!

Alayna, very busy selling baby pumpkins

This is Gordon and Seth trying to figure out one of the mazes. They take them very seriously!

Help, I'm swimming in corn and I can't get out!

It's always great to hang with the Kennards!

The cold train ride:)

The last thing the girls wanted to do was get their faces painted. It was already passed their bedtimes, but we went ahead and let them get fancy. We had to take pictures before they went to sleep and wiped it all off!!

The Witches at Garner Village
If you look closely, Kira still has her face paint on from the night before, she just couldn't part with it.

Kira lost her cousins and sister because they went off to a Utah game, put that didn't her down from posing in front of every witch!

My little music lover

Grandma Julie and Grandpa Mike hadn't ever seen the witches before. It was lots and lots of fun!

While Seth and Brynn went to the Utah game and sat in the freezing cold rain, we all went to my mom's and watched the game and let the kids play.

We're so glad when grandpa comes home! I remember when my dad would say "two girls" and that meant he wanted both Brynn and Kira in his arms at the same time. That face says happiness, doesn't it?

Ian having a little conference with Alayna

Carving Time!

Taeya's Halloween party

Kira's favorite game!

Kira, as Dorothy and Brynn as a gypsy
Alayna wanting to come to school too as always!

Kira in her school parade

The 5th graders don't walk in the parade anymore, so this is the only picture I could snap in Brynn's classroom. How can anyone be too old to walk in the parade?! This last picture is of Kira reading a part in a pumpkin play. The baby sat very patiently, as you can imagine!

Can I Hitch a Ride?

So... in the middle of September Seth came home from work and told me he needed to go to London for a conference. "Lucky!" I thought, "He gets to go all the exciting places." Another week went by and then Seth announced that he and his partner would like to bring their wives. So all I had to do was go find my passport and dust it off a bit. Except, you can't use a passport that has already expired! Ooops! Word to the wise, keep your passport current or it might cost you a pretty penny to expedite it like we had to! Seth was sweet to make it happen and I was glad to hitch a ride.

The London Eye
Most of these pictures were taken from a red double decker bus. We were only there for a couple days so this was a good way to see a lot really quick.

Another view of Big Ben. There were flowers out everywhere also. In front of stores, above the pubs. So pretty! We were really lucky with the weather. I don't remember ever really needing a jacket and I really expected it, but didn't get any rain in London.

I think this is called Picadilly Circus. This is what happend when you wait too long to post your pictures. Your memory starts to fade! We didn't get off the bus here, but I thought it was really pretty.

Now, I really have no idea what this place is called! I just thought it was a good example of what a lot of the architecture looked like in London.

This is Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. I was really excited to see this, although we weren't allowed inside for some reason so I was bumbed. But it was neat to see. Heaven forbib I actually get a human being in any of these pictures! If you look really close you can see Seth's little head in the bottom-left corner.

Ok, finally a picture with human beings in it!! This is me and Kristin Miller. Sean Miller, her husband, is Seth's business of the last 7 years. Our husbands spend all their time together, so it was nice to get a little time to chat with Kristin.
A few more things we did in London: We saw "Sweet Charity", a musical, the second night we were there. It was fun to get dressed up and go do something fun with the guys. Kristin took me jogging on morning around a park near our hotel. We ran around a large pond/lake and saw ducks and swans and people in wet suits swimming (yuck, it did not look so clean) We staked our claim at a pub near our hotel, which is where we ate a couple of our meals.(London is not a place you travel for their amazing food, by the way!) Kristin and I also tried to find Notting Hill one day while the guys were in their conference and were not very successfull. I wanted to see the area that is in the movie. We walked atleast a half an hour before a lady told us Notting Hill was down another direction. By then the guys had called us and told us they needed more business cards, so are little adventure had come to an end. After the conference Sean and Kristin went onto Ireland (which is a place I will see some day too!) And we pushed on to Italy. Poor us, right?

This was the first picture I took once we got on our road trip in Italy. We flew in to Milan and rented a car. Before I proceed, you should know this was not your average site seeing trip. Seth was focused on house hunting for our future. Can't a guy just kick back and enjoy being in Italy? For a long time now Seth has wanted to move the girls and I over to live in Italy for a while. The time limit we live there is a topic of constant debate! I can tell you while we were there I liked the idea a whole lot more than when I'm at home!

This is the view from an area that a realtor took us to look at. Who goes out with a realtor when they're on vacation anyway? Pretty though, right? This whole area was around Lake Como and Lake Lugano. These cities are right near the Italian/Swiss border. I really liked that we were close to the mountains, it made it feel like home, just much more green!

These are some condos that had the above view of the lake. Everything is built with concrete! It was good to get an idea of what things could be.

After thinking about it, we thought we might like living in the city right near the lake more. Who wouldn't want to take long walks here in the evening after dinner? There were a lot of families down here strolling around. We thought that the girls might enjoy being a little more involved in city life where things are constantly going on. These next few shots are of a a city called Lugano. It is an italian city in Switzerland. You have all the advantages of being in Switzerland (good government, health care) and all the advantages of being in italy(fabulous food, fabulous food, beautiful scenery etc.).

The #2 photo with a person in it! Not sure why I have a funny look on my face though.

So ends our little lakeside road trip. It was so fun to be with Seth and look for a place to live, maybe! We stayed in a couple really nice little hotels too. All I have to say is Italians really know how to do the continental breakfast.

We spent our last day in Milan. This is the Duomo, in the middle of the city. It was huge! Each italian city has a duomo,or church. Some are just more notable than others.

This was the entrance to a shopping and eating area. We had Marghereta pizzas at a cafe inside and had to wait 30 minutes for our bill because our waiter was flirting with every girl in site!

Another view from the duomo

This was a butcher/deli on the second floor of the subway we were at. Can you imagine going grocery shopping in the subway? I guess it makes sense, because everyone's either coming or going home from there.

Check out that tub of Nutella! They are not messing around! Seth bought some mozzarella di bufala. When he got to the register the lady gave him a funny look and said something in italian like "Are you sure you want that much? Cause that's a lot!" When we got back to our room with our cheese and bread we realized we did have a lot, but you don't need much more than cheese and bread in italy, especially when you can find it in the subway! What a great time we had. I'm really glad Seth decided to take me along. I hope business needs him abroad again real soon!