Brynn turns 12!

 Brynn begged for a sleepover this year and I figured, why not? She and her friends are really good girls. I don't specifically remember telling the girls to be quiet at 3:00am. I think they were pretty good. But then, that was in January and it is September, my memory may not be so clear!

We played some "Minute to Win it" games. The first one was the cookie drop.

That one always ends good!

And then the tissue pull...Nice action shot! I love how Brynn looks like she is eating tissue in the back ground.

I don't know what to call this one, but you had to get a bunch of penne pasta onto a long spaghetti noodle. Brynn obviously succeeded!

The cake! Brandalyn was nice enough to make this for Brynn. 12 years old! Brynn really felt grown up to me this year, it was a big milestone I thought. But every time I brought it up she would get mad." Mom, I am not growing up, don't say that!"

This is what these silly girls did with that lovely cake. They shoved it in their faces! And loved every minute of it too.:) They might have gotten some in their mouths in the process.

Kacey set up shop the next day and did everybody's hair. I guess that is only fitting at a girly sleepover, right?

 

 

 See what I mean? So grown up and beautiful! We love you so much Brynn!!!

Piercing Ears!

Say goodbye to those virgin ears, you won't be seeing them anymore! I have asked Brynn many times if she wanted her ears pierced and the answer was always no. Her birthday was coming up and she finally decided she wanted to get it done:). I think a lot of her friends were wanting to buy her earings for her birthday and it got her thinking she might as well get it over with! So we all made a day of it and went to the mall, even dad! We asked Kira if she wanted to get hers pierced and she wasn't wanting to commit one way or another.

This is the cute girl that took care of Brynn. She was so nice and told Brynn what it was like for her when she pierced her ears. She explained exactly what was going to happen and did a great job calming all the nerves and such.

Here are her new ears all pierced! She picked out some kelly green studs. Her poor ears are a little red:(. She kept telling me her ears were so hot and I felt them, they were warm little guys.

And then all of the sudden, guess who decided to join the piercing party? I guess because Brynn been brave and made it look really easy, she figured she could try it.

They had two ladies go at the same time on both ears which such a good idea. She was really brave until I came to give her a hug and then she shed a few big tears and then took a deep breath and then we took this next picture, where Kira is trying hard to look happy!

Here are Seth and the girls in front of P.F. Chang's at the University Mall

A forced family picture. Seth loves it when I stop everything for a picture. It was a really fun day.

Fast Forward 7 months while I am writing this, Kira is now only wearing one earing:(. We tried to take hers out a little prematurely and it was kind of a painful experience. She won't take the other one out. So one ear has grown in and the other ear still has her stud in. So I imagine some day we will be back here gettting them repierced!

Snowy Days...

My sweet cuddly girls. There's nothing like dressing up in big puffy clothes to go out into the white downy snow. 2 year olds that can barely walk are especially cute all bundled up.

Over on the Kennards' deck with Layna and Nana trying there first tastes of the snow.

One darn cute snowman who lasted about 30 seconds longer than this picture till the babies knocked it over! They just kept leaning on it or trying to eat it as you can see below and his little head kept toppling right off.

His awesome body parts were a gift from the Kennard klan this year. Gordon made all the pieces in his wood shop and the girls painted them. I thought it was such a cute idea!

Nibbling on poor Frosty

The girls made a snow mermaid. We put cool aid in water bottles and they gave her all her beautiful color.

A happy outside day!

Christmas Cheer!

Christmas morning joy! Brynn is displaying her freaky Moxy doll that kept losing her detachable lovely locks. Kira also needed a Moxy doll and was thrilled to find one under the tree for her. If one sis gets something you better believe the other one needs it too:)

 Alayna with her loot. She is pretty serious here for some reason, but she really had a fun morning and was very cute and excited moving from one thing to the next. he got a little vanity station, a minnie mouse band set and some princess figurines. I'm sure there were other things too, but seeing that it is July now, my memory has faded a little. having a little one around makes everything more fun though. Although nobody around here has lost the spirit of Christmas in the least!

 Our future Doctor got her squishy science set! She  loves anything that has to do with the human body and is always fascinated by how it works. Recently she has told me that she wants to be a baby Doctor that helps babies be born:). This kit has a small scale of the human body with a skeleton that opens up and has all the organs that you can remove. It was especially cool for friends to see because all the organs were so gooey and squishy like the real thing I guess! It is fun to see her passionate about something at such a young age.

 Daddy delivered again again with a special doll for each girl. Brynn got Red Riding Hood and Kira got Alice and Wonderland. I don't know where we are going to put these dolls after a while they are accumulating so many! Especially Brynn:). The girls are also sporting really cute headbands that Effy got them for Christmas. I am really sad that I don't have a single picture of her on Christmas day, crazy! We got her some slippers, a robe, some clothes and a nice Vegan cookbook.

 Makin' some noise

 Going round and round the house striking up the band!

 Over at my mom's house Chrisrmas day making our blitz to both families. Nice pic of all the ladies. I love having sisters!

 Baby Lizzie playing in the wrapping and Mom and daughter looking all cute:). I wish I had taken pictures at Don and Jill's. I guess I was all pictured out, which is really not like me at all. Oh well, we are so lucky to have so much loving family that surrounds us!

Christmas Eve

 Here is Christmas Eve 2011. We honored our tradition of eating out with the Baileys at Mimi's Cafe. Yummy food and always somebody we love to squeeze and hug!

 Here is Tyne being the Mother Mary at Great Grandma Donetta's house. Jill has lots of fun costumes for the kids to choose from to put on the nativity. The girls all seem to want to be angels or Mary. So luckily Jill has plenty of white flowing angel costumes and we rotate Mary each year. Brynn was a faithful shepherd, shepherding her flock of little cousins where they needed to be on stage.:)

 Brynn and Mr. Tripp as a dog/sheep?

 Alayna hid out in Grandmas vintage play kitchen most of the evening and would come out for small appearances.

The whole cast! oldest to youngest: Brynn, Kira, Tagg, Hunter, Tyne, Levi, Tru, Alayna, Autumn and Tripp. Wow, what an awesome family. And that doesn't even include Dru's kids Cache and Nell who did Christmas in California this year. Since then we have added 2 more grand kids with Jen and Chase having baby Calvin and Jeremy and Erin adding to their "T" team with little Tae. That gives us 14 grand kids now, and more to come I am sure:). Grandma Donetta was really cute, after she watched the nativity she said that she had never seen anything like that before! She really liked it. It is so simple, but such a fun part of remembering why we celebrate Christmas.

Getting ready for Christmas...

 Kira hanging ornaments on Cord and Jade's first tree at their wedding shower.

 Alayna loved those candy canes and carried them around everywhere! I am still finding them around in random spots. She was sad she couldn't eat them.

 So excited Christmas was close. I am bummed the picture was blurry, but I had to include it.

 Brynn was very confused when I told her that her little cape was a tree skirt. "what's a tree skirt", she said. But she does look mighty cute!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...we did cut down another tree up Manti canyon  after having a nice Thanksgiving at Seth's parents. It is always fun, although I thought Effy was going to freeze to death and Seth spent three hours on the side of the road in the canyon waiting for a tow truck because the exhaust system dropped right right of our cruiser. Poor guy! We do love our fresh trees though!

Thanksgiving in America

Here is our Thanksgiving this year up at Grandma Jill's and Grandpa Don's. This was Effy's first big holiday in America and also the biggest eating holiday of the year, so I wanted to make sure that even though she is a vegan, she still experience some of the flavors of thanksgiving. She and I made a vegan pumpkin pie, that had tofu and pumpkin in it. And then we also made rice pudding with rice, cinnamon and soy milk. Everything was really yummy. The kids did the traditional gingerbread houses. It is unfortunate though, there is never enough candy at that house! Cute Kira posing with her house.

Brynn was the queen bee cousin as always. What would life have been like if she hadn't come 4 years earlier than the rest of them? We were lucky enough to have some of Cheryl and Rex's grand kids there too. Most of the day they were playing some undercover spy game, because they were crawling on their hands and knees behind Brynn underneath tables, around chairs...totally invisible to the grown up world for sure! Thanksgiving was yummy and then the next day we went down and stayed at Grandma Margret's house in Manti so we could cut a tree up in the canuon. I love it when that house it busting with family. It doesn't seem to matter who shows up, there always seems to be enough room for everybody. As we drove up the canyon in the Land Cruiser the next day the exhaust system completely fell out from under the car. So while the kids and I went up the rest of the way with grandpa, dad waited another 2 hours for the tow truck, uhh! It wasn't nearly as much fun picking a tree without him. But we do love getting our natural tree each year. And that is one of my funniest christmas memories now. I was out shopping and I called home to Effy to see how everyone was doing and she said everyone's fine, but, "the whole tree just fell down". She said the baby was playing with it a bit and it just fell right over. "Don't worry though, it didn't fall on Alayna!"