Our Annual Christmas Light Visit to Temple Square

Christmas is definitely our favorite time of the year! We will greatly miss the lights at Temple Square. It has become tradition for our family to go the day after Thanksgiving. The lights bring the spirit of the season. We really enjoy the crowds of people too. It's fun to see people with their families. Most of the pictures aren't in very good focus, but you can still see how beautiful the lights are!

I'm always amazed by the Salt Lake Temple. It took the pioneers 40 years to build and was a great sacrifice on our behalf.

Even though, he was freezing, David still had a smile on his face.

Unfortunately, Matthew came down with croupe the night before. However, the doctor said it was good for Matthew to be out in the cold, so we still went to Salt Lake.



I love all of the colors!

This tree amazes me every year. They must string hundreds of strands of lights. It's absolutely extraordinary!

We're in the Band-Aid stage right now. Matthew had to get some blood work done, and he thought it was cool to put on Band-Aids all over his face.

Keri's parents flew in Thanksgiving night and then, we headed to Salt Lake the next day. We had a wonderful visit with them.

The Latest

Well, in case you haven't heard, Sky View HS lost in the semi-finals 55-24 to Pine View HS. It was a pretty big loss, however, the coaches were very pleased with the boys. This is one spot further than they made it last year, and they also were not expected to make it too far this year. So . . . it's the end of a great season! Way to go Sky View!!!
Besides being the circus show in sacrament meeting today, Matthew also said some pretty hilarious things. In nursery he told his leaders, after they mentioned Christmas, that he wants to have the roast beef. The nursery worker approached me after, and I had to explain that we've been reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The Grinch carves the "roast beast" at the end. It was pretty cute!
Matthew also has had a very rough day today. He went to give someone a hug before leaving church, and the boys bonked heads. Matthew wouldn't stop crying, and so I had to calm him down. After he finished "whining" about everything, we started to leave. Ryan immediately noticed his bloody nose. Poor kid! They bonked so hard that his nose bled. And I, being this mean mom, was just sitting there telling him to toughen up. To make matters worse, we had dinner at a friend's house tonight. Matthew went downstairs to play with the other kids. All of a sudden, we heard Matthew crying hysterically. I started to walk down, and just figured he slipped on the stairs or something. Then Payton, one of the little boys, said, "Um, I think he's hurt really bad." I went down, and his face was just covered in blood. Their youngest boy had thrown a truck down the stairs and it landed right on Matthew's head. He has a huge gash / scrape mark on his head. I immediately thought, "Okay, where is our medical card? We're going to end up at the hospital today." (Blood freaks me out!) Instead, Ryan and Jeff looked at it, cleaned it, looked at it some more, put antibiotic cream on it, and put a bandaid on it. He's as good as new! Drama seems to follow our family! Ironically, these are the same friends whose home we were at last time when Matthew had to get stitches after falling.

"Yeah, we live for . . . little moments . . . like that"

So tonight we were saying family prayers, and the funniest thing happened. First of all, you need to know about how we pray. The way we pray when Matthew says the prayer is we say what we are praying for, and then he repeats it. Tonight, it was Keri's turn to help Matthew say the prayer. One of the things she prayed for was "to be confident". Matthew took it to mean something else. He repeated, "Please bless us to be competent." Ryan busted up mid-way through the prayer with Matthew and Keri following. It was pretty funny(Okay, so maybe you had to be there.)!

More Videos

Okay, so these videos are super old, but they are finally uploading! I know there have been many changes since these, but they're still fun!

Fun Videos

Halloween Updates & More

So we are really bummed about the Rockies getting swept. Ryan says, "I told you so!", but Keri is genuinely sad. They made it so far!

However, we do have some exciting news for Sky View HS. They won the first two games of the playoffs and play at U of U's stadium (Rice Eccles) next week. Ryan is stoked!

Halloween was really fun this year! We spent less time trying to get Matthew to move on, and more asking him to slow down! He ran from house to house. A few times, we had to remind him to wait to eat the candy, but mostly he did great. He said "please" and "thank you", and even told one of the houses that he needed more candy after they gave him only one piece. I just think as a mom you begin to become numb to all of the things that your children say. Normally, this comment would have mortified me, but especially after potty-training, nothing surprises /shocks me anymore. We attended a barbeque prior to trick-or-treating. We had a lot of fun visiting and eating with friends!

Oh, and there are some pictures in here from our ward Halloween party. They didn't do a trunk-or-treat, which we were sort of bummed about. However, they did do some trick-or-treating inside the church with about 10 doors. It was fun to see all of the kids in their costumes. They also had a little carnival set up inside the gym with a cookie walk, games, and a pie eating contest. The kids seemed to really enjoy themselves! We took a few pictures while we were there. The "hippie" couple is our friends Teneil and Seth Furtaw. We couldn't resist. Their costumes were too classic! The little white-haired girl is Matthew's friend, Alli Sagers. He loves her!