My sweet kiddos

Anna is such a good sport.  She puts up with so much with her brother and sister.  They are loud, rowdy, and love to tease.   (And I wouldn't have it any other way!)  But every once in awhile these kiddos of mine slow down and are just as sweet as can be.....like when they are in the middle of a wrestling match and Crue will tell Claire to stop for a minute so he can come tell me that I am the best mom ever.  Or like when Claire will walk out of her room all ready for church and Crue will tell her that she looks like a princess and give her a big hug and then instantly start shooting her with his nerf gun.   Or when Crue gets a time-out so Claire will go sit with him until it is over.   Anyway, this is one of those sweet moments.  Crue asked if he could watch Netflix on my kindle and then informed me that Anna was wanting to watch with him too. So here are two of my sweet babies watching Spiderman and the most stupid show ever....Aquabats.   I could even hear him explaining to her different things going on in the show.   I sure love my kids.  

December

Still trying to get the blog completely updated so even though these are from last year I didn't want to just leave them out.  

December was an amazing and busy month for us.  

This little beauty arrived on December 2nd.  She is such a blessing in our lives.  

Our great neighbors (and Claire's best bud) from when we were living with my mom and Ron gave the kids some gingerbread houses to decorate.  Here is Claire with hers.  Crue's never got this far.  He just didn't have the vision of what it could be....all he saw was a bag of candy, a bag of frosting, and a couple cookies and he just ate it right up.  And then when Claire wasn't looking he started eating hers too.

We all spent lots of time cuddling with this little beauty.

We all got together at my moms to decorate more gingerbread houses.  

My mom and Ron trying their best to save their gingerbread house.  In the end it couldn't be done and it collapsed. It sure was entertaining though.

It snowed and snowed and snowed.  Here the kids are outside playing when we lived at the cook house.  

Crue fell in love with this dog while we were living at the cook house.  Even now he will ask to go back and visit the dog.  And yes, the poor boy is wearing a pink snowsuit.  That's what happens when the builder doesn't have our house done on time so all our snow stuff is still boxed up somewhere.  Crue didn't mind though.  He actually loved it and several times I would go check on the kids during the night only to find that he had changed out of his pajamas and into the snowsuit.  

We really got lots of cuddle time in.  Little Anna decided she needed to be held at ALL times...day and night.  

Another family party at my Dad and Holly's.  Gotta love the life size cutout of Sam.  He is currently serving in Oklahoma.

The grandkids.

Crue, Ashlyn, and Caitlyn

Holly did her annual Christmas Craft Day with the grandkids.  This year they made these cute snowman wind chimes.  Here Alexa is finishing up one of them.  

Ri and Claire with their wind chimes.

Grandpa and Anna

 The week before Christmas we were finally given the keys to our house.  We were so excited to finally get moved once and for all and then what happens...it snows and snows and snows some more.  We already had about six inches on snow on the ground  and then it snowed another 15 inches on the day that we were going to move.   It was such a bummer to have to put moving off for a few more days.  All our stuff was being stored in a shed behind my Aunt's house and the snow made it pretty much impossible to get it all for a few days.  We finally moved into our new home three days before Christmas.

 Christmas Eve with me and my girls.  

Our three amazing children in their Crhistmas pajamas.

Crue got this great train set for Christmas and he played with it nonstop for days.  

When the kids grandma asked what Claire wanted for Christmas, Claire really wasn't sure but finally mentioned that she wanted some wind-up chattering teeth.  Luke and I were laughing so hard when Claire opened up a gift and inside were her chattering teeth.   

The kids also got some snow paint which they totally loved.  

We went ice-skating with the family.  

My mom, Crue and Luke. 

Claire was really getting the hang of it this year and by the time we left she was skating by herself.

Crue didn't do too bad either and ever since we went he happens to mention ice-skating in every prayer he says.  In fact every time he blesses the food the prayer is entirely about going ice skating again.  

Our sweet Anna all ready for church in her new Christmas dress

Our favorite person came to visit us.  We sure love Abbey.

New Years Eve was pretty quiet around our place.  We bought a pizza, a bunch of treats, and just stayed home watching movies.  After the crazy year we had, it was nice just to be all together at home.  It was perfect.  

Hooray for Summer

Claire's last day of school was on Friday.  She has loved school so much and did an amazing job this year but she has been counting down the days until Kindergarten would be over.  So on the first day of summer vacation we headed out and had some fun.  

Grandma Holly had been talking about going on a bike ride on the Legacy Highway Trail but last year was just too busy with selling the house and moving and everything else so it just didn't happen.  We definitely wanted to get it in this year.  We woke up to rain and wind and all the way in to Salt Lake it was raining but it quit the moment we got there.  It ended up being a beautiful morning.    We really had a lot of fun.

Look at the beautiful girl of ours.  We love her so much.

Claire took a picture of our next adventure with Grandma Holly...hiking on Antelope Island.  We are checking some things off the bucket list this summer.

Saturday night we met up again with Grandma and Grandpa to go out to dinner and then we all 

headed over to the Bees game.  

Crue and Anna waiting while daddy gets our tickets.

Ben with Grandma and Grandpa before the game.

The first thing we did was get in line for the train ride.  

Anna's first train ride at the Bees game.  

They packed so many kids into the train cars that it was kind of uncomfortable.  Here is Crue's not so happy face. 

Me and my man

Anna hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa

Our seats were on the front row and there really wasn't any other kids around.  These two kiddos waiting and waiting hoping to get a foul ball thrown up to them.  They talked us into going out to get some treats and during the five minutes we were gone there was a foul ball.  The baseball player looked around for a child to throw it to and there wasn't any there.  Bummer.  Better luck next time.  

Crue's favorite part of the game was watching the people dressed up as vegetables racing around the field.  He just thought that was the funniest thing.  Ben and Claire's favorite part was watching the fireworks.  It was a great way to start summer vacation.