christmas festivities!

I just sat down to look at the pics on my camera from all of our Christmas festivities and I don't have very many. :( Sad. So, I now have a New Year's Resolution: take more pictures! I did more filming of Junior this year and I guess I kind of forgot about the camera. Here is a rundown on our Christmas festivities (with just a few pics):

We went to Zoo Lights with Hercules' family. It was so fun, there were tons of cool and beautiful lights, and Christmas music was playing throughout the whole Zoo. Hercules and I missed going to Temple Square this season but enjoyed the smaller crowd at Zoo Lights.



We had a Christmas party with Hercules' family a little early this year so that we could celebrate with Emilie, Branden, and Anthony before they went back to Georgia. We missed Marcus while he was in Texas. Junior had fun with Grandpa and Grandma!


Hercules and Josh were good sports and played the reindeer game!

Hercules was in his element while making the gingerbread house! He put his construction management skills to work and built us a beautiful little home!



Santa even came to visit! Junior loved seeing him!



My family had our annual "Soup and Sing". We get together to eat soup and sing Christmas songs! (Hence the name.) It is so fun! It looks rather cramped there in the family room but we love it and think it makes our voices blend better ... or something!





We had a lot of fun on Christmas Eve at the Sorenson party (Hercules' Mom's fam). I only took ONE picture and it isn't the greatest. (I'll have to get some pics from Annette!) Junior and Hailie were happy, I promise! Here they are with their cute new Christmas pj's.


MERRY CHRISTMAS! Christmas was extra fun and special for us this year. It was so fun to have little Junior to share it with. We wrapped all of his gifts and started a few new traditions now that we have him - even though he had no idea what was going on. It was still fun for us! Hercules put Junior down by the gifts on Christmas morning and he totally started reaching for them!


My family has their Christmas party the day after Christmas. We call it the Christmas Fiesta because we eat yummy Mexican food and have a pinata (a tradition carried on from my Mom's side of the family). We also have a few gift exchanges. My Mom buys enough ties for the men and enough jewelry for the women. Then we play the gift exchange game and it's only fun when there is a lot of stealing going on! Hercules got a sweet tie and I got beautiful earrings! Santa also comes to this party. Unfortunately the only picture I got that night is of Junior AFTER he sat on Santa's lap. He was really happy until he shoved the candy cane (from Santa) into his mouth and started to gag himself. I was busy filming and someone else got this picture of my Mom and little Ella coming to Junior's rescue!


We have had a wonderful holiday season and loved spending time with our families! We are looking forward to a couple New Year's parties tonight and tomorrow! YAY! We hope you all have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

PS. I just thought of another resolution: blog more often so that my entries aren't SO LONG!

9 days, 1 hour, 20 minutes until Christmas!

Is it bad that we only have 9 days, 1 hour, and 20 minutes until Christmas and we aren't ready AT ALL??? We haven't bought ANYTHING for Christmas yet. Wait. We have. We bought a present for Branden and half a present for Hercules' parents. The only reason those are done is because we had the family party on Saturday night. (Junior gave to Branden for the cousin exchange and we gave a picture of the Grandkids to Hercules' parents.) I get all panicky whenever I think about it. So, I don't think about it! :) Which explains why all of a sudden we only have 9 days left and I STILL don't have anything done. Maybe tomorrow I will get started. For now, I will blog!

I got together with Hercules' 2 sisters (Emilie and Annette) to get pictures of the 4 grandkids in their family. Julie was gracious enough to take the pics for us. She did a fabulous job! The kids look ADORABLE!!! Here is the picture we had framed all nice and big.

Here are a few more pics of the kids:





Here are a few of Junior. He was so cute, cooperative and HAPPY!



Here is a really cute one that Julie did. She photo-shopped Junior's eyes shut (using his real eyes from another pic), and she put the little Santa hat on him too. Isn't it adorable?!

Here are Hercules' parents looking at their gift. They LOVED it! Hercules' Mom cried and I found myself getting a little teary too! (Of course!)

Thanks, again, to Julie for taking the pictures - she's amazing! And thanks to Em and Net for putting the final pictures together in the frames. AND thanks to the 4 kids for being so handsome and beautiful! :)

we're back!

We moved into our new house a couple weeks ago but I've been putting off the "blog update". I'm just too overwhelmed!!! We have so many things to write about that I just don't even know where to start. So ... I'm not even going to try to play catch up. Maybe someday I will post about the last 3-4 months, maybe not. For now I will just start with the last couple weeks. WE LOVE OUR NEW HOME!!!!!!!!!! We seriously love it! We closed on our house at the end of October. The next day, Hercules tore out all of the carpet in the whole house, the flooring in the kitchen, and 3 closets. (He is such a MAN!) He has done SOOOOOOO much work on the house to get it ready for us to move in. THANKS to those who helped us and gave so much of their time (and skills) to help. I want to name your names right now but I'm too nervous that I will forget someone. You know who you are! THANK YOU! We moved into our home about one month after we closed on it. We feel like we live in a brand new home, thanks to all of the work that was done. We also feel like we live in a mansion! Hercules mentioned how the places we have lived have gotten progressively smaller. First we lived in a condo in Murray. Then we moved to the married student housing at BYU (Wymount - super small). Then we moved to my old bedroom for 3 months (even smaller than Wymount, believe it or not!). Now we're in a home with a garage, room for couches AND a kitchen table, stairs, washer/dryer, everything!!!!! We love it! We still have a lot of little things to do here but we are SO enjoying just being together in our home.

As you can tell from the picture above, Junior is looking as cute as ever!!! Isn't his smile to die for??? That is what we get to see every morning when he wakes up and then he doesn't stop smiling all day long!!! We love it! He is adorable and makes us laugh so much. Sometimes I will notice that he is looking at me so I will look over at him and he'll smile so big! Then I smile at him and start laughing and then he smiles even bigger. It is so cute! He is like his Daddy and is always trying to make me laugh. I know it's a little early to be saying that he does it intentionally but I swear it's true! He is 5 months old now and is doing so well. I think he started teething a couple days ago so that has been sad but I just can't wait to see a little white tooth with that smile. Here are a few more pics to show what we've been doing.

This first one is when he was only 13 days old. We took SO MANY pictures of him sleeping. We think he looks so cute while he sleeps. Even now it is hard for me not to go in and stare at him all night!

Junior's first trip to Jackson Hole. We went up for a few days for my family vacation. We love to eat at "Mountain High Pizza Pie". (By the way, we stayed in a hotel while my family camped. No way was I camping with a 3-week-old!)

He sucked his thumb for the first time at the hotel in Jackson. I thought it was adorable!

One month old! Look at how his little feet are together!

Hercules' graduation! Way to go, honey!!!

Maybe I'm the only one but I think this picture is hilarious!!! Look at the expression on his face and his little hand. This is the day we moved from Wymount so maybe it's mixed emotions! Who knows?!! I laugh out loud every time I see it. SO CUTE!

Look at his little hand holding his Daddy's finger. (2 Months)

Naps with Mom and Dad.


Granny and Grandpa took such good care of him (all of us, actually) while we lived with them. Somehow they always had the "magic touch" with him and could get him to sleep - especially Granny. I don't know if it's because she had 9 kids or what but she is amazing with the babies.


All ready for Church!

First cereal feeding ... at 3 months! We did it out of desperation and then waited another 3 weeks before feeding cereal to him again.


Happy Halloween! (4 months)



This was his first try at sweet potatoes and I guess it wore him out! He was so cute at the end and was eating but would totally fall asleep by the end of the spoonful. (As you can tell from Hercules' clothes, he was working at our house and came to eat dinner with us.)

Cousin time! As you can tell, he isn't starved for attention!



Happy Thanksgiving!


Okay, so I ended up adding TONS of pictures! I just decided to do our little update. I wanted to give a lot more details on each one and add more pictures to a few of them, but decided it would be way too much. Now I'll just do my best to keep up on what is going on NOW! (But I'll have to spend a few days reading all of YOUR blogs to catch up on what I have missed.)