Our Holiday Decor

Spencer directing the decorators

I pruned the holly bushes today and I just couldn't resist decking the hall with boughs of holly.

The whole family contributed to this festive creation.

Getting into the holiday spirit

GingerGrant

Ninjago

Just in case you haven't been hanging around with the elementary school crowd recently, these are the Lego Ninjas from Ninjago, Jay, Cole, Kai and Zane.

Here are our ninja

 (If you were wondering; in season 1 episode 5, Zane accidentally washed his white ninja outfit with Kai's red outfit and, yeah... it came out pink.)

Highlight: Spencer

Spencer on defense at his soccer game

Making bagels- this is our family tradition on General Conference weekend

Still got a great smile, but there is definitely something new about his smile.

Playing in a cardboard box

Clark, Spencer and Grant built a club house out of a large old box.  They've got an escape hatch, peepholes, locks and two way mirrors for windows.  Usually they try to keep Laurel out, but I guess she's been granted access now.  Still, no grown-ups allowed.

Our boys actually finished a summer project

Clark and Spencer got a cut out and glue together model castle from their grandparents (after a trip to Europe).  They began this project just after school got out and they have worked on it all summer.  We have one week left of summer break and they finished it!    Good job, boys.  It looks awesome.

Family vacation to Utah (although sometimes I thought maybe it was Tatooine)

We took our family vacation this summer to Utah.  We went to visit Jen's parents and family in Springville, Utah.  

While we were there we did a lot of fun things.

We met with other cousins and toured temple square.

This is Trevor, Grant, Laurel, Claire, Clark, Spencer, Johnathan, Nathan, Lance and Logan at the children's area in the Church History Museum.

This is Spencer with Spencer W. Kimball. 

Grant with Heber J. Grant

and Clark with J. Reuben Clark

The next day we headed South to see the landscape and our first stop was Arches.

It was a hot, sunny hike to the Landscape arch.  We toured the other famous arches mostly by car.

 We next made our way to The Valley of the Goblins, which was a great park with amazing places to explore and climb all over.

All of our kids turned out to be excellent climbers.

We spent the night in Goblin Valley in these awesome Yurts (think somewhere between a cabin and a tent, but furnished and air-conditioned.)

We stayed up late to take in the starry show

The next morning we hiked up the Little Wild Horse slot canyon.  This too, was super fun.

After that adventure we got together with family again for a day at Payson Lake

Clark turned out to be a darn good kayak-er.  This is him way off on his own.

Damage report

We had a freak storm come through Richmond yesterday.  I was at the hospital and we had to move all the patients away from windows and hunker down for just a few minutes.

At home Jen also had to herd the kids away from the windows where they wanted to watch the action.

We lost a few more trees.

Amazingly, this one came down right next to the shed but it doesn't look like even a branch hit the shed.  Even the fence and the bushes are still mostly intact under there.

Here we go again.

Summer time

Spencer wearing his crocodile costume, which was part of his end of the year Kindergarten play.

The kids try to keep cool in the backyard.

Having lunch on the deck. 

The garden's growing great.  As usual there is more zucchini than we know what to do with.

Laurel is 2 years old

Here are a couple more fun pictures of Laurel

Laurel is totally beyond bibs, but capes... those are pretty cool.