February 2016

 February was a big month for our family. We moved out of our first house and into Grandma and Grandpa Peterson's house for a month. Gracie turned 1, and we enjoyed some unseasonably warm weather. Here are the pictures that don't have enough with them to make an entire blog post.

Cass attempted a new recipe from American Test Kitchen, frosted meatloaf. It was delicious and he was so proud of how it turned out in case you can't tell from the grin in the picture :)

Jamie was nice enough to take Alden to Elko for a few days to allow us to pack a little easier. This might have been the cutest box we packed!

This is our photo from the Home Depot kid's work shop.  Alden made a bright green Valentines mailbox because what says Happy Valentine's Day better than green?

We also attended the open house for the Provo City Center Temple.  It is a beautiful temple and we feel so blessed to live near so many temples.

Just a fun photo of how well these two get along. I love how Alden wants to do so much with his sister especially because Gracie thinks he is best thing since sliced bread.

This is after we moved in to the Peterson household. Gracie and Ozzie are trying to spring lose from the joint, but grandpa wasn't having any of it. 

And finally, just swinging at the park. Notice there is no jacket and no snow. 

11 Months

And the day after Alden turned 4 this little beauty turned 11 months.  This girl is starting to get quite the personality. She still does not attempt to walk and does not talk much, but she can definitely get her point across. She loves being dressed up girly and definitely gets a lot of attention no matter where we go, especially at church when she never stops moving and keeps everyone entertained in Sunday School. Happy 11 months baby girl!

 

Alden Turns 4

 The best part of BJ's trip to Utah was that it was on Alden's birthday.  We went out to dinner at the "train" restaurant for his actual birthday and then had a party after we got back from Idaho.  

After dinner we discovered that Alden and Hudson have the same pajamas.  Who wears them better?

   For Alden's birthday this year he had his first friend party.  He loves the movie Cars so we had a Cars themed party.  It was in the church cultural hall so that we could play with the wiggle cars.  As you can see Gracie loved her party hat.

Here are all of the kids eating their lunch.

And here they are playing tag. Whoever was it got to wear the blue cape to let everyone know they were it. The kids loved this game and I loved it because it gave them a way to get some of their energy out.

We also played pin the teeth on Mater, also a hit.

Finally, there was an obstacle course for the wiggle cars. The 4 year olds didn't really understand the idea of the obstacle course, but they loved racing each other.

After all of the games we got to Alden's favorite part, the presents. This boy was incredibly spoiled as you can see from all of the presents in the photo.

 This picture is just to document that I did try to decorate. Of course it came out blurry and I didn't take more than just this one so we just have to deal with it.

 Blowing out the birthday candles.

 And finally, we set up the bounce house to keep all of these kids busy until it was time to go home.  Overall it was great party. Alden is blessed to have great friends and we are grateful for the positive influence they have on him.

 This is just to show how clever all of the dads are. One of the balloons got loose and floated to the ceiling.  After putting all of their heads together a brilliant plan was hatched to put masking tape on one balloon and raise it up to the other to pull it down. It worked like magic!

Great Grandma Norton

BJ had to take some vacation time in the end of January because their babysitter would be unavailable to watch Hudson for a week. We were lucky that he decided he wanted to go visit our grandma so he and Hudson drove up I15 to Utah and Jamie drove over from Nevada so all of the Norton siblings go take their kids to go see great Grandma. We had a lot of fun hanging out in Grandma's room with 6 kids and then we took her on a little adventure to visit grandpa's grave. We stopped by the grocery store to get some flowers before we got there.  That was a whole other adventure with 6 kids in one shopping cart and grandma in the wheel chair. Here is our attempt at a photo to document the chaos.

    Here is all of us at grandpa's grave.  BJ had fun pushing the wheel chair over the snow covered grass and the little boys had fun decorating the gravestone with flowers ;)

 There were a couple of boys who needed a pit stop and decided the tires on the van needed to be washed.  These two really have to do everything together.

 Visiting Uncle "Posty" too

 Here are some of the shenanigans that 5 boys and a girl can get in to when you cram 10 people into one room for an extended period of time :)

Alden thought we would like these hats, and we did.

Jarom, just being Jarom