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

Thanksgiving Point

We continued to take advantage of our Thanksgiving Point membership in the winter where we could play inside from the cold. We took Sam with us once too.  Here are some pictures from our adventures.

Unfortunately Gracie is not always happy, but her sad face is pretty adorable.

The water area is always a hit. These two were soaked! At one point Alden had the water spraying right down the front of him.

Good thing there is a wind simulator (or blow dryer) on your way out :)

Gracie loved the ball pit. 

And on this trip we actually played in the green screen room. I don't think that has ever happened before. It was really fun to watch Alden and Sam dress up and watch themselves on the TV.

We also went as a family a couple of times right after work so that people could walk through the house. It was nice to have a quiet place to go and the kids even let us get some decent picture of them.

This maybe the picture I am most proud of, it was taken with self timer and we got it on the first try!

SNOW!!

We got a good amount of snow this January and had a good time playing in it.  These pictures were taken at Grandma and Grandpa Peterson's one afternoon after Sunday dinner.  

Alden thought rolling the snowballs was pretty awesome because they got so big.

In the end he loved his snowman. We are lucky grandma has a snowman kit so that our snowman could have such a great outfit. 

  

I had to get in on the photo action too. Love spending time with this kid!

January 2016

January was a busy month for our family. We put the house up for sale on January 4 and for 10 long days we stressed about keeping the house clean, having somewhere to go at a moments notice for a showing to come through, and if we would get enough money out of the house to be able to afford the new one we were already under contract for.  As mentioned earlier we went under contract in 10 days. We were incredibly blessed with this and our testimonies were strengthened to know that Heavenly Father is aware of us and what is best for us. 

Through all of this though we did have a lot of fun in January. Here are a few short stories that have enough detail to get their very own posts.

Gracie got her fingernails painted for the first time. Unfortunately this is about as long as it lasted. She rubbed and sucked it all off pretty soon after this, but it was fun to do girly things with her while it lasted.

This next picture is how we keep Gracie entertained in church. She is so busy that sitting still in Sunday School is a challenge, but she loves to take selfies so we have a few of these gems to enjoy!

Just a cute one of the little girl at a Sunday dinner in Springville.

Alden wanted to roast marshmallows one night, but in January we were not about to find a place to make a fire, so the gas stove top made do. Unfortunately after all of the build up he did not actually want to roast marshmallows for too long because it was hot on his hands :)

Here is a little view of his fashion sense at age 4.  Love it!

And finally Grandma and Grandpa Peterson cleaned out some things and found this box of cool toys from when we were kids. Alden found the roller skates and decided he was brave enough to try them.  He did pretty good (way better than I did as kid when I cut my chin open on them)