Christmas Trees 2011

Every year after Thanksgiving, we head down to Ephraim Canyon to cut down our Christmas tree. If you want to read more about how to do this click here. This year, the highlight of our trip was definitely sledding. Mark is big enough that he can climb the hill by himself and usually haul up the sled (sometimes we just tossed it up to him). Dax had to be carried up, but he grinned the whole ride down. They have been looking forward to snow for a long time, so this was a special treat for them. A nice treat for me was the fact that my brother-in-law brought his camp stove and cooked up hot chocolate. That was a fun new addition. Anyway. . .  we got two great trees and took many rides down the hill on the sleds.

Dax and Mark loved riding the four wheelers. Todd took them on lots of rides, and so did their dad!

Had to stick Dax on the sled so he would stop spilling hot chocolate all over the snow.

Mark chose to sit on the back of the truck.

Mark sledding. Is he having fun or terrified?

Dax sledding one-handed.

Randy finally feeling better (he was sick all of Thanksgiving).

Here is a short video of both boys sledding. It was done on my photo camera, not my video camera, so don't expect high quality.

Thankful Jar

We found a fun idea to increase gratitude in our house on my friend's blog (check it out here). So we have been doing all sorts of activities as a family--baking cookies (we're thankful for our kitchen), watching The Lion King together (we're thankful for our eyes), making cards for dad (we're thankful for our dad), and my favorite so far, raking our neighbors leaves (we're thankful for our neighbors). It was so much fun to watch the boys get excited about service. They couldn't wait for dad to come home and help us rake the leaves in our neighbor's yard. They did a great job!

Mark is a good raker.

Dax likes to play with the rake.

Look at those hard workers.

Cleaning up leaves with dad.

And who knows what we'll be thankful for tomorrow!

Fall Activities

We have been doing so many things lately that I feel like I can't keep up on the blog. So here is a compilation of all the fun things we have done through October (except Halloween--we already talked about that holiday).

Mark had a field trip to the fire station. Don't they make cute firefighters?

Dancing in the leaves.

Throwing leaves.

Mark took this picture of Randy and me at Cornbelly's.

Playing at Cornbelly's.

My sister had us and some friends over to make Halloween cookies and cupcakes. Here's Mark being silly!

Our monster cupcakes!

This is how Dax eats a cupcake. I have tried and tried to get
him to pick it up, but he just wants to eat it this way.

Mark frosting cookies.

Happy Halloween!

Hey, this is Randy. . . 

Well, we managed to have a happy Halloween after all. Dax refused to wear a costume for the weeks leading up to the day, despite the fact that we had the cutest little monkey costume that my sister, Laurie, made. We tried a bunch of different things to get him excited, but what finally worked was having his brother dress up and knock on each of the bedroom doors as Dad handed out candy. Seeing the principle in action changed Dax's mind in a hurry! He still wouldn't go for the monkey costume because he didn't want anything on his head. We finally got him in a Buzz Lightyear outfit, but he refused to put the hood up on that, too.

He did get into the spirit, though, and we Trunk-or-Treated with our ward, and then went out on Halloween night as well. It was a pretty good memory exercise for him. After the first house he'd say, "I got m&ms." After house two: "I got m&ms and a Kit Kat." Then, "I got m&ms, a Kit Kat and a sucker!" He could remember up to about 6 houses. Then he'd start dropping items out of his list. 

We hope you all had as happy a Halloween as we did! Here are the pictures:

Trick or Treating in the house.

Natalie worked really hard on this Luke Skywalker costume.
Funny how Mark really wanted to be Luke despite having seen about 5
minutes of Return of the Jedi-- clearly the weakest of the old movies!

Halloween night--off we go to Trick or Treat.