10 Years of Gayness! and I mean Happy!

Ten years ago on December 1st, 1997, my sister Karen and I met Melissa Straw, through her cousin (who is our friend) Heather Andersen. Who would have thought that we would become such good friends and roommates a couple months later. After Dan and I got married, my other sister, Jenny, was roommates with her. Now we're married and have kids, but that doesn't change much. We still act like we're 20 years old! For our 10 year Anniversary, we went out to dinner and stayed the night in a hotel room. We stayed up late reading our journals from back in the day, talking, laughing and peeing our pants (literally). For those of you who don't know, I come from a family of several sisters who don't have a lot of control over our bladders when we laugh. Then we meet Melissa Straw who has the same problem. Friends in heaven? Hmmmmmm? Anyways, below are some pics from that night and a video clip of me and my sister Jenny doing what we do best!

Dinner at Chili's

Melissa brought a little bubbly and glasses for a toast. She was very disappointed when she realized she only had 2 goblets instead of 4.

Jenny and Melissa
Karen and I

Don't ask. It was late and my name is Heather.

We woke up to several inches of snow. It was a winter wonderland but not very fun to drive home in!

Ok, so I need to set the stage. We decided to take a picture of Jenny and I jumping on the bed, but Melissa wanted to video us jumping first. We started jumping and on my second jump, my head hit the cottage cheese ceiling (which crumbled down onto me) and when I landed I stepped on a water bottle, squishing it. Jenny just started laughing and peeing immediately. Don't judge us, we're still nice people!

Let it Snow!

What a great way to begin the month of December - with a snow storm! And a fun one it was! Last Saturday (December 1st) we got about 5 inches of snow dumped on us and the kids were so excited. So we took them to the park across the street to go sledding, where there is the perfect hill for them. It's just long enough to tickle their tummies, but short enough for them to walk back up the hill by themselves. They had a blast and the snow looked so pretty. Gavin was so mad at me when I brought him back inside. He kept trying to open the front door to go back out.

Thanks to our fabulous neighbors for letting us use their snow blower, Dan spent quite some time cleaning our LONG driveway off. Thanks Carl & Mindy!


Gavin wanted to go back outside so badly, that he found the bathroom stool, carried it into Lindsay and Zane's room, put it on Zane's bed and climbed up to watch daddy shovel snow. He seriously did this on his own!


Then Zane wanted a turn.


Mommy and Lindsay


Daddy, Zane and Gavin. Look at those rosey cheeks!

The Nutcracker

Last week, some of our good friends, Joe and Amy, asked if I could come up to the clock shop that Joe's family owns and help out. Once a year, they have the Steinbach's come from Germany, to sign their Nutcrackers. Christian Steinbach passed away in February, so his daughter, Karla came to sign them this time. They needed help unpacking the Nutcrackers, handing them to Karla, then after she signed them, we would re-package them. It was a lot of fun meeting Joe's family and hearing Karla speak German (sprechen zie deutsch anyone?). As many of you know, my grandparents are from Germany. I don't speak it very good AT ALL (my family will attest to that), but I LOVE to make up my own German. Deutschland uber alles in der Welt! I didn't make that up though! It just sounds cool. Here's some of my favorite Nutcrackers that I saw in the process of re-packing.....

"Crack nuts, I will!"

"Luke, I am your Nutcracker!"

"N-U-T-C-R-A-C-K-E-R-S"

"You wee lass. I wear a kilt when I crack nuts!"

Amy and I re-packing the Nutcrackers

Me and Karla Steinbach


P.S. Dan made me keep what I wrote under each Nutcracker. I just wrote them to be funny and then I was going to delete them, but Dan was laughing so hard, he told me to leave it, so sorry!

_{But Heather came up with them...not me.-Dan}

Festival of Trees

Lindsay asked for a baby doll.



Family togetherness. Gavin's giving Santa the evil eye!



"Ho, ho, ho THIS, Santa!"

Zane asked for a pretend dog.

Last week we took the kids to the Festival of Trees on opening night, Wednesday. What were we thinking? Well, I'll tell you what we thought. We thought that it might not be as busy that night, and we were wrong. It took us about 15 minutes to find a parking spot. We thought it would be a fun tradition to continue and that the kids would enjoy seeing the different trees, we were wrong. Zane had fallen asleep on the way there, so he was SOOOOOOO grumpy almost the whole time. Lindsay was bored after about 10 minutes of looking at trees and wanted a cinnamon roll, that she only ate about 3 bites of (but mommy was willing to finish it!). We thought the kids would be too afraid to see Santa and we were wrong, well, except Gavin. Lindsay and Zane both walked right up to him and sat on his lap. Gavin acted like he was going to sit on his lap, then at the last second, he turned and started running (see photo). It was hilarious! So maybe next year, we'll start a different tradition, of going to the Festival of Trees for a date night!

We are so grateful....

This year for Thanksgiving we went to Heather's parents. All of her sisters and brother-in-laws and nieces and nephews were there, except Matt and Lauren (in California) and Amy ( in Texas on her mission). We missed you guys! Oma (Heather's grandma) was able to join us too. Dinner was delicious and so was dessert and so were leftovers and ok, ok, you get the point. We ate ALL weekend and didn't feel guilty one bit! We also celebrated our nephews birthdays, Jarom (7), Nathan (1)and Carter (1). So along with all of the pies, we had 2 birthday cakes and cupcakes! Yumm! We are so grateful for so many things ~

• Our families. We have such amazing support from both of our families. We are so blessed to have most of our family members living nearby so we get to see them a lot! We love you all!
• The gospel. How fortunate we are to be part of the true church. We're grateful to have both been raised in the gospel and to have strong testimonies.
• Our Children. Yes, life was simple before we had our 3 little munchkins and we had more money laying around and in savings, but boy has it been fun raising them. And so worth it! They have brought us so much joy! We love you Lindsay, Zane and Gavin!
• Our Home. We love where we live and have the best neighbors. Our home is perfect for our growing family and we're planning on being here for a while!
• Our Jobs. Dan is loving his job where he's been for almost a year. He gets to work with other computer nerds (as he calls them) and enjoys everything about the business. It's so nice to be at this point in our lives, where he has graduated from college and has his career. A few years ago it felt like school was never going to end. Heather loves the freedom and flexibility of working for the title company from home now. They have been so good to her these past 11 years. She's also been loving her newest job, teaching tap and ballet to 3-5 year olds. This is something she's always wanted to do and LOVES it!
• Our Friends. We have been so blessed to meet and become friends with so many good people. Thank you to all of you who put up with us! We love you!
• Our Health. Even though we've had strep throat, the stomach flu and about 50 colds since September, we're grateful they are just small illnesses that we have to deal with.

We hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving. (We'll post some Thanksgiving pics in the next few days)

What time is it? High School Musical Time!

Lindsay and Zane filled their sticker reward charts again and this time earned tickets to see High School Musical on Ice. We went on Saturday afternoon and they had a blast! It was so cute to see their faces as we walked into the arena. I spent a lot of the time just sitting watching their reactions.

Lindsay's favorite parts were "Get Your Head in the Game" and the breakup song (as she calls it) when Troy and Gabriella break-up! Zane's favorite parts were when they were singing and the fireworks at the end.

One of Lindsay's best friends, Lydia Lambson, Lindsay and her cousin, Kaelynne

Mommy and Zane

Another one of Lindsay's best friend's, Lila Cowdell, Lila's cousin, Alayna Garn and Lila's friend from preschool

"Can I wear it like this?"

So the other day, Zane came out from his bedroom and asked if he could where his boxer underwear like this. He had both legs in one pant leg and it looked like a mini skirt. I calmly said (without trying to pee my pants from laughter), "well Son, I think that might be a little uncomfortable. So lets try it a different way. But first, can I take your picture?" He agreed and this is what it looked like.

Here they are the right way.

Then Lindsay wanted a silly picture with Daddy's hat from Hawaii on her behind.

Gavin kept standing in front of the camera when I was trying to take Zane's picture. He's such a ham!

Some Quiet Time

A few years ago, Missy designed a quiet book that is adorable. I made Lindsay's a while back, and had done a few pages on the boys' but needed to finish them. So mom, me and some of the sisters, reserved the Young Women's room at mom's church and spent all day Saturday working on quiet books for our kids. We didn't quite get finished, but are planning on getting together to finish this weekend. It was so much fun to hang out and chat and listen to Christmas music :) with no (well, not many) interruptions.

Me and Mom, sewing.....GASP! Hast mein eyes deceived me? Is that Heather at a sewing machine you ask? Why, yes it is. Actually, I'm just posing by it to look cool, but I promise, I really did sew a few things on my kids' pages. My first sewing machine experience ever!

Jenny & Carter showing off the shape page

Karen spent a lot of time ironing fabric

Laurel and Missy cutting out shapes, numbers, balloons, etc....

The Mayan Adventure

Lindsay and Zane earned stickers on their reward chart to go out to dinner. We wanted to take them somewhere where they'd never been and somewhere cool. We decided on the Mayan Adventure at The Jordan Commons. They were astonished just when we pulled up in the parking lot. Lindsay said, "This looks like Temple Square!" We had a relly fun time and it didn't cost all that much either.

Here they were watching the divers. They thought this place was the coolest place! They loved the waterfall.

Lindsay and Zane eating SOME of their dinner. We don't usually let them get their own meal because they usually don't eat most of it. But we did this time and it was a fight to get them to eat.

Gavin was really tired because he hadn't taken an afternoon nap, but we caught a few smiles from him.

Christian, Karen and Nathan joined us. Mom Skousen, Heidi, Jenny and Carter came too.

Little Nathan, checkin' out the place

Dancing the day away

This is one of those tender moments, when I caught Lindsay teaching Zane how to slow dance, while they were listening to some of Jon Schmidts music. I had to hurry and snap this picture before they saw me and stopped!

It's been a sick week!

So this week has been spent mainly sitting at home trying to entertain 3 sick kids! Zane and Gavin have had a cold and really bad cough for over a week and Lindsay has a cold and a sore throat. I went to the doctor's office 3 times in 6 days! Once was for Gavin's 15 month checkup where his head is still off the charts and his height is in the 95%. His weight is down from the 95%, where it was at his 12 month, to the 75%. So all the running around and getting into everything is sliming him down (I wish that could work for me!). Then on Monday, I took Zane in to have his cough checked out and his lungs sounded pretty good, so that was good. Then Wednesday, Lindsay kept complaining about a sore throat, so I looked and she had white spots all over her throat. Then I checked Zane's and he did too! So back to the doctor's I went for strep tests, which both came back negative. They've just got a virus that will still take a few days to clear up. We've stayed home from church, Preschool and dance and I think the kids are ready to get out of the house!!!! Thankfully, Dan let me leave to run some errands the other night, just to get ME out of the house. Hopefully, we can return to our regular schedule next week! I took this picture today to show that they are all feeling a lot better!

We're Incredible!

Halloween was so much fun! As most of you know, we dressed up as the Incredibles, thanks to Heather's sister, Melissa, who let us borrow a lot of the accessories and a couple of shirts that she spent so much time sewing. Thanks Missy!!! At our ward trunk-or-treat, we felt kind of famous. Several people asked to take our pictures and we got many laughs and "that is the cutest idea!" We also went trick-or-treating all together (thanks Mike & Brie for passing out our candy at our house) so everyone could have the full effect. The kids loved getting the candy, but were not very fond of the chilly weather.

Dan and I were Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl. Dan was such a good sport to wear the costume, especially the women's black underwear!



Lindsay was Violet and loved pretending to put force fields around us. She has a black wig to go with the costume that Granny Annie bought her, but she decided to brush it out and it looks like .... well, we won't say on here.

Zane was the perfect Dash, with spikey hair. He loved to show people how fast he could run like Dash.

Then there's our Jack-Jack, Gavin. At times, we thought he just might have a Jack Attack and burst into flames! He was hilarious! The mask was too small for his rather large head (Melissa's littlest boy, Spencer, who wore it last year, has a small head) so the elastic was cutting into his face. And his eyelashes are so long that they kept getting caught in the holes, but he loved it and kept it on most of the time.