New Years

My sister and her husband were in town this year for the holidays. They spent Christmas with her in laws but we got to have them for New Years. Sarah is due in February with a baby girl. We had a baby shower Wednesday night too.

We got a good snow storm on Wednesday so New Years day we decided to try out the sled Santa brought for Tyler. Andy and Brandon rigged a rope pull to pull Tyler around on the hill. It was a fun visit and always nice to see Sarah and Brandon.

Caught Red Handed

Andy caught Tyler's confession to eating all 9 of the Reese's Peanut butter cups Santa had put in his stocking while Mom and Dad were in the other room.

Merry Christmas!

This was the first Christmas we had at our house with just our family. I was kind of excited about it since Tyler's older now and "gets" Christmas more. Here's a picture of the tree after Santa came.

He left Tyler and Bryce these cute Sesame Street dolls in their stockings.


Christmas morning.

This is Tyler and Bryce "sharing" a wooden train that was actually given to Bryce by Grandma and Grandpa. Tyler has really enjoyed playing with his and Bryce's toys this year before Bryce is old enough to protest or fight back.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

This year was Tyler's first time going to see Santa Claus. We've been talking about it for weeks now and rehearsing that he's going to ask Santa for Handy Manny tools. We got there early and there wasn't even a line yet. Tyler ran right up to him and sat on his lap before I could even catch up. When I got there he was talking to Santa about his sleigh and Santa said "Is there anything else you want besides a sleigh?" (I didn't know Tyler wanted a sleigh for Christmas). So I said "Remember the tools you wanted?" and Santa said "Ah! Handy Manny tools" (Santa always knows...)
The mall also had this train that the kids could ride around Santa's village. I think Tyler enjoyed this more than seeing Santa.

Sledding

Saturday afternoon we went sledding with Andy's sister, Richelle and her family. The kids had a blast. I was so proud of Tyler that he's starting to overcome some of his cautious nature and even sledded down the hill by himself! I turned off the video camera on this clip right before he stood up and yelled "I did it all by myself!"

Mostly he went down the hill with Andy.

I'm sure next year we'll have some pictures of Bryce on the sled too. Your turns coming bud.

Only in Spanish Fork

I love the town we live in. I love that its relatively small and that almost everywhere there is to shop is located on Main St. I love that rodeo stars are local celebrities. I love that the car wash has special instructions for cleaning hay and manure out of your truck bed. I love that Tyler can see a farmer driving his classic green John Deere tractor down Center St. at 9:00 am on a Monday morning. I love that I can often smell manure on someone in the produce section of the grocery store. And I love that on a Saturday morning at the drive in of the bank you can see a chicken wandering around the cars. Not having much else to do, a Spanish Fork policeman stopped and chased him around for awhile. I had to pull away before I could see how the story ended. Hopefully it wasn't with a squashed chicken in the middle of Main Street. Only in Spanish Fork...

First Big Snow

It has been dumping snow here in Spanish Fork. Tyler and I went out to shovel the driveway today while Bryce was napping. I couldn't believe how much snow there was and it was still coming down. The wind last night created big drifts like this one on our front porch.

All bundled up
Tyler helped me "rake" the snow. I couldn't find him a kids shovel. Some areas were up to his waist. He tried to follow me to the front walk way and got stuck and had to have me lift him over it. He loved it though and wanted to go back out as soon as we were inside.
Only an hour after shoveling it was covered in at least another inch and a half again. We'll probably be back out again later.