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Here are just a few of the…over 500 photos we took on our vacation.  I figured you didn’t really want to see all of them.  I will scrapbook a nice portion of those.

This is our family in front of Carhenge…yep Stonehenge made of cars.  Adam was very excited about this site and the kids asked several times during our vacation to go back there.

Brendan in front of Carhenge.

Our family in front of Mount Rushmore.  I was so excited to be back here.  I came with my family when I was about Jonathan’s age I think.  It was gorgeous.  We went to the night presentation where they lit up the mountain.  We were able to visit the visitor’s center and even walk the trail below the mountain to see the sculptor’s studio.

We saw lots and lots of wildlife on our drives.  We saw buffalo, deer, squirrels, prairie dogs and even mountain goats.  But, my favorite were the burros.  They work in pairs to block the movement of your car while the other goes to ask for food at the window. Eventually they were both at our window enjoying our red licorice.

Our family was lucky enough to dress up and have over 60 pictures taken of us as cowboys.  The kids loved it.  We had a lot of fun together and made some memories.  These pictures will be really fun to scrapbook.  I thought Brendan was awfully cute in his beaver hat.

The weather was pretty cloudy and rainy the whole time we were there, but it let up for one nice sunny day.  We hurried to the alpine slide and took a couple trips down the mountain.  It was lots of fun.  Brendan sat with Mom and then with Dad at the base of the mountain.  He sat down on a stump and waved at the people sliding past.

Here we are at the Badlands.  Very beautiful landscape.  The kids enjoyed learning about fossils and seeing the wildlife.

Of course we had to go see Devil’s Tower.  It was amazing!  We showed the kids “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” just a few days before we left.  They were convinced that around every turn they would see an alien ship.  It was very cute.  I love experiencing things with my kids!

Today was Brendan’s first birthday!  This morning I took him to Target to get his picture taken and he was such a doll.  He had a new outfit from Grandma that had a little golf hat.  He would rip that hat off as fast as I could get it on.  But, the photographer amazingly snapped a few really cute photos before he ripped it off a few times.  I will post those pictures when I get them.  But, for Brendan’s dinner, Adam bought finger food.  We had cheese sticks, chicken nuggets, tater tots and cheetos.  I know… anyway, for desert we had tiny ice cream balls, and a cupcake.  Brendan had a really good time eating at the table with all of us.  We stripped him down to his diaper for the cupcake with his initial on it.  The look on his face when Jonathan handed it to him was priceless.  Strange, we did this exact same thing with Jonathan…and now he’s the one handing Brendan the cupcake.  Needless to say, after he finished, we had to put Brendan straight into the bath and clean the kitchen!

Jonathan grew out of his bike, so he chose a BEN 10 colored bike and Marissa got his red and black one.  She was very proud to be on a bike.  She only fell once and was pretty brave. Brendan watched for part of the time from the trunk of Percy, our car.

Not much to say…just felt like taking pictures of Brendan.  You can’t help but smile when you see him.

We haven’t taken pictures of anything for awhile except yearbook stuff.  I am in charge of the yearbook at Jonathan and Marissa’s school, and it takes a lot of my time.  Anyway, here’s our cute family.

My Grandpa Stone told us a few weeks ago that he and my grandma had visited the Harley Davidson store.  He was quite surprised when they reached the second floor to see a picture of he and his family on their farm back in 1939.  He had no idea they had gotten this photo.  So, of course we got together as a family and met my grandpa down there.  He told us all about growing up on a farm, what all the buildings in the picture were, and how it felt to have the government tell them they had thirty days to get off their land so they could build Geneva Steel.  42 families had to leave for this steel plant to be built.  Right next to my grandpa is him in the photo on the wall at age 17.  Afterwards we all ate at Marley’s.  Sliders are awesome!  The kids had a wonderful time seeing all of the motorcycles as well.

We got together with the entire family since Jordan and Amanda came to visit from Pennsylvania.  This time was extra interesting getting everyone to look at the camera and be happy.  That’s because this year there were seven children to keep amused during this forty-five minute photo shoot.  In the end, we basically had to photoshop some people in from other pictures to get one where everyone was happy and facing forward.

A few days after Christmas, I got a little laugh from Brendan.  He was sitting behind the fridge and leaning out to see me.  After a few times, he would start to giggle every time he peeked around the corner.  Oh, and Brendan picked Christmas day to start crawling.  A few days after Christmas, I removed our tree skirt, the train that goes around the bottom of the tree, and raised all the ornaments to a few feet off the ground.

I am still a scrapbooker at heart, so I will scrapbook Christmas for you all to see.  But, here are a few pictures of the cousins all together, on both sides of the family.  There is also one of Brendan and me.

This year my mom joined us at the Christmas Eve dinner at Nana and Grandad’s house.  There was so much good food…everyone was stuffed and ready to sleep by nightfall.  We played one of Jonny’s crazy games about a haunted house and Jonathan couldn’t stop talking about it all the way home.  He REALLY wanted to play it again.  Brendan and Miles got in on the fun of the food with our new “Net Binkies.”  You can place a piece of food inside the net and the baby can suck on it.  It was SO nice to not have to worry that Brendan was going to choke.  Lindsey was glad they enjoyed it, but the whole idea just grossed her out.

As is our tradition, we went to the Lindon City party to see Santa come on a fire engine.  Brendan went from bewildered, to upset, to wondering why we were all calling his name so that we could get a picture on Santa’s lap.  The picture shown here is the happiest he got.  Both kids asked Santa for a bakugan shooter, and Marissa put in a good word for an easy bake oven to show up either at Grandma or Nana’s.  Afterwards, we got a picture of everyone on the fire engine.  We had lots of good pizza while there.

Marissa’s kindergarten class had a Christmas program just before the break.  Our favorite part was when one song said, “Thirty-two feet and eight little tails of white…” because at this point all the kids turned around and shook their little white tails.  Marissa was very proud to be in a program and actually stand on the stage.  You can see Marissa on the far left.

Here are a few pictures of us getting ready for Christmas.  We put up the tree and were a little relieved that Brendan still can’t quite crawl.  He can look at the tree and say “oh!” but that’s about it.  He really likes the train we put around the bottom of the tree.  We helped my mom put up her tree and took a picture of us and the cousins in front of it.  We also took a family picture in front of our tree.  We do this every year because we put the family picture in an ornament/frame and hang it on the tree.  Adam and I have discussed doing these family picture ornaments since we got married.  This is the first year they made it onto the tree.  It’s only been twelve years.  In our family picture, Jonathan is wearing the suit that he got when he was baptized.  He’s pretty close to being too big for it already.  We also had to teach Jonathan how to smile for this photo.  We had to practice not having the “crazy eyes” and the “glued on smile” that screamed, “I’m frozen in this position!”  He cried a little as we taught him this.  That’s why his eyes are just so darn “sparkly.”  Marissa is wearing the dress I made for her to match the headband in her hair.  Brendan is wearing the same off-white sweater that Jonathan wore at his age.  I can’t believe that we caught one where everyone is looking at the camera.

While we were driving in the car to Nana’s, the kids were talking about stars.  Marissa suddenly said, “If you take away the ’s’ on star, it says ‘tar’.”

“Good job, honey,” I replied.

Then Jonathan chimed in with, “if you add a ‘d’ to the end of ‘tar’ it says, ‘tard’.”

Adam and I began to giggle.

“And,” he continued, “if you add an ‘er’ to that, it says ‘tarder’.”

Adam looked at me and said, “What’s more than a tard? Tarder.”

For Halloween, Marissa wanted to be Tinkerbell again.  She was this two years ago…so her costume that I made her then no longer fit.  So, I made another.  This was finished October 30th at 11 at night.  Jonathan’s Ben 10 costume was a little easier.  I cut up a white t-shirt and a black t-shirt and sewed them together.  Then I went to Saver’s and found these green pants.  Score!  Brendan had no choice in the matter.  He fit perfectly into the Superman costume that I made for Jonathan at the same age.  Next year Brendan will be a Musketeer and the next year he’ll be a Jedi…

The kids wore their costumes to school for the parade and the parties.  Then we went to dad’s work and showed off their costumes at the bbq.  Then we went to the mall and trick-or-treated from store to store for about an hour.  We saw a man dressed up as tinkerbell, but could not convince Marissa to get her picture taken with him.  Then we rushed home to pick up our candy for the trunk-or-treat.  We then drove to the church and experienced that with our neighborhood friends.  Then we packed up quickly and drove to Grandma and Grandpa Stone’s house to trick or treat there.  This is the first year we haven’t gone to my mom’s house…but she recently contracted shingles…and apparently they can cause you to spread chicken pox and shingles to others.  So…we took pictures for my mom.  Then we drove to Nana’s house to have toad in the hole and eyeball soup.  After that we followed Uncle Jon home to see his Halloween decorations.  These were VERY cool.  He even had a projector showing spiders, scary guys, and even a huge blinking eye-ball in his window.  The kids were very impressed.  Of course, at this time, Marissa realized that she’d left her candy at Nana’s so we drove back to pick it up.  We finally drove home to put all the kids to bed…and Adam left to go to work until the wee hours of the morning.  Phew!

Thursday was crazy hair day at school.  I spray-painted Jonathan’s hair silver for the second year in a row.  We ran out the door too quickly to get a picture, though.  I came back home and had some time to make Marissa’s hair really crazy.  This is how it turned out.  She also has a mosquito bite under her eye…just in time for family pictures.  Ah…we’ll just photoshop it out!

We finally carved our pumpkins from Grandma and Grandpa.  Marissa chose to carve a witch.  Jonathan chose “Heatblast”…from Ben 10 of course.  Mostly it always turns out that the kids just tell us what to do and we make the pumpkins.  Jonathan actually pulled some of the guts out of his pumpkin this year, but Marissa refused to put her hand in the muck.  Jonathan also traced his picture onto the pumpkin.  Adam and I had the honor of cutting them out.

I tried really hard to be a good mom and have the kids be ready for their school photos.  I had washed everything that needed to be washed.  Marissa said she wanted to wear her school uniform dress for the photos.  I ordered Jonathan a new long sleeved shirt for school so that he could have something nice looking to wear in his photo.  The night before the school pictures, I came home from work and Marissa had licked below her bottom lip so much that she was red and purple all over.

It wasn’t pretty.  This picture is actually the next morning.  I almost didn’t even send the money for her photos, but I decided that if they didn’t turn out well, I could always get retakes.  Then, as Jonathan got ready for school, I heard him call out from his room.  “Mom, the hole for my head is too small in this new shirt!”  “No it isn’t,” I yelled back.  “You need to undo the buttons.”  Then he came out wearing his shirt that now looked like this:

Yes, a nice hole was now ripped into the front of it.  Luckily I had ordered him more than one new shirt…but now I had to run into the bathroom, rip the shirt out of its package and iron it as fast as I could since we had to get him to school in the next few minutes.  Luckily I got him there on time.  Then I came home and did Marissa’s hair and tried to apply a little bit of base to her chin to cover the redness.  Adam referred to her photos as “Something she will always remember because of this.”  I mostly thought of it as “Something that will always make me angry.”

Anyway, here is how she looked after a little make-up session….not too bad.

I tried to get pictures of when Jonny came home from Europe so that I could post it for Nana while she was in England.  But, then I had a few mishaps…see my next post.  So, here are a few photos of everyone getting together to see Jonny for the first time in weeks.  Everyone enjoyed the slide show.  I know that it made Adam VERY jealous and even that much more determined to get us to Italy sometime in the next few years.  Jonathan also enjoyed the photos, but the kids of course like the candy the most.

Adam and Jon cooking together.

Chevon and Miles

Jonathan holding Brendan

Adam with Brendan

Grandad being a good host

All of us

Grandma and Grandpa called us today and asked if we would like some free pumpkins.  The kids were so excited to go choose some.  Last year, I wasn’t feeling up to it as I was still in early pregnancy.  We took pictures of the event.  Of course, they talked us into some squash, tomatoes and grapes as well.  We are lucky to have the best grandparents in the world.