January at our House

Well, we started off this year with Megan getting Lasik.  This was her Christmas present that she has been wanting for a long time.  She LOVES it and is so happy to have no more glasses or contacts! Yay!  Payton took this picture of her with the shield on her eyes.

Marcus turned one year older and wiser too!  Megan made him a yummy ice cream cake - she stuck it in the deep freeze and it was a little on the frozen solid side when he tried to cut it. :)

Emma has finally grown enough hair for us to give her a cute little mohawk in the bath.  As you can tell, the kids LOVE their bath time.

There is nothing sweeter than a sleeping child...  Apparently our kids like to sleep on their tummies.

And Payton still likes to sleep in "the crack" between his bed and the wall.  So cute!

December & Christmas Fun

Here is a glimpse into our December at home.  The kids really enjoyed putting up and decorating the Christmas tree.  They liked wearing the antlers and Santa hat.

For FHE one night we decided to make a gingerbread house.  This was a first for us with the kids and it was a lot of fun!

This is the final product!  Payton loved decorating with and eating the candies!  Lots of fun!

We finally made it to temple square this year to see the lights!  It was dang cold, but really cool to see and the kids loved it. This is the first time we've taken the kids, there has always been something that has stopped us the past couple years.

Christmas Eve was spent at Megan's parents house.  We did the traditional Nativity scene, the kids enjoyed getting dressed up. (Payton has his eyes super wide in this pic because in the previous one we took he blinked.  He is making sure that wouldn't happen again!)

 
Here is the whole crew of 13 Grandkids in their Nativity outfits.  They love doing this every year we get together. It is pretty fun to watch and see how long the kids will last for the story. :)

Here is a recent picture of Megan and her brothers and sister and their cute babies that are getting so big so fast! 

Here are our cute kiddos on Christmas morning.  Santa touched their noses and got some charcoal on them.  Payton thought that was so cool, he left it on there all day.  

 This is our attempt to get a picture of our kids in front of the tree before they got to rip into all of the presents.

 Santa put some cool shades in their stockings.  They were pretty excited to have these - Mom and Dad are too so they will leave theirs alone.

Here's Payton posing with his loot!  I think he is pretty excited about it!  He really scored (as usual)!

 
Here's Emma with her new stuff.  She got lots for her size.  Payton keeps telling people that he got lots of presents and Emma got a little bit.  Yeah, he wasn't supposed to notice that...oh well! 

California - Disneyland!!

The highlight of our California trip was Disneyland (of course!)! We spent three days there and had a blast. The weather was far from perfect, but the vacation must go on!

Our first day there we got poured on (which we knew would happen and we were prepared for) and it was really cold (we were totally prepared for that one). We were only there for a few hours that first day, but it was too cold for the kids - even though they were troopers.

Emma's favorite ride was It's a Small World (of course!) and Payton loved the Buzz Lightyear one (and many many more).

Payton got to go on his first rollercoaster ride (which he says he did it once and doesn't want to anymore!) and liked it. He met the minimum requirement of 40" for a lot of the rides and we convinced him to try them at least once. Marcus was able to get a video of Payton on Thunder Mountain. It is funny to watch his expression go from fun to fear and back.

We got to see a lot of the characters, which was really cool for Payton - he loved i t!

Emma wasn't so sure about some of them, but as long as mom was holding her she was fine.

Payton was so excited when he saw Mater! Apparently he is one of his favorites. It was really cool when he drove by us in one of the parades.

It was fun to see some of the main characters in their holiday outfits. The parades were awesome, the decorations were amazing, and Sleeping Beauty's castle was absolutely stunning!

It was pretty neat having it "snow" on us one night after Fantasmic and the fireworks! Payton thought that was super cool (and so did the adults - Emma was sleeping).

While we were there we also got to go to Goofy's Kitchen for breakfast, which was so much fun! Although it was quite distracting for the kids, having all the different characters walking around and coming to our table, it was really cool.

Alice and the Mad Hatter were entertaining us with a bunch of pirate jokes.

Goofy was good at making sure Payton was eating his food and he also had fun harassing Emma. She had a funny little fake cry/whine whenever he got too close.

Overall, we had an awesome trip and it was fun to get to share it with Megan's parents!

California - San Diego Zoo & Sea World

This was a first for us to go the the San Diego Zoo.  That place is huge!!  We were there for 8 hours and we didn't even see everything. We saw a lot, but not all of it.  Crazy!  It was really cool and the kids loved it.

You can go inside the aviaries with the birds.  While in there Payton decided to chase one of them (because it is so much fun!), but we quickly put an end to that.  Notice the size and beak on that bird?!?  Hello, not a good idea to chase him!!

One of the main attractions for the kids was the cute chimps!  There was a cute baby chimp and some other young ones in the mix.  They were so much fun to watch and see how they interact with each other, especially their mom.

The elephants were really cool to see too.  One of them even posed with Payton with under its foot!  He and Emma both thought it was really cool!  

Another day, off to Sea World we got to see Shamu (of course!) and many other attractions.  Emma & Payton really like watching the whales jumping and splashing around.

Sesame Street's Bay of Play was a lot of fun (for Megan & Marcus too)!  They had some fun rides that Payton loved and a really cool rope course that all three of us could go on.

The penguins were a hit attraction for all of us.  They are so cute and so much fun to watch.  Emma loved the cute stuffed penguins at the gift shop that Grandma couldn't resist buying one for her. Lucky!

The Christmas decorations were fun to see while there.  It helped remind us that Christmas was coming even though there wasn't any snow (but it was still pretty dang cold!). 

Also, while we were in San Diego we ate at one of the best BBQ places ever.  We would highly recommend it!  It is called Phil's BBQ, if you are ever around there, you should stop and eat! 

California - Universal Studios

In December we got to make a trip out to California with Megan's parents. We bought a City Pass (which is a really great deal) and were able to go to 4 different parks! The first place we went to was Universal Studios. This is mostly a place for older kids, but Payton and Emma still enjoyed going to the shows.

Payton liked seeing the some of the characters they have there. He learned that the hulk is really big and tough.

We also stopped to say hi to Jason Bourne. He was nice enough to let the boys take a picture with him and his car! :)

While we were waiting in line for one of the Special Effects shows, Marcus was approached by one of the workers and they asked him if he would like to be a stunt man! Of course he agreed to do it and had a lot of fun with it. He got to be chained to a wall, tortured, and then turned into a crispy skeleton (Payton was a little worried as to where his daddy went). Later he reappeared in the show to get his arm sliced into...kinda gross.

Halloween

We went out to a pumpkin patch as a family so Payton and Emma could check out the pumpkins.  They really liked seeing all of them.  Payton loved that fact that they were orange, since that is his favorite color!  Emma loved being able to get down and touch them!

Before Halloween we carved our pumpkins.  Payton loved helping clean out the guts and getting all messy.  He wasn't as hesitant this year.  Emma even got to get in on the action and grab a squishy handful.  Mom and Dad got to do all the face carving though.

Our kids turned into a pirate and a butterfly this year.  Payton really got into his character and would say "Arrr, Matey!"  He also figured out the whole candy thing.  At the trunk-or-treat, he started out walking to the first couple cars and ended up running to the rest!  Very funny!

There is no wrong way to be mobile!

Here is a fun little video of three of the four babies in Megan's Family to show you how they all get around. Each one is different, for now...

Georgia Trip

Megan and the kids took a trip out to Georgia this month to visit Marcus' sister Cheri. Her mom also went with. We had so much fun while we were there and saw so many different things it was too difficult to narrow down the pictures to just few, so you will have to look at the slideshow instead.

While in Georgia we made a visit to Okefenokee Swamp Park. Anything you think of when someone says they went to a swamp - wet, hot, dangerous, alligators - is what it is like. It was so cool, but a little freaky, especially with all the signs posted saying "Stay on path, all animals are real and dangerous." Thankfully we had no fatalities during our visit and we did get to see many alligators up close. We went on a boat tour of the river and later we got to pet some snakes, gators, and even got to have one on our head or face! (Yes, gators do smell funny)

Another day we went to Savannah (a very pretty place) and went to Tybee Beach. Payton and Annie had a TON of fun there. We were just planning to wade in the water a little bit, but of course the kids got soaked. They ran around the whole time we were there. Funny kids!
Also in Savannah we got to experience our first huge rainstorm. When it rains there, it POURS! I have never seen so much rain in my life, it was crazy and awesome to drive in! The roads flooded because there was so much water, but you just keep driving in it because you never know when it is going to stop.
The kids had a lot of fun together, of course we had to get some bath time footage of the three little cousins. They are so funny!

Family Pictures and Payton

So we decided to go up the canyon to Temple Quarry take some pictures of our little family before it got too cold.














Megan's parents took the pictures for us and this is what we got. As many of you know taking pictures with little kids is quite the challenge, but we had a lot of fun and did get some cute ones!


While we were up there we decided to take come pictures of Payton since he is three now. He was so funny to take pictures of. He kept making some funny faces and rolling his eyes. As you can see he also started tilting his head to the side whenever we told him to smile. Not sure where it came from, but he sure is cute!

We also got a cute picture of Megan's mom and Grandma! So fun.