1st Haircut

It was finally time to give the little Cam his first haircut. I say finally because by this age Ryland had probably had 5 haircuts. Cam didn't have quite as much hair as Ryland. Anyway, he needed a trim ya?

Look at that hair.

And I put this picture up just for the sake of being able to see his uno tooth. Yep the lone ranger, one and only tooth he has. Adorable huh?

And the haircut was very similar to giving Ryland a haircut. It started like this, holding on for dear life but no tears yet.

And quickly went to something like this...

And lasted like that until the end. But he was all good after Lance held him and made him feel better. Tears and all.

And doesn't he look so handsome with his new do?

Love this little guy!

Christmas 2011

I can't believe christmas has already come and gone. We had a great time celebrating the holiday and I am sad to see it gone so quickly. Thankfully it will come around again next year. Here is a little recap of our Christmas festivities this year. We visited temple square on thursday night with Lisa Brian and Ayla. That was, well freezing, but fun. We didn't keep the babies there long, we were all done quickly, it was seriously super cold and very crowded. It was fun seeing a few of the lights though.

Ryland thought they were awesome, so many lights!

We did a wonderful Christmas Eve brunch with Lances family. It was fun to have all the family together and see all the kids. We had tons of yummy food and opened gifts together. Lance and Cam

Lances mom opening her gift

We gave her pictures of the 5 grandkids all together. Unfortunately Ryland acted like this for all the pictures.

It did not matter what I did, he cried through the whole session....so frustrating. What can you do though, it will be a fun memory. They all looked so adorable together!! We had a good time.

Ryland was so tired Christmas Eve afternoon so he missed most of the present opening while he took a nap by the christmas lights in his room.

He was excited to open his gifts when he woke up though. This train has been on constantly since he got it, he loves it. Thanks Marie!

We had Christmas eve dinner at my parents that night. We did it at the church, yes that is how many people are in my family. It was fun. We had so much room for the kids to run and play. They had a blast and thought their own dinner table was pretty steller!

Ryland and Thomas "hiding" Love this picture!

Kim and Kelly helped the grandkids put on the nativity. Here is Ryland in his get-up, and yes, he may or may not be picking his nose here! :)

He ditched the costume half way through and kept wondering around the stage and throwing us a wave every now and again. It was hilarious. Don't 2 year olds listen so well?

Lance and I

Cam and Natalie

Brian was nice and helped Cam open his gifts. He loves this little ambulance.

My mom made Ryland a new blanket. His baby blanket is pretty hammered. This pictures explains his love for blankets. He still is not ready to give up his old one. He sleeps with both and loves it!

We had a great time celebrating there. We headed to Gildas after and visited there for a while until we ran home to get ready for Santa to come. Ry and Cam both went right to bed and slept until 7:15. Ya, I woke them up, we, well maybe just me, couldn't wait anymore. Here is what Santa brought both of them.

They had fun playing with their new toys.



And Grandma Jo and Papa Tom were great to help them open gifts.



It was a great Christmas morning. After spending a couple hours playing, we packed up and headed to Lances dads to spend some time with them. The first thing Ryland saw when he walked in was his new tent. He went right down to check it out. He loves it. He and Maddie had a great time playing in it.

We had a yummy breakfast with them and then opened presents. They were both getting very good at opening presents by now.

Nana and Cam

They gave Ryland a real camera for kids. He LOVES it. He took over 150 pictures in probably an hour. He is taking pictures of the most random things. It is funny to see his mind through the pictures he has taken over the last few days. That will have to be a different post!

Nana Maddie and Cam. We tried to get one with Ry too but had a similar experience to the photo session earlier this week, so I will take what I can get!

It was a blast hanging out there. We ended the night by skyping with my brother who is serving his mission in Eugene Oregon. That was AWESOME!! It is always fun when they call home but it was way cool to be able to skype and actually see him. Ya, he is on the computer and the t.v.!

He is doing great!! It was a blast to just enjoy talking with him and hearing what he has been up to the last 6 months. What an awesome missionary. It was sad to say goodbye, but we can't wait to do it again in 6 more months! We love you Elder Bradley! We hope you all had a safe and happy holiday season! Can't wait to ring in the new year this weekend!

Sing-a-long

We went to the annual Sing-a-long at the ESA again this year. As usual it did not disappoint. We had a great time and it was a nice way to start off our Christmas week. Ryland loved dancing all around and trying to sing the songs. His favorite song this year is Jingle Bells, he sings that one pretty well too! He gets so excited when he sees Santa too. I don't think he quite gets the concept that Santa is the one that brings the presents on Christmas, but he loves to see him and gets super excited. Maybe he got that from watching Elf....not sure! :) Anyway, it was a great time and such a fun tradition...even if Lance thinks its a little nerdy! He is a good sport about doing it for me and the kids! Thanks Lance!
Chillin before it started!

The little Elf and Santa

Santa was a little more excited about smiling for the picture than the elf was...

Cam and Grandma

Cam and Scott, we tried to get him up on the big screen but no such luck. Ryland was super lucky a couple years ago to get up there!

Ryland and Kira had a BLAST dancing and singing by their chairs.

And spinning in circles. They have so much fun together.

Singing away....

Have a Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Crazy Windy Day

I used to be terrified of wind, seriously. I remember as a young kid going to the park to have a picnic with my family but it was windy outside, so guess what I did? I sat in the car while they enjoyed eating and playing at the park. Thankfully I got over that one but last Thursday, I had a little bit of that fear in me come back. We experienced (and by we I mean me and the boys while Lance was out of town helping his family move) one of THE craziest wind storms EVER! I have never in my life seen wind that bad. It all started around 1 or 2 Thursday morning. I was awakened to the wind rushing by and through our bedroom window. The air cooler outside was creaking with every gust of wind. It sounded pretty bad but I was able to get some on and off sleep through it. We got up around 6 just as the power went out and to see that it really was pretty bad. I ran outside to pick up our front door mat that had blown across the yard and take the wreath off our door. All the while trying to breath was a challenge because the gusts of wind literally took your breath away. Our trash and recycle can had blown into the backyard so I moved those up against the house hoping they would be able to withstand the wind there. It wasn't too long before this happened....

Ya that is our neighbors tree. It didn't survive the wind and fell down on the fence, mailboxes and across the road. This was just one of the MANY pine tree casualties from this storm. Seriously, so crazy. By now I had to run across the street to retrieve our recycle can that had blown to the neighbors yard. My fear of wind struck again as I was almost blown over with a recycle can in my hand watching our neighbors tree snap in half and go down. So freaky, sounded just like a loud clap of thunder. I ran inside and decided it didn't matter what else blew away I was staying put! Hence why we lost our BBQ cover. Ya, no idea where that one blew too. Since the power was out we had no heater to keep us warm and the house quickly went from 65 to 60 to 55 by noon and I decided it probably wasn't going to be back on anytime soon. So I packed up Ry and Cam in the car and we took off to my parents who thankfully had a fireplace to stay warm because they did not have power either. I could not believe all of the downed trees, power lines, and other debris scattered everywhere. I was most sad to see our cities landmark christmas tree taken down, tears! That is a big old tree too!

Anyway, long story short I spent all day at my parents enjoying the fire and watching the wind blow. It finally died down around 5 or so and our house finally got power back on later that evening. I picked Lance up from his sisters house after her drove across a couple states to get them back home! Yeah! We are so happy to have them close. We didn't get home until around midnight and went to bed thankfully without the wind howling anymore. We awoke to see the crazy damage it really did. Our roof looked something like this....

And this...notice the ones on the top of the peak just standing straight up. Nice huh?

Lance and our neighbor Michael spent most of the day friday fixing that.

Good thing Lance is super handy and not scared of heights. He had to get way up there with a ladder sometimes. Super high! I am getting nervous just looking at this picture!

Ryland wanted to get up on the ladder and help too. He is rather afraid of heights though and only made it up a couple steps before coming back down.

And even though we have no trees, we ended up with this pile in our "catch-all" corner of the yard.

Ryland didn't mind helping me rake them all up. We normally don't do this because we only have 2 baby trees that hardly produce any leaves so I think this was his first experience raking leaves. He had a blast throwing them around and helping me get them all into bags.

Yep 4 super full bags of leaves, I didn't think the pile was that deep either. So crazy.

Cam had fun watching us rake up the leaves. It wasn't too cold and he enjoyed being outside for a little while.

Ryland pulled out his bike for a bit too. We kind of wish it was summer again around here! :)

I love how our front porch light even had a hard time against the wind. I almost left it like this.

And my parents roof now looks something like this. Poor shingles just couldn't hang on.

So after spending most of the day Friday and Saturday cleaning up our own house and all of our neighbors, I am sure there are very few pine tress left standing in our city and surrounding ones. And no, I don't plan on ever planting one after this weekend! After reading the news they clocked a guest of 102 in the city next to ours and a gust of 83 right through our neighborhood! Yesterday they cancelled church and sent everyone out to try and get all the branches and such taken to the dump because of a forecasted windstorm Sunday night. So once again the neighborhood rallied together and got everything cleaned up and taken to dumps. It is great to be part of such a wonderful neighborhood. Thankfully the wind did not blow near as hard last night. Lance sure is beat after 3 full days of working working and working! He has bruises and scratches up and down his arms! I am so happy to married to such a great guy who is so willing to step in and help wherever he can. Speaking of married, we celebrated our 6 year anniversary on the 3rd as well. 6 blissful years! We had a great time celebrating Saturday night, but sorry no pictures. But we did get our Christmas stuff up last week as well. Love this picture of Ry and Lance by the tree. Happy holidays everyone!

And just because this is too cute. Look what Cam can do now! Yeaaaa!