It's all about Service!

I don't know about you, but I enjoy the holiday season because it's filled with thinking of others and filling our time with serving others. This year I feel that Alayna is old enough (3 1/2) to comprehend that she has been given much and that she too must share. After having a FHE on serving others, we went to work! She and I came up with a chart that she can check off when she has done a job of any kind to earn money for our service family. My parents are serving a mission in the Inner City Mission in Salt Lake City. They have been given the opportunity to "adopt" families in need. So we are blessed to be able to help these sweet people from other countries, who truly are just thankful to be alive.

So Monday, Alayna was rearing and ready to go! She was a GREAT helper. She folded towels, emptied the dishwasher, put shoes away, cleaned her room, etc. After she had earned 6 service dollars she was sitting and looking at them in her special Christmas jar. She said, "Mom, I think I want to keep the money to buy treats for myself, from the store." I said, "Well, you have earned this money, I'm going to leave it up to you." No, more than 3 seconds she said, "Mom, I changed my mind...I want to buy clothes and socks for our service family." I am just so thankful that she is experiencing the sweet joy that comes when we serve and love others. I was greatly blessed to have been taught this priceless lesson when I was just a young child from my parents. Next...Jared and I "volunteered" to watch 4 extra kids today. Todd and Shan lucked out getting 12 tickets to see the Christmas Devotional downtown. How lucky are they? Well, we were lucky too...it was just another teaching moment to tell Alayna that sometimes we have to do things even if it's not our first choice. But Jared and I had the BEST time watching these darling boys interact and have a great time! Olivia and Alayna just played house the whole time...they just love having an excuse to play together.

Over the past few months and weeks we have been focusing on praying for people in need. Our Grandma Suker has been recovering from some complications from a previous surgery. She is recovering in a rehab hospital in Utah County. Since we haven't been able to get there in person more than once, we are excited to send her some darling pictures. I had to take a picture of Alayna's adorable Christmas tree picture. On the back I had her write a letter through me. One of the sweet things she said was, "We have been praying to Jesus so that he will bless you." I just loved that she is expressing her faith and gratitude for a Heavenly Father who does bless us and look over all our needs.

This picture is simply to show off Jake's "Shiner!" He was in nursery last week and he took a tumble after he was going for a ball. Each day it has been progressively gotten worse. But Jake has learned that he is "tough!" It has changed colors and is now fading. But this tough kid even returned to nursery! Way to go Jake.

The 8th Annual Lighting Ceremony...

Yes, you heard me right. Todd has been known as "Clark Griswald" for 8 plus years. Each year he has been adding more and more lights to his house display. This year took the cake! Drum roll...he has over 30, 150 lights...47 extension cords...31 candy canes lining the driveway...Maple tree's have 3,150 lights...and over 28 decorated pine trees!!!! Yeah, that's right it is AMAZING. It takes him from Halloween until the day before Thanksgiving to finish hanging all the lights.

Here is Mr. Christmas himself with to extra excited girls. Really they had stayed up VERY late. We let them watch Christmas movies and eat treats all night long. These cute cousins couldn't have thanked Toddy for such a Fun filled night.

My mom, my sister Krista, and Mrs. Christmas her self, (baby Isaac).

I know this is silly, but I had to take a picture of the HUGE display of food. Really this is just to preserve a memory for me because we had so much food. It doesn't look appetizing at all because it was at the end of the night. But we made TONS of appetizers. This is our families favorite type of celebration. Any excuse to get us to cook some great food. We had two tables filled with several different appetizers. We needed this much food because we had over 60 people! Yeah, between our two families, extended families and a few great neighbors we cleared lots of food.

I have tried to upload a video I took of when he lights turned on. I'll keep working on it though because its amazing! Stay tuned...

Getting ready for Christmas...

It was Jared's day off on Wednesday (the one before Thanksgiving) and we decided it was time to start decorating for Christmas. Really we felt pressure to keep up with the "Madsen's" if you will. For those of you you haven't experienced Todd & Shan's Christmas Wonderland upstairs you really need to stop by and visit. They have trees in every room, and a huge 12 ft or so Christmas Tree. It really is spectacular! So with that being said we needed to get started. Alayna was starting to ask if we even celebrate the Christmas holidays. So that's when I left to play basketball and I put Jared and Alayna up to decorating for Christmas.

She was in heaven spending one on one time with dad and I came back to a decorated house. Thanks fam.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Thanksgiving #1...with the Aitken Family.

(My mom's side of the family)

Here we are getting ready to play Human Foosball...It was really FUN! We were trying to work off all of our turkey and mash potatoes!

Alayna is saying, "Happy Thanksgiving!"

Thanksgiving #2 - hanging with the Sukers

(Jared's side of the family)

Jacob has discovered is new favorite treat...OLIVES! I was shocked when he ate one, then he asked for, "More" he continued to eat the entire bowl! He gets this from me NOT Jared or Alayna.

Randy, very tired Jacob, Heather, Gr Denny, Gr Ludd, Jason, Mike and Jared.
Grandpa Suker and Alayna enjoying some football.

I think Alayna is holding her heart saying, "I love my Aunt Ashley and Uncle Brian!" These two are the BEST when it comes to allowing Alayna to "boss" them around. She has so much fun playing with them. Thanks for entertaining her she absolutely LOVES spending such great quality time with you!

Here is a perfect moment to show you how great these two are...Alayna and Ashley are hiding from Brian in the famous game of hide and go seek. They picked to hid behind the couch. Alayna was giggling so much she was trying to cover her mouth so Brian wouldn't find them. I couldn't resist capturing this precious moment! So cute.

Thanksgiving #3...Hanging with the Perry clan!

(My dad's side of the family)

Finally, best for last, right? No, all our Thanksgivings were great! This one was fun because it happened after a long morning of shopping on Friday...so we had worked up an appetite.

Here's my mom spending time on the grand kid table.

Kari (cousin), Ange (sister), Josh (cousin) - I wish I ended up with the cute pictures of there kids. Josh & Kari have twin boys about 8 weeks old and Ange has twin boys 2 years old. How did our family end up with two sets of twin identical boys? Either way all four boys are adorable!

Bring on the games!!! First my mom had us play a word game. Each person had two letters around there neck. We had to jump up and turn around to form the words. It was surprisingly competitive...Way to go girls - we WON!!

Here's Doctor Jared himself...while he was making the rest of us sick touching my uncles foot, he was making an assessment! I think they both are enjoying it a little too much.

I didn't end up with pictures from two other games we played. We played a salt shaker game. Where you hold hands under the table, and squeeze down the row of people. Then the two teams try to grab the salt shaker. It was an absolute riot! I will give more instructions if your interested. Then we played life-size "Rock, Paper, Scissors!" This was an absolute FUN activity. We'd huddle make a choice, then line up on the line and on the count of three we would do our action of "Rock, Paper, Scissors!" Then if you win the bet you chase after the other group to have them join your side! Then we ended the night with Speed. It was a fun think as usual!

Finally all the turkey and mashpotatoes are over!!! YEAH. So far Jared and I have tried to eat very light...we are trying to recover from all that heavy food. Yummy, but too much! Thanks for all the fun fam!

Preping for Thanksgiving...

Here's my cute little Jakey helping me make the famous yams for Thanksgiving. He has loved this new freedom of standing up on a chair and being able to see everything that is happening at the counter.

Funny thing Alayna just said...

Alayna was having hot chocolate with her cousins and she ran downstairs..."Mom, do we have any candy canes?" I said, "No, we haven't bought any yet!" She then sat down next to our old broken printer (it's waiting to go to the DI) and she lifted up the paper holder in the back and pretended to start typing and looking at the screen. Then she said, "Well, I'm just going to get on my computer and check to see if there is any online!" I laughed and laughed...then she said, "Yeah, I found some on sale!" Seriously, how funny is that...I do very little online shopping, let alone in front of her, so I have no idea how she pieced it all together. Funny huh?

Really, I don't need to say anything!

For all my family and friends who wore the other color on Saturday I won't say anything! But this is the color our family was wearing! We had a great time watching a great football game. We LOVE college football. Go UTAH!

So following the game I joined my sister and some friends to view the "Oh, so long awaited movie...Twilight!" (I hope your sensing my sarcasm!!!) I won't begin to unleash my opinions and feelings about #1 the books and #2 this attempt on making a movie. But I will share the #1 thing that literally ruined the movie.

Yes, that's right...Edward's car! This is the car I pictured...this is the car that Stephenie Meyer had listed on her website as Edwards car! How could they create the movie using a hatchback Volvo???? Since when were hatchbacks cool? The moment the car scene of him slipping and sliding to save Bella in Port Angeles happened...I was ticked! It really made me so frustrated that they missed this major detail. A hatchback? Seriously...So with me venting my annoyance with this one missed detail I will stop, so those of you that haven't watched it will not notice all the other mistakes they missed.

As we were walking out of the movie theater the cute old lady asked, "So girls was it worth it? My response was..."Well, the tickets were free!" So that sums up how I felt.

Here's to prove that I was a reader...of books 1, 2 and 3...with 100 pages left of book 3 I stopped. I couldn't take it anymore! So yes, I must admit that I have not and will not read book 4. Sorry. I tried.

Yes, here is my sister standing in front of the actual real La Push beach on the Quileute Reservation. This was the best part of the movie, seeing the amazing views once again from the beach. It is spectacular! On my families girls trip last May 2008 we went to Seattle and my sister who is a Edward-Twilight-Stephenie Meyer- groupie if you will insisted we visit all the sites...Forks, Port Angeles, La Push, etc. It was a fun thing to say during the movie, "I've actually been there!"

I can't wait to hear what you all think about this post!!! :)

His favorite past time...

Just another picture to document some of Jake's favorite things to do in the kitchen. He LOVES my salad spinner. Whenever I pull it out of the cupboard he runs to want to do it. He waves his hand up and down saying, "Me! Me!"

Just wanting to show how Jared wants me to grow his hair back out again. It really is SO wild...but it matches his wild personality!!! (ha ha ha)

I don't understand...

Jake is saying, "Cheese" - What a cute kid!

Is my child the ONLY one that insists on drinking his sippy cup while holding his yogurt container? or bowl? Jake insists on finishing or not finishing his food and then placing his sippy cup inside it and drinking it that way! He's done this for months and months and I figured I might as well snap a photo because this really is his trademark for drinking milk!

A little excited for Christmas...

The other day Alayna and Olivia had a cute friend over to play. They were playing so well down in Alayna's room for quite some time. So when I went to check on them I heard tons of giggling. I walked in to find them saying, "Oh, mom (referring to their make believe mom) we are trying to decorate so fast for Christmas day, it's coming tomorrow!" When I walked in I had to laugh...they had decorated the tree with anything from Alayna's drawers and papers (there cards for Santa). The only thing I didn't take a picture of was that her entire floor was COVERED with all her clothes from the closet. Hey, at least they were using their imagination, right?

If you look to closely, you will see underwear! It really was so great. For those of you wondering, I haven't decorated yet for Christmas, this was an EXTRA tree that Todd had that he wanted us to use this holiday season. So when we had to pick a room Alayna would only allow it to be in her room. We just picked up our Christmas decorations today, so sometime this week we will get around it!

Kleenex...what is the deal?

Jake has found the joy and wonders of a box of Kleenex...He also has learned to fake cough and cover his mouth with them. It in its self is cute and very clever for a little guy, but very annoying when I have to stuff them all back in the box. Oh, well. Cute nonetheless! I've learned my lesson though, the box is now up higher out of his reach...well until he climbs up on a chair...which is happening daily now!

Poor guy, he got the Kleenex stuck on his tongue!

Just so cute!

Thinking he is so funny with his large pile of Kleenex! Silly kid!

Dinner in a Pumpkin...

Here's to my mom trying to keep being adventurous and introducing fun new things to our kids.

Dinner in a pumpkin...who would have thought? Not me! My mom has always wanted to do this for Halloween but it's so busy on that day that it wouldn't be appreciated. So a few days later for a FHE she brought this for the kids. It was a success! (Sadly, I never tried it!)

The kids LOVED it! Now, for those of you who know Alayna, she NEVER eats. So to get her to actually eat something this strange and to ask for MORE. Was something I had to take a picture of. But I witnessed her eat at least two plates of pumpkin...WOW!

Here is a classic picture of Conner. He is MR. G-Q. He poses for every picture. It's hilarious. But he does it well. The girls thought they'd be funny and be like Conner.

When dad is on duty...

This is hilarious. Jared was watching Jake and found him literally shoveling the cheerios into his mouth.

This kid LOVES mornings mainly for cereal and being able to eat. These pictures really show how Jake wishes he could eat at this mass consumption. Thanks to Jared he knows to capture cute moments like this when I'm gone!!