December - Ashley Lynette

Jacob is so excited to have a sister! What a cute big brother.
Ashley is a little jaundice but that went away within a few days.
James can't believe he has a new baby sister!

Cute baby Ashley posing for Mom to take fun pictures of her.

Alan, Ashley, Lessa - Ashley's birthmom and Lynette
right before we left the hospital.

Cute Ashley with Mom and Dad.

We love you baby girl!

Merry Christmas! Here is the whole family meeting Santa.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care....

Well - it looks like Santa came for all three of our kids! They had so much fun opening their stockings and were very patient to get to their presents under the tree.

Our whole family standing in front of our Christmas Tree in sunny Arizona. So weird celebrating Christmas with no snow!

November 2009 - It's a GIRL!!!!

Making Turkey Cookies - a November tradition.

My cheering crowd at the Thanksgiving Day Race.

Lynette, Jenn and Cassy with the race mascot before the race began.

Jacob thought cutting the turkey on Thanksgiving Day with Dad was really cool!

Ashley Lynette was born on November 30th. She joined our family through adoption on December 1st. We love and will forever be grateful to her birth mother. We love Ashley so much! What a beautiful baby!

October 2009

October was a fantastic month full of lots of great actitivites. We love when the holiday seasons start - it is so much fun.

Awhhh...Lagoon for Frightmares. Here is James and Lynette getting ready to ride "The Bat". James thought it was great! The decorations all over the park were pretty fun.

James LOVES Legos. We heard of a Lego exhibit in Park City showing all kinds of cool creations and we went to check it out. It was awesome! There were some amazing stuff - you just didn't want to be the one to fall into it and break the whole thing! We went to Gardner Villiage with Aunt Jenn, Aunt Cassy and cousin Miya to check out all of their fun witch displays and Halloween stores. We did a scavenger hunt to find all of the witches and then the kids got cookies and hot chocolate when they had found them. It was fun - but sooo cold that night!

Every fall we have a couple of weeks of leaves galore! Fall has officially started! We raked the leaves into a huge pile and the boys slide down the slide into them. They had a blast.
Hey guys - this is a great way to clean the floor! Seriously though - who didn't love doing this when they were a kid?

Bowling! James and Jacob really like to go bowling. Its great because they get the kid "bumper rails" so that it's impossible to get a gutter ball and then a ramp to roll their ball down so that it gets enough speed to knock the pins down. They get into it so much - cheering for each person when they hit the pins over - so much fun.

Here we are at The Mayan restaurant with our friend and Birth Mother - Lessa. (who is having a girl due December 7th! We are so excited!) The boys thought watching the divers was awesome. We also picked out a car seat, stroller, baby clothes and blankets from Babies R Us.
Our family Halloween party was a blast. We had "spooky food", bobbed for apples (well - some of us did), ate donuts off string and played the mummy game. This is our James mummy - can you tell? Happy Halloween! We passed out candy at the annual Trunk or Treat and then spent the night with family. This year we were the Star Wars family. We dress up every year as a themed group - it's funny how many people wait to see what we are each year.

September 2009

Fun in the sun. Here the boys are in Arizona riding the kids train at the train park - a family tradition followed up by going to the Sprinkles cupcake store to get a yummy treat.

Howdy cowboy! James loves going to school and they had a "western days" that the kids could dress up like cowboys. James looked so cute!

Happy Birthday Jacob! Our little guy turned 3! We cannot believe it. He wanted to have a "Finding Nemo" birthday party. It was so much fun - pinata, games, coloring, presents. He even choose to go to Red Lobster for his birthday dinner to finish off the ocean theme of his big day. We love you Jacob!

The Big Yellow Slide at the Utah State Fair Park. All four of us lined up and slide down this. The first time was a little scary but we all wanted to slide again - the second time was just fun!

Here is Alan and the boys on the beach in front of our hotel. Kauai was so beautiful! The little black spot in the ocean behind James' head is a seal that swam up and down the beach and then came up on the sand and covered itself with sand. We had just seen a turtle in the water about 20 feet behind where Alan is. We also went snorkling here and there were so many fish!

Chickens Are Everywhere!
Here are some that we are bribing into coming into our room with little pieces of bread or
fish crackers. It was pretty entertaining to see how far into the room they would come! The boys wanted to catch one REALLY badly....and then eat it for dinner. We are REALLY glad they were never able to! The chickens weren't too smart though - they would crow ALL DAY LONG!

Here is a cute hawaiian couple.

This was taken on the grounds at the condo we were staying at. It was so green and pretty there.

August 2009

James is getting his tiny tiger orange belt, (far right). James LOVES karate and he is so good at it.

Alan has a client/friend who is a Lieutenant Colonel F-16 pilot up at Hill Air Force Base. He invited us up for a tour. It was awesome! We got to go up inside the air traffic control tower and watch the jets take off, get really close to the jets, fly in the simulator and tour inside some of the buildings where they told us all that goes into getting pilots ready to fly or go overseas.


James got to sit inside one of the demo cockpits to see what it was like.




I got to go to Europe to visit my friend Heather and her family. We had so much fun but I missed everyone back home. Here are a few of my favorite sites. Buckingham Palace. We got to go inside some of the state rooms - they were amazing!


Bath, England. This is inside the famous Roman Bath that the city is named after. It was huge with lots of rooms - the original day spa!

Stonehenge. It was really cool to come up over a rise in the road and see all of these huge stones sitting out in the middle of the field.

James and Jacob love seeing all kinds of animals - especially when they get to feed them. Here they are feeding goats at the Davis County Fair.

Silly boy Jacob LOVES dark chocolate. He was found sitting up to the counter with his whole chocolate bar I brought back from England for him unwrapped and loving every bite!

July 2009

Happy Fourth of July! Our traditional July 4th activities include: going out to breakfast, fishing at the fish farm, coming home and cooking our fish and having a fun themed Americana dinner. This year we decided to add roasting marshmellows on the BBQ to make smores. Yum! We also thought it would be fun to have a pinata and the boys loved it. It took a lot of hits to get that candy out.

Happy Birthday to James! 5 years old! He wanted to have a Star Wars birthday so we went all out - even making Jedi costumes for him and his friends. Of course Alan and I had to have costumes at the party since we were the Jedi Masters! It turned out really cute and he had a blast.

Alan and I went to France together this month. Since Alan speaks French from his mission, this makes this experience all the better as people can understand us! We spent a couple of days in the south of France and saw probably 50 different fields of lavender - one place had 52 acres of it. It smelled sooo good. We also spent a couple of days in Paris.

This is a Roman Aquaduct - it is gigantic! We had such an awesome time.

Our hotel in Paris was just down the street from the Eiffel Tower. Each night the whole thing would sparkle on the hour every hour for five minutes. It was so pretty!

This is me in front of a Monet waterlily painting at a museum we went to in the Tuileries in Paris. Monet actually designed the museum around these paintings. They were amazing.