Snowy Day Miracles

I sent the following as an email the other day but since I don't have many of your email addresses I thought I'd post it here!
Hi All,
I've been receiving a ton of phone calls to check on the kids and I and our plans to fly to California today! Instead of making a ton of calls I thought I'd send a mass email!
So last night around 7pm I started to panic about the weather and our 5:30pm flight to CA for this afternoon. I thought I'd check to see if there was an earlier flight we could get on! By some miracle there was a flight with 8 seats left scheduled for 9am and by an even bigger miracle there were no change fees or charges to switch the flight! I made the change! We woke early and headed off to the airport in the ever increasing blizzard! After checking in and arriving at our gate I started to worry that we wouldn't get out and that I'd be stuck at the airport, by myself, with 4 kids, for 2 days! AND I'd miss the BYU Bowl Game I'm supposed to go to on Thursday in Las Vegas with my brother and inlaws!! Sooo, to make an already long story short, we boarded the plane, de-iced for about 45 minutes and then took off! The flight was smooth and uneventful! When we landed we were told that our flight was the last flight to leave DIA before they closed the entire airport down a nd grounded all flights! WOW!!! Another miracle! We are all so happy to be here but are sad because Adam is stuck at home! He was supposed to work today and tomorrow and then fly here on Friday but with the blizzard his office is closed and he is stuck at home all alone! :-( We wish he could've gotten out with us but he had a court date for work that he couldn't miss! Be sure to call and check on him tonight and make sure he isn't starving or lonely! Anyway, hopefully the storm will be cleared out by his flight time on Friday!
Hope you all have a Merry Christmas!!!
Love You All!
Marilee and kids!

An update about Adam: He is still in Denver but on his way to the airport right now. His 2:00 flight this afternoon was cancelled but he was rebooked on another airline into LAX instead of Orange County for later in the evening! Hopefully his flight will get here on time or at least sometime before Christmas!! We'll keep you posted!

Spencer's Birthday Pictures!

I learned at this party that 9 year old boys are WILD!!!! They all had fun but we were happy when 10 am Saturday Morning came!

CRAZY Week

Whoever said "It's the most wonderful time of the year" should have said "It's the most busiest time of the year!". Every year I say I'm going to simplify Christmas but somehow it never turns out that way! However, as busy as it is, I do love this time of the year!
This week has been soooooo crazy busy! It started last Sunday night when we had some friends over to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional! It is such a good way to start off December and feel the Christmas Spirit! Then on Tuesday night our ward had its Annual Relief Society Enrichment Christmas Dinner at our house. We set up the basement with tables and chairs decorated with Nativities for the centerpieces. There was enough seating for 75 people. Turned out that 67 showed up. Dinner was sooooo yummy and we had a fun time just being together. Our ward was divided last Sunday so we are no longer going to see each other very much. I LOVE our ward and am sad that we have split but as our Stake President says, dividing wards, though sad, is a good sign that the church is growing!
Early Thursday morning, Adam and I flew to Utah to attend the Marcus and Millichap Salt Lake Office Holiday Dinner! We ate at a restaurant in Park City called the Riverhorse! It was FABULOUS!!! I would reccommend it to any Park City goers! GREAT food and fun atmosphere! The SLC office is doing great and has grown in the past 4 years from 2 agents to 7!
Today we flew home from Utah and are currently hosting eight 9 year olds for Spencer's birthday party! Can we say WILD!!!!!!! The boys are having a blast! They are all so funny, competeing to be heard, trying to be funny, acting so grown up, but still being little boys! (there have been a few tears from them when something doesn't go their way). Since it's a sleep over, I will be VERY happy tomorrow morning at 9:30 when the parents come to pick up their boys!
This next week will prove to be just as busy as this one was. I'll be finishing up my Christmas shopping, shipping 2 big boxes (maybe 3) of gifts to California to await our arrival, going to Garett's preschool Christmas concert, helping to plan and run Annie's Holiday Class Party, going to our Girls Christmas Dinner/gift exchange with my girlfriends, hanging with Mindy cause she's coming in town for the dinner, attending Adam's Denver holiday Christmas Party, going to our ward Christmas party, taking our Christmas Card Family picture as well as writing the annual letter (Adam does that) and packing to get ready to head to CA. I'm tired just thinking about what lies ahead!!
I'm sure you are all just as busy we are but hope you are all surviving the season! I'll post some pictures of Spencer's party tomorrow!

Holiday Dinner Party

We had a great night with some of our friends Friday! We had a pot luck with lots of yummy food and wrapped gifts for some needy families in our community! Lots o fun!! Here are some of the pics!!

O Christmas Tree

Last week we all pitched in to help decorate the house for Christmas! The kids were so cute to watch as we opened each box of decorations! They would see some wall hanging or snow globe and excitedly exclaim "I remember this one! It's my favorite!" It was a very fun night, listening to Christmas Carols, hanging ornaments and talking about what this years' Christmas will bring! We weren't going to decorate since we'll be in California, but changed our minds when we decided to host a Holiday Dinner with our friends as well as have the Relief Society Christmas Enrichment Dinner here! We are all glad we gave in and decorated for the Holidays! There is always a wonderful feeling in the air at Christmas Time!
Adam putting the Angel on top!
Annie and Spencer helped hang ornaments! They are getting quite good at it! I have to say that letting the kids help decorate the tree has been something I have struggled with over the years! It makes me laugh to think of why I'm like that and this year I figured it out! Growing up we would get sooooo excited to help my mom decorate the tree. We would get the tree set up and the next day would plan on helping decorate after school. We would get home and it would all be done. Mom would apologetically tell us she had time and just wanted to get it done! As we got older we realized that she never intended us to help, she had a specific way of decorating and there was no way we were going to mess that up! Finally after pleading with her to let us help she decided we would have two trees. One she could decorate all by herself, in her way and the other would be the kids tree! But, as the season drew near, and the trees went up, the "kids" tree was NEVER decorated by the "kids"! Mom always did it! I must say now that I'm a parent that now I COMPLETELY understand why she didn't want us helping! Broken ornaments, bare patches on the tree, chaos of kids arms reaching all over the tree, etc. I understand it all....but this year, I decided to let it all go and let the kids help! We actually had SOOOOOO much fun and I was able to decorate the tree SOOOOOOO much faster! The kids are getting quite good at finding the right spot for each ornament! I think we may have started a new tradition!
Annie LOVES to wear the Santa hat!
Logan and G were mostly observers but enjoyed seeing the tree all lit up! Logan keeps saying "Christmas Tree" with a lisp! SOOOOOO cute!

While the Boys Slept.....

This picture is sooooo adorable of Garett and Ben! They were joint at the hip the whole week long and both crashed on Mom's bed Saturday afternoon! The best part of this little picture is that while the rest of us were literally SCREAMING OUR LUNGS OUT in the next room the boys slept straight through! Why were we screaming you ask? Well, in the last 3 seconds of the BYU/UTAH game the Cougars scored to win the game! We went NUTS!! and the boys slept! It was a GREAT win! Go Cougars!!!

Turkey Day!!

Thanksgiving Dinner was soooo yummy! Mom and Aunt Peri really out did themselves this year! We ate in Pat and Peri's backyard (eating Thanksgiving dinner outside was a first for most of us and something we all enjoyed)! Mom and Peri had a "stuffing" contest because they #1 are so competitive with each other, and #2 each have been told that their stuffing is the best! We did a blind taste test and voted. They were both sooooo yummy it was hard to choose! Mom wan by a slim margin but we all were lucky because we got two kinds of stuffing to eat! Mmmmmmm, yum!
The Contestants
The Stuffing
The Tasters
The Winner
Dinner

Toothless at Target

I am so happy to be blogging again. For some reason when I tried to post something the picture icon didn't come up and I couldn't figure out how to get it back. This afternoon when I checked, the picture icon was back so here I am! We had a great Thanksgiving Weekend in Arizona with Mom and Dad, Heather and Steve and Ryan and Nicole! Despite a little sickness (sorry again everyone), we all had a blast!

One highlight for Annie was that she lost her 2nd front top tooth the day before we left for the trip. She was trying to have it fall out at school but Sunday at dinner she took a bite and it popped out!
Mom decided that the Arizona house needed some toys for the kids to play with for entertainment so Wednesday night Nicole Dad and I took the kids to target to each choose a toy for Nana's Arizona house toy collection. It was HILARIOUS!! 3 adults and 11 children was quite the site let me tell you, but it all came off very well! We made rules of no running, yelling, arguing etc. Each child had a partner to pick toys with and they had a time limit! I said 10 minutes but Granddad thought that wasn't enough time and gave them 30 minutes!! AHHHHH! Thankfully they didn't take that long and we were out of there (paid for and everything) in about that time! The kids had fun and those toys did a great job of keeping them all entertained in the cute tiny house the 19 of us were all jammed into!
Ben and Garett
Tyler and Annie
Spencer and Justin
Marin and Brooklynn