Valentines Day

We had a quiet and fun valentines day this year. Chelton had to work so we celebrated on the weekend too. We rented some movies which is becoming a real treat for us lately. We used to rent movies all the time. Chelton cooked us some yummy steak which is definitely becoming a real treat for us. I made the kids scones too which is their FAVORITE and they ask for it all the time and gave them one of their valentines treat (a tootsie roll bank) since they would get so much on the actual day. On actual valentines day I made a valentine for each of the kids and gave them a valentines treat (their favorite candy bars). Connor has been gearing up for valentines day for about two weeks now. He really gets into it and makes sure he has homemade valentines for everybody and more than one. He has given me valentines for about a week now. He has been asking everybody if they got his valentines ready for him. It is funny what kids really get into. So when the actual day came he was excited to give me my "real valentine." He came in and handed me a card. Here is a picture of the card.



I recognized the card right off the bat because it has been sitting in my scrapbook tote for about 3 years. I was trying very hard not to laugh but just opened up the card and sure enough....this is what I find.



Garrett's handwriting is about what Connor's is now and Connor's handwriting is about what Kylie's is now and Kylie's is just scribbles so it was written about three years ago. So they gave me the card they gave me three years ago and didn't even write a new message in it. I asked him where he got the card from. He said that he just found it in the drawer and he knew it would be perfect because it was already addressed to me and already had their names in it and he didn't think I would remember the card at all. Oh...I guess it's the thought that counts. I immediately thought of Alvin and the Chipmunks when he wraps up Dave's wallet and gives it back to him because he knew he would like it because it is something he uses every day. Gotta love kids....but Connor did give me like 10 Valentines that had A LOT of love and time put into them...this just made me crack up and it is something I will NEVER forget. This is just Connor to a TEE!!!!

Later that day we wanted to send Grandma's a valentine but being three hours away it is kind of hard so I told the kids to think of a picture valentine that we could text so they came up with these all on their own!!! We also sent them to Chelton because he was at work.



Kylie sent this one with "Happy Valentine's Day...XOXOXO"



Connor sent this one with "Bee my Valentine" (this is the Valentine he made for Chelton)



Garrett sent this one with "Aiming for you Valentine"

The kids were excited to receive special Valentines from their Great Grandma Spendlove with money to share to buy a treat which they bought fruit rollups and already ate them all and special valentines from Grandma and Grandpa Spendlove with money in it which they are saving for their trip next year....I have never seen kids so excited to get money instead of candy. They have been so good with saving their money. I think it is starting to sink in about saving their money and what they need it for and how far money really goes. It has been a good teaching tool (and a great learning tool to keep their rooms clean---for allowance to go towards vacation).

Later that night I asked the kids if they wanted spaghetti (because it's red) or pink pancakes. The boys wanted pancakes so 2 to 1 I was going to make pancakes but Kylie freaked out so I ended up making both (yeah for me). We ended up not having red food coloring so we ended up having green pancakes. Well I guess you could say we got a head start on St. Patrick's Day and Kylie had her red spaghetti.

We had a pretty good Valentine's Day I would say and there was a lot of love spread in our house!!!

Vote Team Spendlove

I entered my family in a Disney contest called the I Love my Family Photo contest. The top 10 vote getters win $500. It goes until March 22 and you can go in and vote once a day for a photo!! So if you love me and my family (which I just know you do)....you should totally go on this link and vote for my family but not just once...go back every day. The thing about it is the top person has like 90 votes but the top 10 person only has like 16 votes...I know I can get in the top 10 easily if I can get the people I love to go in and vote for me every day and I can stay in the top 10 and win. Super easy right. I think you have to register but it is easy and if you are registered in anything disney (like disney movie rewards than you don't have to do it again) but if you aren't it takes like 20 seconds and if you uncheck everything they won't send you any spam mail. I registered and vote for myself and then registered under Chelton's email but can only vote twice a day. Wished I would have entered the day the contest came out then I would be that much ahead and probably would have about 20 votes by now. We want to use the $500 to use towards spending time with our family. Chelton has been working towards going on the road more and as many of you know how precious time is especially in a law enforcement job and any money we can earn towards our family spending time together is a bonus for me!!! So don't forget to vote and vote for us every day!!!! If clicking on this link doesn't work then copy and paste it in your browser. Love you all!!!

http://family.go.com/i-heart-my-family-contest/favorite-family-photo/law-enforcement-family-loves-to-spend-time-together-82860/

Our Royal Caribbean Cruise

We just got home from the best vacation we have ever been on....a 7 night cruise to the Western Caribbean. It was wonderful and we are officially cruisers now. First of all I have to throw a big thanks to my in-laws for taking my kids for the vacation. My sister-in-law Meridee and her husband Kasey took them for us and they also spent a few nights with Chelton's parents when she needed a break and Chelton's brother Parker and his wife Ashley took them for a day too. It is so nice to have all of them help us out so we could go relax in the sun!!!

My parents came on the vacation with us (they are retired now so they can go on fun trips like this now). We decided to go out of Galveston and with four drivers we thought we would save on airfare and drive to Texas. This was more fun when thought about it than actually doing it. 28 hours in a car is really not that fun. Plus we drove it all in one shot there and all in one shot back. That is a very very long time in a car. But we really truly did save a lot of money driving there. We made a stop in Roswell, New Mexico and took a picture next to an alien and sent it to the kids. They thought that was pretty cool. (Just so you know Roswell looks nothing like the TV show if you ever watched it on the CW---I was pretty disappointed!!).

After making the 28 hour drive we made it to our hotel in Webster (about 30 minutes north of Galveston) and crashed until our cruise took off the next day. We showed up for the cruise on Sunday at 11:00 only to find out that the ship couldn't come in because of fog. The people on the last cruise were stuck on the cruise ship and couldn't get off. They told us we were supposed to come back at 1:00. So we did what anyone would do...we found a Walmart and bought Texas souveniours. We then got a text saying not to come back until 6:00. Yikes. We had to kill more time by getting some lunch. We finally went back at 4:00 and just stood in line. At that time they were letting people on but it was quite the long line and big ordeal. It wasn't the cruise lines's fault but was the port authority's call. By the time we got on the cruise ship everyone was starving and just ran to the food places and most of them were full. Wasn't quite the perfect start of the cruise but they handled it great. They then had to book it to Cozumel because they were four hours behind. We made it late to Cozumel so we had to redue the timing of our excursions but they did it with perfect ease. We pretty much ate dinner and toured the ship and then turned in for bed. Kind of a hectic first day but we were just excited to be there.

We went on Royal Caribbean and the boat we were on was Mariner of the Seas. There was so much to do on our boat we could have just stayed on the boat for 7 days and been fine but we also had stops in Cozumel Mexico, Georgetown Grand Cayman and Falmouth Jamaica. The boat had a rock climbing wall, ice skating rink, mini-golf course, in-line skating, basketball course, 4 pools, 6 hot tubs and lots of shows and activities. There was always something going on and something to do or just relaxing and doing nothing at all. It was wonderful.

The first stop was in Cozumel. I had a friend who went on a cruise and stopped in Cozumel who used this LDS tour guide (Helamantours.com) and recommended him. It looked like something we were interested in so we decided to give him a try. We got it arranged a few weeks before we left. He told us to take the ferry from Cozumel over to Carmen del Playa and he would meet up with us and take us to Tulum to the Mayan ruins. Because of our late start from the fog we were two hours late getting in to Cozumel. The cruise line told us because of this we would have two hours longer to stay in Cozumel. We had no way to let our tour guide know that we would be late so we just had to hope that he would be waiting for us when we got off the ferry. We walked off the ferry and Chelton heard a guy whistle and wave at him and he looked up and saw a guy wearing a BYU hat and he realized that must be our guy. He asked him later how he knew that we were the people he was waiting for and he said that he can usually pick his LDS people out of a crowd because of the ladies wearing the long shorts. I guess it was me wearing my capri pants that set him off. He says it really throws him off when they show up in their swimsuits. I was really impressed because he got there early to make sure he didn't miss us and then he waited hours for us because our boat got in late. I was so glad we booked our excursion with Helaman (his name really is Helaman). He showed us the Mayan ruins and the minute we got in the van he was giving us the history of the Mayan's and explaining it to us from an LDS perspective. It makes so much sense when you know your scriptures. There was so much history that archeologists cannot explain but all we have to do is read the Book of Mormon and the answers are all there. The Mayan ruins were really neat and it was nice to have our own personal LDS tour guide. What a neat excursion. We made it back on the ferry and back to the boat on time.

Our second excursion was in Georgetown Grand Cayman. This was Chelton's favorite stop. We split up from my parents on this excursion but we did run into them. Our excursion didn't start until later in the day so when we got off the boat we had a few hours to kill. We ran into a tour company who was offering a tour of the city so we decided to take advantage of it since we had time to spare. We took an hour bus tour of Grand Cayman. It is such a pretty country. We saw the beach front, the governor's house (who is British as it is a British colony) and we went to Hell. There is a city in Grand Cayman called Hell so they shuttle the tourists in so they can all buy their postcards postmarked from Hell and they all buy it up. They actually have some rocks that the city it is named for that are black rocks all over. We then saw my parents on our last stop at no other than a rum factory. We went in while everyone in our bus was sampling the local rum to buy a picture frame. They were taking a city tour on their excursion. Kind of funny to be in another country and run into somebody you know. After the city tour we met our real excursion and set out on a boat and went snorkeling. As I said this was Chelton's favorite part of the vacation and it was his first time ever snorkeling before. I had been snorkeling in Hawaii once before and didn't have the greatest experience but maybe it helped me prepare for this because I really had a great time here. We got to snorkel over a reef and a shipwreck. They had the most beautiful fish. We really had a great time. My parents went in a submarine with a glass bottom and they really enjoyed that.

The last stop we had was in Falmouth, Jamaica. This was my favorite stop. We went to Dunns River Falls which was my favorite stop. It was a 600 foot waterfall that you get to climb up. It starts at the ocean and then with the help of our tour guide (which Chelton and my dad thought were no help at all) we proceeded to climb the falls. They wanted all the people in our group to hold hands and help each other up the falls but the guys did not want to do that which we really didn't need to. It was sooo much fun. I would really like to go back there and do it again. If you ever go to Jamaica I would definitely recommend going here and doing this. I thought it was a blast. This was my favorite part of the excursions by far. After that we went to a place called Dolphins Cove. It was okay. We got to see dolpins but I guess it would have been better to actually swim with the dolphins. They also did a shark show and you could have paid extra to get in with the sharks. We got to get in and swim with sting rays and that was pretty cool. They had some cool birds to see and a snake and iguana that we held and got our picture taken with. We also had a Jamaican lunch. They gave away some prizes which with the help of the staff we won a few things. This was probably the bottom of the excursions and I wouldn't recommend going here unless you were swimming with dolphins (which is funny because I was most looking forward to coming here).

So there were a lot of stuff on the boat that we did. First off all we ate and ate and ate. We had the best waiter and assistant waiter who liked to feed us a lot of food. When we were not eating in the dining room we were eating in the Cafe Promenade where they had pizza and croissant sandwiches and desserts and if that wasn't enough they had a buffet that we could eat at. It was wonderful food.

We had plenty to do to work off the food too. We ice skated and mini-golfed and swam and played scrabble (we brought our own). The hot tubs got kind of crowded during the day so we found the best time at night when they were empty so every night we would go to our favorite hot tub and have it all to ourself.

They have a many activities on the boat that you can participate in and if you participate in certain ones you will be recognized by people on the boat. They did a newlywed game and televised it to all on the boat and the poor people that participated couldn't go anywhere without people laughing at them and pointing at them. Also they do a game called The Quest where everyone in the audience participates but each team has a captain. The male captain ends up in the end dressed in a woman's bra with women's shoes on with lipstick and earrings and parading around the stage. We kept pointing to our team captain the whole cruise. They also had a belly flop competition. We went down to lay out and get some sun. The lady kept saying that no girls had signed up. I had this urge that I was just going to do it. Chelton told me I was crazy and kept asking if I was serious. We went down and I signed up. Another girl about my same size signed up too. There were 9 people total. We had to do two flops. The first one had to be water displacement (how much water came out of the pool when we jumped) which I had no hope for with these 300+ guys and the second one was how much pain we inflicted on ourselves. The first jump I made my flop and then when I was done I started splashing the crowd for my water displacement. (They were filming this for the DVD that everyone takes home and the cruise director made it clear that this was my water displacement). I was in 5th place after my first jump so I was glad that I wasn't in last. For the second jump they put a platform up. I definitely had the other girl beat in the bust department so I got up on the platform and put my hands on my girls so they knew how much pain it would inflict. This drew out some laughs. Then I made my jump with a scream. I probably would have got more points but my legs came down and my flop really wasn't much of a flop. Well....I did end up with a silver medal so I can't say I did too bad. There were some real big boys. At the end they had all nine of us do a flop together in the pool. There was another guy from Utah in the contest so that was cool. After that I was one of those people who was pointed to and talked to and asked if I was one of the "divers." One lady told me I should wear my medal the rest of the cruise and people would buy me drinks. Lets just say I took it off right after that. I hoped that after I changed out of my blue swimming suit people wouldn't recognize me but they still did. Yikes and then in the farewell show they played a blip of the DVD that you could buy and they showed the belly flop and I was in it a lot. But I would do it again. The kids thought my medal was cool.

We also did fun things like we went to Harry Potter trivia (which I was mad that we didn't win). We are Harry Potter freaks and I should have known more than I did. We also did a flip camera scavenger hunt which was a lot of fun. We had to do dumb things like sing "I'm a little Teapot" in the elevator and ask a guy named Bob to dance with me. It won us a free Royal Caribbean pen. I was always looking for dumb things like this to do. They were fun though.

We did get in some rest and relaxation too. They had some good shows too. They had a cool ice show and the skaters were amazing. They had Merrill Osmond one night which was cool and Gary Mule Deer and some comedians.

All and all it was an amazing vacation. The first thing we did when we got home was book our next vacation. This time we are taking the kids with us. We booked an Eastern Caribbean cruise out of Florida. The plan is go do a week in Florida doing Disneyworld and Universal (mainly for Harry Potter land) and then do the cruise. We are doing a slightly bigger ship too. This ship has Dreamworks characters so you get to character dine with Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar characters and do parades and stuff. It has everything our ship had plus a 3D movie theater, a flow rider, an H20 water park with wave pool and out door movie screen. We are excited. I asked the kids if they are more excited for Disneyland or the cruise and they said the cruise (me too)... We are going in Feb 2013...now I just have to wait that long. We are definitely cruisers for life.

The pictures were uploading way too long and driving me crazy so I put all of our pictures on a slideshow...so if you want to see all the pictures...push play...and have fun....

This digital slideshow created with Smilebox

Fear Factor Birthday Party

Well my Connor turns 7 today. Can't believe it. Connor is such a special guy. He definitely has his own way of doing things. Seriously everybody needs a Connor in their life. He cracks me up every single day and makes me want to pull my hair out every single day. He is the sweetest kid on earth too. He loves to get hands on with things and he loves school. He is in the 1st grade. His favorite thing is math. He is very advanced in math and there have been times I have caught him doing his older brother's (who is in 4th grade) homework. His school work is too easy for him and he will beg me to make harder math sheets for him to do at night in his bed. (Now he cannot be my kid---I know what your thinking---me and math do not get along--he is all his father's child there). He is also an excellent reader. He is sooo far advanced at his age in reading too. He loves to play with his older brother (that is when they are not fighting). They really get along great and I love having two boys together like that to keep each other entertained and do boy stuff together. They really have such a love/hate relationship. Connor is really into karate right now. He has the most flexible body you can hardly believe it. His favorite thing is to show everybody in the world how he can jump down into the splits. We will be at the store and he will just show the lady at the counter how he can go into the splits. I have to tell him all the time that not everyone is interested in seeing him do the splits. He LOVES to be the center of attention but at the same time is a very shy kid. Kind of a weird situation there. He will do very good in karate with that flexibility. He wins a lot of their competitions in karate classes for his kicks and kung fu's because he can bend real good. He also loves ocean animals. He has been obsessed with sharks and whales for many years. We really want to take the kids to Alaska in a couple years because of this. He has always loved dinosaurs too but is phasing out of this. My oldest son Garrett is the kind of kid who never really cares about stuff or doesn't have an opinion really but Connor knows what he wants and has to really have things the way he wants them. He is pretty stubborn in that way. I'm kind of glad for this because he will know what he wants and will set out to do it. He will go far with an attitude like that. I'm so grateful for him in my life. He definitely keeps it interesting.

For his birthday this year he wanted to have a Fear Factor birthday party. It is his favorite show and he is obsessed with it. He didn't want to do anything too scary or gross. Everything I suggested got shot down (maybe they were too young because Garrett thought it would be cool).

I made up these cute invitations:



and Chelton made him a Fear Factor cake and he was very specific about what he wanted. He had to have the words written on it in a specific way and he designed it himself. I think it turned out awesome and Chelton got off easy because this was a lot easier than cakes requested in the past.



We played a few games...We played a game where we would see who could balance the longest on a can of food on one foot. This was really hard for little kids. Connor won at 30 seconds but after that the kids could only get like 5 seconds. We also played a game where we could see who could suck the most M&Ms from a straw and into a cup in a minute. (Thanks to my sister-in-law Meridee for the idea of this game). I was going to get the Scooby Doo dog bone graham cracker treats that look like real dog treats and do a game with that but couldn't find them so had to come up with a game last minute. We also did an eating challenge. This was hilarious. I had the kids roll the dice to see how many "worms" they would eat. For instance Connor rolled a 5 and had to eat 5 worms. I let them choose their choice of pudding cup and then put 5 sour gummy worms into a pudding cup and they had to eat the sour gummy worms out of the pudding cup. Now that isn't that bad right? Just gummy worms and pudding...but you would think I was making them eat real worms. Some kids shoveled it down like nothing but like Garrett was dry heaving. Kylie made me take the worms out. They got a prize if they finished the challenge but I thought it was hilarious the way some of them responded. Don't think they are ready for the real Fear Factor.

The last game we played was their favorite. I boiled a BIG batch of spaghetti and put green food coloring in it and bought like 140 plastic spiders and mixed them in. They took turns and each had a minute to see how many spiders then could pull out of the spaghetti in that minute. It was slimy and gross and they loved that.



For their goody bags they took home I made a bag and put the Fear Factor logo on it and inside they had eyeball suckers, gummy body parts (like intestines, hearts, brains and lungs) and blood bag juice, eye gum and gummy worms. It turned out cute.

Here is a picture of Connor blowing out his candles



And we gave Connor his sparring gear on the day of his party. He was so excited. Once he reaches his orange belt he is required to have his own sparring gear so he keeps asking us for his own so he was very excited to get this. I also let him open up two pair of pants I got him but he wasn't as excited about that. We are giving him the rest of his present tonight as today is his real birthday. We got him a DS game to go with the new DSI we got him for Christmas and a Wii game and Garrett and Kylie got him one of those blow up jumper balls you sit on and bounce on that is Star Wars. Since we already did the cake thing he wanted to have popsicles tonight which I am glad since we are leaving for our trip tomorrow (yeah!!!)



Also I wanted to post a better picture of Kylie's dance recital. The one I took before was from my phone and it was really blurry. Here is a pic that is not so blurry and one of her up on stage doing her dance.





Only three more days and I will be relaxing on the Mariner of the Seas!!!!

Christmas Holidays

With living in Fillmore we had a few different Christmas traditions this year than we are used to. Chelton had to work the Christmas shift this year so we had to spend the Christmas holidays at home and have a quiet at home Christmas by ourselves. We went up the weekend before Christmas to spend with our families. On Friday night (which was mine and Chelton's 11th anniversary) we went to our annual friend party with Chelton's friends Brady and Emily Reeves and Nate and Brooke Mueller. We always have such a good time hanging out with our friends and letting the kids run and play together and take turns destroying each other's house. On Saturday morning we had a brunch with my family. This is a new tradition for us and they were very nice enough to pull this together since we were not able to attend for Christmas Eve. My mom wanted to have all the grandkids together to decorate gingerbread houses. We have never done this before and it was a blast for the kids. We got to enjoy some very yummy breakfast too. Later that evening we had a party with Chelton's family. We had a very yummy dinner and played some fun games. We opened Christmas gifts with cousins that drew names and with Chelton's parents since we were not going to see them on Christmas.

On Tuesday after that weekend Kylie had her first dance recital. She did such a great job. She was the youngest (and by far the littlest) girl in the whole recital and it made her that much cuter. She did a cute dance to the "Lollipop and Candy Girl" songs medley and then at the end all the girls did a finale together to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and then Santa came. It was so cute because Kylie got really scared on stage when Santa came and almost started to cry and you can see her on camera practically jump off the stage into her teacher's arms and tell her she wants her mommy. I was trying hard not to laugh but then figured I probably ought to go and get her. Then by the time I got her we were of course the last in line to see Santa and when we get up there Kylie tells Santa she wants a Kit Kat for Christmas...all the parents and Santa looked at me and had to clarify if she meant like the candy bar...and yes...that is what she wanted...a Kit Kat candy bar. That is her favorite thing in the world right now. What a goof ball. She sure looked darling. She was excited that my mom and dad were able to come down and see her for her dance recital.



After coming home from up north the boys got sick and didn't get to go back to school before Christmas but luckily they got over it before Christmas. This year as we didn't have any family around we spent Christmas Eve with some friends of ours here in Fillmore. We had a nice dinner and played a few games. After they left and Chelton had to go to work :( I played a few more games with the kids and we read the Christmas story. This year was a little hard on my kids because Chelton's shift was 5 to 5 so he had to come home and sleep until 10:30 so my kids had to wake up and wait until he woke up until we could open presents. That was a real test for them. We stayed upstairs and watched Home Alone and then played some Wii games and then a few board games until 10:30 when I just couldn't keep them under control any longer and then we woke Chelton up and opened up presents. It was kind of fun to wait that long because it made Christmas last longer. We got Garrett and Connor DSI's and Kylie inherited their old one so we got her some new games for that and we got her a strawberry shortcake dollhouse and a princess sleeping bag.

Santa brought Garrett the electric scooter he asked for:



Santa brought Connor the Air Swimmer's Extreme shark he asked for:



Santa brought Kylie the Rapunzel Sing and Glow doll she asked for:



They also got a few other things they asked for too. They had a great Christmas. It was real quiet. Kind of weird not to have to go anywhere on Christmas or see any family but it was kind of nice at the same to have a quiet family Christmas and the kids had all day to just sit and play with their presents. Chelton and I got a lot of new clothes and stuff for our cruise which is now seven days away :)

Family Pictures

We got our family pictures done with Chelton's family and I thought I would post the pictures and how cute they turned out. It has been a very long time since we got our family pictures done so we were in desparate need of an update. Thanks Annette (my mother-in-law) for arranging for it to be done.

Here is one of my cute kids who are growing up much too fast!!!



Here is one of just me and Chelton. She took one of us where we look like we actually like each other and we were actually touching and hugging but we didn't get a copy of that one :) I don't like this picture so much but it is all we got.



Here is one of the whole Spendlove clan (minus one niece who was in Las Vegas for a dance competition who was greatly missed) but what a clan it is. And about two weeks after we took the picture we found out one of my brother in laws is getting married so now we are missing two people from the picture. Doesn't that always happen. You take a family picture and suddenly you find out someone is pregnant or getting married or something and it is out of date?



And last but not least family picture #1



And family picture #2



Can't believe how fast our family is growing and changing. What will the next 5 years bring?

Pickles and Beans

"Pickles and Beans" by Connor Spendlove

Being different is what diversity means.
Some people like pickles, some people like beans.
Some people have black hair, some people have brown.
Some people have smiles, some people have frowns.
We should all get along though we're not the same.
We can all be friends and play a game.

This is the poem that Connor entered in the Reflections contest this year. The theme this year was "Diversity Means." We sat down and wrote this poem and he wrote it pretty quickly actually. We had the assembly two days ago and he found out that he took second place and he got a medal and a dollar for writing his poem. Connor LOVES medals. He was sooo excited!!! Here is a picture of him and his medal for his poem.





The next day at karate Connor was chosen as the athlete of the day and received the karate medal (which he has done once when he first started karate so he had one other karate medal) so he had to take a picture with both of his karate medals. Now he gets really proud of his medals and keeps them in his special medal box and is proud of them. He is a very flexible kid and can do the splits very well and when he earned his medal they took a picture of him doing the splits in front with the whole class behind him. He loves the attention and being in the spotlight so he LOVED this!!! When he got home he had to run and get his other karate medal and take a picture with both of his karate medals on.



Also Connor lost a tooth recently (which he hasn't done in a long time). He hasn't been one of those kids that has been missing all his teeth. When he lost his bottom teeth his others were already grown in behind so he never had a hole like a normal kid should. He was so proud when he lost this tooth to actually have a real hole in his mouth. He put the tooth under his pillow and could you believe it that the tooth fairy didn't come? She must have been real tired or forgetful and the next night didn't come again? Darn that tooth fairy. Mom went upstairs and showed Connor that he just doesn't look very good and showed Connor that the money was there the whole time and that it was just hidden really good inside his pillow case and he got $5 because the tooth fairy didn't come the first night :)





Also I know it is going way back but we did have a good Thanksgiving. My mom and dad came down to Fillmore as it was their off year and we couldn't come up to my in-laws as Chelton had to work. We had a low key Thanksgiving with just my kids and my mom and dad. We watched some football and made these cute little felt turkeys with the kids. My mom and I stayed up until 1:00 in the morning after doing our version of black Friday getting the Walmart deals online. It was pretty hectic but so much better than going to any stores in the cold and dealing with people and lines. We actually got pretty much what we wanted to get too. It was great. On Saturday in Fillmore they have a light parade (pretty small but fun) and then they light up the town square and have hot chocolate and doughnuts with Santa. It was cold but fun. Plus Santa gives you a whole bag full of candy rather than a little candy cane so the kids liked that. Here is my kid's homemade felt turkey puppets we made on Thanksgiving.



So Garrett has been playing junior Jazz lately and has been doing pretty good with that. His team is the Pacers. He plays with a combined 3rd, 4th and 5th grade team and there is a big difference between 3rd, 4th and 5th graders but down here they don't have enough kids to have their own league so they have to combine. They basically have two teams. They put in the 3rd and 4th graders to play against the other team's 3rd an 4th graders for a quarter and then switch. It works out pretty good. Garrett has really improved quite a bit. Basketball is his favorite sport and you can really tell.





And last but not least on my super long blog post we had our ward party recently. We had a fun night where we had soup and salad and cookies and the kids sang songs and then Santa came. We had just seen Santa from the light parade and got pictures there but Kylie wasn't so sure about Santa but I got here to sit and smile pretty for me so I thought I would post how cute they were with Santa. I haven't got Santa pictures I think ever because we never went to any place were there was a Santa but we have them now.







Well that is the end of my really long blog post. If you made it this far thanks for hanging in there. Only 30 more days until my Caribbean cruise!!!