Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Christmas Letter

‘Twas the week before Christmas at our crazy house, mom said “some sort of Christmas cards I must get out.” So she thought and she thought until it was clear, these were the Christmas cards she came up with this year. An update of this past year she’d give out, to our family and friends who are great no doubt! So here’s a little summary of our life this past year, wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Jake has been busy working as the packaging manager at Cephalon in Salt Lake. One of the perks of his job is the five weeks of vacation he gets, the majority of it spent this year hunting! He has also been working extremely hard trying to finish our house. We are just finishing with phase one: The living room, dining room, kitchen and family room. We will start sometime around Christmas on phase two: redoing where our existing bedrooms are and turning that whole level of the house into our master bedroom, bath, and laundry room.
Alayna has been staying busy taking care of the boys, animals, housework, helping Jake with construction on the house, and is currently serving as second counselor in our ward Relief Society Presidency. . . While currently being three months pregnant! Baby number 3 is due July 6, 2009!
Dalton is going to Preschool at Plain City Elementary this year. He just turned five this month and will be starting Kindergarten next year! I am amazed at what a good memory he has. He is still as rambunctious as ever, but he is also a very sweet and caring little boy. He is growing up way too fast!
Gunnar is 2 and a half and is talking up a storm! He continually amazes me with the things he says. I think his older brother must be tutoring him! Gunnar is still very affectionate (which I love!), but he is also going through the terrible twos right now, which include tantrums and sneakily getting into things he shouldn’t and making huge messes! (which I don’t love so much!) He’s just so dang cute, though!
Both our boys are such a joy to us and we feel so blessed to have them and are looking forward to the new addition to our family next year.
We hope you all are doing well and wish you a wonderful holiday season!
Love,
Jake, Alayna, Dalton, and Gunnar

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Dalton's Birthday Party






December is a crazy busy month! Not only do we have the normal Christmas festivities going on but it is also Dalton's birthday, Jake's dad's birthday, and both Doug and Sharell's birthday's are in December. One of my best friends, Dana Staker, (she and I have been friends since we were three) owns a tumbleing gym. She has been coaching tumbleing for over ten years now. I asked her if it would be ok if Dalton had his birthday party at her tumbleing gym. So Dalton got to invite as many friends as Jake and I could cram into our car and truck. We took the kids to the gym and they had a wonderful time! They got to play on the trampolines, build forts out of foam shapes, play with the huge parachute like I remember doing in elementary, swing from ropes hanging from the ceiling: it was the perfect place to take 10 rambunctious boys! Thanks so much Dana for making Dalton's fifth birthday such a fun day for him!

After Dalton's friends party the Weston's had a Soup dinner family home evening night at Rex and Pam's church. It was a lot of fun.
Dalton's family birthday party will be a combined party for Dallas' birthday as well (Dallas' birthday is the fifteenth) on Sunday the 14th, we're having everyone over for Chilli.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Happy Birthday Dalton!


Here's Dalton and Braxton on Dalton's 4th birthday. We had planned on taking the kids sledding, but couldn't find a hill with enough snow so we ended up just taking them to a park to play.

Here's Dalton's 3rd birthday.

Here he is on his second birthday.

Here's Dalton on his first birthday.

Here's Dalton a few hours after he was born. Seems like yesterday. I can't believe he's already five years old! Sure Love you buddy! Happy Birthday!

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Oh, by the way. . .


HERE COMES NUMBER THREE!!! DUE JULY 6, 2009!!!
We usually don't tell this early but since Dalton announced it to his entire primary class when I was only about six weeks along, the cat's out of the bag I guess! I went to the doctor last Monday and everything looks good, I'm even a week further along than I thought I was, which is always good news! So I am a little over ten weeks along now.

Merry Christmas!


Here's the boys with Santa at the ward Christmas Party. Gunnar doesn't look exactly thrilled. . . but he's not crying!

What we've been up to


Here's some before and after pictures of the rock hood we just finished.


Yesterday was a crazy busy day, as most Saturdays are. Our ward had the Relief Society Christmas breakfast at 9:00, but I needed to be there at 8 to help set up and then help after. It turned out to be really nice. Our Enrichment Committee is amazing! Relief Society has been kindof crazy lately. Our president was diagnosed with Lymphoma cancer about a month ago. She's had two doses of chemo and will be getting four more. The chemo has been really hard on her, like I'm sure it is on everyone who goes through it. So right now the first counselor, secretary, and I are sort of running relief society until she's feeling better. After the breakfast I came home and painted the last of our baseboard and casing for the family room, kitchen, living room, and dining room. We're trying to finish all the finish work on phase one of our construction projects so we can start gutting the existing bedrooms in the next couple of weeks. I finally planted some tulip and daffodil bulbs, I really hope they'll grow! I cut rock for Jake for about an hour or so to help him finish the hood over the stove. Then I took the boys to the ward Christmas party. It was at the stake center combined with the 1st ward, they showed the movie Polar Express and had some train sets for the kids to play with (that's where my boys stayed during the whole movie), then Santa came! Gunnar even sat on his lap without screaming! Gunnar said, "last night (meaning last year) when I saw Santa I was scared and I cried and cried!" I couldn't believe that he could remember last Christmas, he has a good memory! I feel bad Jake couldn't come with us, he really wanted to get that dang hood finished! We're so sick of doing rock we could both scream! After doing the fireplace and the whole outside of the house it is beyond getting old! Only the wood burning fireplace, the front of the bar, and the chimney left to rock then we're difinely retiring from doing rock!

My Elk


Well hopefully this is the last picture of "dead stuff" I will be posting on this blog, at least for this year. This one is different though because it's not something Jake shot, this one is all mine! I drew a state antlerless elk tag this year so the day before our anniversary we went elk hunting. I had sighted in the rifle the day before, a good thing to do before you plan on shooting something. I had drawn this same tag two years ago and we hiked our butts off, through three feet of snow, over like ten mountains, I almost died! And we never did get much of an opportunity at the elk. So this year I wasn't exactly thrilled about this hunt. But the weather was nice, no snow, we were able to spot some elk (thanks to my husbands impressive hunting skills) and we got to where the elk were and made it happen. I shot five times and we found three bullets in the elk. My last shot dropped it. We found out when we got to it that it had hit it in the head. At least it didn't suffer. It sure is good eatin'!