Been in Idaho for awhile

Yesterday it snowed. It wasn't tons, by any means, but enough to play in . . .or to shovel depending on who you are. Jaxon was looking out the window yesterday morning and sighed forlornly and said, "Mom, I miss my green grass." Truly his mother's boy. He was also all sorts of concerned that the snow would cover up all the neighbors pretty Christmas lights. He was pleased to see that the Christmas lights were not harmed by the white stuff.

Despite the fact that I hate driving on icy roads, I am sorta glad that we have snow. It just kinda adds to the whole ambiance of the Christmas season. Way to go Universe, you win, I am now a true Idahoan.

The snow from our back deck. No need to just dream of a white Christmas 'round here.

Although Jaxon missed our green grass, he still liked playing in the snow.

Jaxon begged and cried to shovel the snow. May he always have that attitude.

Last night we made a gingerbread house for our Family Home Evening activity. Jaxon absolutely had a blast and every time he sees it, he says "I just love my gingerbread man house!"

Sammi was really tired when we were making our gingerbread house, so she just enjoyed a nice healthy beater covered with icing. I'm a really health conscience mom.

I Am Glad For Many Things!

Wow, do I have a bunch to be thankful for! I am surrounded by evidence that my Heavenly Father loves me and our little family - how grateful I am to Him!

We spent Thanksgiving with the Hall fam, plus Emily, and it was a blast! Not only were there tons of good food to eat, but we also had (drum roll please) "The First Annual Mayflower Power Tournament of Champions". Let me explain. As I was lying in bed late one night waiting for Riley to get home from a trip to Utah, I had this stroke of brilliance! As a fun activity we could borrow Kenzie and Cole's kid pool (which I am informed that they keep blown up at all times, "because you never know when there is going to be a heat wave, this is Idaho!") and make little boats and race them across the pool by blowing them. So since Riley's family are good sports and humor a girl who basically talks to toddlers and babies all day, they went along with it. We made boats out of cereal boxes and dixie cups and straws. Rick judged them on their style and picked Jaxon's as the winner, but I think he was being biased! Bailee's ship, La Hispaniola, won by a nose with Barbara as a close contender. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun. Another thing I'm grateful for: a family that doesn't think I'm terribly weird with all my crazy ideas.

We made Indian hats for Thanksgiving...Jaxon has worn his hat every day since.

Riley's vessel: The Proud Walberto

Riley and I giving it a go.

The final show-down, as you see it was pretty darn close.

Here's Bailee, boasting her new crown of first ever champion of the "Mayflower Power Tournament of Champions"

Now on to Christmas!! I am so excited! Our house has been decorated since a week before Thanksgiving, breaking all rules, I know. But here is our rational: we are going to be in California for Christmas and leaving on the 18th or thereabouts and so we had to decorate our home early so we could enjoy it a good amount of time before we have to take it all down. Okay, plus we were really excited because we bought a Christmas tree...

Something that I'm extremely thankful for is my Savior. What a gift our Father gave to us!

Tagging - a serious offense

So I'm sure that you all have played Scattegories with family/friends at some time in your life. I hope that it's not just our family that has this problem, but every time that we play there is usually some sort of argument that ensues (playful...mostly). Dictionaries get busted out as the debate begins on whether or not a particular word really exists or if a person should get double points or not. Emotions run high as the banter and throwing of pencils continue, but somehow we all walk away having a great time and itching for the next time we all can argue, I mean play a game together. So why all this talk about Scattegories? Well, I've been tagged by my dear sister, Katie. I suppose it's because she likes to play games with me so much even though I kick her trash!SCATTERGORIES...it's harder than it looks! Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, things. Nothing made up! You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME: Sarah

BOY NAME: Santa...what? it totally is!

4 LETTER WORD: Sock

GIRL NAME: Sacajawea

OCCUPATION: Sanitation Specialist (it's what they prefer to be called) Double points, cha ching!

COLOR: Salmon

SOMETHING YOU WEAR: sweat shirt - another double whammy

BEVERAGE: Sarsaparilla

FOOD: steak

SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM: scissors

A PLACE: Sacramento, CA

REASON FOR BEING LATE: sleeping

SOMETHING YOU SHOUT: Short people in the front!

So there you have it. I'm now officially "not it" as I have fulfilled my taggily duties(I know it's not a word, but you know what I mean). I now tag McKenzie, Jessica, Whitney, and Bert. Plus whoever else wants to play!

Getaway w/o the kids, this brought to you by grandma and grandpa!

Hooray! Riley and I were able to go down to Utah overnight just the two of us. It was really nice and the first time that we have been able to get away like this since before I was pregnant with Jaxon. Don't get me wrong, we've ditched the kids before this, but it seems like whenever we did have the chance to get away I was pregnant (so really we still had a child with us, doesn't count.) So thanks to grandma and grandpa for looking after the kids and making our trip possible. Riley was able to score us some tickets to the BYU vs. San Diego State football game through work. Yah, BYU slaughtered them. But are we really surprised? It was a good time, the place was packed, but I took pictures at half time, so that's why you see some empty seats. I thought of my brother-in-law, Mark, a lot. I would some day like to go to a football game with Katie and Mark, it would be crazy fun. A bigger BYU cougar fan than Mark I have yet to meet. Here's us, kid less and enjoying the sunshine. It was such a perfect day! We even got a little burned. I called it "our last love affair with the sun this year". A burn is a fitting way to end it.This one's for you, Mark and Cole (another brother-in-law BYU fan), wish you would've been there with us!

Oh yah, I have to put these pictures of the kids in their church duds. They are just so dang cute, so I must show off.

Woody and "Bzzz"

Halloween this year was a lot of fun. Jaxon ran around singing his Halloween song which consisted of the following " Oooo oooo oooo, happy Halloween!" Over and over again. It's quite the catchy tune and he demanded that I join in regardless of what I was doing. Riley got home just in time from yet another work trip to play with the kids a little bit before getting ready and heading off for trick or treating. We did the whole trunk-or-treat thing that was in a subdivision right next to ours, and as if that wasn't enough, we took the kids up and down our little street to get even more candy. Jaxon had a great time being Woody and saying such things as "howdy, howdy, howdy!" and "stick 'em up". Sammi was just happy to play with the candy. I thought she was going to work through the wrapper of some of them, but she rotated enough that no candy was actually ingested. So all in all it was a pretty great time. Although something very confusing happened to Jaxon. There was a kid that dressed up as Santa and Jaxon would not talk to him, he just looked at him with this confused look on his face that seemed to say, "hey, wait a minute! You've got the wrong holiday, pal - you're not supposed to be taking candy from everyone, you're supposed to be giving me presents here in a couple of months!". Ah well.

Birthday Palooza(s)

Wowzers, what a weekend. Did we ever party! It all started off with a bang on Friday with Jaxon's birthday. This kid was all sorts of stoked to be three (and so am I, good bye 2!). He woke up to the living room all decked out with balloons along the banister and on the walls and book shelf and a "happy birthday" sign. Magical to say the least. He was so excited all day for his party that night when all the family was going to be there. I put him and Sammi down for naps so I could get some work done (like the cake, but that's no biggie for a birthday is it?) and periodically I would here from Jaxon's room "Mom, I'm awake. I'm ready to get up and have my birthday party". I repeatedly told him that he was not, but he stayed in his room like a good boy. Jaxon loved having everybody over for presents and cake and ice cream. He can put on quite the show when he wants to. We can't believe that Jaxon is three now, it seems like it wasn't that long ago that get was bruising my ribs from the inside with his constant movement (a testament of things yet to come). But it also feels like he has always been a part of our lives. We love him so much and he makes our lives so happy - plus he says some hilarious stuff which makes us laugh!

We are all singing Jaxon "Happy Birthday" plus we had Katie on the phone, which was fun.

Jaxon on his new "motor bike" and his woody costume, which he looks so great in! Liam especially loved it!

Next was little Sammi's birthday. It was officially Monday, but we celebrated it on Sunday because Riley was going out of town early Monday morning. We all congregated at Grandma and Grandpa's for the celebration. Sammi wasn't so much into opening her presents, so I had a great time opening them for her! She kept on looking for the presents that were already opened because she wanted to play with them instead of opening more presents. She loves all the soft, cuddly and shiny new things she got! When we brought the cake out and set it in front of her, she couldn't wait to dive in and waiting through the traditional singing of "happy birthday" was a little too much for her. She wanted that cake! So I stripped her down and gave her a piece which she promptly mashed and threw everywhere...and then she ate all my ice cream. So all in all she had a great birthday, too! Sammi is everything we wanted in a little girl and more. She's so sweet and such an easy keeper, but she's got some spunk to her too...I wonder where she got that from? We've loved having her this year and seeing her grow and learn and laugh. She brings a lot of love into our home and we are excited to see more of the beautiful girl that she will continue to be.

Here's Sammi girl getting excited that we would put so much sugar in such close proximity.

"Now where's the ice cream?"

Thanks to all who came and ate some cake with us and celebrated like crazy. We love having you all in our kids lives - and they sure love it too! And to all those who are close enough to us to come and visit, please do...I still have tons of cupcakes!

The first of the birthday cake...

So October in our family is the month of birthday-walla-palooza-cele-ganza-bration time. The entrance of little Annie Hegsted on the 5th got us all in the mood for the slew of birthdays that were to come. Yesterday was Liam's 2nd birthday, and boy does that kid know how to party! He started off by giving every one of his cousins (that were present anyway) a present - what a guy! (by the way, Kenzie, giving all the kids a ring pop to keep them entertained was genius and worked brilliantly) Then the opening of presents ensued with appropriate "oohs" and "aahs" and reverenced "wow's" given by Liam. His cake was pretty much amazing, a tractor to make the calmest of two year olds get all worked up. So here's to you Liam - we're so glad that you are our "Cousin Memur"!

Our sojourn to California

How lucky we are that Riley has the job that he does. Because he has to do firesides all over the United States, he just happened to have to do a fireside in my old home-town, Vi-smell-ya. I mean, Visalia. So, there was no way that I was going to let him go without me and the kids...and no way that my parents would let him stay at their place without the grandkids (to heck with me). So for an awesome week, we were able to stay with my parents and play...oh, and Riley did do some work.

The first major thing that we did was go to King's Canyon and Sequioa National Parks. It was sooooo beautiful up there and we loved spending the day there. We were able to eat lunch at the camp ground that my family used to always camp at and see some big ole whompin' trees. There was three forest fires going on in the Sequioa's, so we didn't stay long there, but it was still a ton of fun.

We also went to the zoo in Fresno. It is the perfect size; only takes a couple of hours to go through but has some of the bigger animals that we don't have at the zoo in Idaho Falls. We even got to feed a giraffe - a totally awesome experience and well worth the 2 bucks it cost!

We also went swimming and tried to spend as much time outside as we could. It was great! Riley tried to perfect his dive, I really think he's almost there. Watch out Yo Min, or whoever that really famous Chinese diver was.

We also went bowling, had a picnic, and just took it easy. It was a blast and we were sad to see our trip come to an end, but it's good to be back home where we can be with even more of our family. We are excited to go back at Christmas and be with the whole gang. Hopefully by then our children would have recovered from the excitement!

Officially Cool

Here we go. I hope that the internet world and those of you who are brave enough to read such a blog are ready for a shocking peek into the lives of the Riley and Sarah Hall family. Riley and I make up a pretty crazy couple. But we unabashedly admit that we have some darn cute kids, which is the real reason why we are even doing a blog...and let's face it, the real reason why anyone would look at the blog. It's all about Jaxon and Sammi; Riley and I are just old has-beens.

We just moved into a new (to us anyway, it's about 7 years old) home this spring and are loving it. Admittedly we miss "our house in the middle of our street" that we moved away from in Annis, but are stoked to be where we are.

Summer has treated us kindly. I say HAS because as you all know, we are in Idaho and summer is on it's way out already eventhough winter and spring took their precious time getting the heck out of here. We had the experience of having our own garden, instead of sharing one with Kenzie and Cole. I missed having someone else to do the weeding for me!

Besides weeding, we played a lot. Granny and Grandpa Nielsen came a couple times with Emily. And even Aunt Katie made a grand appearance for a few days when the folks brought Emily up to go to BYU-I. That was some great times. So great that the kids are still recovering from loss of naps as you can see.

We've been to the zoo, Bear World, down to Utah and back again, Green Canyon, the Riot Zone, swimming outside, having hot dog roasts in our fire pit, on some day hikes, attended parades in which we obtained WAY too much taffy, and watched way too much Olympics.


All in all, it's been a full summer, but tons of fun! Thanks to all those who had fun with us! And to all of those who didn't have fun with us...well, where the heck are ya? Come on over!