We have a roof and windows!!.

We have hit a huge milestone on the house project. It can no longer snow inside the house! Hooray! While we still don't have shingles on, the sheeting is attached and our skylight views through the rafters are no more. It has been nice to see the roof lines of the house finally take shape. What looks like a huge mess of pickup sticks are our trusses. The sheeting material you see above those trusses is what is now keeping the weather out. I should have gotten a shot of the snow that still needs shoveled out of the house!

   

What an exciting day this was. My beautiful front door arrived, and yes, it looked like it did in the brochure! It is always so hard to bite the bullet and place a very expensive order for something based on a tiny picture on a brochure or web site. I absolutely love the front door, and can't wait to be able to put it where it belongs. The next 2 pics are of our windows being installed. They are not all in, but a good portion of them are done and I LOVE them. Again, they were a special order (I was very happy with) and they are a double prairie style etching. That's a fancy way of saying I can't take them back!! Notice the furry members of the work crew. 

  

The crew is taking a few week break for Thanksgiving, but hopefully we will be done with the "ruff-in" of the house before Christmas!! Speaking of Thanksgiving, Aaron and I are off to Mexico without the kids for a week. We leave late Saturday night, and get home the following Monday morning. We are so excited to go get warm and relax on a beach together! Thanks to Grandma Lynn and Grandpa Ron for holding down the fort while we are gone. We hope to get some pics posted from the beach! Happy Turkey day to all!

Who's that girl?!

  
Normally I am opposed to nudity, but everyone knows there is nothing cuter than a naked, chubby baby. The other day, Haylee came to get us and said, "You gotta come look at this." We walked into our family room to find Jolee reclined in her Mickey Mouse chair watching cartoons while buck naked. I don't remember taking her diaper off, but I am sure I did at some point. Luckily, we didn't find any "puddles" around.  Most of you don't know, but Jolee has been attending physical therapy 2 days a week for about 5 months now. She wasn't walking or crawling at 12 months, so we had her evaluated and enrolled for PT. Nothing was or is wrong with her, she just didn't have much motivation to move around. Anyway, she officially graduated yesterday and is now up to speed on everything she should be. She loves climbing stairs, doing puzzles, and walking/running everywhere she can. She tests highest at her fine motor skills; maybe she will be a great pianist some day. 

 

We have also officially started reading the Book of Mormon as a family....again. We have a deal going with the kids that if we finish the book by Spring Break, we will go on a family vacation. Jaron told his class today that "we are going to Maui when we finish reading the scriptures." We shall see.

Welcome baby cousin!

We had some exciting news in our family when we welcomed our new baby cousin, Kennedy Autumn Mason on Haylee's 14th birthday, October 30th.  She is such a pretty baby, with lots of dark hair like her cousin, Jolee. We were able to go to Anchorage on Saturday, after all the Halloween activities to visit with the family for a few days. As soon as we saw Kennedy, we all fell head over heels for her and there was lots of waiting in line for every one's chance to hold her. We stayed with Abby on Saturday night, which actually went really well considering she had been without her parents for three days. The following pictures are of Abbi and Jolee having a rough moment, them making up, and playing blocks very nicely with each other. 
   

Chloee just loved holding baby Kennedy. She was happy to tell everyone that her cousin's name was "Kennedy Autumn". She was a great big helper entertaining and distracting Abbi. Jaron and Brady loved spending time with Uncle Rizz, playing a Nintendo DS. 
  
  

The surprise of the trip was how much Jolee just loved and latched on to the new baby. Every time I tried to hold Kennedy, Jolee would come to me with her little hands outstretched, not out of jealousy, but wanting to hold the baby by herself. Bobbi was such a good sport, letting Jolee hold the baby A LOT! She would just sit in my lap, for close to 30 minutes holding the baby with a tight grip on her blankets. She was usually pretty soft with Kennedy, touching her nose, hair, and cheeks. The cutest was when Kennedy would make a little noise or squeak and Jolee would say "Oh, oh!!" and just laugh. Do you think she is ready to be a big sister??
  

Happy Halloween!!

 
 

Yes, the time is here once again for dressing up like idiots, eating candy until you're sick, and freezing your you know what off. We went to our ward's Trunk or Treat night, a relatively quick and painless way for the kids to get their night's haul. It's always fun to see what everyone comes dressed as. One guy was a fisherman from TLC's show "The Deadliest Catch", only he was dead. He was dressed in full, ghastly array with orange rain gear, bunny boots, and a corpse-painted face. Kind of morbid if you ask me.

My kids went as a mouse, a cute witch, a pirate, Harry Potter, and a celebrity look-alike wannabe. Good times had by all.