In case you haven't already heard...

we are adopting a baby boy due on March 12!

We are just thrilled and can't wait!  We have been waiting for this day for a long time!  Although now we have lots to do in such a short time (but we are glad it's a short time).

We just met the birth mother, Ciara on Saturday evening.  We LOVE her!  It was such a great experience and it felt so comfortable.  We know that this decision will be very hard on her and her family so we continue to pray for her, she is such an amazing person to come this far.  We are so happy that she has chosen adoption and we know that she will also be blessed for it.

Thank you everyone for you prayers, love and support!  We know that the power of prayer is real and it works.  We are excited for our next step in life and feel so blessed for it!

Christmas Morning

After opening a few gifts at home, we went to my parents house and enjoyed Christmas morning with them.  We brought some of Lilo's gifts for her to open there.  It was so fun to see her opening her gifts and getting what was inside.

We got her one of those dogs that walks, barks, and flips.  It was so hilarious to watch her with it!  At first she kept sniffing the dogs butt thinking it was real.  It was so funny!  I wish I knew how to figure out how to put videos from off of my digital camera on here because we got some pretty cute ones of Lilo.

Our new Christmas outfits!

We had a good Christmas this year!  I love spending time with family!

FYI:  Keep reading, I did a ton of new posts!  Thanks

Playing in the Snow!

I swear she LOVED it!

Lilo just loves the snow!  After a fresh snow fall all look out my window into the backyard and there are tracks all over the yard from Lilo playing around.  I have to wipe her feet and face everytime she comes back inside.

 We sure love this little pup!

Our Annual Gingerbread House Party

Every year since we got married we have done a gingerbread house party.  We just invite some couples, we provide the graham crackers and frosting and we have everyone bring a few bags of candy to share.  And then we get creative!  The compitition is getting tough!  We have a contest after and everyone votes for their favorite (not your own).  And we have 1st 2nd & 3rd prizes.

So for this year...

Jamie (my sister) & her date Travis.

They tied for 1st place with their Salt Lake Temple.  It was huge!

My friends Alisa & Parker

They also tied for 1st place with their cool beach house.  They even crushed candy canes for the sand!

Erika (my sister) and her date

They tied for 2nd place with their Hogwarts castle.  They mixed some cool colors of frosting: blue, green, brown, etc.

Remi & Me

We also tied for 2nd place with our "Up" house.  We used dum dum suckers for the balloons.  I thought it turned out pretty cute.

Our friends Chris & Katie

This was their first year invited to our party so they didn't quite understand the level of compition.  But they still had fun!  We loved having them and maybe next year they will surprise us.

The big group

Thanks for coming everyone!

Temple Square

I am the 1st counsler in the Young Womens and I love it!  We took the girls to Temple Square to see the lights.  It's tradition, the girls love to go and of coarse you have to get hot chocolate!

This is now our tradition to take a picture in the bathroom mirrors (we did this last year).  I love these girls, they are so much fun!

Time for bed

One night I was folding laundry on the bed very late and I was so tired that I fell asleep.  Remi came into the room to go to bed and found Lilo and I like this.  How sweet!

Utah Food Bank

Trevor, Remi, Me & Erika

Ever since I can remember, every Thanksgiving my family gets together with all my cousins on my Dad's side and we go grocery shopping for Thanksgiving dinner.  We team up and take a cart and you can put in your cart whatever Thanksgiving dinner is to you.  Then we purchase it, load it all up and take it to the Utah Food Bank. 

Angie, Alyssa, Me & Lizzie

Our purchase!  Other grocery shoppers we giving us funny looks and some even stopped and asked us what we were doing.

This is most of us dropping off the food at the Food Bank.

I love this tradition of service that my parents and grandparents have provided for us to be able to participate in.  They have taught us kids so much about serving others, so Thank You for giving us these opportunities!

bread making

This is the first time I have ever made bread from scratch.  Remi had to document it because I said it will probably be the first and last time :)  But it hasn't been, I enjoyed making them but even more I enjoyed eating them...YUM!

FYI: Please see next page, there is one more post!

Lilo & Stitch

I love Halloween!  Every year my grandma has a Halloween party and she likes us all to dress up.  So this year Remi and I just wore hawaiian clothing to go along with our Lilo & Stitch.

Lilo is a little too crazy so she didn't come to the party.

At the party we had dinner and then carved pumpkins.  I was proud of myself, I did my own pumpkin this year and it actually turned out good!  Normally we just do one pumpkin and Remi carves it.  Mine is on the left and Remi's on the right.

As you can see we have three pumpkins.  My grandma had extra's so Remi decided he would bring it home and carve another one.  Well Lilo got to it first, so we wrote on the pumpkin "carved by Lilo the dog" and put it out on the front porch with our pumpkins.  The kids got a kick out of it!