A FIVE year old and a TWO year old!

I had the hardest time deciding how to celebrate both of their birthdays this year. I finally settled on inviting a couple friends over for a play date and that's really all it was, just with some balloons and birthday cake thrown in there. I ordered their number shirts from oldnavy.com and they loooove them. I loved their reaction to when they first opened them.

My boys are growing up!! Gosh I love them. ♥

Snow in P a r a d i s e, MT

It snowed today here in Liberty Lake so I thought I'd post this video now. My boys love snow!! And I love how pretty it is! It's terrifying to drive in but oh so pretty to look at. Kudos to Steve for being a great driver when we had to drive for hours in it on our way home from Utah!

Liberty Lake in early December

I think my real motivation in going on this outing was, of course, to get the boys out of the house, but really I wanted to get some new portraits of their cute faces. They weren't feeling that as much as I was though ;) It's ok!

The days leading up to this day had been cold and dreary, so when we woke up to blue skies and sunshine (and in December on top of that!) we decided we better make good use of it and go to the county park and have lunch outside. It was windy and a little chilly, but the boys were so happy. They ran around, checked out the beached docks and jumped all over the picnic tables. It'll be a while until we get to do something like this so we enjoyed it one last time before real winter hits.

T h a n k s g i v i n g 2 0 1 5

^^Aren't my parents the cutest??^^

It was my first time hosting a Thanksgiving feast at my own house! Our house is tiny and we had to borrow a folding table from Steve's parents so we were pretty tight, but still I kind of liked how homey it made everything feel! We had everything we needed! My mom is amazing and made pretty much everything from the turkey to the dinner rolls to the broccoli salad. All I helped with was the sweet potato casserole (yum!) and the green bean dish. Everything was so delicious. Logan slept through the entire feast and even though we missed him, it was pretty relaxing for me ;) And there were even two pumpkin pies and two apple pies. SO MUCH GOOD FOOD.

This is what Thanksgiving is all about! Oh and family of course. I loved having my family in our home, even if our house is small. I'm glad my boys were able to get some quality time with their grandparents. It didn't last long enough but still, happy memories!!

I c e S k a t i ng at the Gallivan Center//a little video.

Steve will probably be mad at me for only putting in clips where he's about to fall (hehe) but somehow that's all I got on camera! He really can skate though, promise! ;)

Baby, it's cold outside!

I'm shivering just looking at these pictures! It was seriously so cold during Thanksgiving week, and especially Thanksgiving Day!

The top pictures are from Aunt Kay's house in Paradise, MT. Such a beautiful place every season of the year. Sun and snow together is simply breathtaking. Cole simply loves playing in snow and could care less if he is freeeeeeezing.

On Thanksgiving Day, we thought it would be nice to go to Liberty Lake County Park and walk around a bit after our Thanksgiving feast (that was so delicious!!) But the sun was pretty much setting already and it was probably about 25 degrees outside so we didn't last long! I wish my family could have stayed a little longer so that I could have shown them all the places the kids and I like to go to.

But oh well. That's what makes the holiday season so special: getting to spend time with family you don't normally get to see, even if it isn't for very long ♥

Our family reunion skits!!

Although I didn't like the pressure of having to come up with a skit, I'm glad that my mom had us do these because it is so fun for us to go back and watch them and it was so fun to see what everyone came up with! They might not be that funny to anyone who isn't related to us, but if you watch our skit, you will be able to see me dance like a "chicken" as Cole so adorably referred to my dance moves as. So that's worth something ;) (And I wasn't going for a chicken at all!)

**And for the record, Steve might be the first one out of bed in the morning, but in the middle of the night I'M the one who gets up with the kids whenever there's a problem. Me all the way.

U t a h + M o n t a n a// Nov 2015

Time with my family never seems to last long enough. I love my big family but the bigger the family, the harder it is to get everyone together it seems. We're lucky that we were only missing two of my brothers and part of Emma's family and not more than that. My mom had been planning this get together for over a year it seems!

It was such a fun family reunion! My mom had it all planned out! We were only in Utah for 4 days but we fit a lot in! On Saturday we went ice skating-- always a favorite of mine! And then shopping in the afternoon and a movie for the boys! Sunday we had church, we walked around beautiful temple square and then had skits in the evening! My mom also had cute pictures from our childhoods hung up on the wall that was especially fun to look at :) On Monday we made a visit to BYU campus and Waffle love (oops) and then on Tuesday we were back on the road!

On the way back, we spent one night at Aunt Kay's house in Montana. The drive up there in the snow was enough to give me an ulcer, I was so scared!! Luckily, we made it in one piece. I'm so glad that Steve is a great driver in the snow! The next morning, the boys played in the beautiful snow and loved it :) It's sure pretty to look at but such a pain to drive in!

On this trip, I took a lot of pictures with my phone! And I also took a lot of footage!! So I'm planning on posting a lot of videos once I get them all put together! I'm so grateful for the short but quality time we had together!! And I'm thanking my lucky stars that no one got sick! Seriously such a miracle!!