The Christians for Thanksgiving

We had such a great Thanksgiving. One of my best friends came all the way from Cedar City with her family to spend Thanksgiving with us. It was such a wonderful treat. It was very wonderful to have someone to spend Thanksgiving with.
The man working in the kitchen. Rare picture hu? Well actually Jer helps out a lot in the kitchen. He's a great husband, and I'm thankful for him and all that he does.
Five boys, and one baby girl. The boys had a lot of fun having playmates around. Jer took the four big boys swimming while we prepared the turkey (pretty cool that we can go swimming on Thanksgiving day).
Porter just loved little Hannah. He called her Nanna. He wouldn't stop kissing or hugging her.
We had a wonderful meal. Next year I need another oven, or to cook a day or two in advance.
Here is Kamie and Nate. I love them to death. Kamie and I have so much fun together. We were best friends since the day we meet, even though we lived 40 minutes from each other. We were also roommates in college. I'm thankful for good friends. Love you guys, thanks for driving all the way over here to spend Thanksgiving with us!

Disneyand

We got the kids season passes to Disneyland for Christmas. They have already been reaping the benefits though. We figured that many of our friends and family will be visiting us and would like to go to Disneyland. Therefore we needed to get season passes. We have already been with my mom, my friend Tari and her family, my brother Justin and his family, and my friend Kamie with her family. This week my brother Jeremy and his wife Heidi are in Disneyland. So in order to see them we have to head over to Anaheim.
(I cut all of the boys hair real short. No more golden curls for Porter).
I don't think that Hyrum was afraid on the Winnie the Pooh ride, but it sure looks like it.
Porter didn't act excited about the carousel, but when we get off he screams and cries.
My three beautiful boys. I sure do love them!
This is me and my friend Kamie. We've been friends since we were 15.
This is Nate, Kamie's husband, with Noah and their son Carvin.

Late Halloween Pictures

Like I mentioned in the earlier post, I'm getting caught up, a post a day until I'm up to date! Noah's school makes a big deal of Halloween. We had an early morning parade, followed by a party in his classroom. Hyrum would not leave Noah's side. He pretended he was a 1st grader the whole time we were at school. Hyrum was even in the parade. Noah wasn't too keen with that, but I couldn't stop him, my arms were full with my other baby.

There were so many festivities for Halloween, that I finally decided I/we had partied hard enough (they were running my life). Anyway we had some good fun and plenty of candy. We actually didn't even do any trick or treating because if fell on Sunday, but we did do trunk or treating, and a carnival, and the party and parade at Noah's school, and a Halloween party.
This is the party at Noah's school, Hyrum by his side, of course.
Hyrum's preschool group picture.
My baby Porter. He's adorable, if I do say so myself.
Noah's a knight with his side kick Wolverine, walking along in the parade. The little 1st grade princesses were digging Noah being a knight. They thought he was their prince.
This is Hyrum taking roll with Noah's class.

Hyrum Goes to School

Hyrum started preschool in October. I have all these cute pictures of him that I wanted to post. This was his first day of school. I think he loves it. He was real excited about it in the beginning, not so much anymore. He tries to come up with excuses for not going (hope he grows out of that real soon, or that might be a real problem) but when I go to pick him up, he doesn't want to leave. So who knows if he likes it or not.

Are you feeling what I'm stepping in?

When I talk to the boys, I say things like, "You feel me? You pickin' up what I'm layin' down? You smellin' what I'm steppin' in?"

So, we were walking along the other day, when I said something to Noah, and he said, "I'm feeling what your stepping in."

I about died laughing.

Jer vs. Kristi

Kristi says that she gets more comments than I do when I post. So, please prove her wrong... and make some comments.

Check out this video I took yesterday:

Perpetual Party

When I was a teenager, my dad used to tell me that my life was a perpetual party. And so it continues...


My brother and his family came to visit us from Utah, and we went to the beach and to LegoLand with them. It was a great time, and we enjoyed having the company. Anyone who wants to come visit us, we are always up for a good time (and more parties). LegoLand is 15 minutes, SeaWorld is 15 minutes, San Diego Zoo is 15 minutes, the beach is 10 minutes, Petco Park is 20 minutes, and DisneyLand is an hour from here. So, you can see why we are in a perpetual party here at the beach house.







After the Lees left, we went back to LegoLand to visit the SeaLife aquarium. It was really great because the flow of visitors is actually monitored like a ride, so it never gets too crowded. They have really cool tanks that the kids can go under and stick their heads into a little bubble. I can't explain it - you'll just have to check out the blurry picture below...


Also, their shark tank is AMAZING, but we couldn't get any good photos of it. The sharks swim all around you. They have all kinds of saltwater fish in that tank, too, including rays, tangs, and all of Jer's other dream pets. Does anyone remember our stinky tank in the Cove?

Hooray for Labor Day

San Diego's Wild Park is so much better then the zoo. Our season pass gets us into both of the two parks. I have to tell you that I had a bit of a hard time seeing all the animals locked up on display at the San Diego Zoo. We also went on a Saturday afternoon during the summer. So it was hot and crowded as well.

If you have to choose between the zoo and the wild park I highly suggest the wild park. I thought the experience to be a much better one at the San Diego Wild Park. It's kinda like a savanna and you get to see them in their element. The herbivores are out wandering their area looking for food. They actually seem "at home" there. The animals aren't in cages, and have a lot of area to roam around. We also went in the morning. I highly suggest a morning visit; 1) The animals are awake 2) You can find parking 3) Less people/shorter lines, and 4) Not as hot.

We also packed lunches and had a little picnic there. We really enjoyed the park and can't wait to do it again.






It's a long story, and I've told it too many times already so I'll spare you the details and just tell you we got great seats to the Padres game.

My mom was down and we only bought four tickets. So there were six of us in the four seats. It was still a great time, just limited room. The Padres won against the LA dodgers. There was a special fireworks show afterwords because of it being Labor Day. My boys thoroughly love the baseball games/Padres. They get wrapped up in the environment, as do I.

Noah's First Day

It's been two weeks since Noah's first day of school. But I still want to put up the pictures, better late than never. He absolutely loves school, his teacher, and his classmates. He's getting along really nicely. I'm so glad that it went so smoothly. I was very worried/nervous. It's a big deal to me to go to a huge school here in California. Also it's a full day now moving into 1st grade. I was so relieved when I picked him up and he couldn't stop talking about how great school was.

One of the cultural shocks for me is that Noah is the only LDS kid in his class. There are only two other LDS kids in his grade of 80 first graders. I think that there's just under 1,000 students at his school, which is k-6. The school is really great. People move here just so their kids can be in this district. I think it offers a lot for Noah.




I forgot to mention Porters tired little face. He's been having a rough time with his nap schedule. Poor thing. But isn't he adorable?

Blogging Anyone?

As I try to get back into blogging, I get overwhelmed, side tracked, and a bit discouraged as well. Not many people blog anymore. Good work to those of you who didn't fall short (unlike me). I want to get caught up on everyone's summer, and let you all know we're still alive. But then I use my free time up, and never get to bogging.

Now that I live far away I thought I'd start it up again. But so far we haven't had many responses. Probably because everyone figured we were done, and a lot of people (like half at least) stopped blogging. So I kinda feel that I'm talking to myself here. I'm trying to update the entire blog. I've lost people's blog addresses, or people have gone private, or whatever else. I'm going to try and collect your info so I can be up to date, and see what's going on in your lives.Those of you who have gone private, please invite me to be a part of your blog party.

The Philistines

This post is by Jer, even though it says Kristi. I'm just getting that out of the way right now.

On Friday, we went to see our team (the Padres) get beat by the Phillies. Noah referred to the Phillies as the Philistines, which I felt was actually pretty fitting, since they were opposing the Padres (aka friars). Noah thought that Phillies was a shortening of the word Philistines, so that was funny.

I was at work a little after 6:00 when I got an e-mail from our CEO that said the first person to show up in front of his office got tickets for the Padres game at 7:05. So, I jogged over there (about 12 steps) and snagged the tickets. He said, "good luck explaining to everyone that you got the tickets." and shut his door. Then, I turned and saw that people were running at me from all directions. It was hilarious. I ran back to my desk and called Kristi. While I was on the phone, one guy actually walked over and kicked my chair!

Kristi was so stressed out because the game started in like 45 minutes and I was still at work, and we hadn't eaten yet. So, I came home, we got shoes and jackets and headed to Taco Bell for dinner (to go). Then, we realized that I forgot Porter's shoes. Luckily, our house was still close, and kind of on the way. So, we got to Petco Park right after the game started. We didn't have $20 cash for the parking, but they let us in for FREE!

We had no idea how good the tickets were, but once we were walking down to our seats, and we had to keep walking down, we knew they were good!

The boys were so excited to be so close to the action, and surrounded by people chanting and clapping and screaming at the players. Hyrum was screaming "Go Padres!!!" over and over again at the top of his lungs. Noah kept on dancing ridiculously to see if he could make it on to the jumbo tron screen. Porter kept on rubbing the leg of the man sitting next to him, which was funny, but really annoying to the guy. I think Kristi really enjoyed it until the 'guess the attendance' game. The screen said that there were 34, 500 people at the game that night, and she realized that was more than the population of Iron County, Utah! Then, she started to get nervous about the crowds when it was time to leave.

Surprisingly, it ended well, and the boys were fantastic. The traffic home was smooth like butta. We are definitely doing it again! Below are some pictures.