Christmas 2010

Another Christmas has come and gone. Of course, Santa was good to the girls, and so was the rest of our family ;). Thank you everyone for your wonderful gifts! We had a great Christmas being able to spend it with Grandma and Grandpa Slick (Jake's parents) and Nick and Megan. It always makes the holidays better when you can spend it with family. Here are a couple pictures of our Christmas.. and don't forget to check out Sierra's awesome roller skate video at the bottom of the page.

Sierra got some new roller skates for Christmas. Those things do not leave her feet. She skates around the house all day. She is looking like a natural. It will be fun to go outside in the spring and let her loose. Here is a fancy trick she is pretty proud of. :)

Frames and Furniture

Jake has been working hard perfecting his woodworking skills. Our next door neighbors dad is an artist and is in the market for someone to custom frame his artwork. So Jake has been working on making different styles of picture frames to showcase. Here are a few of the picture frames that Jake has been working on. The pictures inside are our neighbors dads art. He does mostly ducks, geese, and other birds... at least the pictures that I have seen.


Below are a few more pieces of furniture Jake made for a few of our friends.

Our Fabulous Christmas Tree

A few weekends ago we decorated our tree. The kids loved hanging all the ornaments.. and quickly decided they were toys.... I'm sure most kids think that. Well, lastnight when I came home from work, I noticed that our tree had even more decorations on it! They added scarves as tinsel and barbies and ponies as ornaments! LOVE IT!!! How cute is that? It makes our tree look so cute.. at least I think so. Fancy trees are beautiful, but I love homemade kid friendly Christmas trees. I added a few closeups of the AWESOME ornaments.

Yes, we have a few naked barbies on there too.. oh well.

BTW Jamie.... our tree blows yours out of the water!!!

Sledding

Jake built a little sledding hill for the girls in the back yard. It's a perfect size for them. They were having tons of fun sledding yesterday.

The top video is Maddie, the bottom one is Sierra.

We are ready for Christmas! We have all our lights and decorations up. Although, I think Jake wants to add more lights on the house this year.

Photo Shoot

This past September, Jake's sister Megan got married. Since we were all dressed up and had a great photographer available, we decided to do some much needed family photos. If you live in the St. George area... or just Utah, you need to hunt down Rachel Steele from Steele the Moment Photography. She does a fabulous job!! I will be printing pics and sending them out with Christmas cards, so anyone out there (mostly talking to my mom and dad) who thinks they need to go ahead and print the pics from my blog, just be patient, and you will get some! I posted a bunch of my favorite, so sit back and enjoy!

Cousins

Baby Peter, Olivia, Elsa, Sierra, Madison

Happy Halloween!

Fall Festivities

Today was a fun filled day doing some fall festivitites. This fall has been beautiful and warm! I think it is rare to get this far into October and not even snow once! Although, they are calling for snow tomorrow....but today was beautiful! We took the girls to Rocky Creek Farms to pick out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch... well, by the time we got there, all the pumpkins were gone! But they did have a bunch of hay for the kids to play on, and a petting zoo.

After the pumpkin patch, we headed off to the hay maze. This is the first time we have been. It was fun! Sierra loved it! She was the leader and took us everywhere through the maze. We did finally make it out.

After the maze, we ended up going to the store to buy some pumpkins. Sierra said she wanted the biggest pumpkin there! And Maddie said she wanted the smallest. Well, Sierra did find a pretty big pumpkin, and Maddie found a little one. I think we will be carving them tomorrow...

Pumpkin Patch

I was flipping through the Three Forks newspaper yesterday (it only comes out once a week), and when I got to the back page I saw a surprise.... Sierra and Maddie!!! This is Sierra's preschool class on a field trip to the pumpkin patch. It isn't really a pumpkin patch, it is someones yard, that has spent WAY too much time and money making it look fancy. The pumpkin patch is actually his garden, with LOTS of pumpkins. The kids are posing near the pond next to the bears. If you can't spot them, Sierra is Miss Hollywood in the sunglasses in the middle, and Maddie is next to her wearing a navy blue dress. It was kind of cute to see their picture in the newspaper!

Happy Birthday Sierra!

Yes, I am a week late, but Sierra's big 5th Birthday Bash Blog is finally here!! She had such a great day! She pretty much celebrated the whole day! It started out with a party with her friends, and ended with a family celebration. There were lots of cake, lots of balloons, and lots of fun memories!!!

Months ago, when Sierra decided that she *had* to have a party (um, I was leaning more toward NOT having a party, but she had her heart set on it), she told me she wanted Sariah (cousin from Utah) there. Luckily, Sariah has parents that are willing to bring her to Montana from Utah to celebrate Sierra's Birthday with her. The girls LOVED having Sariah around for the weekend!

Grandma Neela also made it to the celebration!

Oh, boy! What kid wouldn't love to have that many balloons?!

Sierra standing in front of *some* of the decorations.

Sierra couldn't wait for her friends to show up so the party could begin!

They played Pin The Tail On The Donkey....

and had a pinata!

Maddie was pretty proud of her candy stash after the pinata!

These were Sierra's Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes for the party. They turned out so cute!

Mmm, enjoying the yummy cupcakes!

After her party, we did a little family shin dig. One thing she got was a real digital camera. Oh boy, she really loves taking pictures!

But the best present was saved for last.....

A NEW BIKE!!!

She was so surprised and LOVED her new bike!!!

That evening we went for a bike ride to test it out. I absolutely LOVE this picture!!! It is so sweet! Daddy/Daughter going on a bike ride (BTW, Jake is riding Maddies bike).

Here is Sierra's Birthday Cake! Just so you know.. I did NOT make this cake. My mom was kind enough to take on that task. Thanks mom!!!

So, this cake has a bit of a story to go along with it. Months before her Birthday, Sierra had chosen a Barbie cake for the big celebration. I was so excited because I thought it would be the perfect cake for her! Well, a few weeks before her Birthday, they were celebrating a Birthday at her school. The Birthday Boy brought in a cake to share with his school mates. When Sierra came home from school she was so excited about the Birthday celebration at school. She told me she wanted a cake just like his. So I said "ok.. what it was it..?" Sierra was so excited and said "A SQUARE CAKE!!!" Um... doesn't she know we dont do square cakes at our house? So, we made a compromise.. a square cake with a barbie cake on top. Yes, this was a TON of cake (also, remeber the ice cream cone cupcakes we had earlier?), but I couldn't settle for just a square cake... nope, not at this house!

It was a great day and I know Sierra loved every minute of it!

P.S. I also learned how to ride a dirt bike. It is actually pretty fun!!