Happy Birthday Grandma Ardes!

Matt's Grandma turned 98 this December. every year we have a big mcqueen party to celebrate--we've usually had these at her home, but the past few years (because she is finally getting too old!) we've gone up to rog and jill's. mary and her family always come after christmas as well, so we get plenty of playing with the mcqueen's.
Here's our kids with grandma and their 2..count them 2!... mcqueen cousins. (quite a difference between matt's family parties and mine with 24 crazy cousins running around.) grandma, at 98, is still all there. she know all of her 15 or so grandchildren and her 25 or so great-grandchildren and loves to have them around. she dotes on them all and is genuinely interested and concerned with each one. she truly amazes me at the number of lives she's touched in 98 years. another wonderful plus about being home is getting to be around ardes in the twilight of her life. watching my children love her and interact with her is a priceless memory for both them and me. of all of ardes' great-grandkids, these 5 stick together. they only see each other 2x a year so when they do get together they are inseparable. they can spend weeks at a time together without getting sick of each other and needing a break. it's really fun to watch them enjoy the time they have together so much.

just thought i'd throw in the new darker me. a little darker than planned...but, we're going to go with it for a while.

Christmas Morning Faves

isaac and his bakugans

eli and his "cars" undies

megs in her ute track jacket, hat, and new boots

mall and her "mallory doll" (notice she is in her gymnastics leotard--she drives me nuts!!!)

you already know my fave and matt's was a Ripstick to share with isaac. he is tired of borrowing the kid's down the street.

my parents braved the blizzard and joined us with jared and dana and taylor and laney (home from NY) for christmas dinner. it was the first year in a long while we didn't have to split the day between our families. we lounged all day watching movies and the snow pile up before heading the block or two over to jared's. just what christmas should be. no craziness, no hustle and bustle, just being together.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was spent in our home this year. With my family party over with and Matt's not until next week, we had a "silent night" with just us and Grandma and Grandpa. We started with dinner and then had our little program: the girls doing their Symbols of Christmas talk and Isaac doing his talk on the white cloths in Jesus' life. Eli just hopped from adult to adult trying to be reverent. Not a chance with this one.
then the kids opened their christmas jammies and Oh joy!!! Matching Utes PJs!! just in time for the big game! they love them and getting them to the laudry has proven to be difficult. with a quick kiss the gramma and grandpa they were off to bed--too excited to sleep.

ok, no camera, but HELLO...

new washer and dryer. so, we left our set in colorado a year ago, and my brother gave us his old set when we moved here and (not to kick a gift horse in the mouth) but said hand-me-down has been really leaking for the past two months and i could only wash a medium load (gasp!, i know). that said, i have detested laundry and the wet floor aftermath for a while and matt caught on to my complaining and VIOLA! merry christmas to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! see, whining really does pay off. now, i {heart} laundry. the clothes come out of the washer almost dry and the dryer is so quiet. i don't even know when it's on. i've been renewed, refreshed even, as a mother, and all my mothering duties.

the only thing i'm waiting for now is an automatic folding machine;)

all i want for christmas...

is a new camera. how can i blog without a camera? i ask you! literally impossible! ok maybe not but i was trying to get some sympathy for dropping off the blogging bandwagon for the past month. on to sympathy for awful camera syndrome. our old olympus 350c (or whatever it is) is as old as megs and has worked just great for us but isaac dropped it a few months ago (after being reminded and reminded that cameras are expensive and only mom and dad can use it--you see how far that went) and now all pictures are blurry around the edges (i'm sure this hasn't gone unnoticed!) so if santa is out there checking blogs...DON"T FORGET ME THIS YEAR! the whole past two months of our lives have gone undocumented for the lack of photo ability (well, and a little, i mean little, laziness on my account)

some things you've missed:

megan has been singing in the local children's choir for the past few months and at the begining of december they had their christmas concert at temple square. matt's parents along with mine plus aunts, uncles and cousins came out to wish her well and see her first big performance. unfortunately, there was no taping during the performance so we couldn't get her on film and of course, chalk another one up to the camera crisis, all of our stills are blurry. nonetheless, it was so fun to see her don her choir robes and sing her guts out for a real audience. we asked isaac if he was going to join her choir next year and, without hesitation, rapidly shook his head and looked at us like we were going to cut off his right arm. ok. message recieved. you won't hear about isaac's choir debut


but you will hear about the school christmas play a few weeks ago. we thought we left colorado behind us--but this play was something you'd see in a boulder school with al gore as the visiting santa. "santa's going green" was the title and each grade sung a song about enery conservation or recycling or how santa is now using fossil fuel to power his sleigh. quite a different twist on christmas plays of old. not one traditional chirstmas song. i'm not talking bring in the christmas spirit with "away in a manger" or "oh come all ye faithful". but a good rousing "jolly old st. nicholas" or "i want a hippopotamus for christmas" were noticeably absent. what's up with that?

in salt lake? bah! just wait until i join the school/community council.

mallory had her little preschool program last week too and loved performing like her older siblings. fortunately her class let christmas ring with "rudolf" and "jingle bells" and other christmasy tunes and poems. she really has grown up a ton and kindergarten can't come fast enough--for both of us;)

other fun events--seeing the lights at temple square, isaac starting his first season of basketball, megan singing the star spangled banner at a "feeder team for the jazz" (i can't remember their name) game, sledding with the whole neighborhood this weekend, sunday advent celebrations, gearing up for dad's b-day, pretzel dipping with dana, trying to figure out christmas lights on a new house, and getting 12 days of christmased by one of our neighbors.

here's hoping unblurry pictures will be gracing our blog soon!

the end of another season

...soccer, that is. both megs and isaac played awesome this season. they still love this sport and when we're not out on the pitch watching them, we're playing a girls v boys game in the back yard. when it gets too dark for that, isaac is you tubing any Man U clips he can find. it's so fun to see them so intense about this game. to love everything about it. i hope they continue.

isaac and his new soccer buddy, simon. this kid can BOOT the ball. he scored while playing goalie on a drop kick. kicked it over everyone and bounced over their goalie. hilarious!

isaac got a better feel for defense this year, too. which was a change for him. he still loves to score but slide tackling has become his new joy. if he can do both in one motion, all the better:)

megan, on the other hand, never saw the backfield this season. she always was out front, just how she likes it:) practicing against isaac definitely shone through this year. she was way more confident in her dribbling skills and took the ball around many a full back to find the back of the net. it's fun to watch her develop into a good little ball player.

scoring her last goal of the season. she had been held scoreless this game and with one minute left, tapped this one past the goalie to put the score at 2-1. i'll let you just imagine her excitement.

fall festivities

the pumpkin getting, above, and the pumpkin carving, below.The beauty of moving to a new city is you can get away with the same halloween costumes from last year and no one is the wiser. this year, both mal and isaac were gems and allowed their mother to take a creative break this season by going with their "old trusties" from last year. Cheer bear for mal and isaac as a skeleton. megan was harder to convince and in the end, was "cindy lou who", easily made from a DI dress and stuff around the house. eli took the cake, though, as our resident chicken. he was destined to be last year's frog until aunt dana offered up the chicken for him to borrow. am i ever glad as he was so funny, wadling around.

mal at her preschool party, and with eli and her bestest friend