TIME

Jayden is getting caught up in the latest news by reading the latest edition of TIME magazine! Is he going to be a future politician?

Barbie Cake

Here are a couple pictures of the Barbie cake. Thanks Aline for sending the pictures to us.

Christmas Decorating

We have spent the last couple days putting up lights and getting the house decorated for Christmas! We usually try and get as much Christmas stuff up as we can the weekend of Thanksgiving. It seems that once the month of December comes it gets even crazier to get stuff done. I found out this weekend that Jared has always wanted a train to go around our Christmas tree. Well, on one of Jared's many trips yesterday to Home Depot for lights and etc. he came home with a train set. I don't know who was more excited about this train, the kids or Jared! So far the boys have been pretty good about the decorations around the house. That is probably because most of the decorations around the house are "child friendly". The only things that we have had to put up so far were the ceramic Mr. & Mrs. Santa Clause. The boys were loving them a little TOO much, so I put them back in their box for another year.

Happy Birthday Jared!

I surprised Jared for his Birthday by getting a babysitter so that we could go out to dinner on Wednesday night. He decided that we should go and try The Melting Pot. It was VERY tasty. Being Thanksgiving Eve, we walked right into the restauraunt. This is a fondue restaurant where everything comes in bite size pieces and then you dip it in a sauce or cook it in a broth. You start out the meal with breads, cauliflower and baby carrots that you dip in a yummy cheese sauce followed by a Cobb salad. They then brought out a platter of different meats and vegetables, there was some chicken, steak, pork, lobster tail, salmon, and shrimp. These came out uncooked. You put a piece of meat on your little skewer and cooked it in the broth. After all this they brought out the best! We had a dark chocolate with cherries fondue. We dipped rice crispy treats, strawberries, bananas, coconut covered marsh mellows, cheesecake, and brownies. They definitely saved the best for last. We were shocked when we found out that we had been eating for 2 hours! Happy Birthday Jared!

Kelm Visit November 20-24, 2008

Last weekend Wolf & Aline came down to visit. We all had a nice visit with them. The girls talked them into going to the school and having lunch with them both. That was the highlight of the entire visit for the girls. Wolf was concerned about how much the lunch was going to be and Jocelyn piped right up with, "Just bring your whole wallet Grandpa." The boys even loved their "ornery" Grandpa. All weekend we would find them sitting on Grandpa's lap. They would keep getting books and climbing up on his lap so that he could read to them. It was very sweet.

Saturday was a busy day with 2 soccer games and youth conference activities. They made it to Jessica's soccer game (it was a good game but they lost) and were able to see Jared reffing the game, but by the end the heat had them worn out so they weren't able to go to Jocelyn's game (which by the way...she is STILL undefeated!) That night Wolf was the guest speaker for youth conference. He did such a fantastic job. For those who don't know him, here is a quick run-down of his life. He was born in Germany during the Hitler era. He was part of the Hitler Youth, lived through the bombings of Berlin, and was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints throughout all of this. He was then asked to go on a mission for the church when he was 17. Okay, so that is only a snippet of his life, but you can tell that he has let a pretty remarkable life. As I sat there and listened to his talk I was so moved that I am able to be a part of this family and able to pass down this heritage to my family. I also kept thinking about all the teenagers that were there. This WWII generation is soon going to be gone and these kids were all fortunate enough to get to listen to one that lived through that terrible time. What I got the most out of his presentation was prayer. During trials we pray a lot harder, but we still don't always get the answers that we think that we should. The Lord though is always by us and will often whisper other answers to us, if only we listen and follow the promptings.

Sunday was a much more layed back day. The girls and Grandma did a little baking and made a Barbie cake. Good times. (Sadly, I don't have a picture of the finished product...they did a great job on the cake!)

Monday morning they "headed for the hills". Thanks for coming down to visit!

Who Knew?

While I was in Utah a friend gave me an Abba cd (Mama Mia). Anyway, this past weekend I learned something new about my father-in-law. I turned Abba on so that the boys could dance a little and get their wiggles out, when my father-in-law said, "Hey, they aren't too bad." How funny to watch him, subconsciously of course, bob his head to the rhythm of the music. He had even heard some of the songs before from back in the day. Okay, so this may not be funny to most of you, but to us it was amazing because my in-laws listen to mostly operas and classical music. Who knew?