Our Greatest Gift

Our Christmas was filled with joy. Good food, good times, great company with friends and family. I love the excitement that Christmas holds through the eyes of our children. I know it won't always be this way so I try to enjoy these precious moments. Our Christmas joy and greatest gifts are....

Tyler

Blake

Madison

and Jamie

We hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas.

We love our Savior and are very thankful for His birth and life here on earth. We are greatful that He lives today.

Merry Christmas

and have a very happy New Year!!!

Christmas with our Family!

Our Christmas fun continued as we went to the Ouzts's for our family get together. As always, we had a lot of fun!

Here is Bella (with the red eye evil look) all decked out for Christmas in her little Santa jacket! The girls enjoyed making Peanut Brittle with Papa. It was very yummy!

The kids and Josh had fun playing Foosball. They were in the basement playing and you could hear Blake cackling so loudly with laughter all the way upstairs. He thought it was just so funny to see the ball rolling around and getting hit.

Let the fun begin! The cousins are at the "cousin table" in the laundry room. I love how they fill their plates with food, take a bite and then run off to play. They will put 20 pizza rolls on their plate, eat one and then they are done. It is just too busy to eat when you have so many cousins to play with!

Or some don't find time to eat because they are hiding under tables holding "their dog". My nephew, Brock, was told not to hold Bella until after he ate. He REALLy wanted to hold her right then so he snuck under the dessert table and held her for a long time. ( I really wish I could get a good picture of Bella without the evil eyes - I am too lazy to actually edit the picture!! :) )

Our annual family Christmas picture by the tree - minus hats and reindeer antlers this year!!!

The Ouzts grandkids - 13 in all!

This is really what it usually looks like....

The cousins put on a musical for their Great Grandma and Grandpa Aldridge this year. Jamie and Maddie played the piano, then they all sang a variety of Christmas songs for them. There really is no better present than that!!

Grandma Aldridge had her big family get together on Sunday after Christmas. Those of us that were there had a great visit! We have to meet at the church for our get togethers now because it is such a big crowd! (13 grandkids and 21 great grandchildren - I think?)

I cherish this family time that we had together!!

Basketball Season

Tyle is participating in YMCA basketball right now. He is really enjoying his season. To ensure that he had the best coach possible, I signed Josh up to coach Ty's team. Josh is so good to do this for basketball and soccer!! He is really good at it too! He is the best coach ever!! Of course, one of Tyler's favorite things to do is run! He thinks it is a race to get to the other side of the court before his other team mates. He is pretty fast!

Tyler made the first basket this past Friday night at the game. His cheering section went wild (me, Blake, Jamie and Madison). Although a few things have come up and I haven't been to every game, I really do enjoy going to the game and watching Tyler and Josh in action. It's fun to see them enjoying themselves.

A Great Day

On Nov. 21, 2009 one of our very best friends, Carla Miller, got baptized!! We are so excited for her and her family! She has been coming to church on and off for about a year. She started taking the discussions in October and decided to be baptized. She has such amazing faith.
Here she is with her beautiful family and of course the best missionaries in the world - Elder Stanfield and Elder Oslund. Here are the Martin/Millers....life is BETTER for the Millers! :) Inside joke with them...

Congratulations Carla!

Halloween!

We started the Halloween weekend off to a good start with the annual Preschool parade downtown. Jamie stayed the night with a friend so she didn't join in the fun but our friend, Taleia, was with us. We had lots of fun seeing all the other cute kids and our friends! On Halloween night, we had a Trunk or Treat at the church. The kids played games before going outside. Our cheerleader, Madision, is playing Musical Chairs...

Here are the Martin-Miller girls - Madison, Anna and Madison! Where else (besides Hawaii) can you go and wear a cheerleader's uniform and not be cold on Halloween? Gotta love NC!!! (Last year we were in jackets but not this year!)

Jamie is playing the BEST GAME! Donut eating - hands free!!!

Here is Grandma Dee Dee with our little puppy Blake! Poor Blake, as I mentioned before, it was hot so he was a little toasty and cranky in his doggy suit. For trick or treating in our neighborhood, a halloween t-shirt is what he wore!!!

Puppy Blake checking out Grandpa Martin's kitty Elwood. Grandma and Grandpa Martin were the hit of the show with the kitty!!!

Our fearless football player and puppy trunk or treating!!!!

Gabbie, Skylar and Jamie at the trunk or treat!

Our Indian and gypsy girls!!! (Gabbie and Jamie)

Even Bella got to participate in the Halloween fun!! She was, as you can see, a very cute witch (that hated her costume and ate a hole through the hat before Halloween night!).

Bella usually rides with me to pick up the kids from school and this was her in the carpool line, waiting to make her debut as a witch!!!

We had a fun Halloween with lots of fun, many treats, a few tricks and way too much candy!

Happy Birthday to My Baby!

I don't know how this happened but my baby turned 2 today!

Time goes by faster with each passing year!

Blake is such a joy to have in our family. I remember thinking for a while we were "done" having kids after #3. When we felt impressed to go for #4, I was so overwhelmed with the thought of having 4 kids. My pregnancy was good, the delivery was good (but crazy fast) and Blake has been such a good child since he was born. We have loved every minute of his little life! (well, most of them anyway!!)

Blake is really growing so fast! I guess he just watches all these other big kids in the house and wants to fit right in. In a way, it is really nice. In another way, not so nice because he is my last baby and I know these days are numbered and ticking away!

He is already sleeping in the bottom bunk bed. He does great staying in bed too! We haven't had to "lock" him in his room for coming out yet. (YET...) The only issue we have is when he decides it is okay to come out of his room at 5:30am. I have tried telling him that Mommy is still sleeping when it is dark outside and don't wake me up please. (yeah right) BUT a few days he has actually stayed out in the living room. One day last week I even saw him laying on the computer room floor by the dog crate - asleep! What a good listener!

He is also going to the potty pretty consistently. I have to admit that it is nice to not have to change so many stinky diapers!!! Oh yes!!!

Here is Blake trying to put up 2 fingers - which is harder than it looks!! We were so excited to get "Elmo Cupcakes" today at the store! He couldn't wait to get his hands on them!! We also found an adorable Elmo balloon! He loves it and came right in the door to show Bella. She growled at it for a while and then had fun playing with it today too!

Blake had to wait until everyone got home from work and school to open presents. He opened his Elmo doll, bubble blower, new coloring notebook (his "homework") and ball. Then Tyler went in the back room and rolled out on his new bike - a Hot Wheels big wheeler. He ran right to it and it was love at first sight!! He cried when we pried him off of it to go to dinner. I knew I should have made dinner at home!!!! Oh well. There's always tomorrow...
We had fun taking goofy pictures at the restaurant. We went to a new mexican restaurant close to our house - El Zarape. It was really good! He wasn't trying to stick his tongue out in this picture, we just were lucky to get the cute shot!!!

Another lucky and cute shot of our birthday boy!!

Daddy's boy - so cute!!!

Happy Birthday Blake - we love you!!

2nd Annual Cousin Campout

What a weekend we just had! When we finally were able to leave the house (3 hours after we planned) and get Blake out of the hot locked car (terrifying!!), we had a great weekend with our family! We had a Cousin's Campout on Friday night at Mom and Dad's. On Sunday, we had family pictures made (as you can see a glimpse below). We set up camp behind Mom and Dad's house in the field behind their big barn. It was perfect, quiet and great area for a big fire (I think Mom threatened to burn the barn down at one point to get rid of it...?? heehee). Here is Tyler getting the tent ready for the night - but don't let him fool you. He and Madison didn't even try to sleep outside. They were too scared. As Madison says, "we are not happy campers". Oh well.

Here are the older girls (Morgan, Jamie and Ashton) in their tent. And they did try to sleep outside but ended up coming in the house around 5am due to the down pour of rain! Jamie's pillows were soaked! Ewwwww!!! Still fun though.

These girls also got to experience their first "snipe hunt". Ethan and Jason took them out to catch snipes. They were super excited leaving but came back to camp crying their eyes out!! They got really scared being left out in the dark to "catch" their snipe. They have sworn revengence on those 2 guys!! Beware!

We all played a fun game of tag that Grandma calls "Ain't No Boogers Out Tonight - Papa Killed Them All Last Night!" It's pretty much a game of tag played in the dark! Very fun!

Grandma was a chaser :) and everyone had to get back to "base".

We had our very own "country drive-in" at the barn! My brother Danny projected a movie onto the barn for everyone's viewing pleasure! :) We ate popcorn balls and enjoyed the show (atleast 10 or 15 minutes of it anyway!!)

Movie time!

Here is Grace, ready to get it started!!! She couldn't have been more thrilled that we were watching a movie!!

And don't forget the s'mores!! After roasting hot dogs, we made s'mores. When I told the kids we were making s'mores, Lanie wanted to know "some more what"??

The kids all did really good cooking over the fire!

Just hanging out by the fire with Papa....

With 13 kids, 8 dogs and some mighty tired adults, we made some great memories!

We hope to have many more at future Cousin Campouts!!!

Conference Weekend

We had a wonderful General Conference weekend at our house AND I have discovered yet another reason why I LOVE our new playroom!!!! We decided to put up a "conference tent" for the kids to watch conference. We put it in the playroom. We explained to the kids that in the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin taught his people from a tower so everyone could hear. The people gathered around the tent with their families and put up tents with the door facing the tower to hear King Benjamin. Josh put the tent door facing the tv so they could hear the prophet (and other church leaders') words. They also had little "conference packets" with mazes, bingo, connect the dot, fill in the blank, etc. And their favorite tradition we have is the little bowl of candy we pass around.
Today was especially fun because our friends, the Millers, came over to enjoy conference with us. Amazingly, they were all quiet enough to hear and listen to most of the talks. I wish I would have remembered to get a picture of them all in the tent. Very fun!!! Josh and I were able to watch conference in peace and quiet in the living room while the kids did their conference activities in the playroom! It was great!! I love that room!

We look forward to doing this fun family tradition again next April!!!