End of School Party

Last Friday Ethen’s teacher hosted the end of the year party for his class. Of all places – the kiddie casino – I mean Chuck E’ Cheese!

I wasn’t able to get off but my fan-tab-u-lous sitter took him and grabbed some awesome pics for me! Brianne – you’re amazing!

I think Ethen got ahold of the camera!!!

Ready to go in!!!

See what I mean by Kiddie Casino!!!

I have NO idea what this is but I’m sure Ethen had fun!!!

Lil’man waiting for his prizes!!!

Ok so I have to show you the CUTEST little girl EVER!!! This is Brianne’s little one, Leia!!! Every morning when I drop Ethen off I say “Hello Gorgeous” and she gets the BIGGEST smile on her face! It’s like she knows who she is and that she is destined for greatness!!!

This Friday – June 1st – Ethen’s teacher is having a “graduation” ceremony for all the students moving onto Kindergarten next year… yes that includes Ethen! I can hardly believe that my little guy is going to be in Kindergarten next year! AHHHH!!! Will definitely be posting again soon… Not to mention our Memorial Day fun we have in store for tomorrow!

Oh yea – no better way to celebrate and remember our those who died protecting our freedoms than shooting some rounds down range in support of our 2nd Amendment right to bare arms!!! This has become sort of a family tradition for us!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!

Christmas Is Coming…

Christmas is DEFINITELY coming! Since the dawn of the day after Thanksgiving it has literally been non-stop. With Jonathon finishing up the semester. Not to mention in the past month and a half we have celebrated 3 birthday’s, our anniversary and Thanksgiving. Christmas if fast approaching and the check list is FINALLY dwindling down! So far I have had:

Family pictures taken, written (and mailed) Christmas cards, decorated the tree (outside lights still pending… ahem… JONATHON!!!), Christmas shopping is done (including a little something for Ethen’s teachers), Presents are wrapped and under the tree (except those from a jolly ole’ elf and Heavenly Father)

Still to do – clean my house, grocery shopping for Christmas dinner and I should definitely take a moment and BREATHE!!!

We have attended TWO Christmas parties in a weekend (why do we do this to ourselves?) First stop was the annual SNARSCA party. SNARSCA is an air conditioning contractors association for Las Vegas. They always take pictures, provided by the fabulous Blake Ballard (Jonathon’s boss).

The SNARSCA party is always a blast because they have huge raffles!!! I mean… HUGE!!! This year they were giving away a 42” LED (yes LED the latest technology) TV, 2 Kindle Fire’s, a KitchenAid Mixer (which I would have loved to win), so many other things including an iPad 2!

Now first let me start by saying I NEVER win anything! EVER! This year… I won…

YEAH BABY!!! I WON A KINDLE FIRE!!! (I should be a little more humble here but I’m just soooooo excited!) My wonderful hubby and son gave me a Kindle for Mother’s Day this year and I fell in LOVE with it! I am so excited to finally get my hands on this (due to a misunderstanding I had to wait for my prize).

Skipping ahead 24 hours we headed out to Pahrump, NV… my home town (at least where I graduated high school from) if you don’t know where that is… you’re not missing much.

ANYWAYS!

Our good friends Chuck and Toni Hernandez live there and we just love their parties. Of course we are always the token sober people at the parties so we have a pretty good time laughing at all the inebriated ones!!!

The highlight of the night was watching Ethen get excited when Santa showed up! (sorry the pics are grainy – low pixels of cell phone cameras!)

And of course we couldn’t pass up snapping a pic with the Jolly Ole Elf ourselves!

We’ve be very blessed this year! We are trying to remember Christ this Christmas. It’s interesting this year how Ethen is all about the presents so helping him to remember that Christmas is about the birth of our Savior has been… a task… to say the least. Every year, not only does “Santa” visit Ethen, but we also place gifts under the tree from “Heavenly Father”. These gifts are spiritual in nature and emphasize that Heavenly Father is always with us and cares for us dearly. One year Ethen received his own scriptures, this year he is getting the Living Scripture cartoon DVDs.

We also try to decorate with nativities as the main focal point. I like to add a new nativity (even a small one) every year.

This year Jonathon came up with an idea to wrap the Christmas story in a box and write “TO ALL” on it. It will be the first present we open then we will read Luke chapter 2 before we open anything else.

I pray that the world finds peace this Christmas season and that it shall last in the hearts of man throughout the year to come!

Merry Christmas!

Brandy

Official Photo

This is the last official week of bike riding since school is starting in T-MINUS 6 DAYS! So we gathered EVERYONE who has ridden with us this summer. An AMAZING 50 people and 4 dogs joined us today (can you believe we were still missing at least 8 people!) Our group was GI-NORM-OUS!!! I can only imagine the looks we were getting as this mass of wheels and helmets goes strolling on by! Makes my head spin! So here are some of the great pics that we got today!

And the count is: 15 adults 35 children (10 of which were on training wheels and 6 more not even on a bike but in the trailers!)

Here’s ALL the kids at the playground (our halfway point!)

And now the parents! (we must be nuts!)

It’s been SO much fun riding bikes this summer – I’m thankful that Ethen’s school is in the afternoon so I can continue this during the school year – at least a couple times a week!

After the ride we decided to have an end of summer bike riders bash! Swimming plus pizza – how can you go wrong with that?

Well I forgot my SD card for my camera because I was busy loading the pics from the bike ride – BUT I did get one AWESOME picture of Ethen jumping (and I mean JUMPING) into the pool!

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On another note – Ethen has been a little thief – taking my blanket all the time. So I asked him if he wanted me to make him one – the answer was a resounding YES! So I went to JoAnn’s and got all of the yarn I needed (thanks to a great gift card we won from a photo contest, thanks LDSJOURNAL.COM and all that voted!)

Well the other day Ethen was playing with my crochet hook and extra yarn – he was totally trying to crochet it was hilarious!

I love the “Tongue of Concentration!” His creation wound up being a ball of mess – but it was really fun to watch him try something that is a hobby of mine!

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Wow I can hardly believe that this summer is almost over! We still have a few more days of bike riding and a water balloon playgroup and a camping trip this Friday – so stay tuned for pics from those!!!

Though I’m looking forward to Ethen getting back to school I am certainly grateful for the time we spent this summer. Ethen accomplished so much; at the beginning of the summer he was on a bike that was just barely too small for him with training wheels and now he’s riding without training wheels and even “jumping off the curbs” (which by the way he totally ate it today doing this… hardcore!). He’s grown so much this year! I’m so proud of him!

 

Brandy

Lil’ E Turns 4!!!

I can hardly believe that he’s 4!!! Where did 4 years go to? It was such a treat for Ethen to have his party at Chuck E’ Cheese (AKA Yucky Cheese)

All though the party started out as a “Transformers” theme… it ended as a mix of Transformers and Power Rangers… He sure didn’t mind!

E with his best bud Lily E with new friend Deon

Ethen with his buddy Amari!

PRESENT TIME!!!

Transformers, Toy Story 3, a drum, $35 in gift cards and a Leapster 2~ this kid made out like a bandit!

We had such a great time. Thank you to ALL our friends that came to celebrate with us!

Videos to come!