Sunday, December 28, 2008

Merry Christmas!!

My mom got Claire this cute outfit, so I had to take a picture of it so she could see-- since she's in Florida and I picked it out!!
The snow drift---Jason thought he could make it!! Here's the story-- We were driving over to Jason's parent's on Christmas morning after we'd opened presents and ate breakfast at home. I was in my car and Jason was in his Dad's truck, we'd borrowed and were returning. I got to the drift first and stopped. Jason pulled up next to me. I told him that I didn't think we could ever make it through, He said, " oh Jenn, just back up and I'll go first" This is where he ended up. Lucky for us we live in a farming town and within 5 minutes a tractor and a backhoe were there to pull him out and plow the road so we could make it to gma's and gpa's house. Jason claims he could of made it if he had gotten a little more speed-- we'll let him think that-- the drift was like 4 feet tall!!

Karson got his very own "real rock star guitar" as he calls it!! Santa brought it to him. We are excited for him to start playing his first musical instrument. I'm more of an acoustic fan, but the guitar guy said that the electric are much easier for kids to learn on-- so here's our future rock star!!

Don't you just love your house at Christmas!! I do-- I took this picture after Santa came on Christmas eve! We had such a wonderful Christmas this year!! The kids are at such fun ages and were adorable!! I loved being in my own house and would have been perfectly content just hanging out at home all day. We did get to see lots of family though, and that's always fun too! I feel so blessed this year and I always love Christmas as a time to reflect on blessings especially the gift of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ---his birth, his life, and all he did for us!!



Christmas Eve!!

Cute smiles from Claire-- Jason was having tons of fun making her smile.
The kids in their Christmas jammies-- I must say, I think I have to world's cutest kids!!
More cute Claire-- we just can't get enough of her!
Karson and Claire-- He's such a wonderful brother-- he loves her so much and helps me out tons!! I am loving 5!!

We acted out the Nativity with Jason's family-- it was so much fun-- brought back childhood memories!!




Thursday, December 4, 2008

Pictures for Grandma

Here is Kate....I was taking pictures of Claire and she felt left out so we took a picture of her with the Christmas tree. Here's our little Claire Bear-- as we love to call her. She was looking so cute in this outfit, that my firend Jodi gave me, and I just had to snap some pictures. I think she is kind of half smiling in the picture. I tried really hard to capture her smile, but of course never snapped the camera at the right time-- mostly because Kate was being oh so helpful!! I think her cheeks are starting to chub up a little and she still has all her dark hair!!
Anyway, life is good ... Crazy but good. I am still stressed about school (hopefully I'll have that all figured out by next week) and Christmas (mostly because I am ward activities director and have to plan the ward party!!) and my house (which I've decided I need to not worry about so much) and my kids (mostly the messes they make--my mom says I'll miss them someday, we'll see) but I feel so blessed!! Plus it's Christmas time-- I love Christmas!!!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Thoughts...


I decided that I need to write more on my blog-- thoughts, feelings, etc. I'm not an amazing writer and despite the fact that I never have a hard time finding something to say, I do have a hard time writing anything of length. It's been a tough past few days. Everything with graduate school is exploding in my face. My thesis advisor moved to TX and my new committee is not supporting some aspects of the research we did. I went up to ISU for a meeting on Friday and was totally attacked. I cried the whole way home, but made a resolution to myself that I could overcome this and with the help of my old thesis advisor could prove these people wrong. Well, today my new advisor wrote me suggesting that I turn my thesis into a project. It would be the easy way out, but makes me feel like a total failure and all the research and hard work I did would be in vain. It makes me want to throw-up. I just feel so abused!! I thought educators were supposed to help students-- I guess I was spoiled at Ricks and BYU!! This makes me want to teach even more. Maybe that's why I need to go through this, so I will be a more understanding teacher and be an advocate for the student and not the "rule book." Despite all of this I am so blessed-- I really do think I have the cutest kids in the world!! Here is a recent picture of Claire. She was 5 weeks yesterday!!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

House Update

Our house is really comming along!! Jason and his dad have been working very hard!! I'm so excited with how it is looking!! It finally looks like a house-- yeah!! The roof is super steep and it's so far up--I was very nervous when they were putting the plywood on the roof!! We should hopefully have the roof on in a few weeks and it dried in by the end of the month!!

Side view and garage-- you can see how steep the roof is here!!
And here you can see how tall it is!! We didn't even consider the hill at the bottom of the house or the fact that we would have 15 foot truses when we were drawing our plans. I think the house is about 45 feet tall plus the hill-- so scary!


Saturday, November 1, 2008

Happy Halloween!!

Batman and the flower fairy-- so cute!! We had a great Halloween. Kate was so adorable in her fairy costume-- the pictures don't do it justice. Maybe I'll have to have a little photo shoot and dress her back up-- if so, I'll post more pics. Karson was Batman again-- He sure makes a cute little super hero.
Grandpa with all three kids!! Claire was a little fairy too!!






What a cute little fairy!!

Our sweet baby Claire!!! She looked so precious!!