Trains and birthdays and wedding

Well everyone it was time we put up a blog update. How about that?! Actually it takes me forever to get around to bloging because blogger just gets me frustrated every time. This time I had all the images downloaded, but not uploaded and the thing froze up and I had to start all over again. Fancy that. Anyway here are some pictures and some fast words about them. Please don't look for spelling mistakes. :)

Michelle had a birthday shout hooray! She got to celebrate over at our place where Allen had hid her ice cream cake from her.

 Two other girls had a birthday shortly after Michelle did. Kate and Kairi are now two! They loved all of their presents. Thanks everyone.

 

Kairi is in purple.

One nice Saturday we thought about going to the outdoor free skating rink but called Allen and Michelle first and low and behold they were already there so we joined them. Here is dad and Wesley. The kids skated with street shoes. 

Here you can find Uncle Allen with Kairi and Aunt Michelle helping Kate.

 



A fun picture with tongues and legos.

 My little sister Amy got married! Here is the reception once we got the decorations put up. I am pleased to say that it was faster to clean it all up then to put up. Hooray! It did turn out rather nice though.

 

And here is the single picture I took to commermerate my sad tale about losing all my videos off my new camera. Apparently this camera puts movie files in a separate folder so when I copied over the "stuff" from it I really only got the pictures and no movies and then I just had to decide to clear the camera before realizing that fact. Yippe. Anyway if we had the movies you would have seen some really good goofy girls singing to Hillary Duff, and yes they were really singing it.

Uncle Allen and Aunt Michelle got this little rental car. I thought it was small enough to deserve a photo. It could seat four and hey you could shift between automatic and manual. How about that?!

Oh yah Amy got married at the Oakland Temple in CA. Here is Amy and Dan Fowler coming out of the temple.

 And then they kissed. Gross!

 

 Had to put this one in here. :)

 

Here is Dan with his mom. I thought it was precious.

 



Um. Here are some people from Dan's side of the family. Let's see we have his dad, step-mom, Amy, Dan, and his mom. I hope I got that right. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Here is the same picture again but with the added bonus of a picture of the photographer who took many pictures of the happy day than I did.

Dan's side of the family

 



Parents

Amy looking over her shoulder. Yup.

My grandma Richardson, amy, dan, and my mom.

Fancy food at the wedding including cake pops and chocolate strawberries.

 

cake pops close up.

The bridesmaids. Here you can find Brittany (Ducky) Sable, Megan, and Ann.

Did I spell Megan right?

 

Here is the ring holder and the flower girl. I think they were Dan's nephew and niece?

The cake.

 

Here is Amy and my mom coming up the aisle for the ring exchange ceremony after the temple ceremony.

Here is an amazing airplane view picture Chris took from his flight to Washington the week before I flew out to CA for Amy's wedding.

 

Here is an amazing airplane picture that I got. Yah.

 

 Even better you guys all need to find a place where you can try out these new toilets! Really you wave your hand over the top and plastic covering the seat moves around the seat counter clockwise giving you a new clean surface to sit on. Pretty cool right?

 

We went to Madison's model train and railroad show again this year. We had to with out train fans. Here is Kate learning how to drive a train.



And here is Kate again with boots and a helmet. Actually I am surprise the floor around her looks so clean.

Here is what the twins did while waiting for Daddy to help move up Allen and Michelles things into their apartment.

A train!

 

For the girls birthday we went to a children's museum in...Rockford I think. Everyone, well mostly everyone, tried out some pully chairs.

And we did some tractor farming.

And chicken hugging. (Kairi, Kate)

Okay this one was really funny. I got the girls to sit down on opposite sides of each other doing this thing where you use a mirror to help guide you moving a "pen" around a metal sheet with a red picture on it. The object is to not go off the lines or it will beep at you. Anyway, the girls didn't know that and Kate thought she was seeing through the divider at what Kairi was doing instead of seeing her hand reflected back at her. Kairi started to figure it out and wanted to climb over.

Wesley and Dad at the water spot.

Dad holding Kairi and Kate to the right riding on a train! Wow. And Michelle and Allen are in the background.

 



Let's deliver some pizza!

A ticket for mom to ride the train from Mr. Wesley conductor.

This is where Kate put her birthday stickers. :)

Oh and here is a potato. How did he get in here?

Here is another good train, Percy!

 

At the model train show there is one place you can ride a smallish train. We got off a few shots before the camera died. Notice anyone missing?

Here is one attempt to find Kate.

Oh wait. Here she is!

 

Hope you all like the blog post. bye.

Pre- Heit Holidays

At the start of November I attended my fathers funeral(s). We had two for him, one in CA where I was glad that some of his co-workers had been able to attend and one in Utah where he is now buried. The next two pictures  are from the CA event. There were beautiful flowers at both and warm wishes and smiles. I was able to learn new things about my father from the talks and was pleased at how well we were able to honor my father.

Since we were in Utah we visited a few friends and family members including Greg who is there at school and Michelle (and Allen) who I drove up with. Yes I actually drove on the freeway at high speeds on a long road trip. And no I was not ever speeding. In fact I was so slow or something going 60-75 mph that my mom and company who used to be a few hours behind us started to catch up. :) Yup this picture is a keeper!



We walked around campus to see some old haunts and I took a picture of the place I used to live as a Freshman at BYU. On the right hand side used to stand two tall towers called Deseret Towers or DT as we would say. Now that is torn down and there are these cool new places like the building on the left. 

 

Here the kids were learning about how Indians shared food with the pilgrims for Thanksgiving. They each to some degree colored their headbands.



And we have put up the Christmas tree! It looks even better with presents underneath it. Only 9 more days to go!

 

Downtown Madison had free trolley rides. How could we miss out? We went twice in fact, another picture is below.

The Hilldale mall does a gingerbread house contest yearly. This was one of my favorites .

 

Wesley sat on Santa's lap and showed him a picture of some legos that he would like Santa to bring.

 

 

 What was even better was that Kate also got brave enough to sit with Santa, and Kairi started to walk up to him but then changed her mind. I was still impressed considereing she still won't sit in nursery without crying the whole 2 hours unless I am in there with her.

 

Here was another gingerbread house that was intriguing.

Kate and Kairi are showing off their new Christmas pajamas. Soft and cozy! 

We were excited to get a visit from Aunt Michelle and Uncle Allen. We didn't have too long to play around with them, but we did get to play with Michelle for a day and go on the trolley ride the next. 

 

Another fun, although short this time, trolley ride.

We had our first "large" snow fall this winter. I am not really sure how much snow it was an inch or so.... but we were able to use up the snow in the backyard to make something spiffy!

Tah Dah! The finished product. Too bad that as we speak only a small amount of it is left since it rained yesterday. 

 

I held a gingerbread house making party again this year. I was happy to do it ahead of everyone leaving for the holidays so that we had a good turnout. Seven kids, four plus my three, decorated the houses.

 

And what is a new season without changing the fireplace mantle display? We have a lego advent calendar so this has been added to, but here is the general idea of our lego mania.

 

 

Hope you enjoyed the post. Please have a warm and safe and cozy Christmas and New Years everyone! My fingers are crossed so we're not sick on Christmas like last year. Toodles!

 

Happy Michelle?