Terrific Twelve

Benjamin turned 12!  How can that be?  

He wanted to open his presents with everyone so he woke up super early!

When you turn 12 at our house, you get your first phone, so Benjamin was pretty excited to get his new phone.  He got a gift card to buy a new case for his phone, a cool big lego, silly socks and new tires for his bike (and the gift of Andrew putting them on for him).  He got pretty spoiled!

We had piano lessons so dinner was a bit later than normal, but we went to a new restaurant (to us), Black Bear Diner and enjoyed the yumminess of it!  

Twelve terrific things about Benjamin...

...he the tallest person in his class.

...he works SO hard in school!

...he loves electronics!

...he is a great helper around the house!

...he's really good at keeping his side of his room clean.

...he is a faithful dog walker to Rufus!

...he loves to do sports and will try anything.

...he LOVES to talk and talk and talk and talk!!!

  

...he's excited to be a Deacon and go to Scouts every week!

...he has a very kind heart!

....he loves to CRAZY socks!

...he faithfully reminds us to pray in the morning!  

Happiest of Birthdays, Benjamin!!  We love you so much!!

Happy Halloween

This Halloween marks the one year anniversary of our house being painted 

and I absolutely love it!

                      Thank goodness our kids will still humor me with the picture on the porch!
                                  Spencer is a wizard, Benjamin is a zombie football player,
                                       Levi is a hacker and Andrew is Danny from Grease.

                                We love how creative our neighbors are with their decorations!

                 Benjamin's goal is to get enough candy to last him until Easter.  I think he did it!
                                 

                    I love that Sarah even got dressed up for the party she and her friends went to. 
                                   I think she's so creative being The Greatest Showman!

                                                                    Cute friends!!

                           We had a family group chat going on last night so we even got to see
                                    Alexa as Kanye West and her roommate as Taylor Swift.

                 Jayna sent us this picture of her cute kids in celebrating their first Halloween in
                                      New Mexico.  We sure do miss having cousins close!

Jon sent us this picture of him as Hagrid.  He got to pass out candy at his library.

                     
                           Andrew sent this picture of him and Lily at a party they went to.
                                                     (Sandy and Danny from Grease.)

Spencer had a party with his friends at our house.  They ate pizza, played games and watched Coco.

(Picture coming soon!)

Legoland

The boys had a couple of days off at the end of October so we asked them where they'd like to go for a long weekend getaway.  It was pretty unanimous that they wanted to go to Legoland.  I was extremely impressed with the Castle hotel where we stayed.  I loved everything about our time in Legoland!

                                 Levi's first lunch was his own turkey leg.  He was thrilled!!

         Walking around "Minitown" was one of my favorite things about Legoland.

We tried going on almost all of the rides.  Most of them were for little kids but we still enjoyed them!
                           Our average wait time to get on rides was five minutes.  It was great!

The park was very decorated for Halloween.  Lego ghosts and pumpkins were everywhere.  

I loved it!

                                   Our hotel room was really dreamy!  I loved our room!

This was in the dining room where we ate breakfast and dinner.  The dragon even snored.  So fun!!

                This is also in the dining area.  Kids can play while they wait for their food and they can
                                       even bring some of the legos to your table to create.

This is outside "The BIG Shop".  It's the biggest Lego store in the park.  We spent time here every day and everyone was happy here! 

While Nathan took Spencer and Benjamin on a few more rides, Levi enjoyed playing in the sand and discovering dinosaur bones. 

                     Almost every ride had a photo op that we all tried making the funniest picture.
                                                       This was my favorite of Nathan.

        All of the boys spent their evenings creating their legos.  I loved watching them be creative!

       
                         This picture was taken in our hotel.  We loved seeing the characters!

                                    I absolutely LOVED everything about our trip to Legoland!!!
                           
                       

For anyone who's wondering...Andrew stayed in Boise with Nonnie.  He had friends over for breakfast and made them waffles, he hung out with friends the entire weekend and loved his weekend of freedom!!

September

We got up early Saturday morning so we could see the balloons at the Spirit of Boise.  

Then, we drove to Sun Valley to spend the weekend enjoying the beautiful weather and being outside.
                     I absolutely love Sun Valley!  I truly can't get enough of the beauty of it!

 Cool new haircut for Levi!!

We got all of Nonnie's boxes out of her U-Haul and into her new garage.  We'll fully move her in after new carpet is installed.  Yay!!

Levi lives for the school carnival and this year was just as great!!

Sarah surprised us with coming home one weekend.  It was super fun to see her!  She's loving college!

Andrew asked Lily to Homecoming.  Nonnie and I had to be a little sneaky to get it all set up without being seen.

Nathan, Spencer, Benjamin and I went to the Hyde Park Street Fair.  We had some yummy food and saw very interesting booths.  I sent this picture to Sarah and she knew immediately where I was.  

Doing a little scripture reading together.  Love these boys!

We got up early one Saturday morning and drove to Logan to see Sarah for the weekend.  It was so fun to spend time with her, meet her roommates, walk around on campus, go to a football game and go to church with her.  She's doing fabulous as a college student!  In fact, she makes college life look so good, all of the boys are ready to go!

Levi found the world's longest corn dog and was pretty pleased about his find!

I think we both can't believe we have a daughter attending college....we definitely don't feel old enough! 

This was the first time our youngest boys have gone to a college football game.  It was a fun game to watch and I loved being all together!

                                                                Benjamin got braces!!!

                                         Let's take a closer look at this handsome boy!!

For our birthdays, Kerri and I spent a whole day together eating breakfast, laughing, shopping, talking, going for a long walk at Quinn's Pond, laughing and eating out for lunch.  Such a fun day with such a fun friend!!!

     
                                                           Such handsome, silly boys!       

 Such a fun, BIG group!!!  Some of these friends, Andrew has gone to school with since kindergarten.

                                                                  Andrew and Lily

 Nathan took this picture of Spencer speaking in church.  He did a fabulous job talking about preparing himself for General Conference.