A Few December Happenings

This little boy is so cute....love his post bath poofy hair!

We did a gingerbread house together while Justin was out of town at his nephew's wedding. I told the kids to smile and that's what I got out of Dylan...silly boy!

Lindsey had a fun Holiday concert at school

These boys get to hang out all day while the big kids are at school

And I just had to post these.....Justin borrowed a couple of Christmas sweaters from our good friends the Adams to wear to a party at work. Here he is trying them on. 

The "reindeer pose"

And the "polar bear pose"

What a guy! :)

These pics are from our friend Spencer showing us the cool new lens on his camera.

Christmas Tree

We had a fun time going to our favorite Christmas tree farm and picking out our tree this year.

Weston and I hung out in the nice warm car while Justin and the kids went and found our tree. I took some pictures while I waited....

While Justin was tying the tree to the van I took the kids on a quick hay ride, always a favorite!

We had fun decorating the tree after church the next day. My favorite part was Dylan calling all of our snowflake ornaments "snowman fwake!"

Brandon's First Dance Concert

Every year our older kids get to choose an activity that they want to do other than piano lessons (because piano lessons are automatic). In years past Brandon has done soccer and basketball. 

This year a new opportunity was added to list of things for him to consider....ballroom dance. We have a dance company here that was started by 2 LDS couples from the BYU ballroom dance team. It is really great and has tons of LDS kids involved in it from the area. They started a pre-teen team this year, for kids in grades 4-6. We have some friends in the ward that are involved in it, so Brandon wanted to give it a try this year. There are 12 girls and 12 boys on his team, and he has a lot of fun going to practice every week. Their first performance was a Christmas concert last weekend. Brandon did great!

Here he is, ready to go to the show. I asked him to pose and this is what I got.

That is a little better....

And here is a picture of Brandon after the show with his sequin tie and his friend Makayla who we carpool with to dance every week. 

And here are some videos from the dance concert.

This first video is the opening number of the show. Brandon makes a short appearance right at the very beginning....he's the kid who is being carried from left to right by 2 other boys. As a side note, his dance instructor is the main guy in this dance. He came through the BYU ballroom dance program, and has since competed on a national and international stage and won several titles. He is very accomplished and makes dancing fun for Brandon and the other kids on his team. Brandon is lucky that he gets a chance to work with such a great teacher.

(If you double click on the videos they will go to full screen.)

And this next video is the number that his dance team did. He is in the fox trot portion and then in it again at the end.

This last video is the finale number. His team takes a bow at the very beginning, and then comes on at the very end.

Very fun show to watch. Way to go Brandon!

Baby Weston is Born!

We made it to our scheduled c-section at 39 weeks on Nov 14th. It was such a different experience being able to take the kids to school, and going to the hospital in a leisurely way that morning. We got all set up at the hospital and were so thankful that Weston King was born without any unplanned excitement. He was 7 lbs. 7 oz. and 20.25 inches long. The cord was wrapped around his neck twice when he came out, so it may have been a good thing that we didn't attempt to do a v-bac. I was thankful to have Justin there with me the whole time!

And here are some pictures of our day....(and the last 2 weeks)

We loved having my Mom out to help for a week and she even put  together a lovely Thanksgiving dinner for us. You're amazing Mom!

And we'll leave it there for today. We love our Weston!

Brandon Makes His Mark

Literally. This story has a happy ending, but is pretty sad in the middle.

We were cleaning up after a fabulous Elder's Quorum meeting one Friday night in November. Justin knows how to put on a great family party, complete with good food, a pretty serious EQ Jeopardy game for the adults and two huge bouncy houses to entertain all of the kids.

We were almost finished with our clean up and Brandon was running around the gym. He hit a wet spot and before he could react went down fast and hard. His front tooth hit the wood floor and broke into several pieces, and chipped the corner off of the other front tooth.

Here is a picture of the divet Brandon's tooth left on the basketball court.

He was in pain that night, but we were able to get him to sleep with some medicine.

Thankfully the dentist was able to meet with us on Saturday morning to glue the pieces back together and bond the teeth. It looks really good now, and you wouldn't be able to tell that Brandon broke his tooth. He has to be careful with it, and when he is 18 or 19 will probably have to get a crown put on it. So, as happy endings go, in this situation, this is about as happy as it's going to get.

We're thankful for dentists and bonding!