Random Pictures 2009

I take a lot of pictures of things that meant something at the time, but then after I have no idea what to do with them. I probably won't put them in the photo book and (up until now) they didn't make the blog, but all the same I can't bring myself to delete them.  To validate my photography, I am going to devote this post to all the random pictures I took this year.

This is Noah dunking on the basketball hoop he made while we were in Idaho. It was surprisingly durable and entertained him for a long time. Score!

 

Zack would have left for preschool in this outfit. The headband over the snow hat look never really took off. At least his eyes are protected from Nerf bullets. You can never be too safe. 

The day Zack used his birthday money to purchase this marble track was the best day of his life. Buy one of these if you want your kids to be entertained for an entire Sunday afternoon. It might be the best day of your life.  

 

This spring the neighborhood went Bakugan crazy. This was the scene in my basement almost every day, but usually with more kids. They were coming from all over the place to trade.

 

Come springtime, all Zack wants to do is picnic. I think he and Mckenna started outside, but the wind picked up so they moved it to the garage. 

 

Remember how much Zack likes picnics? I forget the reason, and I am sure it was a good one, but we decided to eat our pizza on a blanket on the kitchen floor.

 

 We ran out of the cement stuff with only this much left to go.  And that is the story of our lives when it comes to home improvement projects. 

 

This was my contribution to the kitchen tile job-taping around things. And I needed knee pads to do it. The next day, the boys and I went to St. George and left Matt & Mike to do all the hard work.

There is a park in St. George with cool and unusual playground equipment. I have whole bunch of really crappy pictures of the kids playing on them. Playground photography is beyond my skill level, at least in this picture you can see all their faces. 

Nana has fun cookie cutters and uses them to make sandwiches. 

 

A broken arm=cool presents. Grandma sent a Bakugan mat & the Dobsons made this fun sign.

 

I don't remember taking this picture, but I  think they are ants on my sidewalk. Yulk. 

 

We get a lot of praying mantises (or is it manti?) and the kids like to catch them for pets, which usually ends badly. This is the grave and headstone that Lance & Zack made for their pet, Rose.  It said: "Rose Now Dead."

We took the boys pictures on this really cool tree. The individual pictures turned out great, the group shot--eh.  Cool tree though.

 

I take pictures of almost every snowman they build. It's a weakness.

And that's all. It was oddly therapeutic and now I feel less wasteful.

 

 

Kindergarten Spelling

A note for Santa:

Translation-Stop put the presents under the tree.

Cookies and Carols

We made sugar cookies which gave Zack and Lance the idea to deliver them to some neighbors. It also gave Zack the opportunity to fulfill his dream to go caroling. In addition to helping me cut out and frost, they did all the plating and tags themselves. Who wouldn't want these cuties to come knock on their door? 

Ben was nice enough to go supervise them and was just about to leave when I noticed that the plate of cookies he was carrying was a little squished. Too bad, because it had by far the best frosted candy cane of the day. (I suppose we could have delivered them to someone who prefers to lick frosting off plastic wrap rather than eat it on a cookie. Oh well.)

Santa

Festival of Trees

Every year I think that it would be fun to take the boys to the Festival of Trees. We finally did it this year. There are A LOT of trees and we started out strong and excited to see them all. This one could be Matt's dream tree.

This is more my taste.

An Eric Carle tree is fun. The ornaments were all the food the caterpillar from The Very Hungry Caterpillar ate--very cute.

This scuba diving/shark tree was really cool. I just didn't get a good picture of it. 

A tree for Grandpa. 

But after walking past a few rows of trees with crowds of people, the kids started to wear out. Then the thirst set in. And it wasn't long after that they were starving.  They couldn't  properly enjoy this super cute robot, or

 appreciate the Utah Jazz tree.

Poor Zack couldn't even walk.

 So we ate a few snacks, got drinks and coaxed the kids to look at a few more. We didn't want to miss this rockin' tree.

Or the various versions of the Grinch

We spent about an hour and a half looking before Matt & I called it quits. We didn't even see all the trees or make it to the wreaths.  Our kids are lightweights! Even with all the complaining, it really was fun to see all the creative and beautiful ways to decorate a tree.

Spanish singing should be fun, right?

Each year I can look forward to a Spanish Immersion Christmas program. The first two were at the school gym. It's a good venue because it's close to home, there is a stage & chairs, I can hear the songs and it's warm. Why mess with a good thing? Really, why mess? Because someone is messing and I am not happy about it. Last year we risked our lives on snow covered roads to get Noah down to the University Mall so that he could sing for...us. I am pretty sure he could have done that at the school. Instead, we waited 30 minutes past the time our group of over 100 kids was scheduled to sing, for some dancers who refused to leave the stage until they finished their performance. That wouldn't have happened at our gym. It was crowded & I couldn't hear anything. Hopefully that will be the end of mall singing.

This year they were invited to sing for the 1st annual Saratoga Springs Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. It's outside, a little fact I neglected to inform Zack of. I also should have prepped him that the Christmas tree wouldn't be very grand and that Santa would be there. The kid needs prior knowledge of what to expect or he'll cry, complain and whine like crazy and refuse to have any fun or allow anyone else to have any fun.

But even if he was happy I probably wouldn't have had a lot of fun. I couldn't hear hardly any of the songs, which may have had something to do with the fact that Noah has taken up lip sync caroling. The song Feliz Navidad is ridiculously long and repetitive and I missed the burrito song, which is my favorite. (On the plus side, it hasn't been stuck in my head.) We didn't even stick around for the high school choir, mayor's comments or the actual tree lighting. It was the frozen toes that finally did me in. I am finished with malls & civic events. If they want the Francis boys' singing (or fake singing) next year they better have it in the gym.

Thanksgiving In St. George

St. George is a nice place to go for Thanksgiving. A good reason (for Noah and I) was that it is warmer. Noah wore shorts the entire time. A great reason was so that we could celebrate with Papa and Nana & the Harris family. On Thanksgiving Day we tried to take the kids to the St. George Temple visitor's center. We were too early so we only saw this.  I love how white the temple looks against the blue sky. It is such a pretty temple.

For the big dinner, we had a slight seating dilemma: six kids and only four bar stools.

In order to sell Zack and Charlie on using the coffee table for dinner we made it look fancy. This gave Charlie the impression that she and Zack would be on a date. She went and changed into a fancier shirt and then told Zack that they were going on a date. I wish I had a picture of the stunned look on his face. He definitely did not want to pretend date Charlie, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings either. They worked it out and had a good time at their little table. 

On Friday we drove over to Zions and went on a little hike to the overlook.

 

 

The rest of the weekend we spent swimming, shopping and hanging out. We are definitely thankful we have such a great family.