Happy New Year!!

We always start off the night with fabulous food!!

My beautiful cheese ball...so yummy too!!!

Kyle watching some fireworks

Mommy and Kyle


Marlee, Landon and Kyle with their noisemakers

Jeremy and Spencer w/ his noisemaker

Alyssa and Spencer

CHEESE!!

I was finally able to get a picture of them together:)

Jeremy, Alyssa, Spencer, Hallee and Zackary

We always have such a blast welcoming in the New Year with food, games, family and....more food. Everyone brings at least one or two things to snack on throughout the night, and we play games as we wait for midnight to roll around. The kids have so much fun together and every year I'm surprised at how they can stay up all night long with such good attitudes. This year there were 14 kiddos ages 1 year to 9 years old. It's never quiet at our family holiday gatherings:). I hope everyone had as much fun as we did!!

Christmas '08

Cookies for Santa!!
Oh how they love silly putty:)

Spencer was so happy that Santa brought him the Wii game he asked for:)

For some reason, Kyle is absolutely obsessed with playing with erasers...I don't get it! He gets Gramma and Papa's erasers out of their office every time we go over there. He got this special surprise in his stocking at their house that morning and boy was he excited...what a goof ball:)

I know this post is almost 2 months overdue but I still wanted to do it. I can't seem to get my rear in gear!!! Christmas morning is always a lot of fun. The four of us wake up at home and open presents from Santa. The boys love to see how many cookies Santa ate and how much milk he drank. After presents, we eat the yummy cinnamon rolls Tyler and I made the night before (from scratch I might add) and they are DELICIOUS!!!!!! After we are showered and ready for the day, we head to my parents' house for presents with them and my sister's and their families. Later that afternoon we gather together with the rest of our family in town for a big Christmas Dinner. It's always a house full but a lot of fun.

Uncle Trenton's Wedding

For some reason Spencer kept giving the camera the "peace" sign all night. He cracks me up.
Kyle enjoying his little plate of food

What a couple of cute little goobers...they had so much fun that night.

Kyle, Tyler and Kelsey

The boys really had a good time scoping out all the different goodies.



Spencer caught the garter!!

He was very excited about it...It might have been a little rigged by the groom;)

Spence with his buddy uncle Trenton...does anyone else think they look alike???

Spencer opened an early Christmas present from G-ma and G-pa Stutz while sitting next to one of his favorite people...Aunt Kelsey:)
Back in December Tyler's brother Trenton was married. We planned to go up to the sealing in Portland, but there was a terrible ice/snow storm between Eugene and Portland so we weren't able to make it to the temple unfortunately. We were quite bummed and really wanted to be there for Trent, but it was safer for us not to make the trip up there. We were fortunate enough to make it to the reception that night though and we all had a really good time...especially the boys. We got to spend a little time with family and exchange some Christmas gifts with them which is always fun. I know it's a little over a month late but....CONGRATULATIONS TRENTON AND KASEY!!!

Chuck E. Cheese

So my kids see commercials for Chuck E. Cheese all the time. They beg me every time, "Can we go to Chuck E Cheese's" or "I want to go there so bad". We don't have one close by and Spencer had only been once when he was 2 years old. Tyler's brother was getting married December 23rd in Portland, and they have a Chuck E. Cheese there and one in Eugene. We took them on the way to the reception to the Eugene restaurant and they had a blast. We ate pizza, played games, and they played on all the toys and the tubes. We even ran into Chuck E. the mouse!!! What a fun afternoon!! I'm so glad we got to go.:-)

Piano Recital

Front row (left to right): Alyssa Parker Hallee Berklee

Back row (left to right): Candice Brendan Broc Kassidy

Back in December I held my second Christmas piano recital at my house. These are 8 out of 9 students. They each played 2 or 3 Christmas songs they had been practicing for about 2 months(some songs were picked out only a couple weeks prior to the recital). They were all a little nervous (I can relate) but they each did a great job. I'm so proud of them!! Since then, I've picked up 2 more students so now I have 11!! I really enjoy teaching piano lessons. I have a great group of kids to teach and I love the families I work with as well. Here's to another great year!!!

"Deck the Halls"

This is Kyle singing his favorite Christmas song at Christmas time. He loves to perform! :)

Tyler's 30th Birthday

The Olive Garden servers singing to Tyler
Poor Robyn thought she was just going out to dinner to celebrate Tyler's birthday. Well her birthday was that night so she was also sung to. What a good sport.
Our dinner table


Tyler's birthday cake...obviously.



His boys love to help blow out the candles.

Tyler's birthday was December 7th. I know I'm late in posting this but...tis the season to procrastinate!! Anyway, I planned a surprise birthday dinner for Tyler at Olive Garden(our favorite restaurant). His parents and sister came down from Eugene to celebrate with us. Everyone met at our house to surprise Tyler then we all drove over to Medford to eat. There ended up being 22 of us!!! We had a full table. My mom watched our boys and everyone else came childless too(with the exeption of little Marlee). This ended up being a really fun date night!! Thanks to everyone who was able to make it. We hope we can do this again soon!!

Take a look at Tyler's first 30 years!!

All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth

Spencer came home from school a couple weeks ago and his loose tooth had come out at school. He was so excited...it had been loose for a few weeks. He was so attached to it that he didn't want to put it under his pillow. In fact it's still in the container he brought it home in!! He's so funny. Hopefully one of these days he'll be ready for the tooth fairy to make an exchange:-). He's very proud of his tooth...

He's also quite fond of his new space. Both of his bottom front teeth have started to grow in!!

Kyle wanted me to take his picture too

Oh Christmas Tree

We went out on December 1st for Family Night and picked out our tree. The boys were both so cute looking through all the different trees. They kept picking out trees that were like 12 feet tall. They loved how big they were. I think we ended up with a 7 foot tree that they were more than happy with. We decorated it a couple days later(usually we decorate it the night we get it, but we needed more lights because some of the strands from last year didn't work, and Tyler ended up going out of town the night after, so it was undecorated for a couple days). Now it looks great(when Kyle isn't rearranging the ornaments)!!!!

Little Punk

So I had my cousin and her kids over one day, and the two of us were working on something downstairs. Spencer and Berklee were playing so good together all day and Marlee was just kinda hanging out with Stephanie and I for the most part. We hadn't heard from Kyle and Mason in a while. Spencer came downstairs and I think his exact words were "Mommy, Kyle and Mason made a huge horrible mess in my closet"!! I finished what I was doing while Stephanie ran upstairs to check it out. Then I heard her yell down, "Um Heidi, I think our kids need to be beat"!! She chuckled a little while she said this so I didn't think it would be too bad. I WAS WRONG!! Absolutely everything (within their climbing reach) in Spencer's closet was off the shelves and on the floor. We're talking costumes, clean clothes (now mixed in with dirty clothes) games, toys...you name it, it was on the floor. I grabbed my camera trying to make this out to be as humorous as I could, and of course took a picture. Mason said they were just trying to reach a game on the top shelf. I responded "If you can't reach something, come let me know and I'll be happy to get it down for you boys". I made Kyle come out of the closet and literally had to SQUEEZE my way through the door(it would hardly open). Eventually I got the mess cleaned up and luckily nothing was broken(a few things smashed but not broken). What a couple of STINKERS!!!:)