Cooking with Kenzi for her 8th bday

Kenzi wanted to have a cooking party, so of course I went crazy and had a blast putting it together. I made 20 six inch cakes for the girls to decorate. I sure wish I had a double oven! They loved learning how to frost them and using bags of icing with different tips.
I made all of the girls these little cookbooks!
Kenzi LOVES being the center of attention!

They decorated their own aprons!
Making pizzas....YUM! Boyce was in charge of this and so the pizzas were a little large for the girls. He's used to boy-sized portions! They turned out great though.

Valentine's Day

I always make the kids breakfast on Valentine's Day and have a personal letter and present on the table also. When the kids were younger, I use to buy them a stuffed animal or toy, but now that they are older I do gift cards or cash. Teenagers always like cash. I keep a copy of the letters that I write them, and it has been fun to see what their interests were that year. I'm hoping that I will continue the tradition and always send them a letter every year on Valentine's Day.

bringin' in 2009

This was a big snow storm for Ohio. The problem with the snow here is not that we get a lot of it, the problem is it snows, rains, snows, rains, and creates this thick layer of ice everywhere. Kaid spent hours breaking up the ice underneath the snow (rock salt doesn't do anything for it). We were out of school a couple of days for this because of the ice. The kids have loved the snow because it has been 5 years since they've had it. I still hate the snow.....Wyoming did that to me.

Kenzi reading to the dog. She can get pretty lonely sometimes because her brothers don't play with her that much. Sometimes her dog is the only one that will pay attention to her. And you know labs - they always want attention!
Boyce had the boys cook me an incredible anniversary dinner for our 18th! We had ribeye with sauteed shrimp on top and lobster. They took my order and served me. Of course I had to have one of everything. The best part was they cleaned up the kitchen afterwards.
The boys were at a New Year's Eve party, so we had a few friends over last minute and played their Guitar Hero. It was a blast jammin' to some 80 songs. When the kids are away, the parents will play!

Spending Christmas in Catskills, NY with Grammy and Grampy

After we left the city, we went up north to Catskills, NY to spend it with Grammy and Grampy Fish. We spent 4 days lounging around in our Pj's, eating, playing games, eating, sleeping in, and eating some more. I gained 2 pounds thanks to Lynita's fudge!

Darwin read the Christmas story while the kids did a puppet show. Did you know baby Jesus wanted to hit everyone and fight? Ethan was hilarious with baby Jesus!Yes, that is Grammy Fish singing with Guitar Hero. Ask Kaid how it went haha. Ryan and Lynita are definitely the best jammers of the bunch. I'm sure the neighbors didn't appreciate the loud singing as much as we did. We decided that they don't get out much with little kids at home, so they went a little crazy rockin' out when the kids were in bed.
Notice in the background that Kaid has just thrown a snow ball and Davin is the recipient of it!

Christmas in New York City

BRRRRRR! We picked the coldest day of the year to be tourists. We planned a trip to New York City for Christmas because we had never been and that is one of the perks of living in the East. We are only 9 hours away! We only had 2 days in the city, so we tried to pack a lot in. We rode a train from my brother-in-law's house into the city, a tour bus around the city, the subway, and then a boat around the harbor. We totally did the NY tourist thing. It was awesome!

Kenzi's favorite thing about NY was the pigeons. We paid how much money for her to chase birds around!
This is one my newest nephews, Owen. Boyce and Owen were bald buddies. I think the count for our nieces and nephews is now 57! Can you believe it? We are adding 5 in this year alone!
They had a huge ferris wheel in the Toys-R-Us. Davin and Kenzi love to play Monopoly together (probably because Davin can convince her to trade anything for his benefit of course), so I had to take a picture of this cart.
You can't tell in this picture how cold it is on the top of the boat. No one else was on the top because they weren't as stupid as we were. What we will go through for a few pictures.
Ellis Island - I love the history of New York.

We had to see the TREE. We didn't put up a Christmas tree this year (yes, we are that cheap) because I kept telling Kenzi we were going to see a big one. It was cool to finally see where my morning news is taped. I needed to see, hear, smell (good and bad), taste and touch NY because it always looks different compared to television.

Cute niece and nephews with Santa (the paid Santa of course). They were troopers being dragged around New York.
Bryce's favorite thing was a little jazz club he visited called the Village Vanguard. I'm ready to go back and see some more things!

Hanging Out With Med School Friends

For the first part of our trip, we were able to go to Pennsylvania to have dinner with the James and Amy, and Ryan and Amy. We had to stop the first day because Kenzi was driving us crazy asking to see Emma. We were supposed to spend a day with them in Hershey, PA on our way back, but unfortunately Davin got sick (too bad)! It was great to see each others kids and of course the men have to swap ER stories. I don't know who's worse - ER docs or fishermen.

Davin turns 12

Wow! I'm so impressed with myself. I'm actually posting this on the same day as the party! That never happens and probably won't ever happen again. Anyway, we tend to have some pretty crazy parties at our house, and today we had a "catapult" party. What does every 12 year old want to do - build a catapult and fling things at each other right! I had to tell them no to sending flaming things into the pond. We just had our lawn aerated, so they flung dirt "poops" at each other and loved it of course. Boy brains.....I just don't see how that could be so fun! Poor Boyce had to build one too many catapults with the boys and then go work all night. That about sums up his life as an intern.

I've had many requests for pics of our house, so I included a few trying to put people in them. Kaid's room is a mess, but that's how it looks all the time pretty much. He designed it and painted the stripe. Bryce's room to be is the basement area that we were building in. It will be nice, but we don't know when we will get it done (hopefully by Christmas). We were trying to avoid having to do much of it ourself, but finances tend to dictate things like that. Boyce got a new power tool (compound miter saw), so he is pretty hyped and motivated to build. He's been my hot handy man with a power tool!