Update in Pictures

None of these pictures are really that great, and they were spaced out few and far between the last couple months, but for record-keeping purposes, here they are.

Christmas Eve dinner with all of my family, minus the Holts. We had our traditional soup, salad, Christmas jello, and rolls.

Christmas morning: Santa brought Darren (and Jerry) nerf guns, a spiderman punching bag, and a camera. He brought a barbie doll house with furniture and a wedding Barbie for Claire, and a parking garage with lots of cars for Miles. They have had fun playing with these and all the toys they got from everyone else. Miles especially loves his mop and broom cleaning set!

Darren got this cute cowboy hat from Aunt Christina. Miles doesn't let him wear it very often.

Santa also brought our family a trampoline. We have all had fun on it. This is Miles with his friend Natalie.

All of the kids getting ready for bed on New Year's Eve at the Sheppard's. This was one of our most fun New Year's Eve Parties.
Last week I turned 28! Miles also had four teeth come in last week. Now he has 10 sweet teeth. As you can see, he doesn't have any problem eating birthday cake.

We ate out twice -Cheesecake Factory and Spring Creek BBQ, and I got a pedicure. On Friday, my friend Tiffany hosted a birthday brunch for me. Except for getting older, it was a great birthday! Thanks for all the birthday cards, phone calls, and e-mails.

The following Sunday, my family came up for dinner. We also got to see my cousin Reed, who has been living here temporarily.

Darren and Reed playing with Light Sabers.


Truly, the best Christmas and birthday gifts this year were spending time with family and friends!

Jerry and the Bear

It's been a while since we had anything funny on our blog . . . my dad found this one in his video archives - beware, it's pretty intense!

Master Bath Redo

One of our projects last month was to paint our bathroom. It was probably the ugliest room in the house before. I hated the tile because it didn't go with any of the other colors in the house, and the walls were a boring white - but we love the way it turned out! We took down all of the vanity mirrors and replaced them with smaller, framed ones. The mirrors were a little too tall, so Jerry had to move the lights up and install a third one - which, as you can see, we are still waiting for in the mail. I painted and then put a tea stain over everything to add a little more visual texture. Oh, and we also added another towel rack above the bathtub. We are almost done painting our house - just the nursery and a bathroom to repaint!

Happy New Year!

This was one of our best Christmas breaks ever! Darren and Claire got to stay with my parents for five days before Christmas, which gave me just enough time to finish painting my bathroom, steam clean all of the carpets, clean the house, and finish shopping. This was probably the best gift I could get. Jerry was able to build a really cute barbie dollhouse for Claire and hooked up an LCD TV and BlueRay player for our media room.

My mom, dad, and brothers brought Darren and Claire back on Christmas Eve and stayed with us for several days. We had a fun time playing games and hanging out with them. But for some reason, we didn't take hardly any pictures!

After they left, my sister Christy, Jon, and their little boys,Tommy and Joey, stayed with us for a couple days. We had fun with them, too, especially decorating sugar cookies. Tommy calls me "Michal Man." I'm glad no one thought of that when I was in elementary school!

To wrap it all up, we went to a really fun New Year's party. The kids all slept upstairs while the grownups stayed up late playing games. What a great idea!