Update #4

Monte grew an 87 pound pumpkin this year and carved it for his new apartment porch, the only problem...it was too big! He had to bring it back to mom and dad's and leave it on their front step for Halloween. What a rockstar pumpkin grower!

Devin went trick-or-treating with Ben and Tucker on a beautiful Halloween day!

Update #3

November 29th was the first concert in the tabernacle after the Christmas lighting on Temple Square. Our choir was honored to be invited back and perform the opening Christmas concert of the 2009 season.

My sister Elizabeth and I are in the lower right hand side of these two pics.

Ariel in the yellow lei, me on the right front row and Elizabeth behind me on my right.

Sister-in-law, Ellie, heads into the Tabernacle for our dress rehearsal.

Ariel in yellow lei, my mom in the purple lei, and

my sister Elizabeth in the glasses.

Queen of all Slackers Has Returned

I confess...FACEBOOK has totally destroyed my will to blog! There, I said it! But, being that today is January 1st, 2010, it seems as good a time as any to catch-up, update and re-up my committment to my blog.

Update #1
-Camera is broken! It will get to be fixed (or replaced) if I'm to have any hope of all at keeping this New Year's Resolution.

Update #2

-The 2nd annual Cousins Christmas Par-tay was held at the Wilkins' house again and another fun time was had by all! The cousins watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, ate pizza and drank rootbeer floats, slept over, had a yummy breakfast in the morning (compliments of Uncle Rog) then decorated ginger bread houses together...-everyone except James, I guess he grew too cool for such things this year. :(

I wasn't going to do it again this year until Liz told me that they were walking through the store one day and Little Ben said, "Mom, we have to buy that right now for the cousins party this year!" He was pointing to a gingerbread house. How could I possibly ignore that?

Shelby saved the day by making 7 batches of frosting for all the house decorators!

Tucker's Birthday

Because my sister, Elizabeth, and her two cute boys live just six houses down the street from me, we get to spend lots of fun family time together. Here's a little snippet from Tucker's birthday on August 6th. He's already 2 years old! It seems like just yesterday we were anxiously awaiting his arrival before school started that year...

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Ariel's Quilt from Grandma Bonnie

Now that Grandma Bonnie is finally feeling better after her car accident (oh yeah, I need to post that story too) she had a chance to present Ariel with her graduation gift. The quilt was about half-way finished when the accident happened so our great family friend, Mollie, took the quilt to her house and helped grandma finish it for Ariel. Grandma Bonnie is eternally grateful and Ariel is so happy with the way it turned out! Thank you Grandma, for another stunning piece of work. We feel very lucky to be blessed with so many of your beautiful works of art, from the Easter & flower girl dresses you made when the girls were younger, to the Christmas P.J.'s you spoil them with every year, to the baptism quilt for Devin, and now this beautiful graduation quilt. You are one TOP NOTCH Grandma!!!

Happy Birthday Devin

Today was Devin's 10th birthday! I'm especially excited about this one because he will be in 5th grade this year. He will be in the class right across the hall from me and there are only 2 fifth grade classrooms at our school. We do lots of switching and intermixing for various activities. That means I will get to see him in action and be right on top of his homework for the next 10 months. Here's to hoping we can survive the upcoming school year...Happy Birthday Dev...we love you tonzzzzzz!

Boy Cousin Sleepover

On Thursday, July 30th, we had a boys only party/sleep over with cousins. We had a lot of fun;

playing with "Sam" the puppet, "How's it goin' brothahs?"

splashing around in the water,

watching Peanut catch his very first mouse,

jumping on the tramp,

eating pizza for dinner,

playing video games,

WHAT THE..???...

and building marshmallow shooters for a fun game of war!

Tucker thought it was a brilliant way to eat marshmallows from a fancy tube!

Oh, we have so much fun with our cousins!!!

Ariel's First Car

This week we broke down and co-signed with Ariel to get financing for her first car. This is a pic of the kind of car she got. It's a 2002 Toyota Echo, gets 32-37 miles to the gallon and is in excellent condition! We saw it on Ken Garff's Internet Site and by the time Ariel and Roger got to the dealership to test drive it, someone else had gone before her and someone else was scheduled after her! The price on the internet was listed at $6,000.00, but Roger worked his magic and talked them down to $5,300! Ariel's car payments should be around $140-$150 per month and insurance will be right around $70 per month. We are all EXTREMELY happy she has her own car now...

Monte and Alisha's Engagement Day

On July 11th Roger videoed Monte's proposal to Alisha so I put it together with some music, words and hearts and posted it here.

My little brother, Monte, asked Alisha to marry him at the end of the auction at our family reunion. You can't understand what's being said on the video so I'll explain it a bit.
Alisha thinks Monte is bidding on an iPod, but during the day when she wasn't looking, he put the ring inside the container. She is obviously not pleased with how high he is bidding...most things at the auction go for $5 -$25 and he was getting up to $60, then $80, then $100 and so on. You can tell she’s getting more and more upset each time he makes a new bid because she hits him and tells him (through gritted teeth) not to bid one more time. Finally, when he makes the winning bid of $120 (I think) he takes her up to the front, gets down on one knee, grabs the wrong hand (hee, hee), then she says, "You're going to do this here?" He said, "Will you marry me?" And the rest is...well, you know.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

An Afternoon at the Gallivan Center

Ariel and Eryn spent the early morning hours of June rehearsing with the Granite Youth Symphony. They were practicing mostly patriotic music to play while on their summer tour during the first week of July. They had a couple of weekday concerts downtown at the Gallivan Center so one afternoon I gathered up the boys, got on Trax and made an afternoon of it!

We're boys...we'll take any excuse we can to ride the train downtown!

We enjoyed tasty snacks and drinks,

watched Eryn play the piccolo solo in 'Stars and Stripes Forever,'


applauded the excellent sounds of the Symphony,

played on the bars,

chased each other around the park

watched people walk their little doggies,

and had the most fun of all running and cooling off in the wonderful water fountain!

Outstanding concert girls!