Family Christmas Pictures 2009

So here's the thing. Family Christmas pictures...it shouldn't be that hard to gather everyone together and snap a picture in which everyone looks reasonably good, reasonably happy and reasonably resembling a happy family.....should it? I mean other families do it, right? So we attempted it on Sunday! First of all I had strolled up Battle Creek Canyon earlier in the morning and it was a beautiful day, sun was shining, the streams were all frozen over and gleaming, the path was strewn with patches of snow and even a few fall leaves remaining. Perfect I thought, as soon as church is over I will have my brother-in-law grab his camera and come over and we will take a nice stroll up the canyon and snap a few pictures of our happy little family and check it will be done!

So as soon as I came out of church it was way clouded over, looked like snow was on it's way, hurried home and everyone was supposed to be dressed in dark colors and ready to go...of course they weren't and so we were off to a good start....lots of whining and complaining...why do we have to go up the canyon...let's just take them here....it's going to be too dark....and on we go!

To spare you all the gorey details everyone really enjoyed our little excursion, Brad and I exchanged many happy words on the way up and the way down and I think the pictures reveal what a really happy family we are! Ha, ha, ha!

Happy Thanksgiving and on to a Merry Christmas! Yeah, don't we just love the holidays! Well, at least the christmas cards are done and ordered, check!

Halloween at the Big FAM! AKA my job!

Oh we had some fun for Halloween at my work! Big Partay for the cute Expectant Parent Group that we have every week! All the workers dressed in costume and I got to be the fortune teller......I'm so psychic I handed out fortune cookies to tell the future and everyone got a laugh! I loved Katherine's Power Ranger Costume....custom made...it was awesome and Adrienne our resident cheer leader....you go girl. Loni was our demure pirate and Melinda joined Adrienne as her co-cheer girl! What a fun group! Happy Halloween! Oh and don't forget Adrienne's thriller dance....she is amazing!

Bowling Buddies!

Have I ever told you about my cute little Primary class? I love them all so much! At the beginning of the summer when I became their teacher we decided to earn a Bowling Party! They are sooo good they get points for all of their good behavior and it added up to one really super fun Bowling Party!

We decided to split up boys against girls! The boys raced through their games and I saw a few strikes and plenty of spares. Braxton even got a bonus strike when the automatic scorer screwed up and that was 3 strikes in a row for him! He was very worried about it and Amanda and I said just go with it! Cute little Sydney was so shy and said she hadn't bowled much, she would roll the ball down very, very slowly and she would get spares almost every time! Way to go Sydney! Jenna was a great little bowler and she decided to follow Amanda's technique of laying down and rolling the ball so she could eyeball that single pin better....ha, ha, it was funny! Max and Joseph kept everyone on track and the boys rooted for the girls when they finished their game early!

On the way home we stopped for ice cream cones....a delicious ending to a very fun afternoon! Thanks for all of your good behavior and cute smiles I get to see every Sunday!

October is the Birthday Month at the Beagles!

Celebrating 4 birthdays in one month can be exhausting! So we did our best! Mackay and Brad celebrated their birthdays in Hawaii! Can't get much better than that. Chris celebrated his in Iraq. We decided to have a family party on his birthday just to celebrate everyone's birthday and hey, it was a great excuse to get together. We invited the Stout's who turned out in force and Courtney and Kevin came up from BYU and what do you know they discovered that they live almost right next door to each other! It's good to know where your cousin lives at BYU!

We had a delicious dinner of Lemon Chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans...yummmy and for the party a great big delicious old fashioned world famous Martenson ICE CREAM CAKE! Whoot, whoot! We had a very BAD chorus of Happy Birthday......my kids always do their best to sing out of tune and it was especially horrible this year! No worries...it's alllll goooood! Chris we love you and we did our best to celebrate with you .....we hope we did you proud!

Post dinner we had a rousing game of Signs in which I think everyone got their turn in the middle.....so funny.....good job everyone! Celebration was a success! Love you!

The Niece's Reunion!

We had a ton of fun at the Niece's Reunion in October. The agenda was well planned and no shortage of treats, fun & good conversation....you might even say JUiCeY conversation! We started out with dinner by Jeanette.....always a good thing and followed that up with a carmel apple making demo.....for which Mindy turned out to be the pro! We are still waiting for that recipe Mindy! The apples were delicious and diverse with many flavor combos in the mix. Some of my favorites, carmel followed by white chocolate and cinnamon and sugar. Another favorite was carmel followed by chocolate and rolled in toffee bits. But some people got creative with reese's chips and baby chocolate chips and I saw at least one apple rolled in crushed oreos!

On to the crafty part of the night with super cute bracelets by Dodie. Noelle turned out to be the expert here with everyone consulting with her on color combanations. They all turned out so, so cute and totally fashionable.

At any moment and you never knew when someone would drop dead in some creative way as we had a game of murder happening all night long.....the who dunnit was none other than our own clever and creative Nalene! Kudos to all for the great acting jobs, I think Diana hiccuped to death and Karen Jump Roped to death and Dodie sang her self to death and Abby laughed or cried to death I'm not sure which! Anyway it was all very fun!

Next on the agenda was a little shut eye and we all bedded down all over the place....not so much sleep happened but that is what a slumber party is for....right?

Next morning we had a scrumpious breakfast by Karen, scrambled eggs, bacon and cowboy coffe cake! Yum! It all gave us enough energy to get ready and go shopping off to Gardner Village where there was much to entertain us....the WITCHES were out in force.....it was some haunting good fun for Halloween! Lunch was great and we didn't have to do the dishes! Yeah!

This was where the party sort of parted ways.........we all loved it so much we voted to do it all again next year! Husbands you have been warned! It's a hit the Niece's Reunion at Karen's! SEE Ya'll Next Year!