Christmas Holidays 2011

Getting ready for Christmas this last year was crazy. I think this year I will have to start in July if I want to get everything done. on top of working to finish decorating the boys rooms we did the following.

I was Santa's elf this year and made a fold up airport.

sorry the picture quality is bad I used my phone.

made my mom a bulletin board with old patterns, sewing stuff, and button push pins.

made my Nephew a science kit. with lab coat and science experiments in the book.

 I never took a picture of the gift i made my dad this year. it was wooden blocks painted black, with B&W pictures of each of the grand-kids and a letter on each block that spelled out "We love Grandpa"

went through ALL of the boys toys before Christmas this year. Was starting to wonder if I should give them any more for Christmas!?

Hosted Christmas Eve dinner with Rob's family.

 We also went to a rest home and sang carols one night with Rob's family.

made a ginger bread manger scene at our annual Ginger bread making with my family.

this was Dean's creation.

went out to eat and Temple square with my family, just like old times. This is all of my family except my Brother Matt who is serving a mission right now.

All the Grand-kids on my side of the family. first time they were all together!

Hosted New years party. second annual Steiner cousin party. what a bunch of crazies!

Thanksgiving 2011

 We started a tradition a few years ago of doing a 5K every thanksgiving. We moved farther away and so this year we went to a new one in Orem. It was only two miles, but we still had fun and kept the tradition going.

we really need to stop taking pictures from this angle! arg!

 This year I started a new tradition i want to keep going. I started a thankful book. each page will be a different year and have a photo of everyone we have Thanksgiving with that year. around the photo everyone will sign with one thing they were thankful for that year. I think it will be fun in a few years to look back at what we have written.

love my family!

kids thought it was a nice day to go canoeing.

This is my Gramps!

Halloween fun!

 We have had a fun Halloween season.

Dean had a field trip to a pumpkin farm and picked out a strange looking pumpkin.

The boys and I made hand and footprint ghosts.

We went to a pumpkin patch in Springville (same as last year) we saw the biggest pig we ever saw and had fun in the corn and in the hey maze.

We skipped buying a pumpkin there, they were pretty picked through and what was left was rotten. We went down the street and bought some healthy large ones at Walmart for only $1.88 each!

 We had fun carving pumpkins this year!

Dean wanted his to look surprised!

We made Brig's look like him when he does his evil laugh.

Dean dressed up like a ghost this year (the only costume I made this year). He is holding his mouth open in all his pictures to look like a ghost mouth.

Brig and Rob went as pirates that we wore 3 years ago when Dean was that age.

I went as Fiona from Shrek a costume I made our first year married (7 years ago) 

I made trick-or-treat bags for the boys this year. (a ghost and a bat)

Andrea

Warning: this is not a happy post.

Life is so hard and for some of us it is too hard. We don't know why things happen the way they do. Only God knows that!

Andi and her son

 Within minutes of posting my post yesterday my sister called and gave me the horrible news that my dear, sweet cousin, Andrea, took her life. She is 28 years old, a mother of two (5 and 4), a wife of an amazing man, who just buried his father on Saturday. My heart goes out to them during this tragic time.

Andi and I

Andi and I

My earliest memory of Andi was on the front porch of our grandmother's house. I was trying to get in to use the bathroom, I think, and she was guarding the door, ready to bite me if I came any closer. Though most of my earliest memories were similar to that one, we apparently had fun together as well, sometimes getting into trouble.

In the photo we are jumping off the bed onto the mattress thing on the floor, doing it again and again, I think we were suppose to be sleeping. I've also been told of a time we were caught in my grandparents bathroom with the entire floor covered in toilet-paper.

Salt, Pepper, and Brown Sugar

My favorite memories were the Steiner reunions, when Salt (me), Pepper (Cherese) and Brown Sugar (Andi) would share a tent (later the younger girl cousin joined us) and stay up late talking about anything and everything. Of course this would normally lead to the subject of boys at some point. I remember how freaked out she was about the thought of sex. She thought it was gross. It was gross that her parents did that and she would say she was never going to do "that" with her husband.

Cherese, Bryan, Andi, and I

A few other random memories are that she didn't like mayo or mustard. Everyone who knows her knows she loved bears. They decorated her room growing up and her house when she was older.

She seemed to have it all put together, such an easy going person. So caring, She always wanted a job where she would be able to help people. I am sure there are many people who are better due to her help. I've always admired her drive and desire to do this.

I miss you and Love you Andi! This world is not as sweet as it use to be, without our Brown Sugar!

First Day of School

I know this is late, but I had to post about Dean's first day of pre-school. He started school on his birthday which was a very exciting for him.

He got to bring cookies to share with the class. He also got to pick out a book as a birthday gift. He chose The Old Woman Who Swallowed Some Leaves. It a great Fall book, you should check it out. He is going on his first field trip today. They are going to a dentist office.

Superhero Birthday party!

My two boys birthdays are 3 days a part. last year Brig turned one and we tried doing two parties. This year we got smart and threw one big party for the both of them. Super hero themed.

Invites: 

the letter states:We here at the CRIME FIGHTING SUPER HERO LEAGUE have noticed you and your special skills. Skills that are necessary and vital to crime fighters. Do you think you have what it takes to be a Super Hero? Super Dean and his side kick Super Brig seem to think so. They have invited you to our SUPER SECRET SUPER HERO TRAINING FACILITY at (address). Training begins at 17:30 hours (5:30) on the tenth day of September 2011. Please come in your Super Hero uniform (if you don't have one, one will be provided for you) and be prepared to work hard. Becoming a super hero is not for everyone, but it could be for you. We hope you decide to become a part of the CRIME FIGHTING SUPER HERO LEAGUE.

Regards, Justice Forall

As guest arrive we had felt masks and plastic table clothes (cape) available.

We had a jar of Peanut M&M's for everyone to guess how many where in there.

We also had a photo booth area. There were props; dumbbell, wham, pow, bam signs, and the backdrop had a speech bubble that said Happy Birthday Super Dean and Super Brig .

 

We then had dinner and served Superhero sandwiches, sidekick sides, Hulk juice (green kool-aid and lemon-lime soda), and iceman water.

After dinner we had a trivia sheet for the adults, to test their superhero knowledge. And the kids went out to train to be a superhero. 

 

First: they must cross a lava pit (water and red kool-aid in a pool)

second: they must find the kryptonite from the bat cave. ( blankets over chairs to make a dark cave. We then put glow-sticks in there.)

third: they had to learn how to dispose of hazardous material. (using tongs they moved green painted rocks (kryptonite) to a cooler labeled hazardous material.

Fourth: vaporize a villain (we put villain faces on Helium filled balloons and gave the kids cans of silly string (spiderman webbing) to take down the villains. You could also use a person dressed like a villain.)

some ideas I did not get around to doing were: jumping over buildings (made of boxes, blocks, or legos) learn to fly. (Jump off stool into pile of pillows), getting yourself out of a sticky/stringy situation. (have yarn strung into a web. Have each child take an end and follow it to the other side. We were going to have the silly string on the other side.)

After training we went inside for cake and Ice cream. Most years I've had my sister make the cakes, sense she is a pro, but she move across the country this past year so I took what I learned from her and went for it myself, this year. In case you cannot tell what it is we have a city scape on the bottom with the bat-symbol in the sky. Then the top is a web for spider-man with a superman cape draped off the side. The two figures on top are hulk and ironman.

While everyone ate cake and ice-cream we read off the winner of the candy jar and the answers to the trivia questions. We then opened presesnts.

Labor Day in Ogden

For Labor day we went to Ogden and had fun at three places.

First we stopped at The Air Force Museum:

Second we went to the Union Pacific Train Museum:

Third we went to the Dinosaur Park:

35. Build a dog house and get a puppy.

As you know we got a puppy earlier this week. So yesterday we were going to build him a house. I had found a house plan online that was simple. the house was only for dogs up to 50 lbs. we had to enlarge it so it would fit our puppy when full grown. He is expected to get to 65-90 lbs according to what typical Labradors grow too, but his previous owner says they believe the mother may have some Great Dane in her.
After drawing out the plans we headed off to Home Depot (about 20min drive when there is no traffic) we got there and realized that we forgot the racks for the top of our car. A must for taking lumber home in our car (see picture below). We went back home and got them and ran into traffic on the way back to the store. When we finally got there, it took about an hour to find everything we needed. We started adding up the cost and realized it was going to cost us $200 or more to build this thing. we knew we had seen dog houses for cheaper so we stood there in the store looking up dog houses online on my Husbands phone. hehe! and sure enough there were plenty of dog houses online for way cheaper. We decided to ditch (okay we put most of it away) the stuff we had gathered and went to Pets-mart (another 10-15 min farther from our house) to see if they had anything in-stalk. Well they did. It was the same size that we were planning on building, but only cost $70. We figure even if we have to buy another one or two in his lifetime we still came out ahead.

We still had to assemble it so it still counts as building it, right?

our small car

Neville trying to help

 Neville got all tangled with his rope so we let him off the rope and he would keep stilling things from us, like the tools or the foot of the dog house.

chewing on the foot from the dog house

 This is the only time you will see my husband in the dog house. 

Right Honey?

Husband in the dog house!

 We will have to find a cover for the door to keep in the heat in the winter.

check out the size of the door.

 And Finished!

We have a puppy!

Meet Neville!

Neville Longbottom Lawrence that is.

The boy's got an early birthday present the other day, a Black lab mix puppy.

He was born June 25,so about 9 weeks ago.

He is so much fun. 

We are hoping to get him a dog house soon so he will not be staying in the garage forever.

We went to the zoo and saw...Dinosaurs?

 That's right! we saw dinosaurs. They had a traveling dinosaur exhibit come this summer. They move, roar, and some spit water at you. Dean about jumped out of his skin when I asked him to stand in-front of the first one we saw, for a picture, and it roared at him.

We saw all the other animals available to see and no zoo trip is complete with our family with out a ride on the train. They are redoing a section of the zoo, over by the bears. It looks like it will be really nice when it is finished next summer. They have little steam shovels, for the kids to use in sand, over by the construction site. very cute.

Lawrence Reunion

We got back from the Lawrence reunion a few weeks ago. The last time we had one was three years ago. We have so much fun when we get together, we are hoping that it will not be another three years before the next one.

We stayed in a 7 bedroom cabin up near Heber at a place called Timberlakes. We went boating at Deer Creek the first day and then spent time in Park City the next day. We played games, visited and ate yummy food  in the evening.