Makenna's Birthday!

What? How could this have happened? The little girl that I've been calling "baby" for the last two years had another birthday? Well, she is definitley not a baby anymore, so I guess I will have to come up with another nickname, dang-it. She may weigh 20 lbs more than when she was born and she may talk in little sentences and have a mouth full of teeth, but she is still such a mama's girl that it's a little hard to let the nickname go. I'm getting better about it, but it still slips out once in a while.

For her birthday we had a little get-together with my parent's and Courtney's family. We had everyone over for dinner after church. There was a glitch with the cupcakes so there was a little more last-minute stress than I would have liked, but it all turned out fine. Whew!

Here's Makenna in the sleeping beauty dress she got from the Moses family. She's been borrowing Alli's dress-ups for a little while now, so it was time for her to get something of her own.
Taylor - her best friend, cousin, and crazy girl that found my water spray bottle and "styled" her hair all by herself. Cute! Love that mischevious little smile.

Alli was a very big "helper" and showed Makenna how to open her presents (and by showed I mean opened all her presents for her).

She also "helped" her blow out her candles...I guess I'm not the only one that thinks she's still a baby.

She did manage to eat her cupcake all by herself, though. And I should mention that despite the fact that I ended up making the cupcakes from a generic mix that expired a year ago and the frosting from a recipe that I've never tried before and has a reputation for being a bit temperamental, they were probably the best cupcakes I've ever made.

She loves the horses and stable that we got for her as well as the rocking chair and shoes from grandma and grandpa and the outfit and book from great grandma and grandpa. Happy birthday Makenna and thanks to everyone who made is special for her!

Christmas...finally

I know...I know...I am way behind. I think I will go ahead and blame that on two reasons: 1 - Brian took the Christmas pictures with his camera and he had to take the time to teach me how to get the pictures off and 2 - we (mostly Brian) have been really busy finishing our basement so that exasperates reason number 1. We got carpet in the basement last weekend (woohoo) and everything looks good so we are close to getting our lives back. I cannot wait for a Saturday morning when we wake up and have something other than working on the basement headlining the day's activities. Enough about that for now. I will post some pictures when it's all done!

So Christmas was great this year. We stayed home and Brian's mom flew in from New Mexico. The kids were so excited to pick her up from the airport on Christmas Eve morning. I recently asked Nick what kind of vacation he wanted to go on this summer and he said he wants to go to the airport. I thought maybe that meant he wanted to take an airplane somewhere, but no, he just really likes airports because that's where we pick up grandma!

After we picked up grandma we went to breakfast at Mimi's and then we hung out for the afternoon while Kenna napped. When she woke up we headed to my parent's house for Christmas Eve. We enjoyed our traditional Italian dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and then the kids got to open two presents from grandma and grandpa - pajamas and an ornament. We missed having Courtney and Russ and David and Natalie with us this year, but it was their turn to see their other families.

This first picture is of the kids on Christmas morning in their matching snowman pajamas. We woke up that morning to a cold surprise - our furnace went out in the night. Luckily Brian got it fixed and up and running in no time.

I love this next picture. I think Makenna was a little tired before we started opening presents.

It's present time. Here are the kids opening the Kinect they got from grandma Arens.

This one makes me laugh, look at Makenna's tongue. We were finishing opening presents. After that we headed to my parent's house for breakfast and then went to church in their ward.

Nick and Alli were very excited to get cameras for Christmas from Santa. They took a combined 800+ pictures in the week following Christmas.

Here's my cutie Alli opening a present from David and Natalie at grandpa and grandma's house after church.

And here's me, lovely me. We had a relaxing Christmas afternoon and then we had a yummy prime rib dinner and pumpkin pie for dessert.