Merry Christmas in California!

We went to California for Christmas this year. It was a long drive, but worth it to see Chris's parents at the end of their mission. We had a great time!

 Davis was a cool dude chillin' in the car

Mom and Dad at the "linger longer" to wish them a safe journey home next week

Enjoying our Christmas Eve dinner in Mom and Dad's place

In our Christmas jammies. My kids can't smile for pictures at the same time, apparently!

Getting our Christmas presents! So fun!

We went to the Christmas light street in Fresno, California. Wow.

Our last pictures with Grandma and Grandpa.

We had so much fun spending Christmas with Mom and Dad on their mission in California. I guess this is our tradition as of late, to spend Christmas with our parents on missions. It's actually a really great thing to do, and great for our kids to see. However, I have requested that we spend next Christmas at home! We shall see what happens!

Happy birthday, Mommy!

Phew! By the time it gets to be my birthday, I am DONE WITH BIRTHDAYS and just want it to be over! But here is the birthday that we celebrated this year!

We had to take a trip to Utah, so we went to temple square to see the lights. It's kind of tradition for my birthday. It's also a tradition to go see the lights when the concert is going on for the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. So it was a little nuts, as always!
We also went to the movie They Shall Not Grow Old. Holy smokes. It was amazing! Seriously, this is a movie everyone needs to see!

This is the best gift of my birthday! I started working for this company, and needed a desk for my stuff badly. So I got this standing desk! Hooray!

Happy 4th birthday, Reagan!

Reagan is four! I can't even believe it! We had a fun birthday with her. . . after Davis went to kindergarten, I took her with one of her friends to the Artitorium, and then to ice cream. It was great!

Here she is opening her gifts from Mom and Dad. She got her great-grandmother's dolly bed, a dolly to go in it, and a new car seat. She loves the dolly bed! I had it when I was a little girl too, so it's pretty special to me!

Having her play date with her friend, Marian

Opening her present from Grandma and Grandpa. She got a castle, and the dolls that go in it. She LOVES it!
Things I want to remember about Reagan turning four:

• She is SUCH a girl! She reminds me every day that her favorite colors are pink and purple. She loves dolls and Barbies, and anything girl.
• She is a great little sister. Davis is her very best friend. It is hard to see him go to kindergarten every day, but somehow we make it through!
• She is my little pal. While Davis is in kindergarten, we go run errands together, and most of the time, get a little "mommy-daughter" treat. It's pretty awesome.
• She loves to color. She could be happy coloring in her coloring book all day long. Give this girl some paper and markers, and she's happy for hours!

We sure love this little girl and are grateful that she's part of our family!

Happy birthday, Daddy!

This was a big one! Chris turned 40! Wow, that's old! We had a fun day celebrating his birth!

First of all, his birthday was on a Saturday, which was great, and made for time for Reagan and her static hair to read Christmas books!

After Daddy exercised, the kids gave him their gifts. Because, let's be honest, anything that Chris and I want, we can purchase, like explained in this video! Especially since our whole family's birthdays AND Christmas are in December, this is how we roll!

But we went to a movie together! It was the best birthday present ever! We saw this movie!

At night, we went out to dinner with Mom and Dad. Chris had to dance for his birthday cake. It was awesome!

Happy 6th Birthday, Davis!

Davis's 6th birthday was last Tuesday! We had a great time celebrating with him! This birthday was a lot more fun than the last one, I think mostly because we weren't nearly as stressed going to Ogden for fingerprinting! Also, we loved the fact that NONE of us had school! This year was exactly like the year he was born, with his birthday on a Tuesday. Only, when he was born, we came home from the hospital on Thanksgiving. That was a ton of fun! Anyway, we had presents in the morning, friends in the afternoon, and grandparents at night! Here are some fun pictures!

Opening his gifts from Mom and Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa Rusch in the morning. He was super excited about the poster from Grandma and Grandpa, and put it in his room IMMEDIATELY! He woke up at 7:20 in the morning, because he was SOOO excited! Unfortunately, he couldn't open his presents until Reagan woke up, at about 7:45.

His breakfast of choice--french toast!

We had his friends Alvin and Clark come over. After we fed them pizza from Little Caeser's, we took the kids to the Playground (formerly Battle Zone). They have a ton of inflatables that kids can bounce around on, which was super fun.

Reagan was more interested in the toddler area. She did play with the inflatables a little!

Then Grandma and Grandpa came over for dinner. After present opening, we had million dollar spaghetti, which he requested, and more cake and ice cream. We love this boy!

Things I want to remember about Davis turning 6:
1. He is the BEST big brother ever! His primary objective in his life is to take care of his sister, and he does that very well!
2. He has the greatest imagination. If he had his choice (which he does most of the time), he would be shooting things all the time, with his fake weapons, of course.
3. He LOVES to learn, and is curious about EVERYTHING. I cannot even begin to describe some of the questions he asks me about. You never know what's going through his mind at any given time!
4. He loves to read and to do math. He feels so victorious when he can sound out a word, and does pretty well at it, actually. He's a smart kid!
5. All in all, Davis is very kind. I distinctly remember the day he was blessed, and Chris blessed him that he would be kind. Davis has always been, and I believe, will always be, a very kind kid. He takes it upon himself to make sure that everyone feels included in every situation that he is in.

We love you, Davis!

A garden story

We moved to Orem in 2011. In our rental, there was a beautiful garden! Everything was all ready to go, so we took advantage of it!

It was so much fun! And we got lots out of it!

These pictures are from our first harvest. During our 2nd year living there, we decided to plant turnips, just to see if they would grow. They, in fact, did grow. We were so happy with our turnips! Then Chris tried to make turnip soup. It was awful. After the first bite, we both decided that turnips were definitely not something we would try ever again.
So, in our minds, this gardening thing was no big deal! If you just plant things and water them, they grow, and then you harvest and eat and it's fabulous!
Then we moved to Idaho Falls, and were very sad to find that our yard had a lot of shade during the day, making it difficult to plant a garden. I tried doing a window sill garden for my herbs. It didn't work that well. But then, the city of Idaho Falls came to our door and said that we needed to have our apple trees trimmed in order to make way for the power line. I asked them to trim really far, because I hated that apple tree. I'm not sure if it was one apple tree or two, but at any rate, it had two trunks and looked terrible. They asked if they should remove it. So, low and behold, part of our yard now gets sun!!

Chris took a day off of school to make us a garden.

And Chris and his helpers made this:

And then we started planting! We thought that it would be fabulous like our last garden in Orem. However, we had a water problem last year. This happened basically because we have no experience in actually making a garden, and my parents were on their mission in Cincinnati, so they couldn't help. Thus, we were on our own!

However, the "expert" has helped (A TON!!) and, after I worked for about 7 hours this past weekend, along with some boys down the street (because of this) and now our garden now looks like this:

I never thought I would be so excited about dirt! Yay! So my dad will come help with our finishing touches next week, and we will plant! Davis is very excited and really really wants to plant cherry tomatoes, because he thinks it's so fun to eat them off the vine! I can't disagree with that!
Anyway, I have learned that, although gardening is hard an tiring, it is a lot of fun, especially when you have kids to do it with you. I also think it's a wonderful thing to teach kids how to do! We're excited for our harvest!