Merry Christmas Everyone!

Just wishing everyone everywhere a very Merry Christmas! We wish we could be with all of you but we are going to enjoy a Missouri Christmas for the last time. Today we are making cookies for Santa, wrapping presents, watching movies, laughing, and loving being together. Tonight we will eat BREAKFAST, open presents, and go to bed early so Santa can come! Jealous? Come on over, everyone is welcome!

Here is your Christmas Card! See how I remembered everyone! That's cause I love you all.

So big!

Annie loves to pick out her own outfits for school. This morning, with no help at all, she got to pick her very own clothes.
What do you think?

Up to no good!

Barry has figured out that he can use things to get around with. I was cooking dinner and looked over and here came Barry walking out of the playroom!

Oh Christmas Tree...

Thanks for finally coming to our house and bringing Christmas with you. We started a tradition last year with cutting down our tree from a tree farm right outside of town. The kids loved it and couldn't wait to do it again this year. We picked the perfect day. The sun was shining but we still had to bundle up for winter. It was fun.Once we found the tree that we all wanted, Tyler got out the saw and sawed away. He is a very good tree cutter downer if I do say so! We pulled it back to the car, tied it to the top of our van, and drove it home.
We had a blast decorating it and the girls did a great job of hanging all the balls on it. I think it turned out beautiful. Once we got it up, Annie said "Now Christmas is here." And every morning she turns on the light and giggles.
Barry has done really good job at not pulling on the ornaments. I think it is cause the needles are so sharp and he is surprised every time he touches the tree and gets poked. Hallie is just counting down the days for Santa to get here. Only 16 more days.

Look who's one

Barry turned one a couple weeks ago but I am just now getting the post up. We had to have his birthday a couple days early because I had to be in Utah for Kensi's wedding on his birthday. Plus, he didn't feel the best so it was not so fun a birthday but we made do with what we had. That picture at the top is him enjoying his leg rubbing from Dad. He laid there for a good 20 minutes.
Barry is so much fun and we love all that he brings to our family. We love having a boy and a boy he is! He grunts and growns instead of whining. He won't play with the girl stuff but goes crazy over cars and animals. He eats like it will be his last meal every time. He has no fear of trying new stuff. He climbs and climbs and climbs. The other day he climbed half way up the stairs and then climbed down. No fear. We love it.
Barry is now crawling, climbing up to everything, walking along furniture, saying Hi, dad, uh-oh and loves to shake his head no and yes. He signs milk and we are working on the sign for food. He loves to be out and going. We just found that he loves to sit in the carts at the stores that have the steering wheels. He throws a fit when we take him out. Oh, and he loves to cuddle. Every morning when he wakes up and after every nap he requires at least 5 minutes of snuggling. I don't complain at all.
He loved his cake and dug right into it. If you can't tell, that is a dinosaur on top! Have I mentioned that I love boys. It is so fun doing stuff other than princesses and flowers. Not that I don't love that to, it's just fun doing both.

Some of Nick and Megan!

Here are a few of my favorite ones of my other brother and his cute family. Little Katelyn was a mover and we had to move faster than her to get the pictures but I think we got lots of cute ones. Oh, and here is another one for Tyson and Lori. (Is this the one you were talking about?) And if you want to see all of the pictures that we took of Nick and Megan then go here!

Here's for Lori and Tyson!

I got to go to Utah last week and while I was there my brothers and their cute families let me take pictures of them. Here are some of Tyson and his family. We were all laughing our heads off at the two kids. They were so much fun. Thanks for letting me do this. Miss you guys so much and loved hanging with you! Hope you like them!

Miss Hallie

I think time has been going by to quickly lately and my kids are getting to big.Hallie 7 months old The other night we stopped to get gas in the van and Annie asked why we needed to put gas in it. I told her that gas in the van was like a battery in the toy. It made it work. Then Hallie said " So toys need batteries to work, cars need gas, and we need food to make us go." How did she get so smart and what 5 year old can think of that?

She has now lost 2 teeth and she is so proud of it. She loves the tooth fairy and thinks that she should bring a dollar for the number the tooth is. 1 dollar for the first, 2 dollars for the second and so on. We tried to explain that the tooth fairy can't afford that but I don't think she believed us.
I had my first parent/teacher conference for her. Her teacher said she is doing wonderful. She is the top group of the class and she absolutely loves to learn. She does have one problem though. She likes to follow the crowd. And right now the crowd is a little boy named Eric. The teacher things she has a crush on him but she called him "the bad boy" of the class. Great, how do you deal with that?
She is such a big help right now and so much fun to have around. She is always teasing everyone and especially loves to tease her Dad. For some reason, every time she walks by him so will reach out and hit him. Every Time! I laugh and Tyler growns!

Are you ready....

For some good/surprising news? We finally know where we are going!! As most of you know, the 3rd and 4th year of Tylers school is done at different Hospitals because Kirksville is just to small to get all the experience they need. So they do a match during the second year to find out where you go. We picked our top 6 spots and submitted them. The computer does it randomly but with our luck each time our name got drawn the spot we wanted was full. This resulted in Tyler not matching any where. He was one of 4 students (out of 180) who didn't match.
So after lots of no's and maybe's we finally got a spot in WARREN, OHIO. We are excited about it and will let you know more about it as we learn more. But one thing I know, they do have a Level 1 ER which is what Tyler wants to do!

Happy Trick or Treating!

We had an awesome Halloween! This year we were A Witch and Belle and a little Bear! The girls were very excited for the day and had so much fun being in their costumes all day. Barry was just excited to be out and doing something different than being at home. Hallie and Annie are getting very quick at going door to door and we finished the route that we did last year in half the time. It was a lot colder but still tons of fun. Our Fun Halloween agenda including:

*Ward Carnival and Trunk or Treat
*Pumpkin Carving with the Palmers
*Trunk or Treat with Dad's school
*YMCA Carnival
*Traditional Chili for dinner
*And most important... Trick or Treating

Hope everyone had an awesome Halloween.

Pumpkin Patch

Today we went to the Truman Farm. Part of the trip was going to the pumpkin patch and picking our own pumpkin. My kids loved it and were so excited to be able to pick their very own pumpkin. They both walked around for awhile looking at each pumpkin and finally decided on one. It was so much fun. They even picked one for Barry. I am not sure if he is too excited about the actual pumpkin but he loved being outside.
Happy Pumpkin Season everyone!