I can't believe the entire year has gone by without me posting once! This year has gone by so quickly! I really can't believe it's almost Christmas. Well here is a glance at our year, going backwards!
My mom came for a week to help me out with our new little baby, Allie. She was here with us for Thanksgiving and it was so nice to have her here. She has been working on my high school t-shirt quilt for a few years and she finally had the opportunity to finish it last week. After Thanksgiving dinner we went to our Church building and tied the quilt. It's really fun to have, the t-shirts bring back fun memories! I know it was quite a bit of work and I so appreciate her making this for me!
Merry Christmas! Taking pictures for our Christmas card!
In March we found out we were expecting with our fourth child. She was due November 25th and came November 15th! Here is our cute little Allie, she looks just like Maddy did!
Our sweet Allison Lanae, came 10 days early and weighed 8 lbs 11oz! This was a huge surprise! I always carry full term so I was in total denial that my water may have actually broken! I woke at 4 AM on the 15th to my water breaking. I wasn't sure if it had or not so I waited until Spencer got up for work to talk to him about this. After a blessing and and some thought I finally called my doctor at 7:30 to see if he thought I needed to go to the hospital. He told me to go to the hospital and I was sure they were going to tell me I was nuts and send me home. After testing to see if my water had broken they came in to tell us that it had and it was baby day! My induction date was scheduled for the 20th and because I'm a planner the idea of going in to labor on my own wouldn't have been my first choice, but it was really kind of fun! The kids have been so cute with her! Especially Maddy and Bay! Allie has 2 very helpful sisters. Maddy can't stop kissing her on the head and telling us she is a big sister now and Bailey loves to hold her every chance she gets. SWBy, although completely disappointed that we were having another girl, has been pretty cute with her too. He told the girls that he would be "nice to our baby sister." The poor guy wanted a brother so badly.
October was a busy month for us. We celebrated Spencer's birthday and Maddy's birthday!
There is a farm by us that grows pumpkins, gives hayrides, and has an entire area of games and slides. The kids look forward to picking their pumpkins and going every year. It was chilly this year but we had a great time!
Tinkerbell, Rapunzel, and Captain America are all ready to go trick or treating!
Happy 3rd birthday to Maddy! She finally stopped insisting that she was 2 and 1/2 and is now proud to say she is 3!
SWBy played basketball this year and was so fun to watch! He LOVED it! SWB is the one with the ball above. He would get so excited when he made a basket and it was really fun for Spencer and I to watch. He sure is hustler. It didn't matter who had the ball. SWB would chase them down and steal the ball! He would often come home from school and tell me that he played basketball his entire recess. So we thought he needed a basketball hoop! He loves to be outside shooting hoops!
This was a big year for Bailey! She turned 8 this year and was baptized! It was such a nice day and quite emotional for me, watching my oldest get baptized. She is an amazing little girl and so responsible. I often have to remind myself that she is only 8 because she is acts beyond her years! I don't know what I would do without her! We had lunch and swimming at our house after Bailey's baptism.
I talked Spencer into getting an above ground pool this year! It was so fun to have. We so took our pools in Arizona for granted! Being pregnant I really didn't look forward to packing up towels, snacks, and children to go to a public pool and pay to get in. This was perfect and the kids LOVED it! However, by the time summer was over we were on our 3rd pool! The first 2 had holes! We're hoping this 3rd one lasts many years!
Before Bay's baptism.
My sister got married this summer. Here we are at her reception!
Bay had a friend birthday party this year, it was a swim party and she loved it. I love this picture of her friend in the air!
This is the picture we used for Bailey's baptism. What a cute girl!
SWBy was so excited to start Kindergarten! Here he is on his first day!
Bay started school a couple days before SWBy. Here are all the kids on Bailey's first day of 2nd grade!
We had family come visit this summer. Here are all the kids at dinner to celebrate one of the cousin's birthday's. This was after a fun day at Seven Peaks!
SWBy is the only one who took swim lessons this year. I was pretty excited that he passed! The poor kid couldn't relax himself enough to float last summer so he didn't pass! Having a pool really helped him learn to swim this summer as well. He went from swimming with a life jacket in May to swimming independently by July.
Bay was on a competition dance team last year and had a lot of competitions! It was so fun to be with her at those and to watch her dancing skills progress over the year. Here she is with SWB, Spence, and Maddy at her end of year recital.
SWBy got to play TBall in the Spring. He was so fun to watch. He hustled to get the ball every time and runs full speed to each base. One of his games he was running to 2nd and a kid from the other team was standing right on the base so instead of slowing down as he came into second he continued to run full speed and shoved the kid off the base. The kid and his team mate were getting after SWB for doing that and so were Spencer and I and his response was, "well, he was standing right on the base!"
SWBy attended a preschool that he absolutely LOVED! I was really impressed with his preschool and I loved that he loved it so much. Here he is with his sisters at his preschool graduation.
Bailey's class along with the other first grade classes had a car day at school. All the kids were supposed to make a car at home and bring it the day of the activity. They walked the track with their cars and learned or got something at each stop on the track. Here is Bay with her yellow jeep!
Easter! Here the kids just got done hunting for eggs.
Bay got to dance at a Utah Jazz game this year. She was so cute and did such a great job. Here she is below. Above is SWBy at the Jazz game.
The kids in their Easter clothes before Church.
My mom planned a family vacation to Disneyland this year. It was so fun! The kids had such a great time. We just happened to be there on SWBy's birthday so Spencer and I were feeling like the greatest parents ever! However, this did backfire on us when Bay asked when she gets to spend her birthday in Disneyland and I had to explain to her that Spencer's spring break just happened to be the week of SWBy's birthday and the week that we could go to Disneyland.
SWBy and I on the Ferris Wheel. Bay wanted to go on this and little did we know that the boxes slide back and forth. That came as a shock to me and made me pretty nervous the rest of the ride!
Here are all of us that went to Disneyland! It was a fun trip!
Here we are at Ariel's Grotto! My girls LOVED this! They got to meet all of the princesses!
It's a small world!
Here we are in our matching shirts!
Before we went to Disneyland we met my dad and he took the kids to a museum. You can see in the picture above that the kids had such a fun time!
Outside the museum.
Bay had to do an animal report and then make a poster she could wear and dress up like her animal. Lucky for me she chose to write about horses and I had a horse towel. All the first grade classes then participated in a parade around the school. Here she is the day of the parade.
Happy 5th birthday to SWBy! We celebrated with his cake and presents before we went to Disneyland. He LOVED his batman cake!
SWBy had a cavity and instead of putting a crown on a baby tooth I had them pull his tooth out. He took a pill that knocked him out pretty well. It was kind of scary to see SWBy like that but it was pretty funny watching him recover. He was so grumpy with me though. He did not want my help to walk!
We put new flooring in, in the majority of our home. It's been really nice.
Bay was supposed to dress up as a 100 year old to celebrate 100 days of school. It was cute to see her and her entire class dressed up.
We got pounded with snow at the beginning of the year. Because Spencer has a busier schedule with school I had to do most of the shoveling. My snow piles got so high that after a while there was no where left to throw the snow. I spent an hour and a half shoveling just our driveway one day. Here is Bay next to one of the piles of snow from our driveway.
Here is cute Bailey posing like the mannequin. One night she and I rode the train down to Nordstrom's to pick something up and while waiting for the next train Bailey decided to walk around the store and pose like all of the mannequins. She was so funny about it. It was a really nice night and so fun to spend time with her!
