Sledding

Enjoying some after Christmas sledding and trying out the new snowboard!

Paul and Grandpa were so great to give Sidney and Rylee some good rides!

Christmas!

We sure had a great Christmas this year! Lots of fun spent with family and friends. There was serious wii playing, lots of excitement, anticipation, good food, and good memories!

The classic waiting on the stairs picture.

Some of Porter's favorite gifts this year were his own snowboard, a sleeping bag, nintendo games, nuggets and broncos jerseys, and basketball stuff.

Some of Sidney's favorite gifts this year were an American Girl doll, new blanket, sleeping bag, nintendo games, and new earrings.

Some of Rylee's favorite gifts this year were her new dollhouse, new blanket, sleeping bag, and new baby doll.

Then after we came back home we had our "California Christmas"! Everyone was so excited to have more gifts to open. We were very spoiled by our wonderful Welch side of the family!!

So many fun memories and traditions. Such a wonderful time to celebrate the birth of our Savior. Our family was blessed to be involved in service during this holiday season and we are so grateful for all our many blessings.

D-Day, or Dog Day at the Welch's!

Yesterday was D-Day! Allen and I decided I decided and persuaded my wonderful husband to surprise the kids with a PUPPY this year for Christmas! We haven't had a dog before and weren't planning on getting one for awhile, until my cousin Cara's dog had puppies in October. She posted some cute puppy pictures and all of a sudden I started thinking.......and then I started working on Allen!

Everything came together and my Sister Rachel and Paul were driving through Salt Lake City on their way home for Christmas and picked him up for us. They made the 10 hour drive with him and we surprised the kids last night with an early Christmas gift!

We knew for about 4 weeks and did a good job keeping it a secret.

So here is Porter, Sidney, and Rylee with our new puppy Oliver or Ollie for short. He is doing really good, pictures really don't show how tiny he really is! Last week he weighed .6 of a pound or 9.6 ounces, we are all trying hard not to step on him! The kids have been so excited! This morning Porter said, "I won't forget yesterday.....I just won't ever forget it!" Sidney keeps saying she can't believe he is, "all the way ours!" And Rylee loves to show him all her toys, one by one! So far he is one loved little puppy and luckily seems to like all the attention! It has been fun being, "the BEST Mom and Dad EVER" all day today!

We invited my Parents, brother, and of course Rachel and Paul (the picker-upers) over for the big surprise. We had the kids open the advent calender door for that day and inside was the first of 10 clues in a treasure hunt. They were so excited and did a good job of working together as a team to find all the clues and end up in the family room where we set the puppy in his little dog bed inside a stocking. The treasure hunt took about 15 minutes, but I pieced the begining and ending together for family that has been asking. Thanks again, Cara! We love him!

Christmas is coming to Town

Decorating the Christmas tree is always so much fun! We have a "kids tree" that Porter, Sidney, and Rylee get to decorate all by themselves. They look forward to it every year. Every ornament they get out is a different memory, and they get so excited when they realized they had forgotten about one from last year. They have built up quite a collection.

Of course Rylee was very excited and kept doing this after everything she put on the tree! So funny. She loves to have a backpack or purse at all times. It is always filled with totally random things. She was very prepared to decorate with her backpack loaded and ready!

We are really looking forward to Christmas this year, I think we have all been very good!

Twinkle Toes Sidney

Sidney has been taking ballet and tap from the wonderful Miss Mindi! She has had so much fun and loved having many cute friends in her class. Here she is all ready for her recital!

Such cute girls. She was very excited and kept saying she couldn't believe she was really going to dance up on the stage!

The highlight of the night was when Grandma and Grandpa surprised her by coming to watch and brought her flowers!! Allen also met us there with flowers, she was in heaven.

Sidney and Lily

What a cute girl we are so proud of her!

Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving! I love focusing on gratitude and everything we are thankful for. I love getting together with family. I love great food, movies, sleep overs, and just hanging out. We had a great Thanksgiving with my Parents, my brother Stuart, my sister Rachel and her husband Paul, and Paul's Mom Jean.

Rylee came down with Croup the day after Thanksgiving. And when we took her in we found out that Porter had Strep Throat (with absolutely no symptoms-except swollen glands)! Who knew! Luckily the office was open and we got them both on medicine and they recovered quickly! We'll just add Doctors and medicine to our list of things we are thankful for this year!

So, I don't have any real Thanksgiving pictures except for this one of the Thanksgiving shopping all-nighter that my Mom and Rachel and I went on!

We had so much fun! First we headed to the Outlets that opened at 10 pm on Thanksgiving night. We shopped there until about 3 am, then went on to Walmart and waited in line there until 5 am for a couple Christmas surprises for Porter and Sidney! Then over to Kohls and Target. We finished up and got back home about 7:30 am! The deals were great, but the most fun was just spending time with my Mom and Sister, getting excited for Christmas, and laughing at everything (because everything is SO funny when you are up all night)!

Thanks girls! Lets do it again next year!

Porter the Flag Football Star

Porter has been playing flag football and loving it. He has really learned a lot and really did a great job. His team was the Buffalos. He made at least one touchdown at every game.....usually two, caught a few interceptions, and made some great tackles! Allen was the assistant coach and had a lot of fun with the boys. They enjoyed practicing, strategizing, and looking up stats together.

The girls loved to cheer for Porter, take in the sun, eat snacks, and catch lady bugs! Funny girls.

I know it seems like a lot of pictures, but I ended up with about 800 pictures at the end of the 10 week season! So really this is just a very few.

The last two are of Porter catching the long bomb touchdown to win the game against the "formally undefeated" team in the league! They had beaten ever other team by a landslide and our Buffalos beat them! By the way, the Dads on the other team were pretty intense and it was a lot of fun to be down at the end zone with them taking these pictures and SCREAMING when Porter caught the ball for the win!!! Go Porter!

Happy Halloween!!

Two Princesses and Obi Wan Kenobi

My Mom and Dad came up for Halloween this year. My Dad loves Halloween and loves to decorate, but they live in the forest and they don't get trick or treaters! So we asked him to come up and decorate our front yard.

He didn't disappoint! The kids were so excited. The snow worked out pretty well to build up the graves. All of the kids and adults that came by loved it.

Porter and Sidney weren't sure they wanted to go trick or treating, they really just wanted to watch out the window and push the remote controls for the scary music and pop up zombie. Luckily the weather warmed up and even though there was lots of snow the side walks and driveways melted and it wasn't too cold to enjoy walking around the neighborhood. The kids said it was the "Best Halloween Ever!"