Happy New Year

We celebrated New Years by taking the boys downtown to the Fire and Ice celebration. There were Polynesian fire dancers, a volcano that spouted out fireworks and ice sculptures galore. Of course, Xavier was most interested in the big pile of snow other kids were sliding down. We also danced around a bit to a reggae band, but it was a little surreal to be dancing to island music when it was soooo cold outside! At one point they were playing, "hot, hot, hot," but we were really freezing. I'm sure you all don't miss those days. Toby slept in his stroller most of the time, but did manage to see the fireworks. He was pretty surprised at first, then just stared until they were over. I really do wonder what they thinking during times like these. Anyway, we had a fun time, but I think we will stay closer to home next year. We love you all and hope you have a wonderful 2010!

Pretty Pretty Princess

One of the girls new favorite games is Pretty Pretty Princess. A most have for all housholds! Apparently whether you have girls or boys! I would say that I thought Nathan was a good sport for playing with the girls, but it was in fact his idea to play, and I think he REALLY was having tons of fun.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night

We love and miss you all and hope you are having a wonderful Christmas. We had a fun Christmas Eve with two families that are very good friends over to our house and now we are all to bed waiting for Santa to come!

Happy Christmas Eve

We just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and tell you all how much we love you! Tonight we are going to take a drive to check out Christmas lights and hopefully catch a glipse of Santa on his sleigh. We're hoping for an early night tonight, because tomorrow, we are going to both Grandma and Grandpa LaVoie's house and Grandma and Grandpa Suttie's house (Yvonne's parents). It should make for a busy day. Hopefully the boys get a good night's sleep tonight. And we hope everyone settles in tonight for you all too!

So, I wanted to let you all know that we are still alive and well here in Idaho. Trever was busy with finals and then now his computer is off getting some warranty work done. Since we live in a small little place we have only his laptop now, so no good opportunity to get on here and post. I love seeing the new family pictures that Scott and Shannon have put up of their family on the sidebar, I need to get a new one of us up there too. Remember, if any of you guys have questions on how to do anything like that just let me know and I will be happy to help. Anyway, don't hav emuch time here on the campus computer, but I will post again with Christmas pictures once we get Trever's computer back!

So, a lot has happened recently and I promise to post pictures soon, although I'm at work right now so they will not be with this post. I am glad to see that everyone is doing so well and I love Robert and Courtney's new glasses, they look awesome you guys! We have had an exciting few weeks. We got some free tickets to a breakfast with Santa and the girls had a blast! They saw santa and Mrs. Clause as well as the grinch was there and read them all a story. They seemed to have a really good time. After that we had our ward dinner and they had all sorts of crafts in the primary room and Kyrie enjoyed doing that, but Arianna slept right through the whole thing. Saturday Ky had a holiday party and her sunbeam teachers house and they made presents for parents so that was neat. I started a new job last week. It is with a child care center in downtown seattle and it has definitely been an experience. I am having a good time at work and now that the public buses are quite so scary to me, I'm beginning to enjoy have some time each day to just sit and read a book or relax. I wish I could spend more time with the girls, but my working is what needs to happen right now. I promise to post some pictures soon and I love you all!

As Christmas sneaks up on us I am definitely missing all of you. I hope you each have a fantastic Christmas with your families. Please take lots of pictures and send a few our way. We are so blessed to have each of you as a part of our family and we thank Heavenly Father every single day for each of you.
We got lots of snow this past week - it snowed for 3 days straight and we probably ended up with 18-20 inches. We can't complain because Valdez got 68 inches during that time. It really was beautiful with all the trees loaded down with snow. Today the wind came up and blew it all off but the temperature is up to about 20 so it isn't too bad out there.
On Wednesday, when I left work the fan on my car stopped working. Since I could hardly see the road through the frosted up windshield I went straight to Roger's and he got it going in a few minutes. The bad part is it stopped again last night so I will have to bring it back there again tomorrow.
I can't believe that I am done wrapping presents and I definitely wish I could come and help all of you who did my shopping for me. I hope you aren't going toooooooooo crazy.
I Love You All and will talk to you soon.
Mom

Video from Santa

Try this link for your kids to get a super cute message from Santa- Elijah is the only one who got a message so far and he loved it! http://portablenorthpole.tv/home

Must be the week for glasses

Here are pictures of the kids with Santa at our ward party. Elijah informed us that this is not the real Santa, but one of his helpers...cute pictures regardless!

Courtney has been telling us since the beginning of the year that she was having trouble seeing the board. We did not take it too seriously for a while, but she was persistent and we took her to the eye doctor last week. She has her daddy's eyes and is quite near sighted. She is thrilled with all the detail she can see with her new glasses. She looks beautiful as always, but I think they make her look older too, which I am not sure I am happy about- she's growing up too fast!! Here is a video of her performing Carol of the Bells at the ward Christmas party this weekend.

Her and Aubrey are both diligent in their piano and we are trying to find lessons to get Elijah started on the violin, though he is insistent that he wants to play the drums- I'm not sure I can handle that!

Not much else going on here- Caleb had another RSV shot this week and weighed in at 11 lbs 3 oz, which is good growth. He is smiling, cooing and laughing and he is so much fun! I wish you all were closer to enjoy him as much as we do.

I guess it is time to check in again. Things here are the same as usual. We had a pretty busy weekend as I had a Christmas Dinner for work on Friday Night and then we had Dad's counselors, executive secretary and clerks here on Saturday Evening. After church we went in to Palmer to the Nativity display which is alwayss really neat to experience. I am always looking for new ideas so it is fun to try to figure out how I could do various things in wood.
The last of the packages were sent out on Friday so hopefully everyone will get their things soon.
Grandma sounds like she is doing well. They got over a foot of snow there last Thursday and Jenny said that in Green Bay where she is going to school they got 25 inches. We haven't had any more snow recently. It has been a little below zero but not super cold.
Robert's glasses look great. I am anxious to see Courtney's new glasses also. I hope al of you are doing well.
Love You All!
Mom

Jonathan's Request

Jonathan asked me to put these pictures on for him because he wants you all to see them. He loves to come home and get and give lots of love. Then he promptly wants to play nintendo.

Look at me -- I can see!!! (we think)

So, you are now priviledged to see our Robert's handsome new look. He got his new glasses on Wednesday. He is fine wiht them for the most part so far. Periodically we see him trying to look over the top of the glasses to see the TV across the room, but we are watching him for a few days to see if it stops. I am told that it will take a while for his eyes to really adjust to having them. On a good note, his eye does not seem to be turning with the glasses so maybe they are right about it all. We will hope and watch. We are just unsure about the strength of perscription that he has, which is pretty strong, we are unsure if it needs to be that strong, but we shall see. Yesterday he told me that if I want to be lucky and have glasses like him I just have to make my eye turn toward my nose. He also tells me that he is cool like grandma and grandpa and daddy and Santa. His new favorite game is to point out people who are "lucky because they have glasses like him."

Love ya guys.

Family Pictures

Here are a few of the pictures we had taken a few weeks ago. Mom, I will copy the cd and

send it to you, then you can either print what you want or let me know and I will get it printed for you. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Courtney

Even as a baby, she loved to read- this is her in Harvard Law Library!

We can hardly believe that Courtney is 9 today. She is an amazing, beautiful girl and always makes us proud. Last week, she earned two different trophies. The first came Thursday night together with Aubrey and their girl scout troop. They got 2nd place in the Christmas parade. It was a fun night for all of them. Then, Friday she competed in the finals for the spelling bee. She was the only 4th grader to qualify for the finals and was nervous and excited. She competed against mostly 6th graders and got third place! Aubrey, Caleb and I had funcheering her on. Last week, she also earned an award at Activity Days for being the first girl to memorize all 13 articles of faith. She also told us that she shared the 13th article of faith with one of her friends at school.

She celebrated her birthday with a couple of friends spending the night Friday and chose Red Robin and ice cream cake for her family party tonight.

Toby smiles!

Like the Olsens, we've seen this smile for a couple weeks now, but it too had eluded us on camera. We've finally captured it, and here it is. We've been staying busy here in Anchorage. Scott is trying to wrap up all the 2009 projects and basically doing what he calls quality control. He's definitely ready for 2010 to get here. I've been staying busy with the boys. I've had more playdates here at our house rather than go out for our usual activities, and it's worked out great. I have more cleaning to do, but it's nice to be able to have friends over for playtime. I think when the holidays are over, we will get back out again.

We helped celebrate Scott's birthday on Thursday. Xavier made a card and Happy Birthday sign for him. He also helped make a birthday cake. We took Scott out to dinner at Kobe. It's a tepenyaki place similar to Bennihanas. Xavier was pretty spooked when the chef lit the tower of onions (volcano) on fire, but when he realized it was just for show, he was OK with it. He still didn't want to eat anything until the steak showed up, but at least he ate a good amount of that. Xavier also insisted on wearing Elmo birthday hats left over from his birthday. Fortunately Scott's a good sport and will wear anything.

We love you all and will check in again soon!

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a fun and busy Thanksgiving weekend. We had a lazy morning Thursday, then drove down to LA to Mark's brother Aaron's house. His brother Jon and family were also there, so we had 12 kids between us. It was a great, laid back day and the only thing I cooked was Dad's cheesecake, which turned out perfectly! I did miss having Dad's stuffing so I actually made it today with dinner!

Mark and I each took a turn battling black Friday crowds and got most of our shopping done. Walmart was a total bust, after fighting the throng of people I came up empty handed, but Kohl's, Target and Michaels were actually enjoyable. Mark figured out last year that the trick at Kohl's is to buy something at the jewelry counter and then you can check out there. So, I bought something inexpensive there and avoided the hour long line

to check out! For Friday evening, I had gotten discount tickets to winter wonderland at the the Ice Sports center. Mark brought all the kids (except Caleb) and a neighbor to go ice skating, play in the snow and meet Santa. They had a great time and Courtney came told me today that she thinks she has a future in ice skating! I'm sure she could, as she could have a future in anything she put her mind to!

Saturday we spent the morning working on banners for the girl scout float that will be in the Christmas parade this week. The afternoon was spent watching the BYU football game- a great one if you missed it- go Cougars! Then, Mark and I had gotten discount tickets to go to the David Archuleta Christmas concert. It was very enjoyable- his Christmas CD would be very good.

So,we had a busy and full weekend and are ready for a very busy week ahead with Christmas decorating, a visit to Meg and family, the girls in the Christmas parade, Courtney's school championship spelling bee, and all the normal activities! We get our family pictures back tomorrow, so I am excited to see them and will post some soon.

I just wanted to write a quick Happy Late Thanksgiving. We had our feast with Ryan's parents on Wednesday. It was crazy and busy because Ryan's mom likes to plan a ton of things to do in not a lot of time, but the kids had fun. The other reason in was a long and busy day was that we went to the eye doctor with Robert in the morning (his right eye has been pulling inward). We were there for 3 hours. He went through test after test. We were in 3 different waiting rooms, 5 different exam rooms and 2 different test areas. The poor kid went through everything imaginable and about half way through declared that he was not having fun anymore and needed a lifesaver to feel him better. Ultimately we were told he has accomadative esotropia. From what I understand he is farsighted and his eyes are trying to accomadate or adjust to that and his right eye is pulling in when they try to focus what he is seeing. The solution, he has to wear glasses. Most likely forever, but who knows. It may adjust as he grows and his eye changes, but we will not bank on that. He won't have his glasses for a couple weeks at least but he seems to think it will be Ok. He says that he gets to wear glasses like his grandmas and grandpas. I am not too excited that I get to fight with a three year old boy in glasses but we will survive. So, there is our family update. I shall now return to rehanging ornaments that Katelyn can not keep her hands off and picking up popcorn dropped while the boys watch the Grinch. I love you all and really missed you all on Thanksgiving and for Tree decorating.

Tis the season

With our tummies full and patience for Black Friday shopping shot, the holiday season is officially here! We had a wonderful time at Grandma and Grandpa LaVoie's this Thanksgiving before heading over to my parents house for an early evening visit. This morning, I braved the crowds, kind of, and headed to WalMart. It was so packed, it took me over an hour to get from one end of the store to the other. By the time I made it to the check out line, I realized it was going to take another hour just to check out. So I left my cart and walked out of the store empty handed. Most of the things I wanted to look at were already sold out, so I didn't have anything I couldn't get at the same price any other time. I don't think I will do that again.

We also just got a ton of wet, sticky snow in the last day or so, so we decided to get outside and play in it. Xavier and I made a snowman, but Scott had to come out and help us actually get the snowballs piled on top of each other. I think I may have made them a bit too big. After we played in the snow, we headed inside to get out the Christmas decorations. We set up our tree inside, but we have yet to put up the lights outside. That may be a project for tomorrow.

We hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving and we can't wait to hear all about your holiday activities.

Go Memphis!

The past couple weeks have been busy sports weeks amongest our household. To start the week, Nathan went to a Memphis Tiger's Basketball game with his buddy Victor. Saturday the whole family went to a Memphis Tiger's Football game. One of the family's Nathan home teaches works for the athletic dept. and got us some tickets for the last home game. As not so enthusiastic I was about going, I will even admit that I had a good time. Let's just say that I didn't grow up in a football house. But I did learn a thing or two at the game. :) Thanks honey!



Then last Friday Nathan won 3 tickets from work for another Memphis Basketball game. That meant it was going to be a boy's night out. It just so happened to be Jaxon's weekend with his "Travelling Bear" from school, so Harley got to go to the FedEx Forum too. Since they had their boy's night, Keilee was asked what we were going to do for our girl's night. She informed the boys that we were going to paint our toe nails and go shopping! And that we did!


Saturday the whole family went over to a family in the ward's house, who hosts BYU football games with socializing and food. Straight from there, we dropped Andrew and Nathan off at the church to head off to a Riverking's hockey game. Andrew's cubscout troop all went together as one of their activities.

Whew! as time goes by, and the kids get older,...I thought they were going to be more independent, so I wouldn't be so busy, but in seems to be the opposite. It seems like there's always something going on!

Finally captured it!

Caleb has been smiling for a few weeks now, but he will never cooperate when I want to take pictures of it. This morning I finally got it- he is a cutie! He is such a sweet baby,though he still thinks night is from 4-9 pm, then wants to play when I finally get to sleep, but he'll figure it out soon enough.

In other news... not much out of the ordinary. We spent Saturday decorating a float for the Christmas parade that Courtney and Aubrey will ride on with their girl scout troop. It was fun and the girls are excited. Then, Courtney and I went and made cookies for families staying at the Ronald McDonald House. We went there in August for the kids to hang out while Mark and I visited Caleb in the NICU, so it was nice to go do something for them.

We were almost adopted by a kitten this week. An adorable little one showed up one day after school. The kids and their friends played with it all afternoon and each kid begged their parents to keep it. I said no and so did all the other moms, so it was outside all night, then the next morning it was crying at my door again. The boys played with it all day and when we went to pick up Aubrey, it followed us all the way to school. My defenses were weakening but I really did not want to keep it. Luckily, a little boy picked it up on the way home from school, but he must have been told no as well, so the kitten showed up at a friend of ours down the street. They could not keep it, but another neighbor boy took it and his mom said they could keep it until they found the owner. Well, they are now the owners! I am just glad that someone took it. Makes me appreciate more mom and dad letting us have kittens over the years...

Family photo Shoot

So we had some family photos done about a month ago, they didn't turn out as good as I was hoping, but they are not too bad. Between the infamous Rexburg wind, and 2 cranky kids the photographer was in for a challenge. She did well though and since we got them done for free we really can't complain! Here are some of the shots, sorry there are so many, I had a hard time choosing!

Other than that, not much going on here, Same old thing. I took Asher to his regular 6 month well child check and he gained a pound and a half in 10 days. I guess the formula is doing the trick. He also just started eating his baby food and he is loving the kinds he has had so far. Ayana is fun and wonderful as always, I am always amazed at what a good kid she is. Yes she has her 2 year old tantrums from time to time and she doesn't always listen as quickly as I would like her to, but she is a very wonderful and obedient child. She is also a lot of fun. She recently learned what Sharks are and now she loves to look at me from across the room and yell "SHARK" before running at me at full sped and biting my leg (playfully of course). Yesterday we got our first good snow and we took her out sledding and she had a blast. Even when she would trip or fall off the sled and get a face full of snow she would just jump up yell out that she is okay and keep on going. Asher is starting to love playing with toys and things, he is always grabbing everything he can reach and that kid has a grip you can hardly believe. Sometimes I have to really work to get things out of his grip once he has them. We are having a bit of a tough time trying to figure out what to get him for Christmas, so any suggestions would be great. Trever is off school for the week so I am excited to spend lots of time with him and get some extra sleep. This is the crazy week at work with Black Friday coming up we have loads to do, and then on Friday morning I will be there to see all the insanity first hand. It is really crazy to me how people act just for a sale. I love a good deal too, but I am not ready to sit outside a store for 5-6 hours and then practically beat down a door, then run screaming to the part of the store where my item is, just a little too much for my taste. Watching as a store employee is both scary and funny all at the same time. We are just going to have quiet thanksgiving at home with our little family (and WAY too much food). Then Saturday morning we are off on a mini vacation to Salt Lake to do some Christmas shopping and see the lights at temple square. It will be a short trip but we found a cheap hotel room, so we are excited for a little break form the hum drum of every day life. Anyway, that's all for now, love you guys!

As Thanks giving approaches I can't tell you how much I wish each of you could be here to share our turkey. You are all my greatest blessings and I am so thankful for each of you!!!!!!!!!!!

It has finally warmed up a little here after a week of well below zero temperatures. The daycare got crazier every day with the kids being inside continously. The furnace(at work) kept going off so several times a day we had to run down the basement and push reset. Luckily it always started. They finally got it going right on Friday, we hope. Anyway today it is about 20 degrees and it feels great. I am sure it will get windy so it will bring the wind chill back down below zero.

I am still working on projects in the garage and am hoping to be close to done by the end of next weekend. I keep thinking of one more thing I want to try to do so it is never ending.
The kids probably won't enjoy the things I have made nearly as much as I have enjoyed making them. I sure don't miss the shopping part. Hopefully, it hasn't been too much stress for you.

Dad is almost done with his fishing pole so he is really getting excited about trying it out in the spring. I still think a long stick would be just as good.

I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgiving.
I Love You.

Mom

Craziness!

Okay, so things have been crazy, but if you get past all the crazy life is pretty great!  Nates grandpa past away so we had the funeral and everything a couple of weeks, and the girls were surprising well behaved and Kyrie seemed really okay with it!  Arianna has had a nasty cold the last few weeks so she hasn't been sleeping so well, but she is still a little ball of non-stop energy whether she sleeps or not!  We have had a lot of fun the last couple of weeks. The weekend before Halloween we drove downtown and to the girls to the Seattle Pacific Science Center, and the girls had a blast exploring it all, especially the butterfly habitat where to get to go through a room where there are butterflies flying all around you!  

For Halloween it was raining, but we still got out to the trunk or treat at the church, and then we called that good.  Julianna (troys oldest, 3) was sick an couldn't go, but her little sister Chantel went with us and they all seemed to have a good time!

 Our ward had their fall festival this past Friday and they had it set up for all carnival games, and the girls had a blast with that, then on saturday we went to the car show and Kyire found what she said she will drive when she gets old enough!

 Kyrie is loving preschool, and her school has a free family night this Wednesday at the childrens Museum up north, so they seem to be looking forward to that.  Arianna has a blast playing with her daddy while Kyrie is at school, and Nates dad is great and helps out by watching them when Nathan has school so it has been working out pretty well.  I love hearing how everyone is doing and I'm glad that you are doing well!

Hello again - Winter has definitely made its self known this week. We started out with about 5 inches Monday morning and we have gotten a couple more inches two or three times since then. It has also gotten pretty cold with most mornings down around zero. I sure do appreciate my automatic car starter. Things at work have been pretty crazy- we may have set a record in the last couple weeks for the most new and different reasons for having to miss work - possible broken ankle, daughter in jail, had to find grandchildren, car problems galore. The list goes on and on. We have survived so I am sure we will keep on doing so. Dad is still working on his fly rod and now it is time for tithing settlement to start so I don't expect to see alot of him for a while. We had our primary presentation today and as I watched I thought of all our precious grandkids and how blessed Dad and I are. We are so proud of each of you and the awesome job you are doing with your children. Each of you is such a fantastic parent!
Thanks for keeping us up to date on what is happening in your world.
I Love You
Mom

update on our little guy

Just wanted to post a quick update that the doctor finally got the results on Asher's tests and they were all normal. So, it seems he just needs the extra formula. I am glad that it is not anything big, we will go back to the doctor in about a week or so and see if the extra formula is helping at all. Love you guys!

What has 4 wheels, 8 pedals and 7 Olsens?

We just got back from a great couple days at the beach. It is our November tradition for the last few years, to head to the coast for a night. Usually it is on a Friday, but Mark had to go to Oxnard for a site visit/consultation at Oxnard High, so the girls played hooky and we all tagged along. It was perfect weather, so the kids and I spent the day at the beach, then we stayed overnight and all played today. After some outlet shopping, we decided to rent this bike and cruise along the bike path in Santa Barbara. Quite a workout for mom and day, but we needed it an it was fun! The only complaint was that we didn't get enough time at the beach! A great couple of days and for me, the first time out of Bakersfield in 6 months!!