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!