Surprise!!

Thursday morning at 5 am Dave got a text message from one of our favorite people, Mandy Jones. It said "Knock Knock, Let me in!" More than just a little confused, he went to the front door ready to take a picture of the empty porch and send it back to our crazy friend. To his great surprise, she was standing there! She had driven through the night with two of her kids to come and visit us for the long weekend. Usually when your phone rings at that hour people aren't calling with good news, but this was the best surprise ever!!! We met the Jones family in Rexburg 4 years ago and quickly became the best of friends. They currently are living in the Sacramento area while Mandy and I make plans to find jobs for our husbands in the same city so we can be close together again!!

We had a super fun weekend that went by way to quickly. On Saturday we took the kids to a fruit stand that has a hay maze and a hay pyramid with a slide at the top. The kids also picked out some pumpkins which we made homemade pumpkin pie with that night...it was delicious!



Kayli is the only child too small to run away from us so we made her pose with the pumpkins. We actually caught some smiles!





All the kiddos minus Aidan who stayed home to babysit his dad while mom was gone.

Thanks for coming so far to see me, can't wait to see you guys again! Andrew is already asking about when we can go to California...

Yummers!

Kayli has discovered the deliciousness of french fries!

The Petrified "Forest"

When we found ourselves with a rare Monday off we decided that we wanted to do something exciting and away from Yakima. So we headed out with the Snider family to the Gingko Petrified Forest near Vantage for a nice day hike.

It's beautiful here! The whole gang. Dave is pulling a Michael Jackson with poor Kayli.


Our family


The forest was actually a desert with petrified stumps, in cages. Still cool, I guess.


We saw a few little lizards!


We borrowed a backpack for Kayli and she loved it! She was laughing and giggling the entire time. Thank you Bradys!!


Walking through the forest :)


It wasn't exactly what I had envisioned,(does forest mean trees to anyone else?) but the kids had a blast playing and good friends can make even lame things fun. Since our families are too big for one car we took two and the girls drove in one and the boys drove the other. Somehow the crazy kids ended up with the boys and Christine and I had a fabulous time talking on the drive!

Back to School!

It's that time of year again...the mornings are cold, the afternoons are hot, and the kids are back in school!!!!

Kelsi started third grade at a new school this year. She is in the PAL program which is an accelerated learning program. It's a program you have to test into and because she is a smarty pants, she got into it! Should be a fun year! She already has made some wonderful new friends.


Andrew went back to another year of preschool, but this year he gets to go four days a week. Yay! He loves it so far, though he misses his teachers from last year a lot. They were the best. He has to stop and talk to them each day as we leave preschool :)

Urvina Cousin Christmas List

Enjoy!!
Here is the video showing who has who...we tried to make sure that siblings didn't get one another but at the end, Annika got Madi because she was the only one left. Ade- let me know if you want to trade and Kayli can have Madi and Anni can have Ben.

We also drew the adult names but didn't record it. Here is that list:
Joe-Jeff
Ade-Keri
Val-Dave
Jeff-Ade
Keri-Val
Dave-Joe

Remember: Kid gifts are around $15 and adults $25. Happy Holidays :)

Happy Birthday Valerie!

Today is my big sisters birthday. Happy Birthday!! My sister and I are 5 years apart in age so growing up we didn't have too much in common. As we got older we have become better friends. I love my sister!!


She is a great Aunt to my children. They all love Aunt Valerie. Maybe because she likes to go to Target as much as me?


This is Valerie with Kayli and her friend Amie at the NKOTB concert. I love that my sister went with me! She also went with me to Celine Dion last year. She is my concert buddy because Dave is not into that so much. We also saw Tim McGraw before he was even very popular. Who are we going to see next?


This is us at the beach last month. I love that we can call each other and have someone to complain to. Sometimes you just need to vent. If I had a dollar for every conversation we have had that started with "Can I just complain for a minute to you?"


She has cute children! I love her family and she is a great wife and mother to them. They even let us come and live with them after we finished school and had no home or job. We only had to promise to try and find a job closer to them as soon as we can...we are working on that. Of course that would mean more frequent trips to the Supermall and Target which could be dangerous on the checkbooks.

Thanks for being a fabulous sister and friend!!

Life is good at the beach!

Last week my family took a trip to Lincoln City Oregon where we stayed in a beautiful beach house that fit all 19 of us with even a little room to spare! We had so much fun and the children were in heaven having so many cousins all in one place. The weather was good, maybe even warm for Oregon Coast standards. We were also half a mile away from a huge outlet mall, which the women thought was wonderful. We had so much fun, we all can't wait to go back!

The Button family in front of the beach house

All the kiddos out front

Our house from down on the beach

Playing in the waves

My (freezing cold!)toes in the Ocean

Dave celebrated his 33rd birthday while we were there!

Kayli and Grandpa

Kayli trying to figure out what that sand stuff was...

Andrew

The house from the back yard