Party Party

We were able to go and see some family 2 weekends ago. Mark's brother farewell was that weekend. He is now in the MTC. (I can't believe he's that old. He was almost 11 when I first came into the family). It was really fun to see them all and catch up.

I have a sister that is getting married and so we got together to go dress shopping with her. It was fun, but do to some unfortunate events were not able to see too many dresses with her :(. However, we did meet up at Jamie and Michelle's. We did get to see Lisa, but her kids were sick and we missed Bryce. So we ended up eating lunch with everyone else and Betsy made a darling cake for Lissie for her birthday. Here it is. She was in absolute heaven. We have been counting down for her birthday since Brigham's. When everyone started to sing to her she just grinned and grinned. See her birthday was actually the next day, so she was stoked.

Here she is. She also wanted to go dress shopping. We were going to leave as it was getting later and we had to do supper and baths and bed so the kids would be good for the next day and it was suppose to snow and be icy. (Our van does terrible in those conditions). Well she was so bummed not to be able to go to the dress appointment, as that is where we were originally going before lunch. So I talked Mark into driving to the dress shop and staying in the car with the boys for 15-20mins while we saw Betsy in a couple of dresses and she got to try on a flower girl dress. He agreed.

Here she is with Aunt Betsy and Mykenzie. She loved it. She started to dance and twirl with Mykenzie. She said "I'm doing balet." And she had pretty good form with it too! Those girls were cute. We only wish Sophie was there to twirl with them. I had to pull her away from the dresses and leave, much to her dissapointment. We had so much fun seeing all that we were able to see. And Lissie enjoyed being around lots of girls.
The next day we had Jon's farewell. It was really nice to hear his testimony and I think he's pretty excited to go.

It was also lissie's birthday! After the festivities we made a cake and sang to her. Here we are making her castle cake!

And here she is blowing out the candels. She was really lucky to have 2 parties and she was spoiled by everyone. Thanks! It made it special for her.

Alex has officially finished basketball for the season. He made one basket the 2nd to last game and was really close to making some baskets the last game. He is pretty good at it and really enjoys it. He's good at defense and defending and rebounding and dribbling. I enjoyed watching him. (Brigs and Lissie got a little bored though :)).

Here he is trying to shoot the ball. His coaches were trying to get him to shoot since he usually passes.

And here he is dribbling. What a fun season.

Baby Tag

1.Where were you when you first found out your were pregnant? At home for all three

2.Who was with you? Mark, Mark, Al and Brig in other room, kids in other room and Mark I believe as well

3.What was your first reaction? Excited, shocked, shocked, excited
4.What was your husband's reaction? Excited with all

5.Who was the first person you told? Mark of course
6.Was the pregnancy planned? Planned?, none of them happened when we thought
7.Was everyone happy for me? Yes, so so, so so, sort of

8.What was the sex? Boy, boy, girl, boy

9.What was the nursery theme colors? Didn’t have any

10.Did anyone throw a shower for you? Yes for the first
11.Did I get any outfits I didn't use? Not that I can remember
12.How much weight did I gain? 40, 30,30,35 ish
13.Did I get stretch marks? yes

14.Did I crave anything? Salad and fruit at the beginning and at the end Sweets! With Brigham especially

15.Who or what got on your nerves the most? Others being perceived dumb

16.Where were you when you went into labor? Hospital though with brig and tay I was having contractions before

17.Did I have any complications? Yes, but not too serious

18.Did your water break? Would they be here if it hadn’t :o)
19.Who drove you to the hospital? mark

20.Did you go early or late? Late, late, early, early

21.Who was in the room? Dr, nurse (1/2) and Mark

22.Did you videotape it? That is so wrong and gross

23.Did you have any pain medication? Yes, but didn’t work with the last 2

24.Did you have a c-section or natural? Natural

25.What was your reaction to the birth? excited with all

26.How big was the baby? 7-12 21in , 8-0 21 in, 6-7.5 18in, 8-6 21in
27.What was the baby's full name? Alexander Mark, Brigham Lee, Elisabeth Carrie, Taylor Martin

28.Did your husband cry? Nope but he almost passed out

29.When is the next one coming? Not sure

30.If you could would you do it all over again? We’ll see

Now I tag, anyone of my friends or siblings/cousins who have had a baby and my mom

For the Sleepless....

The caption says "Someday you'll be a teenager, and You'll want to sleep all the time...and then I'll have my revenge."

So Taylor has not been sleeping well at all. I have only had a few hours a sleep a night. I saw this cartoon in the paper the other day and it made Mark and I laugh. I thought the parents out there would appreciate it.

Continuing Festivities...

Now for the other pics that didn't fit in the last post.
Lisa and Jim had a great idea for a Christmas present. The fixings for gingerbread men. So we decided to do it a couple Sundays after we came home. IT was fun. Preparing the dough.

Cutting the dough.

Baking the dough.

Decorating..

More decorating...

and eating. YUM!

Brig opening his present.

Blowing out the candles.

The finished masterpiece. He wanted a reindeer cake. ITs Rudolph and Fireball. (did you know that was a reindeer?). I can't believe this little guy is FIVE. :(. Time is flying bye way too quickly. Thanks to all who made it special for him.

Wow, Christmas time...etc

Well I thought it was about time to get these up. Above the kids are making Brigs birthday cake. I can't believe he is five. I'll post some more pics, but they won't fit on this post.

One Sunday Mark told the kids he was a vampire or Dracula. Like this pic????

Alex is in basketball. He loves it. I have this hilarious video of him at his first game, he was jumping the whole time, but since we have dialup, it'll have to wait. He constantly is talking about basketball. I asked him if he liked it compared to T-ball. "Basketball is my sport, Mom," was his reply. He does pretty well.

These are the snowman chair coverings we made. Notice Lissie's has a purse. Then Brig wanted a wallet, and Alex decided he did too.

Well Christmas got all out of order, so I'll just start. We stayed at Mark's parent's house, since we went to a wedding in CA. It was really fun. At 7 am Mark and I hear a knock on our door. (We'd finally fell asleep about an hour earlier because Taylor was having a hard night. He'd gotten a cold). Jon and Joseph said, can we wake up the kids? What time is it? 7 am. Okay. So I go upstairs to check on them and the boys didn't notice that Santa put up a block for no peaking. It was really cute, Jon and Joseph are holding the kids hands/the kids are holding onto them, as they tell the kids no peaking, no peaking. The kids have their eyes shut tight. We go get Mark (let Taylor sleep) and then go to Mom and Dad H's bedroom while Mark and Dad H start the fire and music.

The kids have never been this excited for Christmas before. It was fun to watch them.

Christmas Eve Mark's family goes to their Grandpa Goates. He gives all his unmarried grandkids PJs and married a little gift. Mark's parents have carried on the tradition of giving jammies to the kids. Here's Taylor's in his.

Here is Spencer (cousin, Mark's cousin's son) in his. (he was excited to play with the boys). Boys are hard to come by on this side of the family. The boys have fun being the big boys with their younger boy cousins. ITs fun to watch. Unfortunately, none of Wellyn because they weren't here and I didn't have my camera out when they were playing before. It's cute.

All the cousins and 2nd cousins in their jammies. (As you can see it was crowded in that house, which is around 1400sqf) But it is fun and crazy.

The kids were excited after they opened theirs.

I think this is such a darling pic of Lissie (next to Emmie).

waiting to go out and open presents Christmas morning.

Coming out to see the goods so to speak.

Opening the stockings.

Look at all we got :).

Taylor enjoying a box of something. Good thing we didn't get him any clothes.

It was a really nice holiday time. I'm still trying to get the house back in order, but its getting there. Christmas was nice and I love the time to spend with family on both sides. IT was fun in CA because my sister (with the help of my mom) did stockings for everyone). My mom also had fun socks for all of us with fruit, and candy bars and decorated chairs in our suites at the hotel. We had a nice traditional LaPierre meal and even got to see a wedding. We were blessed to at least part of us spend time with both families which doesn't happen much. I guess that's one of the plusses of a Dec wedding:0).

YIPPIEYEAY!!

Congratulations to Betsy and Tanner. We are excited for you guys. We're looking forward to having Tanner be a part of our family! Such a nice guy. We'll see you at the temple in about 6 months for this same kind of event. You guys look so happy:)



For Nikki:

Nikki, this is for you, and hopefully you can tell my haircut a little better. It is layered all around. ITs been fun to have my hair this short. I might even keep it this short for a while.

Happy 8 Years!

I just wanted to say Happy Anniversary to you Mark! This year was a little hectic for celebrating for us, but he did get me that beautiful bouquet on the right and some candies that are almost as good as my mom's. The flowers on the left, is the boquet from our wedding and the picture above is the wedding present I gave Mark. We were going to go out to eat when we were down, but his great uncle died, so we had a little meal together that he made when we got home and the kids were in bed.

Anyways, It has been a great 8 years. Mark is a great and amazing husband, friend and father and man. But I'll leave it at that because he doesn't like all the attention.