Christmas Day

 Christmas Day was lots of fun.  We started at home where Santa had filled the stockings and left a lego train set and then headed to the Stapletons for breakfast and gifts, then went to Ogilvies and repeated the fun.  My mom had surprised us by compiling and editing our old home movies onto DVD, so we watched a bunch of those after lunch.  

 The boys made us calendars in their preschool class.

 Sophie was super excited about her littlest pet shop.

 Aunt Allie made all the nieces and nephews animals out of felt.

 In keeping with Dan's choice of an alternate reality, his parents gave him all four seasons of Man vs Wild.  He didn't get any Bear Grylls clothes this year, but only because he owns almost all of them already. 

 This is probably only funny to me, but for every year for the past 30 or so, there is a Christmas picture of my dad holding a dress shirt.  We really need to spice things up and give him cologne or something. :)

These trucks make lots of noise, so naturally they were the boys favorite, and our least favorite, gift.

Christmas Eve

 We had Christmas Eve festivities at our house this year and were able to have both sides of our family there.  This is the Stapleton side.  We had 16 adults and 5 kids over for a prime rib, with tofu turkey option, dinner.

 Kids bingo.

 Dan's Aunt Mary came from California.

 Dan cheated during Bingo and kept his "bingo" quiet for 40 minutes so that he could hold out for this headband/neckwarmer, ear warmer, thing.  He spent the rest of the night trying to look like a short haired Andre Agassi.

We had our first ever nativity and as you can see we have no dolls in our house and Brad had no idea how to care for our baby Jesus cabbage patch doll.

Christmas Season Festivities

 I love that they wanted to wear their Halloween shirt while decorating the Christmas tree.  I finally had to hide the orange and black one.

We went to Temple Square to look at the lights.  We figured they got turned on at dark, nope, 5:30.  Luckily, the boys were pretty interested in the scripture videos in the visitor center.

 Seth kept putting gum drops in his mouth and telling us that he was just "feeling" them.

 This is the snow fort Dan built with the boys.

Brad is wearing Dan's old wool hat- note to self, don't wash wool in the machine.

Weekend in St. George

 We spent the weekend in St. George and stayed at Aunt Nancy's home.  It was such a fun and relaxing trip.  We went to Snow Canyon which had a short slot canyon and sand dunes, which were Brad's favorite part of the trip.

 We also went to Zion National Park and we hiked to Upper Emerald Springs, a three mile round trip hike.  The boys did all but about a 1/2 mile by themselves.  They were so proud of themselves and did such a good job.  This is the boys "cleaning the trail" by throwing leaves over the side.

 Middle Emerald pool

We complimented another hiker on what a cool composition this was and he volunteered to take our picture- lucky us!

There was a whole herd of mountain goats off the side of the road.  The ram was awesome.

Star Wars

I got some star wars action figures for the boys at a garage sale.  Dan has made it a top priority to make sure the boys know and love star wars.  But beware, as soon as Dan starts talking Star Wars his inner nerd comes out. :)  I'm surprised how many of the characters they can name.  Seth is especially interested.  He jumps up and down during the fight scenes and laughs at the Ewoks.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

It may be my last year to choose their costumes, so I decided to milk the twin theme a little longer. To Infinity, and Beyond! I told the boys what they were going to be for Halloween and the two of them worked it out between themselves who was going to be who. Can you tell which boy is Woody??

Brad's blue mouth proves how much he loves his candy.

Yesterday we got to go to a Halloween Birthday party for cousin Ellie. Seth gave the pinata a good hit.

We went to Great Grandma Brown's assisted living Halloween party. Brad kept handing candy back to the residents if he didn't like it and refusing the candy if it was a duplicate of something he already had. Fortunately, he did get a sucker that he liked. Before official trick or treating tonight, we reviewed the proper etiquette. At his first house he was handed an unfamiliar candy, he hesitated, then took it saying, "this will be for daddy" which is how I explained to them that we take everything we're given- we just give unwanted candy to dad. They must've been listening to my lesson because they only took a single tootsie roll, even when they were offered more, saying "No! Just one."

Great grandma and Maacha

Grandma and Grandpa Ogilvie helped the boys trick or treat since Dan had to work. Uncle Jim and his friend Madison also helped out.

The preschool party.

Considering the number of 3 and 4 year olds in this pic, it's actually pretty impressive we got as may smiles as we did.

Notice how good Brad is getting at coloring.

Summer Fun

The boys like to sit on their chairs while watching a show. This is their friend Carter with them

After bath the boys were being "Cyclops" with their underpants.

Seth frequently falls asleep with a book in his hand, but I loved that he fell asleep mid page turn.

Currently, their favorite activity is digging in the dirt in our backyard. We really should get a sandbox, but they don't seem to mind the mulch.

Stapleton Yellowstone Trip

This past week we had a Stapleton Family Reunion/Vacation to Island Park and Yellowstone (Thanks Grandpa and Macha Stapleton). We all stayed in a cabin and activities included: Yellowstone, Mesa Falls (above), golfing, fishing, and most of all, playing with cousins.

This is the start of one of the tributaries of the Snake River. It's a spring that bubbles up and turns into a river right in front of your eyes. The water was crystal clear. This was possibly the most picturesque place we saw.

There were a lot of cousins and second-cousins to play with.

The "triplets". This is the boys' cousin Sophia. They are all the same height and people will ask if they're triplets.

Yellowstone hot springs

Waiting for Old Faithful

I wish my camera was better, but this is a grizzly bear that was off the side of the road and she had three cubs with her. I thought it was by far the coolest wildlife we saw.

Yellowstone Falls

Preschool

The boys started preschool on Tuesday and were very excited about it. There going just around the corner to a lady who does it out of her basement. There teachers were worried about telling them apart, so we're going to use name tags for awhile and the boys thought that their masking tape name tags were awesome.