Gingerbreat houses

I almost forgot to post our gingerbread house, thanks to Nick you all get to see it :) So here it is the beautiful and amazing Powell Family Gingerbread house. We had a lot of fun making it and putting it together. Emma insisted on wearing a princess dress while doing this, I'm not sure why. Pobably because she knew there would be pictures. It took a little bit of work and a lot of patience, but we got it all put together and we had a good family home evening learning about the first christmas.

Santa Claus

We visited Santa Claus and the picture says it all. Emma was in heaven and Maggie would love to be anywhere but on Santa's lap. Emma reminded me in line that there are in fact 2 santa's. The one in the North Pole and the one in the mall who remembers what we want. I love hearing kids' theories on how Santa works. Emma is still working it all out, but I'm sure she'll let us know in the next few days. She's excited for christmas and ask every morning, just one day until christmas right? Poor girl, it's been a very long month.

James & Jerrica's Wedding

Last saturday, (December 15th), James and Jerrica were married in the Salt Lake Temple, bright and early. We had to be to the temple by 7:50, we barely made it! The ceremony was awesome and they had to add 2 rows of benches to hold everyone, I think we set a temple record. It was so neat to be there and share that with them. Of course we had to do pictures afterwards, but then we rushed back to Sandy to get the luncheon going. Much to my protesting, Mom decided to make all of the food. And she did a wonderful job! Someone even asked who had catered it for us. Made us feel good! Mom did an aweseom job decorating and the church looked beautiful. We had just enough food for everyone, truely. I was the last to sit down and I got the last piece of chicken. It was a nice luncheon. Then we rushed to take things down and get down to Nephi on time for pictures and the reception. We didn't make it on time, but we still beat the bride and groom. Whew! The reception, like the whole day, was beautiful. It was so nice to have our whole family there. We got some fun pictures and made some great memories. Just a quick one to share, Emma had decided earlier in the week that she wanted to have a pajama party instead of going to the wedding (who knows where that came from!), but I told her there would be dancing and she immediately changed her mind. She went and loved it. Her only complaint was that she didn't catch the bouquet. But Alyson being the awesome aunt she is, gave Emma her flowers. Like I said before, the whole day was beautiful and I'm so excited to have Jerrica as part of our family. Congrats James & Jerrica, we love you both.

LET IT SNOW!

So here we are in December and Emma is loving the snow. Everyday it snows she thinks it's Christmas Day. So last saturday when it snowed, her and Nick went outside and built a snowman and played. They even tried to ring the doorbell by throwing snowballs at the door. They were never successful. But they had lots of fun and made some good memories. .

Fight Club

Here for your pleasure and entertainment is our very own Powell Fight Club. Just teasin'. These are the videos Nick got from Thanksgiving. It's a little dark, sorry. But I hope you enjoy them.

GO COUGARS!!!!!!

Oh how I wish there was an appropriate picture to post right now. The big rivalry was today, BYU vs. Utah. And no doubt, who won?? BYU!!!!! Was there ever any doubt?? I unfortunately couldn't get tickets to the game, not unless I was willing to pay $200 or more, so I was fortunate enough to get to go to Amanda & Kevin Lopez's house to watch the game....with all the Ute fans. I was the only BYU fan there, so I kind of had to bite my tounge when I really wanted to jump up and down & scream the fight song. Yes, I do know every word to the fight song & I sing it whenever there's a field goal or touchdown. There were only a few times when I couldn't contain myself and I started to scream and jump up and down. But my Cougars came out victorious and it was sweet! I was a good sport, but I didn't say good game, because to the Ute fans, it wasn't. The only good game is when they win. So sad for them..... I hope you all enjoyed the game as much as I did, wherever you got to watch it. And again... GO COUGARS!!!!

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was a lot of fun, as usual. Nick started out the day by having a little turkey bowl at 8am at Flat Iron Mesa park. It sounded like a lot of fun, but the big babies have been whining for two days. I wish I had a picture of that to post. But that's okay. Around 2:00 we headed to Cory & Kelly's for dinner with the Powell's. It was all very yummy, and no doubt we all ate too much. After dinner we broke out the Wii and had maybe a little too much fun playing. We started out bowling and then moved on to boxing. Contrary to what the pictures may look like, there was no drinking. Sherry and Randy took first dibs and Randy got worked.
Then Cory & Kelly took the stage and we realized this is a very good form of couples therapy. I'm making sure that Colby gets a copy of all the pic's and videos of his mom & Cory duking it out. After the fights and we regained our composure, Nick and I headed off to meet up with the Cook Family at Classic. We played in the buonce zone, did some skating and ate lots of desserts. We all had a blast. Aly taught Maggie how to make a very cute cheesy face at the camera so we naturally have to post it. We all had so much fun and loved the desserts. Steve outdid himself, as usual and brought some very yummy desserts, which I ate too much of. So thank you for the extra 5 pounds.
Over all it was an awesome day. We so much enjoyed being able to spend all the time with both of our families and are so grateful for them. Nick and I realize how blessed we are to be so close to such wonderful people. I'm also grateful for my sweet girls. I just can't get enough of them. Which is good, seeing as I'm pretty much stuck with them. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to reflect on all of the many blessings we take for granted every day. I hope you all had a wonderful a day and a wonderful kick off to the holiday season.

Beauty & The Beast

Emma and I got to go see Beauty & The Beast performed at Hillcrest High School. It was a lot of fun. The bonus was that Aunt Aly, my sister, was in it. She was a towns person, a wolf & a plate. We loved it. We got to go with Grandma & Grandpa Cook, Aunt Mari, Aunt Trish, Garrett, Keaton, Maysen & Jacey. Emma was glued the whole time. They really did a great job. Emma's favorite part was when they sang "Be Our Guest". It was such a fun thing to enjoy together. And we're glad we got to go. Great job Aly, we love you.

Ballet

As we all know, Emma loves dancing. So we had to put her in some type of dance class. So we signed her up for a ballet class at Oquirrh Hills middle school by us. Her good friend Sydney Searle signed up with us. This is the 2nd time they've taken this class and they're so funny to watch.
This is the girls doing they're stretching, it's so cute to watch. Then they usually pick a line leader, line up and practice the different steps (?), moves...whatever. They're not quite graceful yet, but it is fun to watch them try so hard.
Then usually towards the end they get to do the freestyle/freeze dance. Emma was so funny. She'd dance like a ballerina the whole time, and whenever the music paused for them to freeze they're pose, Emma would do a lunge & freeze. It was so funny. I tried so hard to get picture of it, but my mad skills just don't include photography. When she noticed I was taking pictures she started posing differently. Now it's over and the girls had a lot of fun, which was the idea. We'll have to find another class to get her into now.
The picture is called the "Ba-Bye Bubble". It's pretty cute to watch. At the end of class they all get in a circle and hold hands. They squeeze in as tight as they can and then hurry and spread the bubble out without breaking the circle.

Pumpkin Patch

For our Halloween pumpkins we decided to go to he pumpkin patch just down the street. You just use one of their wheelbarrows and go pick out the ones you want. The girls loved it.

They had a whole row of tractors for the kids to sit on and to take fun pictures. Emma and Maggie had a blast playing on all of the different ones.

Halloween was a lot of fun. Emma was a princess (again) and Maggie was a ladybug. Maggie loved her costume, especially the antennae. Funny girls. Emma and I went trick-or-treating for about an hour and she was spent. She said her bag was too heavy with candy. So we went home and checked out our spoils.

St. George/Las Vegas

We recently went down to St George and Las Vegas for a week to get some rest and relaxation. It was really nice to be able to just get away from it all and enjoy some down time.

We got to visit Tyler & Jaynie Jensen in there new home, and Jaynie was good enough to feed us a very yummy dinner. This is a picture of Emma being barried in the sand. We went with Dave, Lisa, Josh & Devin Williams & Jocey, Andee & Brea Hobson to the sand dunes just outside of Santa Clara. It was a beautiful day and we had lots of fun. We stayed in St George monday thru wednesday and then headed to Las Vegas with the William's until friday. We enjoyed the shopping and the pool while poor Dave (aka Jack Bowers) had to go to a "conference". Teasin' We went to Claimjumper the first night in Vegas and the food there is amazing!!! Then we hit the stores the next day and fortunately for the husbands, Lisa and I didn't do much (if any) damage do our bank accounts. But we enjoyed the time there and unfortunately had to leave on friday so nick could get back for "the Hunt!" But it was still a great week and fun to spend time with our friends.

We made it!

So here we are, finally! After much encouragement I have finally set up our blog spot! I've loved looking at everyone else's blogspots and Wassa finally talked me into it. Our little family is ever growing. Emma is getting so much older, she's 4 going on 16. Yes, it's already started, all of the girl drama. Sometimes it makes me crazy and sometimes I can't stop laughing about it. I love it. Emma is our little dancer, it doesn't matter where the music is coming from, she's dancing to it. But she also loves to play sports with her Daddy. She mostly enjoys playing volleyball and chase (tag). Maggie is a little more calm but everyday she's showing more and more fire. She's my little whirlwind. You can always tell where she's been because she's always makes a huge mess. Usually she loves pulling out all of my washrags and towels or coloring on anything in front of her But she's a lot of fun and a very sensitive little girl. Nick is still at All Seasons Auto, which he and his brother Randy own. Nick is always on the go. There is always something going on, whether it's volleyball game, softball game or whatever. But we love going as a family to watch and support him. I'm lucky enough to be able to stay home with our girls and watch them grow up. It's a lot of fun and Wassa said it best, I wouldn't trade it for anything!