Happy Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we went to Grandma and Grandpa Borgstroms. We had a great time. We have so much to be thankful for this year. I am grateful for the Gospel, for my Savior Jesus Christ, for Mike, Jaycee, Wesley, Bensen, and my parents and in laws, my brothers and sister.  I love living close to everybody and getting to see them often. I'm grateful for my nice warm home and bed! This time of year I feel so bad for those that don't have a nice warm place to eat or sleep. :( I am thankful for my health, and the health of my family.  I love serving in the Young Women's program and I love the girls and the leaders I get to work with every week. There is just so much to be thankful for, I couldn't possibly name everything.  These are a few of my favorite things.
Jaycee and Wesley loved playing soccer this year.  I didn't get any pictures because I was coaching Jaycee's team and Wesley played at the same time on another field.  Wesley got the hang of it this year he was a scoring machine! Jaycee is an amazing defender and kept the other team from scoring.  They both did so well!  Wesley has also been taking tumbling.  He can do backhand springs and cartwheels and round offs.  It is amazing what they are capable of.
I don't know if I mentioned it before, but Mike was called as the Gospel Doctrine teacher! Probably the scariest calling other then Bishop.  He does such a good job.  He is so funny and keeps you interested in the material.  I've had several people tell me how good he does.  Amber is also a Gospel Doctrine teacher, she also is a great teacher.
We have been focusing a lot on getting our food storage up to par.  We have been taking the money Josh pays us for rent and buying food.  We almost have the minim of what we should have for a family of 5 for a year, which isn't a lot, but at the same time it is.  We have buckets everywhere! It feels good to be working on something the Prophets have told us repeatedly we need to be working on.
We have read some books by Julie Rowe who had a near death experience and sees the events leading up to the second coming. It really put thing into perspective of what is most important. Taking care of our kids is the most important.  People look forward to the second coming but there are a lot of trials that will lead up to it...even for church members.  The second coming is surely going to happen, I hope to be prepared spiritual and temporally, whether it's this year or not in our life time.
At the end of this month we were able to go see some our my nieces and nephews sing at the Christmas Tree jubilee. It was a lot of fun, and afterword the kids were able to see Santa and Mrs. Claus.

 Jaycee asked for a makeup set and Wesley asked for a Lego set and they told Santa that Bensen wanted a teddy bear.

We had to take a picture by the bride and groom trees. Along with at least 10 others.

We are excited for Christmas.  We have our home all decorated and ready!

Happy Halloween!

We've had a week long celebration! It started on Monday when we went to Lagoon.  We thought we'd get in one last hurrah. 

 We had a fun time.  We didn't have to wait in any lines and the best part is that Wesley was tall enough to ride some of the bigger rides!

 We took him on The Spider, the Roller coaster and the big Bumper Cars.  He loved them all.

 It's too bad that he couldn't ride more rides earlier.  I think he would have liked them all.

 Until next year Lagoon.

On Wednesday we had our ward party. Dinner and games.

 Face painting, mummy bowling,

 and musical chairs.

 On Thursday Wesley had a preschool program and Jaycee had her school parade and class party.

On Friday we went to Sizzler for lunch.  The kids dressed up, so they got to eat for free.  Then we went to Krispy Kream for free doughnuts and Jamba Juice for free smoothies. Yum.  Then we came home and got ready for Trick or Treating.  The kids had a blast.  They got to go with their cousins, Mae, Kayla, Colton, Joshua, Abbie, Ellie, Luke, Rylee, Logan, Sidney, Reese and Elsie. We were a pretty big group.

After Trick or Treating Mikes mom had a her Halloween party.

 She is always so creative with her food.  She made a casserole in that pumpkin! She also had chili and bread bowls, and Sarah made little smoky mummies.

 These kids are pretty silly!

 They played mummy bowling, the balloon dart game, and find dem bones.

 While Grandma LouLou and Aunt Sheila made homemade doughnuts Emily did face painting for the kids.

 When we got home it was pretty late, but we still need to sort our candy. We were told several times that it could not wait until morning.

Here is Jaycee with her loot.

 And Wesley with his.

They both did pretty good.  The best part is that they wanted to put all their chocolate together to share.  We've had a lot of fun this month celebrating and the kids are already talking about what they are going to be next year.

Bailey Halloween Party

Everyone pretty much knows this...I love Halloween! I always have. For as long as I can remember anyway.  I remember dressing up like a witch year round. So far I have been very lucky and my sweet husband and amazing kids have let me do what ever I want with them every year.  About a month ago Jaycee came home from school and said "So and so said you can be what ever you want for Halloween...that isn't true, right Mom? You can't be whatever you want." So I was feeling a little guilty this year.  So I let the kids pick what they wanted to be.  I started off with Wesley.  He told me he wanted to be Olaf. Jaycee hearing that went crazy and said she wanted to be Elsa and proceeded to tell me what the rest of us could be. I was not very happy, I really didn't want to do a Frozen theme.  I was going to let them be what they wanted to be and have me, Mike and Bensen do something different. But they have always been so good to let me do whatever I want I will let them have this year.  Jaycee has already committed to be the Bride of Frankenstein next year, and Wes said he wants to be Dracula.  So next year we will be back to my kind of costumes. So here we are. We've got Sven, Kristoff, Anna, Olaf and Elsa.

 Big Anna and Little Anna.

 Kristoff and his Reindeer

 These two are priceless!

 Elsa and Anna.

 I made our costumes and Jaycee's wig, the rest of Jaycee costume and Wesley's came from Amazon.

 When I showed Jaycee my costume she loved it and said I looked just like Anna and she wanted me to go show Wesley, so I did.  He said I didn't look like Anna at all.  Hmmm. I told him it would have to be good enough. As long as we have Olaf and Elsa with us people should be able to guess who we are.

 Jaime was the only other adult that dressed up! My other siblings were lame this year.  Joy was excused because her whole family was home sick. Abbie was also sick.  Jaime's family did the Mario theme.  They had Mario(Pars) Luigi(Josh), Waluigi(Jaime), funny side note, Jaime was going to be Toadette but Luke, her 3 year old, got on Amazon and bought Waluigi! Orange Yoshi(Luke), Green Yoshi (Ellie), and Abbie is going to be Peach. I think Matt was going to be Toad. 

 Here Waluigi is riding on Yoshi's back.

Jaime sewed the Yoshi costumes.  They turned out so cute! And she did them in like one day!

Wesley walked around saying "I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs." If only that were true. He is getting better at giving hug.

 Me and my fixer upper. :)

 All the Bailey cousins well enough to be there.

 Fun group of kids.  There are 21 grand kids now with one on the way.  Amber is pregnant.

 Bensen only made it through the pictures.  He slept through the rest of the party.

We did the train ride, pinata, monster bean bag toss, for a pop, roll a monster and charades.  It was a pretty fun party.  We also ate really good food, taco soup, Jaime made a yummy desert and Mike made a lime punch. 

  I am glad that this year we don't have any crazy makeup or a change of hair color. It's nice to come home and just be able to go to bed and not have to shower everyone.

Whats not to love about Halloween?

Family Vacation! Part 2

Yellowstone did not disappoint. This big guy greeted us about a half hour into the park. 

Yellowstone has to be one of the craziest places on the Earth! With all the smoking mountains, and the crazy cool waters.

I think the kids really liked it, even though we spent a lot of time in the car.  They had fun marking off all the animals we saw, and using their binoculars.

Everywhere you looked, it looked like something was going to explode!

Which was pretty cool.

This is what Bensen thinks of Old Faithful! He was more interested in the bottle then anything else.  It wore him right out.

The rest of us liked Old Faithful.  We even got to see it twice! The kids went into the visitors center and worked on becoming Jr. Rangers. By the time we were done, Old Faithful was ready to blow again.

This was at the Prismatic Spring or something!?! It was really steamy, and we didn't really get to see it, but everything around it was beautiful and amazing.

Here we are walking the boardwalk back down to the car.

Bensen liked this little hike.

We went to see the Firehole lake and ran into another Bison.

The kids loved this little trail. We had to keep reminding them not to run, we didn't want them falling into the boiling rivers!

Bensen loved being outside, he was always this happy.

Even when we stopped for potty breaks it was beautiful.  

I think this was called Firehole Canyon. 

A little farther up the river we hiked down and the kids got in a played. Wesley slipped and fell and got his clothes all wet.  He did not like having to ride home soaking wet! We tried to warn him. Lucky for him that was our last stop for the day.  We ate at a pizza place called The Gusher.   We got Taco Pizza, it was very good.  I think I ate over half of it myself!

The next day we headed North toward Mammoth. 

We stopped at Gibbon falls.  We also stopped at some more Paint Pots.  We stopped at some the day before also. 

They were pretty amazing. Every body liked this hike.

It was pretty, steamy, and smelly.

Everybody commented on our cute little bear, and Batman.  Jaycee got a lot of comments also.  We sure have cute kids.

We stopped at Norris and did a little loop.  We didn't go to Steamboat geyser, me and Mike were too tired.

We made it to Mammoth.  We saw Elk everywhere! The kids finished their Jr. Ranger books and were able to get there badges and were sworn in as Jr. Rangers.  That was pretty cute.
Here they are with their badges.

Wesley took the picture below.

Just outside of Mammoth Mike and the kids were able to swim in the boiling river. While they swam Bensen had a little snack.

Mike said the water on his right was burning hot, and on the left was freezing.  Wesley stayed in the cold water and Mike would occasionally try to push some hot water his way.  The further down the river the better the water temps, but it was much more crowed down there.

By the time they got done swimming it was starting to get late. We drove around for about a half an hour, then headed back to the hotel. It was dark while we were driving out.  Luckily we didn't see any animals.

On Sunday on our way home we stopped at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This was by far the hardest hike we did.  It  was only 3/4 of a mile but it was a 600 ft drop.  Going down wasn't too bad, coming back up was hard.  But we made it.

This is the Lower fall.

This was right before we started back up.  I have a picture of us half way up however it was not very flattering.

Our last stop was at the Mud Volcano.

Wesley loved this hike.  In the loop we walked, there was the Sour Lake, said to be like battery acid, Mud Volcano, Fire Breathing Dragon, and Black Dragon.  Pretty much a little boys dream!

It was a great way to say good bye to Yellowstone...until next time.