Family Pictures

We have to give a shout out to our good friend Mike Bird who agreed to take our family pictures. As you will see, he did such an amazing job and we are so, so greatful for all the time he took to do these for us! These are just a few of the wonderful shots he took. Thanks again!

SPoooKy Times

Whoo hoo for Halloween!!! Halloween becomes so much fun when you have kids. #1 because you get to raid their candy bags and eat all the good candy bars cause they really just want the dum dums and pixie stix. #2 They get so excited and i love it. (#2 is really number 1. i really am a good mom)

Talmage is lovin' Transformers right now, so naturally he wanted to be Bumblebee. He is his favorite transformer and for the last 2 months, his favorite color changed from blue to lellow (yellow). He wants yellow everything!
I was happy to bring this little treasure out of the costume box for elle to wear this year (i made this for talmage to wear when he was 1 1/2). I figure you only really have 2 years of each childs life as a mom to choose your kids costumes, so take advantage of it while you can. She does make the cutest tube of toothpaste i've ever seen and she learned very quickly how to say trick or treat. who wouldn't when you get free treats for it.

Talmage and his buddy Porter LOVE to play transformers, and Porter is always Optimus Prime and Talmage is Bumble bee. They have been so excited to dress up as them for Halloween and they were trying to convince Mike (porter's dad) to dress up as Megatron so they could fight him. They came to the trunk or treat with us so the two could fight the Decepticons together!

Myk and i were invited to a very fun Halloween party put on by the Craney's and the Bennetts. You were supposted to disguise yourself so that people would have to guess who the person was under the costume. Myk was the creative one and decided to make a robot costume. I was amazed at the way his mind thinks. He used everything we had around the house to make all the different details of his costume. He is just so creative. I did, however, have the song "Mr. Roboto" from Styx stuck in my head the whole week he was working on it. What a fun song.
oh, and i was a cave woman. We had fun ratting my hair and putting leaves in it. We also blacked out some teeth and put brown face paint all over to make me look dirty. I'm sure you could imagine my excitment to brush out my hair that night!! Ouch!

St.George Marathon

So i have always a goal in life to run a full marathon. I have had the opportunity to run a few half marathons and at the end of each i think, there is no way i could turn around and run another 13 miles. At any rate, i was not plannning on running one at this point in my life because i know that it takes alot of time and i was just not ready to take that much time to train. Well, my friend and her friend got into to the St.George Marathon(which is a lottery to get into). Her friend got pregnant and couldn't run. So, needless to say i ended up buying her registration and running under her name.

This is somewhere in the middle of the run. We forgot to grab the camera, so these are just what i could download from the sight. They are a little small, but it's kinda better the way cause who really likes the way they look when they run?

The finish line is in sight!!! I heard that sometimes your emotions can get out of wack during a marathon and i have to say my emotions got the best of me. It first started at mile 23 when I came out of the canyon and all of the sudden the streets were just lined with people cheering everyone on. I started to cry but then i couldn't breath very well, so i had to control myself. The next couple miles seemed to go on forever because i kept thinking, "ok, i only have 2 more miles, 2 miles is nothing, the finish line is so close." After the longest 2 miles, i saw my wonderful, supportive husband and the finish line at the same time, and then i lost it. It was such an amazing experience and i am so glad that i did it!!



Whoo hoo, i am finally done!! and yes, that is a smile on my face because i am so happy to cross the finish line and for some strange reason i remember thinking, "that was so fun, i have to try it again."
I must say that i really did love the course of the marathon also. It was so beautiful and perfect running weather. The only bummer is that there were quite a few crazy hills and alot of rolling hills the first 18ish miles but the last bit was great!

He's a Soccer Maniac

So Talmage played his first season of soccer this fall. He was so excited to play and i must admit, i was soooooo excited/sad to realize that i have a kid old enough to play in an organized sport. Myk was lucky enough to be the coach of the team and i must say, i was quite proud of how well he handled himself with his competitive nature. He did great. And talmage, well, we are hoping that maybe next season he will get into knowing how the game works and actually trying to be aggresive and get the ball. If that fails, at least through the experience i found out that he may be more interested in wrestling because he was the one on the opposite end of the field, wrestling another kid. It was entertaining to say the least.

Can I Get a What, What?

Ok, i know you are all jealous of that title, but i just couldn't get that phrase out of my mind as i was thinking about what to title this. So there you go.
We have been out of the internet world for months now, and it has actually been kinda nice. But i have missed seeing all of my families and friends blogs. So sorry i have not been commenting on anyones in the last 6 months.

Here is an update on what we've been up to since Easter.
(note: these are chronologically backwards because i can't get the pictures to move at all.)

Doin' a little jig for the first day of preschool this fall.

ELLE, need i say more? I can't remember what she got into, but she enjoyed it. and i am sure i did her hair earlier that day, but you can't tell cause she pulls it out any chance she gets. Actually, chances are i didn't do it cause what's the point? She makes me laugh.

I had to throw these painting pictures in here again to show how completely different two children can be coming from the same parents. Notice, talmage is showing his one litte area on his body that he got paint on (whoo wee, his finger of all places). And then there is elle, she proudly displays that there is not a spot left that does not have paint on it. I love having both personalities because i don 't have to clean up so much after talmage, but i love elle's spunk.

Talmage graduating from Barneck Preschool in May. He had so much fun there and met some good friends.

Now that Talmage is almost 4 1/2 years old now, i thought i should show some pictures from his 4th birthday. He was going through a spiderman and batman phase, so i thought i'd join the "make an awesome cake that actually looks like something besides just frosting a regular cake" mom's club. I don't know if i'll ever do it again, but i can say i tried it once. It acutally was really fun and they are really just big cupcake things, so it was alot easier then doing a real spiderman cake. My dear friend Heidi helped with the whole presentation of it all, as you can tell. She is an amazing women and has such great talents in all the areas that i lack. Needless to say, Talmage LOVED it and because of that, i probably will try it again sometime.

Well, we actually did a lot more than that this summer, but i forgot to take my camera everywhere we went, so sorry, no pictures. But we did spend MANY fun weekends up at the cabin this summer with family and friends. We got to go camping, swimming, waterskiing, and had a ton o' fun playing with friends. Over all, fun was had by everyone and we partied hard baby!!!!

Summer Part I

We have had a crazy/fun summer and so we thought we would post a few pictures of our fun. Be prepared, there will be more to come soon!!!

Here are Elle and Talmage helping plant the garden.

These are of Talmage and Elle experiencing the joy of sidewalk paint.

A couple of pictures from James and Melony's wedding.

Easter 2009

Who doesn't love Easter? We had a very busy/fun Easter weekend. On Saturday, we were able to head up to Grandma and Grandpa Hall's house for Melony's (James's fiance) bridal shower. We were also able to dye eggs and have the big Hall family easter egg hunt. I think there were something like 150 eggs to find and it is quite the competition between the brothers. Luckily i was with elle, so we were going at her pace, nice and slow. We came back sunday for church and meetings and then had our own little easter egg hunt around our house. Then we headed back up to Myk's parents house to spend time with the family. It was so much fun spending time with family. We love all of you!!!

Here are the cute little chillin's before church. We were trying to get elle to smile so i was saying, "yea, yea" and smiling, but i forgot she always claps when we say that, but it did get her to smile and to be excited about it.

This is our exciting easter egg hunt around the house. I was so suprised at how much elle got into it. Right after we were done finding eggs, she got down on her belly and was looking under the couch for more, it was funny. She also loved when one egg popped open during the hunt and she found the little treasures inside. She just kept trying to open the eggs.

Talmage was the master at finding eggs. He was also so good about leaving some for elle to find. He is just at such a fun stage with holidays right now. Its so much fun to see your kids get so excited about everything!!!