Christmas 2008... Pathethic...Has it really been almost 6 months!

I've been really lazy and unmotivated and hopefully that will change! I'm not making any promises but I honestly want to try to do better. I look at all your blogs and I realize how much you guys are missing of our family. So I'm going to play some catch up! 6 months of catch up! So stay tuned......

Christmas 2008

Christmas this year was so much fun. Here are just some of the fun things we got to enjoy as a family. We made gingerbread houses...... we had breakfast with Santa....we took a trip on the Polar Express.... we traveled to Idaho in horrible weather making our trip 6 hours longer than it was supposed to be....we surprised Grandma Cindy by arriving at her door for Christmas...had Christmas Eve dinner with Grandpa and Grandma Stoor and Uncle Brad and his family, spent Christmas with my parents, Garrett, Heidi, Joel, Jacelyn, Brenden, Hayley, Mitch, and Boston....played mad gab with Mitch (the highlight of my Christmas).... almost froze to death in Idaho (I've become such a wimp!)... Went to the after Christmas Ozburn party....we were able to see our friends the Smarts and Herberts...had a rockin New Year's Eve party at Mitch and Hayley's......Because we did so much I decided to just make a slide show of it all. Enjoy

Thanksgivng 2008

Thanksgiving! This year we had the big Deming/Bell Thanksgiving in Eugene. It was full of both fun and frustrations more fun than frustrating. Some of the fun things that happened was of course seeing everyone again. Having all the Bells there brought back all the fun memories we had in Colorado! We also had fun spending the whole week eating dinner with the Bells! I felt a little guilty showing up everynight but they insisted that we come; so we did and it was wonderful not to cook dinner for a whole week. Thanksgiving day was a lot of fun thanks to Marie. She of course went all out. She made a Thanksgiving tree where we all wrote what we were most grateful for, she had dressup clothes for the little girls, magic tricks for the little boys, and even dress up for the big boys (Steve, Patrick, and Kevin). The big boys were a hit. Seeing them dress in Jim's old 70's clothes was hillarious. It was something that will always bring a smile to my face. Now for some of the frustrations. Poor Steve. He had the worst luck. He hit a curb and blew out his tire in his car and had to replace it. And then he borrowed his van to Bryce and Katie and it got broken into. A brand new laptop and carseat was stolen. He spent a lot of time trying to find someone that could fix the window and get it back to Portland before Kelly and kids flew in from Arizona. They didn't realize the carseat was stolen until they got to the airport and one kid was without a carseat. Poor Steve and Kelly...

But overall Thanksgiving was good.

Lanie even played dress up! She usually isn't into this type of thing.

Markus the Magicain

The man with the sexy hairy chest is my husband!!! Isn't he HOT!

DuCk FoOtBall

We bought season tickets with Steve and Kelly this year and it has been a lot of fun. I'm going to be a little sad when there's no Saturday games to look forward to. They were great date nights!

LaNIe's a BiG gIrL nOw!

We are very proud of our little girl. And as you can see she is very proud of herself. We can't believe how big she is getting. I have to say having this potty training experience behind us is a huge relief. We've been trying to convince Lanie it was time but she would not believe it. "NO WAY MOM, GO AWAY!" "NOT YET MOM" "BUT I LOVE DIAPERS" Finally I just said we were going to do it and the 1st day was terrible, terrible, terrible. I wanted to cry but each day got better and we haven't had an accident for days!

Markus' Fieldtrip to Pumpkin Country.

Markus' trip to the local pumpkin farm was a lot of fun!

I thought this was a good picture of what Oregon is like during the fall. Every morning you wake up to a fog. Oregon is trully a beautiful place to live.

Markus got to ride the bus to the farm!!

Hayride!

He found his pumpkin!

Markus and Christian his friend from preschool.

Halloween

October has been a busy month around here.

We carved pumpkins and Markus thought it was pretty disgusting at first then he thought dad was pretty funny when he was going to eat it. Lanie had nothing to do with the process until it was done and cleaned up.

Markus and Lanie with our masterpiece of a pumpkin1 Lanie so proud of our work!


YUM! Yum!

The gooy mess!


Part of the Halloween Festivities this year was Markus' preschool party. Lanie and I got to tag along. He got a lot of candy and prizes but good ol Teacher Greg made all the kids eat veggies before they had any sugar! Markus surprised me and ate some celery.

Halloween night was a lot of fun. Markus was so excited. Weeks before Halloween was upon us we tried to find a costume he wanted. I talked him into not being Thomas the train for the 3rd straight year. He decided he wanted to be something scary. He decided on a dragon.

Halloween night the kids had a blast. Lanie thought it was great knocking on the doors and getting candy! Markus thought it was hillarious to scare the people that answered the doors. But behind one door was a 90 year old lady that about had a heart attack. We put a stop to that after that. We went trick or treating in our neighborhood and then hit the neighboorhood right next to ours where supposedly they give out king sized candy bars. We thought we would just hit some of the people in our ward and then go home. Little did we know it was like the sidewalks of New York City. I've never seen so many people. We had to wait in line to get to some doors. At the end of the night Lanie was out like a light and Markus was wide-eyed looking at the load of candy he got!