Merry Christmas

First I should mention that we did in fact have Thanksgiving. Brian, Tia, Dylan, my parents, and Vern all came to have a feast. Tori,Laeni and Dylan had a good time playing together and the "grown ups" enjoyed conversation and talking about the good ol' days. Bryan especially enjoyed dad and Brian's help with yard work and putting up Christmas lights!

Unfortunatley, I didn't take any photos of the food...but right after Thanksgiving, we made our annual gingerbread house.
Our neighbor treats...before I drizzled cream cheese icing over the top.

Bryan and I got a new bedroom set for Christmas - here is the bed in the background.

The annual Weaver party was so fun -especially for Tori. She was so excited to see Grandma Weaver, she kept asking about her, then when Grandma came, Tori was her sidekick.

Laeni has had better days, she wasn't too excited about Santa.

After the party, we went to visit Vern, who had spent the day setting up his Christmas train for the girls. I had a photo of the girls wide-eyed in front of the train, but thought this one with the girls and Vern was cuter.

Tori wanted a butterfly pillow pet for Christmas and Santa delivered...

Laeni loves her pony from Santa...

...But I think the favorite gift from Santa was Max, our new Brittany Spaniel (a suprise to us all...except suprisingly, Bryan seemed to already know....as if he had written his own letter to Santa and hid it so we couldn't see it).

After Christmas, we headed south to AZ to visit Cami and her fam while Bry was hunting with the Shirley boys. The girls had a blast on the trampoline.And loved playing with their cousin Kaylin.

It has been a fun-filled month or so. We have been blessed with family, health, prosperity (we both still have jobs) and good times. Here's to another great year...with a new arrival coming in March.

Halloween & Beyond

Let's begin with the Haloween Party at the church...the Shirley Girls dressed up like bugs. I was hoping Bryan would dress up as a bug catcher, but no luck. I think this is the 1st year since we've been married that he didn't dress up.

Tori was a butterfly, Laeni was a ladybug, and I was the queen bee :)
We won an award for our costumes. Before the party I remembered to add a little face paint to the girls , but of course I forgot on the night of Halloween.

Our final pumpkins. The photos below are of our busy helpers with the work - the icky work!

The night of Halloween, right before Trick-or-treating.

Tori got into it this year, Bryan said she started running from house to house and he and Laeni couldn't catch up! After they came in from trick-or-treating, the girls kept practicing by hiding in the pantry until the other knocked and said "trick-or-treat" then they'd switch. Once I knocked and said those magic words and Tori came back with some candy for me :)

The next day was my b-day and Bryan & the girls pampered me with homemade blueberry muffins for breakfast, take-out Thai food for dinner and a homemade Bryan cake for dessert. It really meant a lot to me to have a homemade birthday cake - birthdays have always been a big thing for me and my mom used to ALWAYS make our birthday cakes, even after my mission, so this was a little "taste" of home.

Bryan even made a very special frosting under the colored frosting because he wanted it to be different and special. What a guy!

For my b-day, Bry got me a gift certificate to a craft store and so I bought our turkey decoration (fun for the girls) and the "give thanks" blocks, but decided the girls and I could make our own pumpkins pretty easily/quickly. Bry cut the wood down for us so we could run to the store and get some raffia...here are the girls at work painting their pumpkins and below is the picture of the final product (s).

Yesterday we celebrated Laeni's birthday with a doll party for her and a couple of friends who live across the street. Their cousin also came, so that was fun. Grandma Shirley, Tese, Jess (and her friend Daniel) and Sierra also came, along with Breann and Kylee.

The party started by coloring a picture of a doll. Here are the little girls coloring away!

Then we played pin the ball on the doll - with the lovely Bryan as Mr. Blindfold Man.
Here are the final results.

Next, we ate birthday cake and ice cream. Here is Laeni's "doll cake"...

and Laeni getting ready to blow out her candles - she needed a lot of help, and a new shirt by the time the candles were finally out. At one point, I thought she was going to eat the flame!

Finally, we decorated doll cookies - each girl received a big doll and little doll to decorate, a bag of their own icing, and a goodie plate...even the big kids had fun.
Tori mostly enjoyed the frosting - out of the bag, but also look at her cookies piled high with frosting!
Before the party, I had made skirts, shirts and braided hair for the big dolls to wear, if the kids wanted to decorate them like that. I was so suprised at how much time even the little ones stayed focused on the activity - I think they really liked having their own plate of treats and bag of icing. Thanks to Grandma Shirley, Breann & Kylee for helping the little girls with the decorating!

As you can see, Laeni REALLY enjoyed the candy off of her plate. All she does now is try to scrape all of the frosting off of her cookie with her fingernail :)

I guess in all the excitement, I forgot to get Laeni's picture with all of her presents. She received a big girl bed from us (which we decided not to put up yet since Bry was going on a trip), a doll bed and clothes for her doll, a couple new dolls, a pillow pet (lady bug), new jammies, potato head, new panties (so we can potty train her), snow pants, mittens, bed skirt, shirt, crayons and coloring book, and a LOT of attention.

Happy 2nd Birthday Lanei Loo. You are such a fireball - full of life and excitement and spunk! We sure love you little one.

We measured Laeni on the measuring wall the day of her party and she is almost 2 inches taller than Tori was when Tori was 2! Watch out world - here she comes!

Rest in Peace

From the 1st day Bryan brought Trigger Dox Sama home, he knew Trigger would be a hunting dog for sure. Bry brought him up in the mountains that first day and he flushed the birds! Bryan was already in love. These two would remain the "mountain men" together until about a year ago when Trigger took a tumble down the mountainside while hunting chuckers. Little did we know then that Trigger had other heath issues that contributed to the fall, but this week we learned that Trigger had liver damage that was messing him up mentally - causing confusion and paranoia. This was not the Trigger we were used to. When Bry took him to the vet, Trigger didn't growl, bark, or even try and bite anyone - definately not our Trigger dog.

The poor thing continued to decline in health since Monday. It got so bad that he couldn't even stand up anymore. Grandpa Shirley was going to come over today to take him to the vet so we could put him out of his misery (Bry left on a trip today). True to his stubborn nature, he didn't make it to the vet - he died in Dennis's arms. Dennis burried him up in the moutnains near his favorite hunting spot.


He was a good 'ol dog. We yelled at him all the time to quit barking, quit digging, etc. etc. but we really did love him. He was a part of our family - the ornery part! He has been good to us - always so excited to see us in the backyard, always good to the girls! He came with us everytime we went up in the mountains. He even hiked many of the highest peaks with Bryan. Here is our very first family picture.

He was always at home in nature.

He came on Tori's first camping trip of course...and many other excursions.

I took this photo this morning with the girls after we went out to say our "good-byes." Trigger couldn't even lift his poor head. We're sure gonna miss you Trigger dog, you crazy thing!

Oh how I love the fall....

We get to watch General Conference: Here are the girls gathering their supplies to help them with reverence (worked occasionally).

Here are the Shirley Girls on "the rock" near Paula's cabin. Going to the cabin for Oct. conference has been a tradition for years. I'll be honest, it was a lot more quiet and reflective as a single girl!

After the cabin - and all of my frustration with the girls at the cabin - I figured we all needed a little fun and for me to not be so serious ALL the time...so while the girls slept, I prepared our girls only tea party. Tori was so excited when she woke up that she had to touch and look at everything on the table.

During fall, we get to wear fall colors...

And go on hay/wagon rides to the pumpkin patch...

And try out LOTS of different pumpkins...

Until we find the perfect ones.

Actually, these aren't the ones the girls finally selected. They chose the ones in the picture below. These GIANT ones were just on display. Oh, how I love the fall!

We're Getting a Temple

In preparation for the Payson Temple, I have been trying to teach the girls about temples- and have started teaching them the song, "I love to see the temple."

This morning, with jammies still on and crazy hair, they each performed their own rendition.

I love my family and feel grateful we can be together FOREVER!

Labor Day Weekend

This photo was actually a few weeks ago - we went swimming and Tori hit her eye on the side of the slide and got a pretty nice shiner - Bryan had her pose like this - maybe we can post it on our front door with a sign that reads:

"Warning, tough girls live here"
Over Labor Day weekend, Tori had her last performances with her dance class and dancing group. Can you pick her out of the crowd below as they were lining up for the children's parade?

(hint: she's the littlest one)

While Tori's group and the other girls were performing on stage, this is how Laeni spent her time...playing in the dirt with her cousin Fisher :)
During the children's parade, Tori was WAY behind her class, but just kept looking at everyone and smiling - as you can see in the photo, there are none of her classmates even close. A couple of times I picked her up and carried her up with the rest of her group so she wouldn't be run over by the bikes right behind them. She was having a great time doing her thing.


We also needed something fun to make / eat, so we made fruit shishkabobs - hoping Tori would eat something (she hasn't been feeling well lately).

Grandma Francis made the girls their own "dancing skirts" and here they are using them...

Laeni posed like this herself...such a ham!