Happy Birthday Zeke!!!

Zeke is 12 years old! What a special birthday and what a great boy! Zeke turned 12 on a Saturday and was given the priesthood the next day, and a week later he passed the sacrament for the first time. What a great day for me as a mom to have one boy blessing and one passing the sacrament. 

Zeke is a great kid! He is always full of life and energy. He gives everything he does 100%. He is also very kind. There have been multiple occasions where adults have stopped to let me know an act of kindness they witnessed. Zeke truly is a good hearted kid.

Zeke is also beginning to win over the girls, with those big dimples of his!

From day one Zeke was either the happiest baby or the saddest baby, there was not much in between. Even to this day he either seems to be bouncing off the walls or asleep, it's never a dull moment with that kid! In the picture below he is sporting an orange julius smile (which I can't seem to remember how it happened, but that might be for the best).

 We cant do presents without doing "heavy heavy hangover!"

 

I never knew a 12 year old boy could be so excited about clothes! All he wanted was a Lovell Bulldogs jacket and a Nike Elite jacket. At least he is easy to please!

And then there's the cake.... skittles..... I am not sure what he was more excited for, the skittles or the jacket!

Zeke was able to wrestle in middle school this year, and he did awesome! He seems to be a natural. This was his first year to ever wrestle, ever, and he took 4th place at the best of the best for our region. This was quite the accomplishment! However, he is still sold on basketball. . . even though his coach is convinced he was built to be a wrestler! Here is a quick video we put together with some of his highlights from the season.

We love you Zeke!!!

Here we go with another big post!

We ended 2014 on a great note!!

Jakes 17th birthday. 

If you can see the look in Jakes face, he was very pleasantly surprised this year. Jake went to EFY in August. While there he lost his EFY bag, complete with his scriptures, driver license, and a $200 pair of Bose headphones he wears when he is running. To make a long story short, he called once, maybe twice, to see if anything had been turned in, but no such luck. I made it very clear I was not going to replace his headphones. So, all he asked for his birthday was a new set of scriptures, which I told him I would get some. About two weeks after EFY I decided to call the Provo extension, even though he attended EFY in Rexburg. Before I was able to track down a Provo number that day, they called me. They had found his bag and it was in Provo.  Later I told Jake I got him a present for $14.00 that he was going to love (that was cost of shipping)!!! He tried to guess for a few days but was unsuccessful. Well, he had no idea, but his reaction to his present was priceless. He had opened the box just enough to recognize the EFY bag and he squealed like a girl. It was great!!

With the fall brings hunting. Here are some pictures of the kids with their first antelopes, and Tom with his antelope and his elk. The elk antlers are mounted and hanging in the basement, lucky me!

Halloween was a little different this year. I ended up with just Matthew to take around the neighborhood. Amee and Zeke both were with a friend. Not sure where Jake was and Sami was home with her dad cutting the elk meat off the bones. Good old fashioned daughter father time!!

Amee wanted to be an Indian Princess

Matthew is obviously a turtle of some sort (haha) and Zeke, his has a story behind it. He saw a costume of that Slenderman person and thought that would be pretty cool. Neither one of us new anything about slenderman, except what he looked like and that he was some type of game. Well we got online and ordered a white bodysuit that would cover his face also. He was excited. Well a day or two later I heard something about kids murdering kids because they were wanting to make Slenderman happy. Zeke and I did a little research about Slenderman and he quickly decided he did not want to be Slenderman. Well we still had the body suit and nothing to be for Halloween. So he added some black to his costume and there you have it.

 The businesses on main street have treat for the kids the Friday before Halloween. We went with the Woodfords.

Matthew and Ashlyn

Matthew is 7!!

Breakfast in bed used to be a normal tradition, but now birthdays are all too often on school days and it doesn't always happen. But for Matthew he got lucky this year!! (Actually he kept telling me to go get him his breakfast in bed and he wouldn't get out of my bed)


We forgot to get a picture of his cake before it was cut. He saw this cake at a cake auction we had in August and he simply had to have one for his birthday!!!

The older we get the less fun birthdays seem to be, but Sami is always needing a reason to make cheesecake!

Amee is 10!!!

And into clothes and volleyball just like her sister!!!!

Christmas 2014

Christmas is getting to be filled with clothes and shoes instead of games. All Sami wanted was stuff for painting fingernails. She is becoming quite the fingernail artist and probably changes her nailed twice a week, spending about two hours on them each time.

Matthew wanted a remote control helicopter. He played with it nonstop, until it broke. It took a crash landing :(

Amee wanted beads for making things and clothes of course!

I do enjoy seeing them play together, even though its not the traditional games we use to play. I think they are playing mine craft, which is a game that seems so boring to me

Jake got a set of Legos, which he is not so sure about . . . they were actually for Matthew but ended up being wrapped for him

Matthew hugging his Denver Broncos hat.... not sure when he became a Broncos fan. This house is pretty faithful to the Patriots and Tom more or less likes anyone playing the Broncos... maybe he takes after his Uncle Jared.

Matthew has been asking for a suit for two years.... since Zeke was going to be turning 12 and Jake had grown out of his, we decided to get a suit for all the boys. Matthew was more than excited!

Zeke with his headphones and a new jacket. Zeke likes anything that is bright and fluorescent!