Our baby is one!

Eli turned one year old on Saturday, February 7th. It always amazes me how much a baby can change and grow in just one year! Eli has been such a good baby and continues to fill our family with happiness and joy!

He started showing an interest in balls lately. During this sitting he kept saying his version of the word "ball."


We went to Grandma Bentley's house on Eli's Birthday and had jello cake! Yum!
If you can't read it, it says, "HAPPY B-DAY"


"Eli"


Isaac helped me decorate this one.


Here is the happy birthday boy with a smiling brother Isaac!


It was fun to watch him as he ate his first ice cream and cake!

The Draper Temple Openhouse

We took our kids to the open house for the Draper Temple in January.

This is the picture we took before we went.

See Isaac's face? We took a long time to get a nice picture and it turned out he had his tongue sticking out in every one! What a stinker!

The kids liked the tour, especially the bus ride up there, but had a hard time waiting in line. The boys liked finding the rooms they saw in the pamphlet they got when we arrived. When Kate walked past the Baptismal font she exclaimed "It's a pool!" Then when we were in the Celestial Room, Eli let out a very loud yell. Needless to say, his mommy turned bright red and hurried him out of the room!
If you plan to take your family, here are some tips:
1. leave your coat in the car. It was very warm in the temple. If you have small children, you will be carrying them and won't want to be carrying all their coats too.
2. Bring something to read like scriptures or an Ensign. There is no way of knowing how long you will have to wait for your turn.
3. Leave IPODs, cameras, MP3 players, cell phones, etc. at home or in the car. They will just distract you and take away from the spirit that is in the temple.
4. Arrive at your assigned time a little early.
5. Plan to enjoy every room you enter because it may be a long time before you can go inside again!
6. Think of someone else who may enjoy entering the House of the Lord and invite them to go.

I cut my hair!

I have been wanting to cut my hair for awhile now. I didn't know what I wanted, just that I wanted it to be shorter. I heard about a girl who does a really good job for a reasonable price and went to see her on Saturday.

This is my "before" picture. See how long my hair was!


...and this is the "after" picture! Such a difference huh! I also had her put highlights in it to make it look more interesting. I really like it!


Here is a view of the back. I have never had this cut before and I think I might want to keep it forever!


Here is another picture.


We went to church today and everyone said they didn't recognize me. They saw Nate but didn't know who was sitting next to him! Funny stuff! I would love to hear what you think of it, so feel free to comment but ONLY if you like it!

Gall Bladder Part 2

I went to see my Dr. again and he confirmed that I have IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). He told me to eat lots of fiber and drink lots of fluids and try to eat my meals at the same time each day. He said to avoid foods that bring on my symptoms and avoid over processed foods too. He apologized for making me do all those tests but I am glad I did, so he could get the right diagnosis and that there's not something serious going on.

Gall Bladder?

For years I have thought I had a problem with my gall bladder. When I was 8 years old I had severe pain which took me to the hospital where the doctors gave me an ultrasound and told my parents, the cause of the pain was my gall bladder. I was then put on a strict diet where I was not supposed to eat fatty foods and dairy. After quite sometime on this kind of diet I slowly began drinking milk again and have tried to be careful about eating fatty and greasy foods. Sometimes I don't have any reactions from eating these foods and sometimes I do. Anyway, after having one of my episodes after eating something greasy, I decided to visit a Dr. to see if I needed to have my gall bladder removed or to check for gall stones. To my great surprise, after hearing me describe my symptoms, the Dr. told me that he would bet I did not have a gall bladder problem at all! He said he wanted to figure out what was going on inside, so he ordered blood work, (to rule out thyroid etc.) an ultrasound, (to rule out the gall bladder and check on my liver, kidneys, and pancreas) and a Colonoscopy (to rule out Crohn's Disease and Colon problems). Basically, he told me he wanted to waste my money and find out that everything was normal. He wanted to be thorough and make sure we got the right answer. I appreciated that. So, the blood work came back normal and the ultrasound came back all normal and the Colonoscopy came back normal! So, now I am going to meet with the Dr. again to see what the next step is. The Dr. that did the Colonoscopy said about 75% of people are lactose intolerant and have trouble in their GI tract from eating greasy and fatty foods. So what I have may be very common and typical after all. It looks like the Dr. did waste my money!! :)

Party like it's 2008!

On New Year's Eve the kids went sledding with cousins across the street from Grandpa Bartlett's house. Nate's sister, Charese was in town and our kids had a great time playing with their cousins!

Here is Kate with Serenity Flanders and Ben Price ready to slide down the hill.


Nate couldn't get Serenity to take her thumb out of her mouth for the picture! She was such a funny girl!


One of our presents this year was Guitar Hero World Tour for the Wii so we brought it over to play with Nate's family during our New Years Eve party. In this picture we have Jared and Colleen on the guitars, Charese on the drums and Julianne on vocals.


Happy 2009 everyone!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

We spent Christmas Eve over at the Bartlett's. For dinner we had ham along with mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cherry salad, rolls, and cherry berry pie for dessert.

After dinner we put on the Nativity story play.
Joseph was such a handsome shepherd. I love his smile in this picture.


Here we see our three shepherds: Joseph, Isaac
and Ben Price


Kate was our somber angel.


Eli played the part of Joseph and his little cousin
Lydia Price was Mary.


This is our little family on Christmas Eve night all ready to receive Santa.
We let the kids open their P.J. presents that night. They are wearing them in this picture along with their new slippers.


Here is our tree with all the presents underneath. This year we had the kids each pick out a present for one of their siblings. They wrapped it and placed it under the tree. I think they enjoyed doing that and we plan to keep the tradition going.


Growing up in my family, we would always get a picture of all the kids lined up youngest to oldest going into the room to open our presents, so we decided to get a picture of our own. I love how Eli is pointing at the camera!


Eli really seemed to enjoy his first Christmas and was really good at tearing the paper off of his presents!


We got a blow-up Sinclair dinosaur for all of the kids this year. Here they are doing the trick the kids put together.


Isaac asked Santa for a K'nex set and this is what he got and put together with Dad.


Joseph asked for a Clone suit and we got one for Isaac too.
Isaac is on the left and Joseph is on the right.


We had a very nice Christmas and hope you did too.