OtterPops: Holidays and Family Pictures

We drove up to my parent's house Christmas afternoon to spend a few days with them and the 3 siblings I had in town. We also celebrated my mom's 60th birthday with some family friends. At the end of December we came back home to spend some time enjoying the new Christmas haul, working on house projects and seeing some of my extended family. It was a good balance of Family time, hosting visitors, traveling and having some down time. I don't think any of us got overwhelmed with any one component, on top of which nobody got sick (miracle of miracles), so we really had an enjoyable holiday.

The girls always love seeing their Aunt Kelsey

Mom's Birthday dinner party

At my parent's house we met back up with the Tituses, along with Kelsey and Nate & Tausha. All three cousins who were born last November were there together toddling around and they were TOO cute!! All three together formed the official "Dog Harassment Commitee." They all loved Luke and since Luke is such an old man now and appreciates his solitude, he would go hide up in my parent's bedroom for solace. I think we only had one little nip where Luke was responding to a tail pull and no blood drawn even then! The little squirts! We fit all of us in my parent's house and although it was crowded, it was fun to be there together.

Scooter rides

3 cousins

3 November babies photo shoot

Emma and Marcus having their snack one night

One of the nights we were all there, USU had a game on TV so we all had "game food" (aka junk food) for dinner and put on our aggie gear to cheer them on. Christopher even built a lego tower spelling out "Aggies" to show his spirit!

Christopher with Lego tower

Nate and Ethan cheering on the aggies

Since Jared and Jeff are so handy with wood and tools, and the rest of us are willing to work whether we know what we're doing or not, and Kevin was willing to fund the project, we built a deck for my mom over the period of a couple days. The old deck had been there over 20 years and was getting a little dangerous for mom to step in certain places. They removed the old deck, built in a new (almost) identical deck and added a hand rail down one of the steps. It turned out so great! Everyone pitched in in their own ways and it was fun to see the transformation.

The boys desperately trying to get outside to help with the project. I tried to keep them occupied and fed inside

Everyone pitching in removing the old deck

Building the new deck-two chief contributors

Everyone with the finished product

Nate's wife, Tausha, is very artistically talented and kindly used her abilities and time to take family pictures for the the Tituses and us. Thank you Tausha!!