Happy Birthday Colton!

Today was Colton's 9th birthday! I can't believe he is 9 already! he is growing up SO fast! We decided to celebrate it with our family yesterday. He decided he wanted to go to Citris Grill and then bowling after. We all had a great time hanging out together and you know Colton, he always makes it a party! Colton ended up beating all of us, along with his killer dance moves. Haha love that kid! But in my defense, Ashley and Spencer and I didn't have bumpers on our lane! Sorry Spencer... I guess Black Beauty let you down!

Here's Colton dancing! So funny!

Tonight we had cake and ice cream and Colton opened his presents. Ashley and I got him a new green camera. He loves it! He can't stop taking pictures of everyone and everything, especially Sophie! I'm starting to worry she might go blind though from all the flashing! He had a great birthday and still has his friends party on Wednesday at RockReation.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

We had such a great Christmas this year! It's always so much fun to go over to Grandma and Grandpa's on Christmas Eve. It's something we definitely look forward to every year! There have been plenty of posts about it so I don't think we need to remind everyone how fun it was! We got to see cute Avery and give her a little present! She even gave us one too! (We love the perfume! You have good taste Avery!) We love getting to watch her and we are so grateful to Jodee for trusting us and letting us come hang out with her! We always look forward to it so much!

After we get home from Grandma and Grandpa's we get new pajamas (that the elfs left for us while we were gone:) and my mom takes pictures in front of the tree.

Christmas morning was so fun! We are lucky to have the little boys around becaue it is so fun to see how excited they get! I got a new laptop which I was so excited about! It will be so nice to have for school! Ashley got a new camera and an ipod touch. Colton was so excited to give my mom a cutting board that he made for her at scouts. It was so cute! Our family gift was Rock Band. The boys have had SO much fun playing it over the break! It's funny because each of them has their instrument that they're good at. Tyler likes the guitar, Spencer is good at the drums, and Colton is the only one in our family that isn't tone deaf so he is the designated singer and he's great at it!

Winter Break!

K so we have been promising everyone we would post on our blog. I promise we will get better at it! Maybe I should make it one of my New Year's resolutions or something! We had such a nice break from school and got to spend so much time with our family which was so nice! Ashley and I got to go over to Dantley's grandparents' house to decorate gingerbread houses with his family. We had so much fun and it was so nice of them to include us in their family tradition!

The boys had a great time playing in the snow and building snow forts! Sophie joined in with the snow fun too! She wasn't too happy about the boots though! That was more for our entertainment!

Every year around Christmas we always do a family activity. This year we decided to go to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and then come home and decorate gingerbread houses. (Ashley and I kind of had gingerbread house decorating overload! Apparently it was the year of the gingerbread houses!) We had so much fun with the boys! They loved it and were so proud of them when they were all done.

What a Stud!!

Since we know that Spencer probably won't be posting this on his blog, we decided to do it for him! I hope he doesn't kill us :) On Saturday Spencer went to Junior Prom. Him and his friends all rented tuxes and of course Spencer had to get the one with the purple vest and coat tails! He was looking sharp and it was fun to see him all dressed up! They went to the Salt Lake Country Club for a nice dinner and then over to the dance at Holladay City Hall. After the dance they went to a place called Missy Marlow's, which is just a big gymnastics gym with all sorts of foam pits and pads and ropes and things like that. He went with a great group of friends and had a great time!

Silverman

Okay so we are seriously like the worst bloggers ever! We have been so busy lately and haven't had time to post so this is a catch-up post! A couple weeks ago we went to Las Vegas to go watch Dantley compete in the Silverman triathlon. We had so much fun and it was definitely a nice break from school! We stayed with Dantley and his family at a place called Lake Las Vegas Resort, which is in between Henderson and Lake Mead. It was so beautiful! The condos were really pretty and the pool was so nice and relaxing!

A couple days before the race we went with Dantley over to Lake Mead to watch him practice swimming in the lake.

On race day we woke up at 5:00 and headed over to the lake to watch Dantley (aka "Billy Idol", as the race announcer called him). The race consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run! The swim started at 6:30 right as the sun was rising. It was crazy watching all those swimmers take off all at the same time! While they were out there the wind started to pick up so on the way back in Dantley was swimming into some pretty big waves. He finished the swim in 1 hour and 13 minutes. I can't even imagine swimming that hard for that long and he still had a bike ride and a marathon run to go!

Watching the bike part of the race was alot of fun! We had made signs the night before. We got to follow him all around the course. Most of the bike course was basically in the middle of nowhere! So we all would drive to a spot on the course and wait for him to go by so we could cheer him on. Then we would drive to the next spot. It was actually alot of fun and we had a good time hanging out with his family. He had the second fastest bike time and he probably would have had the fastest but 60 miles into the race he lost both of his bottles of his liquid calories! The whole cage that was holding both of his bottles fell off the back of his bike! and then a while later his chain came off his bike! Pretty unlucky but he still finished strong on the bike. He finished in 5 hours and 48 minutes.

Next was the marathon run. The run course was in Henderson so there were lots of places to sit and wait for him to come by. He ran through a shopping center called The District, which is kind of like the Gateway mall. It was so cool because by this time it was dark and the trees lining the path were all lit up. We couldn't believe how long he had already been racing and he was still going strong! He finished the run in 3 hours and 48 minutes! He started before the sun came up and finished well after the sun was down! He had been working so hard and doing outrageous amounts of training to get ready for this race. We were SO proud of him!! It took so much physical and mental strength for him to do so well! He took third place and completed the whole race in 10 hours and 56 minutes! And this was his first full distance Ironman! It was so incredible to be there and be a part of such an amazing event!

Halloween Party

This year Ashley and I offered to be in charge of planning the family Halloween dinner. My mom usually does it and she does such a good job but was too busy this year. Ashley looked on the internet and found some cute food ideas. This is how they turned out!

We had fun planning it but it turned out to be a lot of work! We had the dinner on Sunday because Halloween night is usually pretty crazy! Luckily Spencer got home from his tournament in Las Vegas just in time for the party. Ashley decorated the table and it turned out really cute!

On Tuesday night the boys carved pumpkins. They had a lot of fun (even Spencer)! Their ideas were very creative. (Notice the pumpkin insides coming out of Spencer's pumpkin's mouth. Just leave it to Spencer!)