Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

Look who got their first haircut!

We finally cut Charlie's hair the other day. He doesn't have a lot of hair but the hair he does have would get stuck on top of his ears. He also had a few way long hairs that needed a trim. So now it looks a little more even :)

Gingerbread Houses

We make gingerbread houses each year with Andrew's family. We have a good time and the kids especially love it because there is A TON of candy.

Carter wasn't really in to it this year.

This is Sam's finished product.

Candy Day

We have a tradition that we do every year around the first of December. We get together and make candy ALL DAY. It started out seven years ago when my Mom and sisters and Anita and her girls wanted to get together and teach each other how to make their Christmas candy. Sue also happened to be in the neighborhood and joined in on the fun....it has stuck since then and we all look forward to it every year. Here are a few pictures of that fun day:

Charlie loved playing ball with Aunt Sadie.

Preparing for yet another windstorm

Apparently there is another windstorm on its way to our area. Our Stake had us end church really early today (9:45) so we could prepare for the next storm coming. Everyone that was willing and able gathered together. They rounded up all the debris and took load after load to the dump so it wont cause more damage when these high winds come rolling in.

I brought in all of my porch decorations:

This is what our street looked like:

The dump had a four mile line to get in so they started to have people dump it at the park and against the freeway sound barrier. Here is what that looked like:

What a crazy experience!

Wild Windstorm!

Charlie and I survived the craziest windstorm the other night. Of course Andrew was out of town. Around one a.m. I started to hear the wind howling, it got progressively worse and worse. At three a.m. I couldn't take it any longer it sounded like the windows were going to shatter. I could hear the windows bowing in and when a big gust would come barreling by I could feel it move my house while I lay in bed. I grabbed Charlie (because his crib is right by a window) and he lay by me in my bed. We laid there for about five minutes and the wind was getting scarier and scarier and louder and louder. So Charlie and I went in the basement for the rest of the night. When we woke up the power was off and the wind was still just howling and gusting. I kept hearing shingles popping off our roof and flying debris hitting our house. The storm lasted for about 12 hours of really strong wind. Some gusts were up to 102 MPH....that is a category 2 hurricane.  The power was off at our house for like 15 hours (we were some of the lucky ones). The storm did a lot of damage....from Farmington to Bountiful there are so many trees that just uprooted. Windows were blown in, signs gone, semis tipped over, the freeway was closed, houses torn apart, siding ripped off, roofs gone, trees on houses, trampolines and fences gone, garage doors dented, school was out, power was out forever, traffic lights missing from their poles, shingles and garbage EVERYWHERE, & American Red Cross shelters. It was quite the storm.

Our house lost a lot of shingles and some trim along the roof line. We need to get a new roof now :(  This is the damage at our house besides the roof:

This is the backyard....stuff was everywhere.

Here are a few pictures of our neighborhood: