Birthday Month at the Guymon House

Wow! Between sick kids and birthdays, this month has just flown by! I now hope we are on the mend and resolve to no longer be a blogging slacker. :)

Anyway, January has been birthday month at out place. Both Bryan and Grace have celebrated their birthdays! Grace turned 2 and Bryan is, well.... old. :) (j/k love - I'll be there, too, before you know it!). I thought I would share some pictures from our celebrations. I had them all in order but I really think that blogger uploads them backwards. Does anyone else have this problem?!? So then I tried to put them in backwards so they would upload the way I wanted, but now they are just backwards and inside out and all messed up. Maybe it's me and I need help - a very real possibility.... anyhoo.....

Grace's Birthday:

Here we are at the *END* of the day about to eat the 'MeowMeow" cake. This was so funny. I had told Grace about a week before her birthday that I would make her a cat shaped cake, so for the next week whenever anyone mentioned her birthday all she would say is meowmeowmeowmeow..... about like that! She is soo obsessed, but it is really cute!

This is what we gave her:
It's a Fisher Price twist and twirl princess palace, or something to that effect.
Anyway, she really likes it!

And here she is with her adorable grin!
We just love this face!


Opening presents, which she loves!
We really could have just wrapped empty boxes and given her some
balloons and she would have been just as happy!


Here is the famed Kitty Cake:

And here we are at the beginning of the day when Joshua insisted that we had to have party hats for the big day.... so we pulled out the scrapbook supplies and went to work!

Party hats or Dunce caps, I'm really not sure which!?!

The kids did enjoy wearing them though, so that's what counts, right?

And here is how the day started off, with Mickey Mouse pancakes made by Daddy, the pancake-making-machine!

Bryan's Birthday:
Gee, some how there is not nearly as many pictures....

Here is Bryan modeling the TT basketball shorts we gave him, which was Joshua's idea. He remembered that the Elder's Quorum b-ball "season" was about to start and insisted that Daddy needed some new shorts - good idea Joshua!

Don't worry, his wife didn't let him leave the house in this fashionable combo! :)

And here he is with his presents:

I hope that both Bryan and Grace enjoyed their special days and that they know how much they mean to me! Bryan has brought so many wonderful things into my life in the last five years and I can't imagine (nor do I want to) life without him! Grace makes me smile everyday and I just can't get enough of her!

Aren't we so blessed!?!

More Wedding Pictures

Well, I had a couple of requests for more pictures from my brothers wedding, so here are a few. Hopefully this will give you an idea of how wonderful the day was. If not, let me know, I have 200+ more I can post! :)

I couldn't find a picture of the whole family together because we were, of course, in those pictures, not taking them. So you get us all in bits and pieces! :)

This is my favorite of all the pictures. We were supposed to act like we were trying to kiss Todd on the cheek, but we all looked so dorky, especially Maren :) , that we couldn't do it and we just busted up laughing!

All the sisters!

This is Elaine's family:

Grumpy face and all, but she is still so stinkin' cute!!

I love (and MISS) our family!

Wedding Bells are Ringing...

...Or were ringing, I guess!

My little brother Todd got married!!

And here is the happy couple:

His cute wife's name is Elaine and we really quite like her! Isn't she so pretty? I think she and Todd will be just perfect together. It was kind of funny because even in the small amount of time we spent with her, we could see how much they are a like and how much they have in common. The wedding was a lot of fun, and we wish them all the happiness in the world, and then a lot more!

And here is my handsome Joshua. He has been really wanting a suit like his dad, so we figured the wedding was a good excuse to get one. I think he looks so handsome, and I love how much he loves his suit! He's one dapper young man, don't you think? And here is my Gracie Girl! She looked so pretty and way too grown up! She was completely in love with Elaine and her flowers and her beautiful puffy wedding dress. Grace kept trying to hug Elaine and wasn't sure how to because Elaine's dress was so puffy so she would just kind of stretch her arms out around the skirt as far as she could go and pat it - so cute! In this picture she is borrowing Elaine's flowers, which she also couldn't get enough of. I think I've got a girly girl on my hands! YIKES - what will I do!?!

SNOW much fun!!

One of the things we really enjoyed about our trip was playing in the snow!! Well, for the most part anyway. Grace didn't last very long before she would start crying, having to uncover our car took a while, and it was FREEZING, but still, isn't it pretty?

Joshua and uncle Russell making snow angels - Joshua was really into this!

Christmas has come and gone...

....and yet I am just posting pictures! :) I'm sure no one is too surprised!

Anyway, we had a wonderful Christmas. It was SO good to be in Utah with our families and to just relax and have fun! And have fun we did!

Here are pictures from Christmas Day:

We spent Christmas Morning over at Grandma and Grandpa Guymon's house, which was lots of fun. Here are the kids waiting patiently with Grandma and cousin Cole to go into the living room.

Merry Christmas to Bryan!! Santa Claus brought him a Wii Fit

(Which his wife thinks is fabulously fun and she probably uses it more than he does - thanks for sharing, Love! Although I have to say...you should see this man Hula Hoop!!)
Our kids were so into Christmas this year, it was great! Joshua was super excited as he went through his stocking. "Oh, wow! A ......." he'd say every time he pulled out something new! So cute. He even got really excited over his new socks!


And here is Grace with her stroller, which did come with a baby but apparently she's MIA. Santa Claus picked out this perfect doll that even looked like Grace, but who needs a doll when you can just push an empty stroller?

Joshua is showing Grandpa what Santa brought him - a tent set complete with backpack, sleeping bag, flashlight and water bottle! He has had a lot of fun with this one, and even slept in it a couple of nights. I was really excited too because I thought this gift might make it so I could reclaim my kitchen chairs from their new use as walls for blanket forts, but guess who still made a blanket fort with kitchen chairs Friday? Yeah, it was me. :)

Grace's favorite part, aside from the wrapping paper, of course, was the

candy cane in her stocking!

This is the Henke Family Christmas Morning Extravaganza at my Grandparents house. You can imagine the mound of presents for the 17 of us that were there! It is always a good time!

Here are all the "kids"

Ahhh, sweet happiness! Joshua got the one single thing he wanted - a Woody doll. Or as he calls it, a "Toy Woody." As you are all aware, he is quite obsessed with Buzz Lightyear. Well of course, Buzz is not complete without Woody, so ever since I found him a small Buzz Lightyear action figure in Amarillo this summer he has wanted a "toy Woody" to go with it. I had searched high and low, but with no luck, so I passed the idea onto my mom. She found this super cool Woody, complete with a working pull string! Then my sneaky little sisters went and bought him the matching Buzz Lightyear since the "toy Woody" was about three times the size of the action figure Buzz he already had. And so here you have it, a four-year-old boy in heaven:

Then we went to visit my Larsen grandparents where we had more holiday happiness (pictures were too fuzzy) and headed back over to the Guymon's for some more Christmast fun! It was fun to have most everyone together. We had a yummy dinner, opened presents and played some Wii. Grandma and Grandpa even got in on the action! You should see Grandma run with the Wii - on her way to be an Olympic champion, for sure!

Joshua and his cousins Cole and Anthony all got matching computers for Chirstmas from Grandma and Grandpa. Already on the road to becoming more techo savvy than their parents......

I have to explain the goofy picture coming up of next. What I really, really , REALLY wanted for Christmas was a new camera. I knew I wasn't going to get one because it was out of our budget this Christmas and I new it was more than our parents generally spend on us for Christmas. But I was still kinda hoping, you know? So I opened my box....

Could it be!?!?

YAY!! A new camera! And yes, I even did a "I got a new camera dance"!

How did it happen? My amazing husband sacrificed his Christmas gift from his parents (He got "The Tale of Beedle the Bard" instead of something "big" like the rest of us) so I could have a camera. Now that is a Christmas gift to remember! I've decided I must be the most blessed person ever - I don't know how I got someone who takes such good care of me, and he even seems to like it! I think he was as excited as I was!

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Okay, I can't resist:

One more goofy picture:

Check out my dad's hat!

It's to keep him warm when he rides his scooter to work.
Only you, dad, can pull that one off!

Hope y'all had a Wonderful Christmas!