Bridge Family Christmas Party

Here is the pics I took for the Bridges who live out of state. We had a great time eating and opening gifts and chating and laughing. We missed you!!!

What a cute family!

Meyah got Horton Hears a Who

Samantha got some jewelry from Riker

I think Malli looks like Tinker Bell

This was just too cute not to put in.

Mom LOVES her bracelet!

I got Daddy a new truck to add to his collection on his wall!

Christmas 2008

Christmas was 4 days after we moved into our new house so it was a miracle that the tree was set up. Sadly, the only ornaments were the ones we received this year. It was just too much work to go all out! The kids each go Nintendo DS's. This is how excited all of them were! They also go a wii. They got a bunch of other stuff but you would get bored if I listed it all. Way to go Santa.

Everying is open and we are just checking out the mess, oops I mean, the goods.

Here is Todd enjoying Guitar Hero on the wii!

Moving into Cottonwood Heights House

We finally got to move into our new home. I has been a long time coming and we feel very lucky to be here. We got to live in an Extended Stay Motel for over a week and I thought about taking some pics and blogging about that but I will already need some counseling and extra medication to get over it so I did not make any visible memories. Our new home makes up for it though and we LOVE being here.

We had some great help again. Thank you to Mark, Tyson and Gavin, Brian, Rich, Mark, Jody, Darin, Lonnie, and Grandpa Head. Here is Brian in the front entry carrying something really heavy! It was not snowing, thank goodness, but the weather was bitter cold! Also, thanks to Kristi and Traci for staying and helping me get started unloading the endless amount of boxes. Kennedi and Meyah were onsite to look cute, oops I mean, help out.

Rich and Lonnie took apart our table to fit through the door. Here is Rich posing, oops I mean, being very herculean.
This is actually the day before when we took over ownership. The kids raced up the walk way to see inside.

We have this sadly pruned tree in our back yard with a swing on it. The kids hardly saw the house before they went outside to swing.

This is Todd with our realtor Christina and her husband Scott. We got to be pretty good friends with them over the past year. They are great people!! We love them. Thanks, Christina for selling our house and getting us into this new one. Riker is waving a welcome from our new living room.

Moving from West Valley City

Here are some pics of us moving out of our West Valley house. I cried a few times but tried to be brave. It was the day of the first snow storm for Salt Lake and we got dumped on!!! I owe a HUGE thank you to everyone that came to help us. Mark and Gavin, Jody, Chick, Mark, Grandpa Head and Lonnie. The weather was aweful and you showed up anyway. You guys saved us and we love you!

Mallari's Christmas Program

Mallari is lucky enough to have an exceptional teacher this year in school. Her name is Mrs. Jones and she is very talented. She wrote the music for this Christmas Program and the kids did a great job. Mallari looks adorable and she knew every word. Way to go Malli!

Reflections 2008

Kennedi and Mallari both decided to enter Reflections this year at our school. Kennedi entered a box that looks like her. She drew a ponytail in the back. She got 3rd place in her catagory and age division. Mallari made some little animals out of molding clay and got 3rd place in her catagory and age division and she also drew a picture of herself and received a certificate of participation.

I was incharge of Reflections this year at our school (advice from Angi: NEVER volunteer to be incharge of reflections!) so I was not able to judge so the girls received their prizes fair and square! Good Job Angels!!!

Kennedi's first Violin Concert

Kennedi has taken up the violin. She is learning it at school and is LOVING it. She has a natural musical talent that Mom is VERY envious of. She is also playing the piano. She can pick songs out by ear on both instruments. These pics are of her and her best friend Mackenzee. They are two peas in a pod!

Good Bye West Valley City!

Today is December 13th. We are moving today from our home we have lived in and love for over 13 years. As of right now (7:00 am), I have everything packed and ready to go out to the trailer. We are having friends over later to help us load everything and get rid of a bunch of furniture. Thanks to the fact that the joys of children can really cause havoc on furniture, I get new furniture for my new house!!

It is hard to describe how I feel today. I am beyond excited to move to a new home and get to know new people and make new friends and attend a new ward. I am also so very sad to leave such a wonderful home and such wonderful friends and such a great ward. I will miss this place more than I can say. I don't know exactly why we put the house on the market last year because everything happened so quickly but today I know that is was the right thing to do and things work out as they are supposed to.

Good Bye West Valley! I am so grateful for who we have become from living here and who our children can become from what we all have learned here. The friends we have here will forever be in our lives and we will never forget the love we feel from our "West Valley Family".

Here is a HUGE hug and Thank You to JN5, both old and new. We will miss you all and love you so much!

We are MOVING!!!

Now that things are becoming more and more official everyday, I thought I would write about our exciting news! We are moving!!! We put our house up for sale November 1st 2007 and sold our house about a month ago, 1 year after putting it on the market. We were going to take it off the market for the winter and suddenly, and surprisingly, we got an offer. We had to look frantically for a new house or become homeless and were fortunate enough to find this beautiful home. We are moving out of our house on December 13th and moving into our new house on December 21st. We will be living in an extended stay hotel for a week between homes.

We are so excited I can't put it into words but we are also so very sad to leave our beautiful home that we love so much. We have lived here for 13 years and love our ward and our friends. We will miss them! I cry as I write this because we have been so blessed to be here.

I have been carting the kids across the valley to a better elementary school and it is a pain in the tush so that is why we are moving. My commute to school is going from 20-25 min (depending on traffic) to about 8 minutes.

We feel so blessed to find this house and feel like this is where we belong. We have met the sellers and they are very nice and have great things to say about the ward and neighborhood.

I took some pictures of the inside with the current decor but decided not to put them in here because I want to show pics later of the house as OURS.

Halloween 2008

The kids looked great for Halloween. Here are some pics of their costumes and them at school in the Halloween parade! Happy Halloween!!!