Can you believe Christmas is in a week? We are on a countdown at our house. The kids can't wait. 3days till Grandpa and Grandma McIntyres, 6 days till Christmas Eve, 7 days till Christmas, 8 days till Grandpa and Grandma Beuses, etc. This is what we have to go through every morning when we wake up. I don't think anyone is very excited at our house :)

Here is our Christmas tree, the kids really wanted everyone to see it. Enjoy!! (We had to put it "up" so Luke can only reach the bottom most ornaments)

Twin Falls Temple

As most of you know, we are getting our very own temple in Twin Falls and we can't wait. We took these pictures a couple weeks ago (disregard the date on the photo) and as you can see the landscaping is almost completely done and the whole outside is completely done except for the center window. They have to keep it open so they can put sheet rock through it. We are scheduled to have the Open House in May and are so excited. If any of you come through during that time let us know and we would love to have you stay with us and go through the open house too.

Thanks Mom!

Thanks mom for the quilt. It's beautiful and I love it! It really makes the kitchen look so Christmasee (is that a word?).

Darla

This is our cat Darla. The kids and Sam love her (me not so much--even though I have to say that she is a very good cat, for being a cat) and they are always trying to convince us that she should be an inside cat. One of the reasons I gave in and let the kids get her was that she would never live in our house, but they keep trying and I am not tempted at all to give in :).

Today the kids decided to bring her in again and try their best convincing tactics when she jumped down from Seth's arms and ran into his bedroom and hid beneath his bed. We couldn't get her out so we decided to wait till she came out on her own. Luke fell asleep so I put him in his bed and not 1 minute later I heard the bell on her collar. I went in there and there she was. What a funny cat!

First Snow

Well it's here. Can you believe it? We couldn't. We woke up to the beautiful white stuff. It wasn't much, but the girls loved it. Atleast they said they did. They lasted about 5 minutes outside. Our cat Darla didn't know quite what to do with it. It was quite comical to watch her try to walk in it. It was like she was prancing around trying to not get her feet wet.

Anyway, we also got almost all our Christmas decorations up. The only thing we have left is our lights on the outside of our house. This is the first year we get to put them up and I am way excited about it (Sam isn't. I wonder why:) The kids can't wait for Santa to come and have been making great lists of all the things they want. Seth fills many papers up with his lists and then he writes while the girls tell him what they want. It is very cute to watch.

On a funny side note the other day. Sarah and Kathryn were sitting at the table coloring while I was doing dishes, not really paying attention to what they were saying. All of a sudden Sarah starts crying and saying that Kathryn called her stupid. Meanwhile Kathryn is very much denying that she said that, so I asked her what she did say. By the way, Kathryn is our very honest child and will tell you the truth even if it's bad for her. Anyway, this is what she said, "I not call Sarah stupid. I call her stinky. I smell her and she is so stinky." It was so hard not to laugh. And needless to say we still had a discussion of things that are not nice to say.

We are finally doing it!

Since this is our first blog, I thought we should start with the cutest part of our family. It's not a great photo, but we are sending the cutest ones out for Christmas so you will just have to wait. This picture was taken at my brother's wedding (yeah, he finally got married :) and we had tons of fun.

For those of you who we haven't talked to in a long time, we are still living in Twin Falls, ID. and really loving it. Sam works for an insurance defense firm doing mostly medical malpractice and car accident cases. Lately he has had some very exciting cases (atleast in the civil world), an office manager at the only OB clinic in town was caught embezzling. She had been doing it for 8 years and had embezzled in the neighborhood of $450,000. His firm is representing the doctors and he has been having great fun writing up all the legal papers (or whatever they are called-I can't remember them at the moment). I just do the normal mom stuff and stay busy between my calling in the Primary, teaching a mom's preschool with Sarah, playgroup with Kathryn, volunteering in Seth's school, keeping track of busy Luke, keeping the house clean, doing the never-ending laundry, loving my husband :), staying current on all those good books out there and so on. I love it on most days and wouldn't trade it for the world. Seth is 7 now and in 2nd grade. We put him in a charter school this year and he absolutely loves it. It is a great school for him and glad that we made the choice. He still loves to read and build whatever he can get his hands (legos, k'nex, magnetix). He has recently discovered how fun video games are (thank heavens we only have "mario kart" and "diddy kong racing") and I am not so thrilled about it. Sarah is still our tiny little girl. She finally made 29lbs (same as Kathryn) and just keeps getting taller, atleast for her. She loves anything to do with horses and can't ever have enough of them around. She is always saving up to buy another one to play with. She just turned 5 and is very proud that she is not 4 anymore. Kathryn is 3 1/2 and is my little chef. She loves to help me in the kitchen. I think it's mostly because she wants to taste everything, but oh well we sure have a great time making things together. Her speech is improving very rapidly and have found a new speech therapist that we love and is making great progress with her. They also believe that she never had Apraxia, which is awesome, and that it only presented that way because of her tonsils. We had those taken out last August and now her speech has taken a dramatic turn for the good. YEAH! Luke is our busy, busy little boy. He is 9 months old now and has been crawling for several months. He gets into everything and always wants to be just where I am. If I even walk out of the room for 2 seconds, he starts crying and trys to follow me. He is definetly my most needy baby. but we sure enjoy him. He also just learned how to clap his hands and shake his head yea and no. It is so cute.

Well that's a little about us and we look forward to blogging with all of you.