...Gingerbread house continued

Burke finished his Gingerbread house over the weekend. It turned out great! Some of you wanted to know how it went in case you want to try it out sometime too. If it were me I'd say, go and buy one! But if this were Burke he'd say do it, it's a lot of fun! So choose who your most like and go with it. I did enjoy watching Burke create it though, don't get me wrong. :)

Here it is at the beginning. Whenever he'd put pieces together he'd find something close by to prop up against it until it dried completely.
Everything is now dry and ready to decorate with candy.
When I thought it was finished.
Oh yah, the fence!!! Now it's finished. Isn't it so great!?! I mean, it's got it all from icicles to a cobblestone pathway. I think he did a great job.

Early Christmas

We decided to give the kids their big present since we're heading out to Salt Lake and were not going to lug Kaiya's big ol' kitchen there! It was really fun watching them each open their gift. Kaleb's wasn't huge, but we couldn't just give Kaiya her's and not give him one, so he got his Lego Batman Wii game. We wrapped it in a bunch of boxes and in this video he's down to about the last two I think. At the end it's in a microphone box and Burke makes him think that's what it is and you can tell he's a bit disappointed. Then the joy when he finds out what it really is, so funny!



And here's Kaiya opening her kitchen. I love her face when she see's what it it. I was SO excited to give this to her and she just loves it so much. It's been nice to let her enjoy it before we go and have it to look forward to when we come back home. This video is a bit long, so at least just watch until she finds out what it is and see her cute face, then I'm alright with you turning it off ok?!!! :) hehe. But if you do watch it all, I love Katelin's response to it when she see's it also. She loves it a lot too. We got her a stroller and she's loving it too. We have a few more things for them to open on Christmas morning that we will bring, so don't think we ruined everything, it's alright.

Santa Kaleb

Kaleb decided he wanted to make a Santa outfit to wear out of paper for the hat and wrapping paper for his Santa suit. I think he makes a great Santa! Oh, and Burke and I made the cute little penguin's out of olives, carrots and cream cheese for our Bunko Christmas party. It was a fun party playing Bunko with our husbands too.

Holiday Guitar concert

It was time once again for Burke's guitar classes to perform for the school yesterday. I always look forward to these concerts. Burke lets the kids choose what songs they want to play, he has to approve them of course, but it turns out great! This time since it was a holiday concert they had to choose something geared more towards Christmas. They chose some great songs. They got into different groups and got a song together to perform, so we listened to quit a few. Then Burke chose to do Tom Petty's Christmas All Over Again with all of them together at the end of the concert. That's what this video is of. Sorry about the crazy lady that recorded it...me. I had Kaiya on my lap and it got bumped around at times. Anyway, I loved it all, way to go Burke!!!!!!!!!

The Gingerbread house

We've been wanting to make a gingerbread house from scratch forever now, but it has been unsucsessful. But today a sweet couple from our ward brought us a gingerbread house kit for a gift for our family so Burke and Kaleb decorated it together while Katelin watched. Well I'm sure she helped eat some of the candy, but that's it. And little Kaiya is sick, so she wasn't up to helping and I went to our Relief Society Christmas party which was wonderful - so I wasn't any help either!

During the making:

And the completed house. Tada! Kaleb loved every minute of it and I know he'll enjoy eating it to pieces too.
I'm sure there will be another house to come made from scratch, because Burke is just determined to make one work. He's already tried two times and the first was to soft and crumbled, but was yummy to eat, and the second recipe was perfect, but wouldn't come off of the pan easily! So it broke. I think he's figured it out though so stay tuned for the next Simmons gingerbread house to come!

Birthday fun

Kaleb made this sign for Burke's chair at the dinner table. I thought it was so cute.

Burke cooked his own Birthday dinner as usual. I know wierd, but he just has something different each year that he wants to try and he wants to do it, he really enjoys cooking fun things when he can. So heck, I gave the birthday boy his wish and let him cook away. And I'm so glad I did cause it was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!! He cooked steak, chicken and sweet potatoes right on top of natural wood coals. I wasn't sure about how it would turn out, but it was great, and he loved it too so that's double great. After we were done eating he took the kids out and they roasted marshmallows over the hot coals and we made smores.

This was his happiest moment though, when he found out that the candles I bought were the ones that relight after you blow them out. hahaha! This was his face when he figured that out. I just had to laugh, he's so funny.

The kids and him had a blast waiting for them to relight and blow them out and on and on. Greatest birthday entertainment ever!
I'm glad he had such a great day, it was really fun. Thanks for all of the happy birthday wishes also. We love you all!!! :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BURKE!!!

Burke has caught up to me again in age after two weeks! We're both 32 now and lovin' it. Here's a few things the kids and I love about Burke: He's really gets into projects that we do as a family. He makes learning new things really fun. He loves to be silly and laugh and make us laugh. He's very talented and seems to know a little bit of everything. And he loves us very much too. WE LOVE YOU BURKE/DAD!!! Happy Birthday!!!

My favorites

As we put out our decorations this week it brought back memories of where I got them and certain ones stand out to me more than others. I thought I'd share a couple of my favorites.

This nativity set was my Oma's and I'm so glad we get to have it in our home now. It's so beautiful and when I think of it I think of her and also the amazing story of the birth of Christ. The kids love it too and are so gentle with it. I enjoy telling them about our Savior's birth while we look at it and they point to who I'm talking about. I hope it lasts a while for us. It's such a nice addition to our Christmas.
And this sweet little precious moments figurine is from my mom. She sent it to me when I was on my mission in California. I was missing the pretty snow. So whenever I see this little person mailing snowballs I just smile. I think it is so sweet. And it's nice to have it here in Green River too since we hardly get any snow either, just the cold. Thanks mom! I love setting this out each year.

What's one of your favorite Christmas decorations or ornaments? Consider yourself tagged! :)

O Christmas Tree

Before
After (the next day)

It's more and more fun each year putting up the Christmas decorations and the tree. The kids just love it all and want to help with everything. They think each little decoration and ornament are just amazing. It makes it all even more enjoyable to have them to share it with.

little helping hands

We all thought it was so funny watching her just throw them in wherever. She felt so big helping out.

And MORE family fun

Me, my mom, Juli, Robyn and Tiff (my sisters) all headed out on Wednesday night to see the Twilight movie. We always have a lot of fun together and I always end up laughing so hard at silly things that I get a great ab workout without even trying! It's wonderful!!! We all really enjoyed the movie and eachother's company.

I mentioned in a post below that I didn't get any pictures of our temple square trip, but my sister Tiffany did! So I took some off of her blog, THANKS TIFF!!!

Katelin and Reagan kept giving adorable hugs. They're so sweet.

More Thanksgiving fun

Over our fun-filled weekend we also met up with Candice and Josh and Chanelle and Drew and their kids and went bowling.


Katelin enjoyed looking at all of the bowling balls.

Kaiya had some pretty sweet moves. She always walked up to the line, sat down then pushed her ball. It would go VERY slowly and bounce from bumper to bumper, it always made it eventually. She would sit there the whole time until it knocked over some pins and she would do this bend backwards thing to say hi every once in a while.

And this one is when she tried the backwards roll it under the legs trick. It was a good one too.
There were a lot of high fives going around.

Kaleb and Burke's sweet bowling shoes.

Me, Candice, Josh and Kaiya's bright shoes.

It was a good time had by all! Burke was making a Thanksgiving feast that we could all share for a day after Thanksgiving celebration and it was SUPERB! It's so much fun that he enjoy's cooking. Now we're back and getting up our Christmas decorations. SO FUN!!!

Thanksgiving

This year we went to my dad's sister Yvonne's house in Morgan for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a really pretty drive, we hadn't been there in years. None of the cousins were there so Kaleb just teased his grandpa Ottley pretty much the whole time. Luckily there were two other little kids there so they played with them for little while before we left.

Burke and I played a game of horse shoes and he's pretty darn good.And I'm not. Well, I did ok.

This was pretty much all Katelin ate the whole time, cookie after cookie. I swear everytime I saw her she had one. I guess that's what happens when your so little and cute, people just keep giving you cookies everytime you look at them. :)

We finally got a picture with Kaleb sitting still! He is so wild with that grandpa of his, he loves to play with him and just be plain crazy. The kids were really excited to see them and hang out with them for a while.

Hanging out with the family

Friday my dad and his wife Gail had all of us meet for family pictures. I really enjoy getting together with all of them, I just love them all!!! The pictures turned out really cute, I'm excited to have one in my home. Even all of the little cousins did so well in their picture. I thought they would all leave and run to their mom or dad, but they just sat there. The oldest grand child is 7 and the youngest is 10 months. Total there are now 14 little kiddies. It's really fun to see them all together, they really are such good friends. After pictures we went to Wendy's to eat. I got a couple of pictures there - one of my sister Robyn peeking at us through the dining room window and Sophie, Kaiya and Afton enjoying their meal together and then my camera battery died. :( Afterwards we went to Temple Square to see the beautiful lights with my sister's Juli and Tiffany's families. It was a great night!

Happy Turkey Day!!! :)

Tonight we made the famous apple turkey's. But our little store here only had the spice flavor of gumdrops, and I really dislike those. So instead Burke came home with candy corn and sour patch kids. Hahaha. I thought that was really funny, never seen that done before! So I thought why not throw out some marshmallows too?! And it's so funny when we do things like this with the kids because Burke gets SO into it and makes his the best ever, whatever it is. So heck with helping the kids, they're on their own! They like being creative in their own way too though so it works out great.
I had to get a close up of Kaiya's because I thought her's was so awesome with all of the feather's sticking out everywhere. She just loved this. Burke and I had to get a shot with our turkey love birds together. His is the pretty one with all of the feathers, just like a real male bird always has to steal the show.
We set the timer so we could get all of us turkey's in the picture. Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Easier than I thought

Katelin is officially done with the dreaded binky!!! She has been our only child to have been attached to one so I didn't know how or when to get rid of it. I am so excited! No more having to go in there in the middle of the night and crawl around the floor in the dark trying to find it because she'd thrown it overboard. I was waiting to get rid of it "later", but didn't really know when. But the other night she had chucked it out of her crib and we could not find it anywhere at all, so she was done. She cried for quit a while that first night, but now she's fine and her naps too! I knew though that she'd find it again sometime and she did yesterday. She came walking out with it in her mouth and so I told Burke to take her to the garbage can outside and have her throw it away. So he took her out and she threw it away and waved bye-bye to it. Then today she found another one in a toy box and when she saw that I noticed her with it and gave her a "no no" look, she pointed to the door and so I took her out and she threw that one away too. It was so cute. She's such a big girl! BYE-BYE BINKY!!!!!!!

I'm 32 and I'm not blue!!!

Yes, I had another birthday. It started out with breakfast in bed. Burke's uncle Darrell introduced us to Eggo waffles with chocolate icecream on top. We haven't had that for a long time, so that's what I wanted. We added cherry pie filling on top too. That was yummy! Katelin was trying to copy me by holding up her fingers. Then we got ready and were off to Moab for Stake conference. After that we had lunch at a park there and then headed home. Burke made dinner and the kids and him did the dishes, it was NICE!!!
They made me a chocolate bunt cake and Kaleb picked out candles that said Happy Birthday. They melted so fast so we didn't get a picture with them burning.

Then we topped it with cool whip and cherries. Yah, good huh?!And my friend Annie loves decorating cakes and so she was so sweet and made me this yummy strawberry cake. Isn't it so pretty!?! Thanks Annie, you're so sweet!!! So we have lots of cake to eat. We're freezing it and then we'll take a piece out when we want one. It's nice.

We had a busy weekend, more posts below of that. :)