Preparing for Christmas

A picture tour of our life the few short weeks leading up to Christmas:

First it snowed. 

The first snow of the season always carries a bit of magic in its flakes. It brings with it some pretty sweet pajama-clad, fire place running, fill your soul type of mornings. You know the kind little girls dream of when they think about being a Mommy some day. :) Those do happen sometimes.

Snow Snacks. 

Mini chairs, licorice and the Christmas devotional on TV.

Bringing Mister Tree home. Every year it feels like the tree is part of our family. 

That's wierd huh? Maybe we need a pet.

More snow snacks. They never quit!

We always make a big deal out of the star.
Scratch that. Cache and I do. Devin obliges.

Ta Da.

Bedtime stories and prayers around the tree.

Christmas shopping dates with this guy, who is too young to spill a secret. 

Probably our last year of that! He also wore that hat 95% of December.

Decorating giant sugar cookies at their big brother's school party. 

The camera died before I got one of Cache! Sorry buddy.

Afternoon quiet time.

Secret Santa who delivered manger pieces and Christmas Stories all month leading up to Christmas day. This right here may have been the funnest part of the whole season! Thank you secret Santas. We love you. It really added a sweetness to this Christmas that we would have missed.

The notorious jingle bell that got stuck on Gage's finger and sent me into the biggest panic I've almost ever had as a parent.  

Our second snow came on Friday night pizza night. So while the boys were outside in the cold,

us gals stayed warm inside making our own snowman.

New fallen snow gave away our secret Santa's foot prints.
So after the babes were sleeping, Devin and I laced up and solved the mystery of the secret Santa. :)

Then Devin made me this. :)

Noah was baptized a few days before Christmas. Sweet boy.  Sweet day.

Now all 3 of "the boys" are official Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

Don't these 3 cousins look like such grown up, well behaved gentlemen?

Don't worry they are not.

They have grown up a bit though in the past 8 years:

(Christmas 2005)

Christmas Sunday. All our nursery kids dressed in their Christmas best. Oh I loved it.

The boys:

The Girls:

Waiting to see Santa!

Word to the wise: Check to see if it is dog day in Santa's village before you go. We waited in line for 2 hours in the cold while listening to at least 20 barking dogs some dressed like Christmas elves and all the owners high pitched baby voices as they told them how cute they were over and over and over....

Patiently warming her toesies with her hot chocolate while waiting for Santa.

2 of the 5 Carlton boys came to play.  

Cameron sweetly listens to all of Naomi's barbie princess chatter and played house with her. Bryson and Cache are kindred spirits.  They played Monopoly and Chess for 3 hours! Funny boys.

And that's it. We were officially ready for Christmas to happen.

End of Orton family pre-Christmas picture tour.

In the life of Nay

A few Naomi-isms that I want to write down.

Making Family new years resolutions, we decided that all 5 of us yell too much and we created a jar of "yeller" (yellow) M&M's.  You get one every day you can go without yelling..

Naomi thought that "squirtels"(Skittles) would be a much better prize.
She always calls them that and I do not correct her. I love it.



Grocery Store:

Gage and Naomi sit next to one another in the race car cart. They get lost in make believe world as I shop.  Their make believe morphed into: "Let's get married Gage!"
G: "Oh Yeah!" And they start hugging and saying : "I love you soo much!"
Then Gage lets go and says : "Nevermind. I don't want to get married."
Nay persists: "Yes we are getting married and going to have babies and a dog and it's going to be so wonderful!"
Gage: NO I'm not. I'm gonna marry a different girl."
Nay: "Oh! Then you get to marry me! Mom always says that I am a different girl!"

I had to stop shopping and recover from laughter at that point.

Devin turns 31

Happy Birthday D-man.

Peanut butter pie

Home made Burgers and fries.

BYU basketball stadium panorma for is office.

Hour long Tahitian oil (manoi oil) massage for his tired hands and muscles that work so hard for our family. From me ;)

As tradition since moving to here, we will have a belated Tucanos birthday dinner with all the winter adult birthdays on the Orton side.

Pretty simple. That's what he likes. 

We love this happy birthday guy. One day a year doesn't seem enough to celebrate him.

Merry Christmas Wishes

 Merry Christmas Eve. We are ready for Christmas and for Santa! I might be more excited than anyone else in the house! I'm also excited for Gage to not ask 100 times an hour all day if TODAY is Christmas Eve.  He can hardly stand the presents under the tree that he can't open. It has been so funny to watch him attack whoever the new person is that walks into our house with: "HEY (insert name of whoever just walked in) is today Christmas eve?" Even after you say 'NO' he will just keep asking as if the act of asking again might magically change the day to Christmas eve. Our children got to meet Santa last night for the first time.  He did not dissapoint.  Santa asked why they took so long to come meet him and immediatly a vision popped into my mind of the 2 hour wait in the cold and all the barking dogs that were also in line to see Santa with their childless owners along with Gage throwing up all over Devin.  But I just replied.. "Man I don't know!" haha.  He was a sweet Santa though. The kids really liked him, but were too excited/scared to mumble a word. Afterwards they just were really concerned about his belly not being as round as they thought it should be!  We've also had a secret Santa drop off a Manger on our doorstep  about 10 days ago and every morning since we have a wrapped piece of the manger and a touching Christmas story to go along with it. Tomorrow morning I am expecting baby Jesus on our door step since it is the only missing piece. I want to kiss our babysitter (who Devin and I sneekily figured out is the gifter hehe) This little act has added so much excitement and 'specialness' to our Christmas season this year. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas rejoicing in the gift of our Savior.

M e r r y  C h r i s t m a s !

Thanksgiving 2013

 Our First year hosting.

 

 We puppy sat Daisy the dog. Our kids were in heaven.

• We also tried out black Friday for the first time. Pretty fun.  Although we avoided most all crowds so we probably missed the real sales. I guess I just don't love a bargain!   It was just nice to shop knowing the kids were at home sleeping, so I didn't worry about getting home to them.
• New Disney Movie Frozen with the whole fam! Love that movie!!

  Thanksgiving according my phone:

 Waiting for to be seated for our movie...

This new theatre has leather seats. Shmancy! 

Gage didn't move the whole time...he was "frozen" I guess.

 Cache and Naomi think its such a treat to have a baby in the house.

 Downtown Boise after the Stampede basketball game.

 Devin's the new doc for the team so we get season tickets. Pretty fun!

 

We did a dip night the evening before Thanksgiving.  

We usually do pie, but my family couldn't stand the thought of not having it on Thanksgiving... so dip it is.

 Thanksgiving morning.
 Macy's day parade, jammies and cereal. I look forward to this morning all year!

 And that's about how Black Friday went: No stamina.

 IT was a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

November 2013

F A L L * 2 0 1 3 

Our attempt at some family pictures this year. Self timer again. We weren't lucky enough to run into a professional photographer while we were out like last year! So funny how I thought these pictures were disasters, but now looking at them, I'm glad I saved a few. 

BYU vs. BSU

We watch the BYU vs BSU game every fall. Usually at Wingers.

This year we decided to be there in person as a gift for Cache's 8th birthday.

Utah in the fall is spectacular and just one of my favorite things. Oh I love it!

Then we found out that Devin's sis Julie was being inducted to the BYU hall of fame (Cross country National Champions) and they were doing it AT the BYU/BSU game.

Uum no way Devin was missing that.

*Julie and Matt (and Devin)with 3 and 1/2 of their soon to be 6 children. She is awesome!

  We all stayed with Devin's sister Karli in Lehi. Full house = Such a fun weekend!

***

 

How did two Cougars produce a Bronco?

Our children with Cache as their leader have become die-hard Bronco Fans. 

I guess you could call them independent.  Their favorite thing to do is get up in the mornings without waking us up, they feed themselves and the baby, sneak and turn cartoons on and pray we don't wake up.

Funny.

That's exactly what Devin and I do every night.

Back to the game. Cougars won.

 

 All the little cousins stayed with Uncle Pat and Aunt Karli during the game. 

And they took them all to a chile feed and trunk or treating! I thought was really brave of them. 

But so nice to enjoy the game with just Cache.

Cousins Cache and Kyle.

 Kendra, Kyle and Cache with their 3 foot "Cougar tail." aka the best maple bar ever. Truly.

 

We tore my sister Ash from her studies at the 

Tanner business building long enough to go to the game with us.

 Post game shakes at the old shake shack.

  

Saturday at a cool new park with the family:

Dustin and Devin at the tippy top.

 Family soccer game:

Next we met up with a few of our St. Louis school family at another park.

Fun to see these friends again.

These 3 boys sat by eachother for 3.5 years...

 In St. Louis we each had a toddler boy and a baby. Things have multiplied..

It took a minute but then they all warmed up just like old cousins.

 Ash and I also got in a sisters date in that night.

• Sushi @ happy sumo
• hot chocolate at the rocky mountain chocolate factory
• Haunted ski lift at Sundace

Oh we had fun. And the ride was so scary!  Funniest memory of the weekend for me: Our feet were frozen solid by the end of the ride.   But we didn't know it until were forced to jump off and landed on them. The lift operator was yelling: "Hurry go get out of the way!"  All we could do was waddle very quickly and scream in pain. Haven't laughed that hard in too long.

Its fun to have a sister at my alma mater to introduce her to all my old favorite places. :)

Fall is FUUUUN.

Ghosts with gas

In the wee hours of the night Naomi came into our room crying that she was scared.
I sent to her back to bed and assured her all people and ghosts are scared of Dad so we are all safe.
She showed up again crying:
"Mom I heard someone tooted in my room and it wasn't me!"
We let her stay.