The brothers and their kids

Happy Birthday Nana!

Jeremy and the kids walking on the beach

We were using a tripod and timer on my camera to get a good shot. I thought this one turned out great except for Kenyon looking to the side.

Maya and Kai were playing in the sand and getting so dirty in between pictures


I love the chaos-ness of this shot!

Try to get 4 kids, 2 and under to sit still for a kids picture :)

Since we are going out of town for Christmas, we asked Santa if he could come to our house early. He came on Sunday morning. Maya was so confused. You see, when we tell her someone is "coming to our house," she expects to see them there. When she woke up on Sunday morning and he wasn't there, she didn't believe that he had come. We have since convinced her that he did come and bring her scooter, but she originally claimed that Mom and Dad gave her her scooter.

Here are some highlights:

Opening up their PJs on "Christmas Eve"

So happy that Santa brought the one thing she asked for

Kenyon excited about his Cars rug

Trying out Jeremy's American Idol Dance Showdown

Mom's new bike

This is Mom's favorite gift for Maya - now Mom and Maya can listen to their own music in the car and we don't have to take turns anymore! :)

Anyone have one for sale or know where to get one? A good friend has been on a hunt for one and is not having success. I thought I would give it a try to post on here. Please email or call me if you have one or if you see one, buy it and she will get you $. Email: britanyut@yahoo.com

Last week we received an early Christmas present in the mail from Nana and Grandpa (Jer's parents). What a fun surprise! Jer took the kids for their first spin in it yesterday.

Getting ready...

This is what we woke up to - FOG! What a treat from the sunny AZ weather. We have been lucky enough to have quite a bit of rain lately and now fog. Maya couldn't remember ever seeing fog before. She wanted to go play in it! As nice as the change is, it doesn't make me want to go to Utah anytime soon and freeze to death. Sorry Utahns, but we are headed to sunny California this year for Christmas instead. How did I live there all of my life? :)





Check out this video clip... And we wonder why Maya thinks the world revolves around her?

Here is what has been happening at our house:

We went to look at Christmas lights at the temple

They both love to play drums in the kitchen

Ready for church

Here he comes!

We just got a call from our attorney in Florida. They held a termination hearing today and Kenyon's birthparents' rights were terminated. She said it got a little scary when the birthfather's attorney showed up in the courtroom requesting 10 more days. He said that the birthfather doesn't want to contest it, but they needed 10 more days. The judge agreed with our attorney that 8 months was long enough and signed the order to terminate rights. Our attorney said that the other attorney just wanted to drag it on so he could get more money even though the birthfamily didn't want to. CRAZY!

Now we just wait 30 days until we can finalize. Happy day!!

A while back my sister-in-law Tricia challenged everyone to post a picture of their favorite room in their house on their blogs. Here it is:

Our loft! This room is where we spend most of our time. All of the kids' toys are in here, our computer and a super comfy sectional couch. This room is almost always messy with toys, but at least there is only one room dedicated to toys rather than the whole house. Oh and it also serves as Kenyon's room right now until Jeremy's cousin moves out - notice the pack-n-play bed in the corner. Our kids might need lots of therapy when they get older - Maya slept in the dining room of our one-bedroom apartment while we were building our house (from 3 months-18 months old) and Kenyon has been in the loft/family room for 8 months!! :)



Thanks Tricia for a fun idea! If anyone else wants to join in the challenge, feel free!

Okay, okay, many people ask and I always put off responding. My friend Niki just sent me an instant message to see if I ever check my blog comments because I have not responded to comments about Kenyon's adoption. I just never know what to post and what not to, so here it goes.

We served Kenyon's birthfather with papers back in October giving him 30 days to "do something" or we are going to finalize. He did nothing so now we are proceeding forward to finalize the adoption. That said, there are so many steps along the way. The next step is a hearing to terminate birthparents' rights and then we wait 30 days before the finalization hearing. They were hoping to finalize by Christmas, but since it has taken so long just to schedule the hearing (2 weeks to be exact - remember our GREAT attorney??!!), that now finalization by Christmas is no longer possible.

So all I can say is we hope (and pray) that it will soon be over, but we are trying to not count our eggs before they've hatched! Is that enough info? :)

He is still throwing up! It started Monday night and it is now Thursday afternoon. Last night he got really dehydrated. It was super scary so we finally took him to the E.R. this morning. By the time we got there, we had given him enough shots of pedialyte with a medicine dropper so he didn't have to get fluid IVs or anything. He is so sad!

We are still here - barely! My babies have the stomach flu - throwing up countless times, Jeremy and I have ear infections that resulted from the colds Jeremy, Maya and I had last week, and we are an all around SICK home.

So I need to post about our fun-filled Thanksgiving in St. George, Utah, but I better go clean up this pig sty instead!

Have you ever read this book? This was my day.

Remember Oscar the fish that Maya got for her birthday last February? He is still alive! That in itself is a miracle - a beta fish that survived for 9 months! Well this morning Maya and Jeremy were downstairs making breakfast. Maya said she wanted to see her Oscar. So Jer looked in his vase (his bowl broke so he is now in a vase) and he wasn't there. Jeremy got a little freaked out and started looking around. He found him lying lifeless on the cold, hard tile floor. He quickly put Maya on the couch to distract her and picked up Oscar. Oscar started moving a little, but he was all dried out and discolored. Once he put him back in the water, he came to life a little more, but he has not looked good all day. Can you believe he jumped out and landed on the ground??!! Below is a picture of how far of a fall it is. Please keep Oscar in your thoughts!! :)