White Elephant Party w/ Friends

This has become a favorite tradition for me and Camille throughout the years. My friends and wives or significant others get together and have a white elephant gift exchange. It is a great time to catch up and get some interesting gifts. This year the most interesting was Bryan Barney's wrapped up hamburger that he had gotten from Sonic earlier. This year it was at Jenna and Kevin Lee's, who did an incredible job at the smorgasbord. We even had a chocolate fondue fountain flowing. You can't beat that. It was great to catch up with everyone and see some newcomers that we had. I added pictures here of the wives, the friends, and the presents for some reason.

Annette's Birthday

Tonight we spent the evening with Annette Stevens, Chris' wife and both their families and kids. It was a blast!! We had a blast playing on all of their instruments, eating a wonderful authentic mexican meal, and Brayden's favorite......"Opening presents". As you can see Brayden is sitting on Annette's lap while she opens her presents. Not even her own daughter was up there. Leading up to the opening of the presents Brayden kept asking, "When are we opening presents and who are those presents for?" So when it came time to actually open them, he was all over it. This was a fun night with our friends.

Babysitting Co-op Madness

Every Friday night we have our babysitting co-op, which is an opportunity for Camille and I to get out of the house and go on a date without the boys. We drop them off at one of 5 other families, and we just rotate. Just as a side note, and critically important for this story, each family has 4 kids except for us. So all you doing the math at home, that is 16 kids plus our 2. So in our home which is perfect for 2 kids, we have 18 running around every 5-6 weeks. Well it happened to be our turn this last week and I just thought it would be fun to show everyone a little glimpse into our experience. Here are all the kids sitting around are tiny table. They actually have to share chairs because we don't have enough, and some of them even sit on the floor. Then at the end of the night, after running around for 4 hours, here is the typical scene. 3 kids, which are not even mine and Brayden, sitting around me and one falling asleep on me waiting for their parents to come. So fun!! Also I couldn't help but get a picture of Brayden's new little girlfriend, Aubrey. Everytime we have this co-op at our house they play together the whole time and they always sit by each other when we watch movies. Don't worry, Brayden doesn't even realize what kind of trouble his charm will get him into in the future.

Temple Lights

Every year we have a tradition of going to the Mesa, AZ temple and enjoying the beautiful christmas lights that they display on every little living vegitation. This year we had so much fun!! Logan loves lights and was constantly wanting to get out of the stroller and pull on every one. He wanted to take them all home with us. Brayden really enjoyed the Nativity scenes and watching the Christ statue in the visitors center. It was a beautiful night, not too cold, and we were able to see a lot of our friends there; Melina and Jonathan Crosby and Jessica and Bryan Knight. As our kids get older this tradition will only get better and better.

Oh Sweet Cali

At least a few times a year our family has to get to the beach. We love getting out of the heat and getting our beach fix. Just recently we went to one of our favorite California beaches, Newport. It was Logan's first time, so he kept feeling the sand on his hands and feet and getting really excited, but more importantly, he had to taste it for the first time. Brayden loved making pictures in the sand and making muddy sand castles. Our kids loved playing and we loved soaking up the sun.

Disneyland in October

Last weekend, our family took a much needed trip to Disneyland. Since we have season passes this year we have been trying to get here as much as possible. In October there are a lot of fun things they do at Disneyland, including this huge mickey mouse head pumpkin. Camille and the boys sleep on the drive over, have fun all day, then sleep on most of the trip back. It is quite an experience for them. While Dad, spits mouthfuls and mouthfuls of sunflower seeds and drinks caffeine to make it through the drive. We had a blast together as a family and made it all home in one piece.