A VeRy MeRRy ChRiStMaS!!

This was a fun Christmas!!  We spent Christmas in Idaho this year with Cody's family.  All of Corbett's Sorensen cousins were there (pictured above)!  They had a great time playing together and we also had a lot of fun hanging out with family all weekend!
This year Corbett asked Santa for an easel (which is a paint palette to him) an axle (which is an easel).  Along with that Santa also brought him some paper and art supplies. 

This year we were busy in our garage making all kinds of presents.  It made the holiday so much fun!  For Grandma and Grandpa Sorensen we made a rocking motorcycle.  If you knew Cody's dad you would see how fitting this is for their house.  It was a lot of fun to give to them!  We also used our wood tools to make blocks for the babies and rubber band guns along with various other gifts we helped with.  Below is our rocking motorcycle in progress...

This is the prototype.

And Corbett is testing out the finished project here.

Santa Claus came to visit on Christmas Eve.  We are spoiled to have a close relationship with Santa, so we get personal visits from him all the time!

The twins have mixed reactions to Santa and Mrs. Claus.

And the whole family.

The twins playing with their toys...

I just wanted to post a few pictures that I've taken lately...Konrad

and Kennedy

We really enjoyed this Christmas season! 
Our family is blessed to be healthy and happy.  We're looking forward to the new year!

Family Christmas Party!!

Every year we have a Christmas party with my family.  This year we went to see the lights at Willard Bay on a wagon ride, and had a banquet room at a hotel reserved for dinner afterwards, catered by Maddox!  It was a lot of fun, maybe too much fun, we had to rein in the kids A LOT!

The little Girls in their sweet jammies!

As for me, PAJAMAS is the name of the game, I LOvE matching PJ's for Christmas!

The small-ish boys!

The medium size boys...

And of course the pyramid comes crashing down!

That's all you get, the older kids and adults are too old to put on their pajamas at a party.  My mom gets the grandkids a bear their first Christmas with the year on it.  Kennedy and Konrad are opening their first Christmas presents (their bears).

My brother Grant with Konrad!

So maybe this is ToO mUcH InForMaTIon about how DORKY we are, but this year Rhonda was in charge. During dinner (because we didn't give gifts) Rhonda had us fill out "service coupons" for each other. The rule was a child could give a hug but no adults were allowed to give another adult a hug or something like that on their coupon. Maybe you need to know that we're NOT a touchy family, no hugging takes place. So I gave Rhonda an "eye wink" on a coupon. Unfortunately Grant gave Rhonda a "get out of one eye wink free" coupon. So, you see how the coupon giving went.

My niece Mariah with Kennedy!

We had so much fun, it's always CraZy when my family all gets together but we love it!

a little bit of this and that...

The Blackmail Picture!

I have to go through the pictures on my camera to figure out what we've been up to, a whole bunch of random things.  Cody and Corbett have been skiing on Saturdays, no pics of that though.  They will probably be doing that most Saturdays all winter.  While they were gone last Saturday I took the babies down to my Grandma Thorson's Christmas party in the greenhouse. 

My Grandma & Grandpa...I love the look on their faces!

Konrad and cousin Justin

It was fun to see cousins, aunts & uncles, & grandma & grandpa.  I dressed the twins in their Santa outfits (thanks Kim & Susan!) and they looked so cute! 

This is a picture of all the twins in the family...my aunts, my cousins, 2 of my cousins twins, and my twins!

The Aggie basketball season is well underway, we've made it to about 3 games so far.  (Cody has gone to a few more)  We took the whole family one night and Konrad was mesmerized by the game.  Kennedy sat still through it but looked more bored and finally fell asleep. 

I put tattoos on their cute little cheeks!!  Go Aggies!

Last night for FHE we made gingerbread houses and invited some cousins over to join in the fun! 

The yummy madness!

We're looking forward to a whole lot more holiday fun!  We're super excited for Christmas!  And a few more pictures just for fun...

so funny!

And yet so sweet! 

'tis the SEASON!

Corbett playing in the snow!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving.  We headed to Herriman to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with Cody's family.  we had a surprise visit from Santa!  It was a yummy meal, with great company!  Cody's uncle from Georgia was here with his family!!  After we spent time with Cody's family we stopped in Kaysville for a few hours and more pie with my family!
So, where do I start on the things we're thankful for?  We've had a great year.  Much different from last year.  Last year we traveled a lot and had some adventures.  This year we didn't go anywhere, but we still had some adventures!
We are thankful for our family.  We are thankful for Corbett who is a smart, fun, sensitive boy, who is CERTAIN he is super hero!  We are thankful for Kennedy who, as we found out, is definitely NOT mellow.  She's a busy little girl who is crawling all over the place!  She smiles easily and knows how to melt her daddy's heart.  We are thankful for Konrad who has a tender little heart!  He loves to snuggle!  He watches the things going on around him VERY intently!  We are grateful for our extended family.  We have had quite a year and have needed the support that they so willingly give.  We're thankful for nieces and nephews who love our kids and help take care of them in every way!  We are thankful for our parents who are excellent grandparents as well.  They have been there for us this year through the birth of our twins and Kennedy's open heart surgery.  We are grateful for the gospel, our freedom, our warm home, our friends, & Cody's job!  We are especially grateful this year for modern medicine, for the ability to repair Kennedy's heart, for her surgery and recovery to go so well, and for her to be a vibrant, sweet girl despite her heart defect.

Santa came to visit on Thanksgiving!

Konrad is suspicious!

Kennedy is curious too!

The Lone Ranger!

the twins like to crawl on cody

The next snow storm...lots of snow this year!

Is Corbett working?...or playing!

Tags for Charity!

In August when Kennedy was recovering from her open heart surgery we were blessed to stay at the Ronald McDonald House in Salt Lake. We were impressed by this charity, and the amount of good it can do for a family going through difficult times. It was an emotional time for us. We were blessed to have Kennedy's surgery go well and her recovery was speedy. We felt great love from our family and friends at this time and we were blessed. Kennedy is doing great, she had a cardiologist appointment this week and the doctor said he could not be more pleased with her progress. We couldn't love her more!!After we returned home from Primary Childrens Cody looked into running as a charity runner in the Chicago Bank of America Marathon for Ronald McDonald House. It was something he really wanted to do. He was lucky to be accepted late into the Ronald McDonald House team of runners. We committed to raise $1500 for Ronald McDonald House.
And so we set out to raise the money. At first it was slow going. Cody worked hard and turned in forms to large companies, talked to countless people, and even arranged for a climbing wall to be set up at a corn maze to raise the money. Eventually things fell through with the city we were trying to have the climbing wall at and we realized we needed a new plan. Last year I made about 250 tags/ornaments as gifts, I felt good about the response I got when I delivered them to friends and family. I prayed to know how we could raise the money and this idea came to me. So we got cRaZY enough to donate our time to making and selling these tags to raise the money.

It went very well! Within the first day I had orders coming in. We contacted Home Depot and they donated about half our materials. We sold tags through Facebook, family, and friends. My mom sold over 350 at her school for us. We also sold them at Sugar & Spice (a craft store in Hyde Park).We were fortunate to have help from many family members. My siblings, their spouses, and kids all helped with tags AND with BaBiEs while I made tags. We made them for teacher appreciation gifts, a relief society dinner, for trees, stockings, & packages. We made them with just pictures, just names, we made some tan, & we made some with blue vinyl. We made the last tag last night.
In the end, we had 33 orders, made around 850 tags, and (with a lot of help) donated $1650 to Ronald McDonald House!!!We are grateful for the help we received with this project. It was an amazing experience. I have never done anything like this. I realize our donation is small but we are excited we made a difference! It was an experience I won't forget! THANK YOU for your orders and encouragement even if you didn't order. THANK YOU to my FaMiLy for their help, my MoM especially spent a great amount of time taking orders at her school and then even helped me make the tags!
In the end Cody decided not to run his race. The race is run on Sunday. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we believe in keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Cody signed up for the race thinking he could make an exception just this once. He had a flight scheduled and a place to stay. He attended the Priesthood session of General Conference the week before the race.  President Monson gave a talk about making choices. He told a story of a man who was scheduled to play a championship basketball game on a Sunday. He chose not to play. Cody was inspired to make a difficult choice and not attend the race. We are all very proud of him for having the courage to make this decision.

Holidays are HERE!

The holidays seem to be sneaking up on us this year! I have a goal to keep Christmas simple this year. We don't need any more STUFF in our house, in fact maybe we could haul out all our stuff and put it under other people's trees! I am so happy that we have three kids to celebrate Christmas with. Even though the twins will not understand, it's a blessing to have them around at this special time of year. We're starting to get invitations to parties and planning festivities!
We have been busy making tags for Ronald McDonald house...I'll save that for it's own post, but that about sums up our activities lately! We have red bits vinyl EVERYWHERE!...including the babies diapers, dishes, our hair, and our clothes! Cody went for an overnight trip to Colorado and got back this evening, he goes to Florida on Monday for their big trade show of the year and will be gone for 5 days. I will definitely have to call in the reserves to help with the twins.
Corbett is a hoot...as always. The other day he started dancing and told me to, "shake it and groove it, mom!" He is learning the meaning of words and says some pretty funny stuff. These are just some pictures we've taken lately...

A spur of the moment family picture...turned out nice!

Little Elves!

Kennedy is so fun to photograph!

Halloween!

We had a great Halloween, starring Raggedy Ann & Andy!

I love Halloween so I decided early on what the babies would be this year, then I put my talented mom to work! She did an excellent job and we received countless comments on their costumes!

Corbett decided to be a karate "man" after Cody turned him on to the Karate Kid movie. I'm afraid I no longer get to choose what Corbett will be. My mother-in-law was nice enough to come make his pants and belt (and a mask too...what little boy doesn't love a mask??) She did a great job and Corbett was SO happy to have a karate suit! He thinks we're going to sign him up for karate now.

We have a family party with my side and this year we had it right on Halloween. It was at Eric & Camie Jo's house. We had games and soup and rolls. Afterward we tried to trick or treat stores and such, it was a bust for various reasons. So, I took Corbett over to a trunk or treat for our previous ward and he trick or treated at night with his cousin Carson, who also dressed as a karate "man".

I talked Cody into wearing his high school jerseys with me for the family party.

Lightning!

Corbett's soccer season has ended.  It was a great success, Corbett scored plenty of goals, Carson stopped scoring for the other team, and Coleman stopped tackling other kids...although he was still chasing girls around the field near the end of the season.  They tied one game, there were 2 games where we didn't get to play an extra player (mercy rule is that when the other team is ahead by 4, we get to put another player in).  We thought it was a great strategy to get down by 4 and then we had one less kid who had to sit out!  We enjoyed watching Corbett each game.  He loved playing!  He is a naturally a great defender, they don't have goalies at this age but Corbett stood right in front of the goal when he was defender and stopped several really good shots! 

At the end of the season they had a party at practice and got to crack a pinata and got trophies!

He made lots of new friends!