It Has Begun!

Today's the day! I officially started training for the SLC marathon today. How appropriate that it starts the first week of the new year. Can we say resolution or what?

It's not too late to join in! I would love it if others decided to do it too! There is also a half marathon and a 5k. You know you want to!

Pray for my bad knees!

Kids make Christmas Fun!

Here's the Christmas recap:

The Saturday before Christmas we have our huge (and I mean huge) Porter family Christmas party. Dale's Grandma Raeleen has over 30 grandchildren (not counting spouses) and over 50 great-grandchildren and we all cram together in Aunt Jill's family room and stuff our faces with delicious Mexican food. Then we have a short program and then we get to visit. I tried to take pictures of the event, but my camera has kicked the bucket (it's very tragic!)

Then on Christmas Eve, we had a Christmas party for just the Morris Family (Dale's brothers and sisters and their kids.) Face stuffing also occurred here too.

Every Christmas Eve right before we go to bed, the "Elves" ring our doorbell. The kids run to get it but when they open it, they are gone. In their place, are jammies made by the elves for each child. Thankfully, I remembered that my sis in law Jodi loaned me her old camera a while ago so I dug it out. So let us all rest easy, Christmas 2007 was documented after all.

Here are the kids with their new jammies. The elves have style don't they?
Awww, the elves thought of me too! Aren't they cute? I can't think of anything better than a damask pattern with pink skulls on it!
Santa came!!! Santa came!!!
Of course the big hit present was the car that my grandparents got. Ella ran straight for it.
Tabby got a big play make up kit. Loves it! She is always wanting to give me makeovers so if you come over and I answer the door with bright blue eyeshadow and purple blush, you will know why.
Some of you more conservative people may roll over and die when you see what Rex got. Oh, he loved it!
Yay for slippers!

Then it was off to my parents house for our traditional Christmas breakfast (more face stuffing.)

Magi makes this DELICIOUS pull-apart every year. The gooier the better.
Tabby wanted this Barbie dress for months and months. She jumped up and down when she opened it.
Whenever you asked Rex what he wanted for Christmas, every time he would say "a race car track." He played (and still does) with this for hours.
I have to say that this was the best Christmas ever! Instead of buying our kids a bunch of stuff just so they can have presents, we just focused on getting them a few things that were exactly what they wanted. They were way more grateful and they value the presents they did get a lot more. I thought they would fight over that car but they haven't. It truly is a Christmas miracle!

I'm just a tad behind. Here it is a day after Christmas and I'm posting stuff that happened 2 weeks ago. No biggie, I'll get there soon enough. Anyway, we didn't do any official Family Christmas Card Picture Taking this year but I did manage to get a few pics of the family when we were at my parent's house for dinner 2 Sundays ago.

It's impossible to get all of the kids to look at the camera at once and if you do happen to get one of them to look at the camera, they make a silly face. Lovely.
Here's me and my dreamboat.
I actually got a lot of good ones of Tabby. She will never hold still long enough for a picture but she manged to hold it together for quite a few shots.

I swear I did not tell her to pose like this. This is something she has adopted all on her own.
My poor little guy was in no mood for taking pictures but his mean mom made him do it anyway. He's definitely not smiling but he's cute none the less!
Are you still watching?
And last but not least, Ella loves to pose for pictures! She's our happy little girl!
She gives me this look all the time. I think it means "Are you kidding?"

Merry Christmas From Naughty and Nice

Here's a pic from 2005. This was when we just had Tabby and Pig. My how we've grown! Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your day tomorrow will be cheery and bright!

Think Happy Thoughts, Think Happy Thoughts!

Did you ever have one of those days? You know, like when your husband gets home you feel like snatching the keys, running out of the door, jumping in the car, peeling out of the driveway and going till the car is out of gas? Then you get out and run until you get to water, dive in and keep swimming until you get to a land far far away? Hopefully the land I reach would be the Virgin Islands.


Here's to hoping that today is better than yesterday!

Rex Rules!

Here is a sample of the awesome stuff that comes out of my son's mouth:

Sung to the tune of Avirl Lavigne's song Girlfriend

"Hey hey, you you, I don't want a walrus!"

We love you Bubba!

I dedicate this post to my good friend Wendy Fuller.
Happy birthday Wendy!!!
Hope you get a good nap today, you deserve it!

That's Fogtastic!

Okay, I apologize for the horribly cheesy title of this post. But when actual weather happens here, I really get excited. Nothing against the sunny days. I just enjoy a change-up every once in a while. It makes you start taking notice of things again. If you live in Queen Creek, you saw the awesome fog we had this morning. How often does that happen? Not very! Tabby has never seen fog before and of course she asked me what it was and how it occurs. My very scientific answer was the clouds get too heavy to be up in the sky so they hang out down here. Hmmm, all you meteorologists can call me on that. Like I really know what causes it. I just loved that something different happened today and it made my morning. Here is Tabby checking it out (yes I made my daughter stand out in the freezing cold so I could get a picture.)

Here is our street:

Here we go again...

Well I said I wasn't going to do another one for a long time but I decided to run another marathon. I wasn't suckered into it like the last one (I love you Karolee!) I decided to do this one all on my own accord! I'm gonna run the Salt Lake Marathon next April. I hope this race goes a bit smoother than the St. George (all you insiders know what happened, oh the TRAGEDY!) Anyway, if I can run a marathon, anyone can and I challenge anyone reading this post to do it too! The first week of January is when I start training so let me know and we will run together!

Dentist Diva

I just have to take a moment and brag about my daughter, Tabby. She is so fearless. I took her to the dentist (Dr. Goates who is Tresure's hubby) because she needed 2 fillings. Anyway, she was SO brave. She did have a bit of trouble with the shots in her gums (who wouldn't?) She had to have 3 and she took the first 2 pretty well but I had to bargain with her to let Dr. Goates give her the 3rd. Let's just say Brandon got his 3rd shot in and Tabby was the proud owner of a red balloon after that. The rest of the time she just hung out and let Brandon use the drill and everything. She thought "Mr. Thirsty" was hilarious. I don't know many 4 year olds who will lie in a dentist's chair and let all of that stuff be done to them. And she went skipping out of the office like nothing ever happened. Here are some pics of her during the appointment:
Just chillin in the chair making everyone laugh.

The protective eyewear was very stylish!

After we left, my mom asked us to go to lunch with her. She was out riding her horse at the time so we met her at the stables. Here we are taking my mom's horse for a spin.

When we got home, Tabby's face was still numb so I took these hilarious pictures of her trying to smile.

Naughty! NOT Nice!

Here is our beautiful little Ella Rose. You might say, "This is a cute picture, but what's that stuff all over her?" Oh, that's just black glitter that she found in my office and dumped all over her self, the floor, my books, and scrapbook paper. Ella is our youngest but don't underestimate her, she is by far the naughtiest baby we have had yet! Yes she is precious and darling but watch out cause she'll mess you up! I said to Dale the other day, I don't think I've ever seen Ella play with an actual toy. That's because she's too busy getting into everything, making messes, and launching plans of attack against her older brother and sister. They have learned to watch their step around her too! Remember at the end of The Incredibles where Jack Jack all of a sudden goes berserk? Well, that's not unlike our little baby girl. Don't get me wrong, I love my little sweetie and I wouldn't change her for anything. Well maybe I would change her desire to shred rolls of toilet paper into tiny bits and spread it all over the house.
We love you baby girl!