Just one reason why Matt is awesome...

The past few Christmases Matt's family has had a White Elephant gift exchange. Last Christmas I came up with the idea to give a photo album.... full of pictures of Matt.

Here are a few of the faaaabulous poses he did for us.

The Innocent Eskimo

Grown Man in Little Hat

The Bro

The Sweetie Pie

Gay Paris (pronounced Gay Paree)

He's thinking of changing his name to Matt Zoolander.

Water Commercial

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago and it cracks me up. It looks like it could be an ad for Arrowhead water.... except for the funny face she's pulling and her tongue sticking out.

I should clarify that she did the weird face on purpose!

The Big Day...

How did this happen? When did my little girl go from this:

To this?

Well, today was the day. Riley finally got her braces off. And she told me on the way home while looking in the mirror, "I hate to say this mom, but I'm kinda sexy now".

So, of course I immediately grounded her for the next 10 years.

Surgery Day

The surgery is over and everything went well. Sammi has been just as sweet as ever, no crying, no complaining. She's in on the couch right now reading a book.

The doctors were all very nice. They thought "New Kitty" was a pretty funny name for Sammi's old well loved kitty cat. I, of course, forgot my camera so Matt snapped a couple of pictures on his cell phone.

Pre-Op. Happy and smiling and ready to go.

Post-Op. So sleepy, she downed a cup of slushie and went right back to sleep.

At home in the bed we made on the couch. The slushie you see on the left soon ended up in the pink bucket. Apparently Maverick's slushies are NOT the same as the hospital's slushies.

Looking to see what that beeping noise is... uh.. sorry honey.. it's the auto-focus.

Surgery Smurgery...

Sammi is going in to Primary Children's Hospital tomorrow to have surgery.

Matt told her she could pick whatever she wanted to do today and she chose a drive up the canyon to Silver Lake. We took a picnic and walked around the lake. She goofed off with Riley and Olivia and basically had a good time. They stuffed grapes in their mouths and posed for pictures.

Then we came home and she picked a book to bring to the hospital to read and got her ipod ready. The kid is a trooper. She's not nervous at all!

The Partridge Family

Ok, so I'm not really even sure what kind of birds they were... but look at the cute little nest I found when I pruned my old dried out poppies!

I wish I'd have known they were nesting there, we could have kept a closer eye on the flower bed and maybe seen some babies. This nest was right in the front yard under the living room window. Sneaky little guys aren't they?

String Lake, Wyoming

well. i'm back. we'll see how well i keep up this time around. i'm just quickly putting up some pics from our trip to my brother's house in Jackson, Wy. One day we went to String Lake and the kids had a good time playing at the edge of the water. i was really happy with some of the shots i got.
in a later post i'll talk more about the trip and show off some more pictures.

Olivia

Cousin Bruce

Riley
Sammi & cousin Mia
Cousin Stewart