Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We want to wish all our friends and family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

We enjoyed snow recently, the ultimate Christmas weather, which made the season seem even more festive to us. We welcomed a new baby brother and have been blessed abundantly despite these crazy times. We hope you are all happy and well.

Snow in Vegas?!?

Hell has officially frozen over!! Hahaha probably not the last time you'll hear that. We've gotten snow in Vegas before but never like this!! The kids happened to be home for parent/teacher conference (which we ditched). It has been quite exciting. I snapped some pictures of the kids playing in the snow, as you can see we don't really own coats. Sam threw together a few peices of cloth and thought it would work, she froze and Andrew had to search his drawers to find a pair of pants.

I love the pictures of our snow frosted palm trees around the pool. Now that night is approaching and the snow is an inch thick on the ground the fun is gone and we hope the christmas lights around the palms will keep them from freezing and dieing.

Chad got home and helped the kids build a decent snowman, they didn't even know how! Now we hear schools may be closed tomorrow. What fun! It has been sooo cold today we wonder how people manage to live in such frigid weather. I've been away from Utah too long. Happy snow day!

The holidays are fast approaching. Thanksgiving has passed by in a blur and here I am just barely adding my Halloween pictures....tis the life with a newborn. As we do every year the kids carved pumpkins with their daddy. (How is it that some child manages to be half dressed for pictures). As an added bonus Grandma and Grandpa Simmons spent the spooky holiday at our house and handed out candy to all 10 trick-or-treaters that ventured up our way.

We all dressed up this year (like in years past). We had Darth Vader, an egyptian goddess, Spiderman, a little cowboy, and a grown-up Cowboy Mom and Dad. As usual everyone had awesome costumes either made by me or store bought, except Mom who scrounged something up at the last minute. Next year I vow to take care of my costume first and then all the others....yeah right!

HAPPY BELATED HALLOWEEN!!!

Gabe Edward Simmons born Sept. 24th @ 5pm. 7lbs. 13 oz. 19" long. He was sooo tiny compared to all our other babies we kept joking how Gabe was practically a preemie. Our first baby to fit in newborn diapers, what a treat!

The delivery was an all day event but Gabe popped out into the world after only 2 pushes! He came so fast that the poor little guy's face was bruised and swollen from the trip.

Gabe has been a good little guy. We're thrilled with all his dark hair. Gabe is getting used to the fact that he makes a peep and 4 people come running to attend to his every needs.

We are doing well and trying to adjust to another person in our lives and having a baby in the house again. 4 boys! What fun!

July has been a fun month for our family. We started by celebrating the 4th out in the country with Chad's family. Where I unfortunately forgot my camera...so no pics. We BBQed and smoked mountains of meat, everyday! So much meat when we got home we went on a meat free diet just to purge ourselves. We stayed up late shooting off fireworks. The kids love Grandma & Grandpa's house. They can run wild outside all day long in the cool country air.

The following weekend we traveled to St. George to enjoy a House Family Reunion, hosted by my brother David. We also got to listen to Miles speak in church after his return from a successful mission in Argentina, South America.

We're back living each day in the pool, trying to survive another HOT Vegas summer. We're also happily expecting another baby. We thought we'd finished off our family with another girl and instead are having another boy, due Oct. 1st. I wanted to post pics of my 6 1/2 month belly but all the pics. make me look 300 lbs, which I'm not......yet. So we'll hold off and post pics of new baby instead.

Disneyland

Our family just got back from a fun week long trip to California. We enjoyed gorgeous weather, beach days, LA Zoo and of course Disneyland. In the past we've always gone to Disneyland for the one day but now the kids are older we thought we'd try 2 days. We found 2 days is not enough to ride everything still and meet characters and see the shows and manage to eat a meal. Several weeks later and the kids are still talking about the trip.

The Eternal Track Break

Year round school has been a new experience for us this year. Middle of January we started our 4 or 6 week track break, honestly I'm not sure, all I know is it's been too long! It's been mostly too cold to play outside and we're all slowly turning to mush. The other day one of the kids read something to me and I was relieved to see that they could still read!

All kidding aside it's been fun to have pajama days and fast food lunchs. I promised the kids I'd take them to the strip one day during break. They've all been born (and so far raised) in Vegas and we rarely take them to the Strip, we avoid it and all the freaks there. They've grown curious about the awesome city they live in and we. . . . ventured out! (Gasp!)

First stop was the Belagio, where we threw pennies in the lake and watched the water show. The last stop was next door to Caeser's Palace. We enjoyed the water falls, statue shows and the giant aquariam. Doesn't sound like much but it was a 5 hour excursion! We wanted to swing by New York, New York to walk the Golden Gate Bridge and the M&M museum but those will have to wait another day.