Our family (minus Brandon) went to Lake Powell with another family in our ward this past week. It was SO much fun and everyone would definately go again!! Here is all of the girls, plus baby Brynn that we all loved so much.
Marshall and dad, "hangin' loose".
Mom, Leah, and Lindsey relaxing on the couch.
Here's Lexi finishing my make up.
Brandon and Jessica
Brandon and Sarah Loock
Brandon's group eating at our house
Jess turned 16 yesterday, but we celebrated it on Friday since Prom was on her birthday. Here's her before she opened presents.
Dad, Jess, and Mom
She had girls over on Friday, here's them before making their fruit pizza!!
Meg and I got new hair cuts this week! New changes are always fun! Here's my hair before I got it cut. (My hair was braided that day, so it looks kinda wavy.)
Here's Meg and I after our hair cuts! Meg cut new bangs, and I cut 15 inches off! It was a crazy decision, and I don't know why I decided to! Well actually, this girl at school cut her hair, and it looks SO cute, and I wanted mine like hers. It kinda looks like hers, hers is a tiny bit longer. I donated my hair to Locks of Love. I don't know if they'll be able to use it because it dyed, but it's worth the try.
Here is the picture of my knee, the day after surgery. Very swollen, with no bruises.. yet. My leg is orange, because of some stuff they rubbed on my leg. They made 2 incisions and repaired my miniscus and shaved something else inside there. My doctor's initials (B.T.) were on the middle of my knee cap before the surgery.
Here is the brace I will be wearing for the next several weeks. I have to wear it for 6-8 weeks, letting me bend my knee up to 90 degrees. Letting it bend past 90 degrees would tear the repair, or stitching, in my miniscus. I had to wear that stocking for the first week on both legs to prevent blood clots.
Here is my nasty picture of the IV. Just kidding! I looked away while she put it in, but became very curious of what the nurse was doing. I liked watching it.
Here's a picture of me with my stuffed animal horse. Since I'm a "child", I got a stuffed animal. I knew right away that it was a horse, but my mom called it a giraffe, and the doctor, a moose. The last thing I remember about being awake was the doctor making a racist comment about my stuffed animal. I laughed, and then was out. Waking up, the first thing I asked for was my horse, then my mom. She was offended. 
We loved having Abby (holding Matt & Candice's baby Zach) & Paxton visit us from Texas. We had fun playing games... and let me just say.... Tiebreaker. My ego suffers from losing at Scrabble, so I guess I'll have to study my Scrabble dictionary now and pray I'll get a J, Q, X, or Z.
We had a (not so) surprise late birthday party for my mom. The big 60.
This is the tree in our front room that mom gets to decorate.
The famous Tree-Pee! Each child got to decorate one pole with the ornaments that they've gathered over the years. I saw the idea at Festival of Trees last year and came home and made my own with PVC pipe, lights & garland. The guys at Home Depot thought I was a little nuts.
For the past few years our Christmas Eve tradition has been: drive to Salt Lake and park at Temple Square, ride the Trax to a restaurant for dinner, and return on the Trax to Temple Square to see the lights, the nativities (my favorite), and the candlelit bags with words and pictures illuminated in different languages. (I thought Arabic was the prettiest.)
Marshall hitched a ride on Jim's shoulders keeping his hands on Jim's face for warmth.
Here we are on the Trax: the most memorable part each year. We sang Christmas carols (loudly) and many of the other passengers join in. This year there was a young couple who didn't make much eye contact, but the man "conducted" us with his finger on his lap while the woman smiled at us as tears streamed down her face. Everyone was touched and we loved the feeling. We were all very happy and at one point Mark (Mel's brother) broke out into a dance where he grabbed the side poles with each hand and his legs went crazy in the aisle. Very funny!! :-)
Here's Jess and Meg waiting for the Trax. 
Jess was awarded "Student of the Term" at Layton High School after being selected
Brandon is often found holding the babies! Here he is
Lindsey, Leah, and Marshall LOVE to play "dress-up." 
This year Matt, Candice, and their family came over for Thanksgiving. It was loud but very fun!
Here's the little kid's table.
So I decided that I needed to make money for club volleyball, and my mom came up with the idea to make pies the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and sell them. She said people would like homemade pies and they wouldn't even have to make them!! It was a great idea, because all 16 pies sold in exactly an hour! I went around my neighborhood and neighbors were more than happy to buy them! It worked out great!
Here is an apple pie. We had to do something to them to separate them from the jumbleberry pies, so there's little cut-out apples. Cute.
Here's a picture of us. Sara put flour all over me, it was a mess. Left to right: Mom, Sara, Jessica.
Leah turned 8 yrs. old this month, so she was able to be baptized the day after her birthday. It was a great experience and we had lots of people there for her. She was really excited.
The fam.
And here's Leah in her baptism dress.
One Saturday morning Mom, Dad, the little kids, and neighbors went on a hike to a waterfall by our house. It's about an hour hike up, but it's well worth it.
