Decorating Christmas Sugar Cookies

For some reason, I thought it would be fun to let the kids decorate sugar cookies this year. I remember this being a lot funner when I was a kid. Maybe my mom would disagree. It was pretty stressful, but I do think the kids enjoyed it.
Rylan was enjoying himself!

Go easy on the sprinkles there, Champ! Believe it or not, that isn't orange frosting on his cookie, just sprinkles!

Andrea's sprinkles literally came to a point. I had to help her spread her sprinkles on several cookies.

Believe it or not, we actually delivered these cookies to our neighbors and friends. (Including, of course, an explanation as to who decorated them.)

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Here's the finished product. "O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are thy branches."
Here's Rylan decorating the tree. He had so much fun hanging all his ornaments on the same branch. I had to do a little rearranging after the kids went to bed.

Andrea's really concentrating on hanging that ornament!

Landon's hanging his Polar Express ticket from school on the tree.

Alexa wanted to smile for her picture instead of getting a candid shot. You look beautiful, Lexy!

Jack-o-lantern Smile

Alexa has lost two teeth recently and they are both on the same side of her mouth. I like to tease her and tell her that we are going to have to start feeding her baby food because pretty soon there won't be any teeth left to chew.

Thanksgiving dinner

This year we spent Thanksgiving at my sister, Kristi's house. Here are some pictures of the fun we had with cousins, Aunts and Uncles, and Grandma. We had a great time!
Here's Rylan enjoying his pre-dinner roll.

Here's Andrea at the "little girl" table.

Landon and his best bud, Micah got the whole bar to themselves for their dinner,.

Here's Alexa at the "big girl" table.

Fun Halloween Events

This picture is out of place because I accidentally deleted it and had to add it again, but here is Andrea with her completed Jack-o-lantern.

Here the kids are ready to go trick-or-treating. It was sure windy and cold on Halloween night. Poor Landon's Indian Chief Headdress just about got ripped to shreds from the wind.At the Ward trunk-or-treat


Alexa was a puppy.

Andrea was a girl pirate.

Rylan was a clown.

Landon was an Indian Chief.

Here's our Jack-o-lanterns on our front porch.

Enjoying our traditional Halloween dinner: Mummy dogs, slugs (peaches), witches fingers (cheetos), and boiling blood (red kool-aid with dry ice in it.)

Alexa carving her pumpkin.

Andrea cleaning out her pumpkin.

Here's all my boys carving their pumpkins.

Landon decided he'd try to eat the pumpkin guts this year.

Here's Rylan's SCARY face.

Alexa with her finished pumpkin.

All of our Jack-o-lanterns.

Here's Landon at the school Halloween parade.

Here's Andrea (on the left) with her good buddy (yes, a little boy) at the school Halloween party. They were both pirates and had the same costume. (Andie is just a bit of a tom-boy.)

Landon and Andrea at the Ward Halloween Party.

Rylan at the Ward Halloween Party (He refused to put his cute clown costume on that night so we had to put him in his batman pajamas.)

Here's Alexa at the Ward Halloween Party.

Here's Rylan playing musical chairs all by himself. The game ended and he just kept on playing, so the person running the game hurried and started the music because she thought he was so cute. And guess what . . . he won!

Here's Landon doing the limbo at the Ward party.

Here's Andie and Landon doing the cake walk at the school Halloween Carnival.

Fall pictures

It's tradition in our family to take some pictures every fall in the autumn leaves in front of our house, so here they are: Here's cute little Rylan: 2 years old.
Here's our little princess, Andrea: 4 years old

Here's my champ, Landon: 7 years old

Here's beautiful Alexa: 9 years oldAnd here's all of my little darlings.

Summerizing Summer

I'm still trying to play catch-up on the happenings of the Brownings' summer, so forgive my while I share a whole bunch of pictures of the fun things we did this summer. In July, we had the opportunity to go to Bear Lake with my side of the family. Here are some pictures of us having a great time on the beach with cousins.

Here's Alexa with her cousins Kailee and Megan.
Landon with his best bud in the whole wide world, Micah.

I had a great time too.!

Andrea and Brooke, the little beach princesses

Here's Rylan having a blast!

In fact, he had a little too much fun. He wore himself right out!

What a great day!

I took the kids to Splash Park only to find out that it was closed for maintenance reasons. They were really disappointed, so we took a ride on the nearby carousel to cheer them up. So here's some pictures of them in their unfortunately dry swimming suits riding their ponies.

Landon played soccer this summer and was on the Golden Eagle team. He had a good time and got lots of exercise but I think we have decided that soccer is not really his thing. He picked a lot of dandelions though!

Here's Landon kicking the ball when he was the goalie.

Playing the goalie again.

More pictures of the kids in that meadow of flowers that we found. Here is Joe with his two little buddies. These three men in my life are pretty special to me!