White Christmas

Merry Christmas! We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and got to enjoy lots time with family and friends. We have had a great time here in Spokane having a white Christmas. Katelyn is still a little young to really understand what Christmas means but I think she has still really loved being with so many fun people and playing with lots of fun new toys. Here is Katelyn on Christmas morning sporting some awesome bedhead. I tried all day to get it down with very little success.

Getting ready to open presents.

The rest of the clan.
Katelyn with Daddy and some of her new toys. The Kangaroo sings in both Spanish and English and whenever it gets switched to English she always switches it back to Spanish. If only Tyler and I could speak it a little better . . .

Katelyn got a new Elmo phone for Christmas since phones are pretty much her favorite thing in the world and she is just beginning to love Sesame Street. It's pretty neat because we actually downloaded her name on it so that Elmo talks to her when she presses the buttons. I think we may be more impressed than Katelyn though at this point.

Tyler took some great pictures of my parents backyard after we had a big snowfall. It's beautiful.

Another angle.

After all the snow fall we decided to bundle Katelyn up and see how she would enjoy playing in it.

Unfortunately, she wasn't really a big fan. But she sure looked cute!

Going for a sled ride!

Katelyn has gotten to spend time with her cousin Grant while we've been here and she loves to give him hugs and kisses. He is such a cutie we're so glad to get to see him.

Dancing cousins!
Katelyn giving Grant hugs. I think maybe he'll like it more when he can get away when he's had enough.

We have been having such a great time in Spokane and a wonderful Christmas and we can't wait to get to go see all our family down in Arizona in a week!

Christmas Extravaganza!

As is our tradition we went out the day after Thanksgiving for our Christmas Extravaganza. Katelyn got to ride around in the sled while we looked for a tree and had a good time, except when it got too bumpy.

Katelyn and Tyler with our tree. Katelyn was pretty impressed with Tyler cutting down the tree.

Katelyn helping to decorate. She actually was really good about not pulling things off the tree. We didn't even have move all the decorations up to the top half of the tree.


The finished tree.
The lit up tree. Sadly, we just have the cheapy lights on our tree so by the time we left at least one strand had gone out so it wasn't looking quite as brilliant.

Just before we left Boston Tyler's mom sent us a Christmas package in this box. Katelyn enjoyed pulling everything out and all her new fun books and movies but even more she enjoyed playing in and with the box.
Our best present.

The Game and a Visit From Melanie and Jeff

So apparently I only like to blog in marathons so here is our catch up through Christmas. We had a really fun November this year. We had a great Thanksgiving with all our friends here in Boston and my amazing friend Angie hosted 20 of us plus several babies all in her apartment. It was wonderful! Then we got to go The Game. The Game is the longest running football rivalry game between Harvard and Yale. I must admit that after BYU football games it was a little less than impressive but still super fun. The stadium is built in Roman Colosseum style so it's pretty neat just being inside it. So we got decked out in our Harvard finest and cheered the Crimson on to victory.

Here is Katelyn and her little buddy Josh in their matching Harvard Law sweatshirts.

Earlier in November Tyler's sister Melanie and her husband Jeff came to visit us. We had a great time seeing the sights and beautiful fall colors for our last year. Here is Katelyn sitting on a cannon on the USS Constitution.

We went down to Boston Common one day and had a photo shoot in the leaves.

Here are Melanie and Jeff on our balcony. I am definitely going to miss that view out our window.

Our whole group on the deck of the USS Constitution. Thanks so much for coming to visit us, it was a blast!

Halloween!

We had great fun this year going to our ward party for Halloween. Katelyn was just about the cutest cow that there ever was. (It's possible I'm a little biased) All the kids got to trick or treat from classroom to classroom and then did a costume parade around the gym before dinner. It was super fun.

Katelyn actually did really well walking up to the doors pulling a candy out of the baskets and putting them in her bucket. Though she usually wanted more than one. :)

Katelyn and Mommy after the costume parade. I decided last minute to "dress up" so this is my lame attempt at a "cowgirl/farmer"

These are our pumpkins this year. Tyler as usual worked very hard on his and even made his own stencil, it's Gandalf fighting the balrog for those who have seen the movie or read the Lord of the Rings.


Here are a couple of videos of Katelyn trick or treating. One is here at our ward party and then we did another reenactment at our apartment since it was pretty crowded at the church. Enjoy!

Our Big One Year Old

I can't believe that our little Katelyn is one already. I always believed parents when they would say that kids grow up so fast but I don't think you can really understand how fast it really is until it's your own. Even though we have had some rough times over the past year we have had so much fun with our little Katelyn and cannot imagine our lives without her. She brightens up our day and we are so grateful to have her in our family.

The Birthday Girl with her Uncle Cam and cousin Grant, we ended up doing the "party" a little close to bedtime so she and Grant were both a bit tired :)


Katelyn pushing around her new grocery cart from Grammy and Papa. She also got that frog from Uncle Cam and Aunt Hillary and loves to take him with her all the time.

The cake. My mom and I made it together, it was a lot of fun.


Looking thrilled about the whole thing :)

She was super dainty about trying her cake. She only wanted to get just tiny bits on her fingers and then lick them off.

Mom and Dad trying to show her how it's done

the end result, I think there is definitely more on her face and hands than actually ended up in her mouth but I suppose that's the point right? We love you Katelyn!

Fall leaves and Apple Picking

We had so much fun when my Mom and Dad, Cameron, Hillary and Grant came to visit us this fall. They came out for Katelyn's birthday and we got enjoy the fall (which is my favorite time here) by going Apple Picking, going on a Duck Tour of Boston, and seeing Walden Pond. Thanks so much for coming out to see us it was so much fun!

At Honey Pot Hill Orchard, we are still working on the apples :)


Grant is obviously thrilled about his first apple picking excursion :)

Katelyn trying to figure out what to do with this thing :)

Katelyn loved looking at the animals in the petting zoo

On the duck tour Katelyn liked to look at the window as far as she could, especially when we were on the water. I'm sure she would've loved to dive in if we would've let her.

Getting ready to take off. Cameron and Katelyn apparently got distracted somehow. :) Grant was an angel and slept through the whole thing, though I'm guessing Hillary got quite the arm workout since she held him through the whole thing and then the long trip back to our place.

The Lovingers in front of the boat
We also went with my parents up to Vermont to see the Joseph Smith birthplace memorial. It was beautiful up there and a wonderful place to feel the spirit. (Afterwords we finished off the trip by stopping by the Ben and Jerry's factory for some ice cream :)

We also went out to Walden Pond. It is one of my favorite places in the Boston area. I can see why Thoreau would pick here to spend his time in solitude. Katelyn also loved it here since I let her get in the water. She was not at all dismayed by the fact that is was really cold. In fact I had to chase after her a one point cuz she was ready to get all the way in.

Bringing her back after chasing her down. :)


This is a bit of a random picture but I thought it was a good one. We took a trip to the zoo shortly after we got back to Boston and one of the highlights was seeing the Gorillas. At one point one of the Gorillas walked right up and sat down next to where Katelyn was standing by the glass. Katelyn was pretty interested by that . . . until shortly after when she noticed the pieces of bamboo below the window :)

Camping and the Cabin

We were lucky enough to get to go camping with both Tyler's family and mine this year. We got a new tent for Christmas last year and we were glad to already get to use it so much. Katelyn actually did pretty well as a camper except for the whole sleeping at night thing. :) Pretty much she spent a bit of time down by the fire late at night with Dad and most of her sleeping ended up taking place in the car. Other than that though we had a blast. We also got to spend a bit of time up at Tyler's family's cabin which is always really fun. We even got quite a bit of rain one week while we were there which I have learned to be especially appreciative of after living a couple of summers in Arizona. :)

Katelyn enjoying time by the fire in Arizona

We had a lot of fun just sitting around enjoying the campfire.

Katelyn playing around in the tent in Arizona. The ground was a bit rocky and she was only crawling at this point so this was here favorite play place.
The Lloyd family :) We had a great time and are so excited to get to be coming back to Arizona in May.

Enjoying the rain up at the cabin

Katelyn enjoyed the rain as well :)

Katelyn and Daddy relaxing on the swing


Tyler and the Stuart kids. We had so much fun living with them this summer. Thanks so much!

With Cash and Landon too. We have the greatest nephews and niece. :)

I'm so glad we got to keep up the Glacier tradition this year as well. Hopefully next year we'll be able to get everyone there. Here we are up at Avalanche lake, one our favorite hikes.

Such a beautiful view

Tyler down by the waterfall

Katelyn and Daddy hiding out in a tree :)