A year's worth of catch up.

So obviously it's been a while since I've updated. Now instead of just getting a Halloween update, you get a whole year which includes two Halloween updates. :)

Here's a picture of the kids for Halloween 2010. Notice Cody's AWESOME costume ;) Kenzie was an 80s girl, Brooklyn a cowgirl, thank you Grandma Garr for making the skirt, and Kaden was a vampire.

Kaden played his first year of basketball in November 2010. He had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Hopefully I'll remember to sign him up again this year as I forgot for 2011.



December brought dance demos for Kenzie and Brooklyn. They're both doing really well in their dance classes and it's a lot of fun to see what they're learning in class.



And of course the end of December brought Christmas. This was before presents, obviously since the floor is clean, but I managed to get some half smiles from two kids and real smiles from the other two.


In February 2011 we went sledding with a bunch of the Garr family members. We went to a stake camp in the Morgan area and had a great time.


Unfortunately our sledding trip ended with an ambulance ride to the ER. Brooklyn and Kaden were heading down the hill together on a sled they had never ridden before and it careened right into a tree on the side of the hill. Brooklyn hit her head and lost consciousness for a bit. We called 911 and they took her by ambulance to the ER. She was fine and ended up with just a mild concussion.


Our neighbors invited us to their family's cabin at Bear Lake for the weekend in February too. Everyone had fun sledding again and the kids had a great time together.


Kaden lost his first tooth this month too. He was so excited to finally get a visit from the Tooth Fairy.


March brought yet another Jazz game half-time performance for Kenzie. She did a great job as always.



April brought us mom's birthday. We decided that she needed enough candles to account for her age. We nearly burned down the house. :)

May brought us Brooklyn's 5th birthday. This is her new birthday outfit. She's such a beautiful little girl!



For Christmas the family got Lagoon season passes. We spent many a weekend at Lagoon this year and it was well worth the cost!

Brooklyn graduated preschool in May 2011. She had an amazing teacher and she loved every minute of it.

See the next post for the rest of the year. :)

The year continued...

In June 2011 Les and I went to Maui to Celebrate our 15th anniversary. We had a great time. Maui is gorgeous! I hope to be able to go back some day.

Late June brought us another dance recital. Kenzie and Brooklyn did a great job!

In July we went to Jason and Amy's for a birthday party and the kids got to ride their horses. They absolutely loved it! Thanks Amy!

In July Kaden and Brooklyn started a new year of school. Kaden went into the 1st grade and Brooklyn went into Kindergarten.


August brought us Kenzie's 12th birthday. She is growing up into a beautiful young woman and I'm so proud of the person she is becoming.


In September Les and I ran participated in the Dirty Dash at Soldier Hollow. We did it with a group of our new friends. We had such a great time. Who knew it could be so fun to run through mud, climb over bails of hay, swim through mud, wade through chest deep, cold water, climb a rope wall, and slide down a huge water slide? We had so much fun and can't wait to do it again. Here is the before and after.

In October we celebrated Kaden's 7th birthday. He had his first friend party. He picked a Sponge Bob theme and we played a lot of fun games. Cody also had a birthday in October, but for some reason I failed to get a picture of him. Bad mom!


In October we also went down to St. George to see Little Mermaid at Tuacahn. It was amazing! My mom's cousin, Heidi, played Ursula and she definitely stole the show.

And here we are at the next Halloween! Notice Cody's AWESOME costume once again. :) Kenzie was a dead ballerina this year, Kaden a shot police officer, Brooklyn a cheetah or leopard I don't really know, and then we also have Shaylee, Amaya, and Jacob. I'm not exactly sure what their costumes are, but they look really cute!



In November I surprised Les with a birthday party with a bunch of our friends. He suspected that something might be going on, but never guessed that I would put together something this big. It was a great success and I'm so glad I was able to surprise him. He surprised me earlier in the month with a bunch of fun stuff too.

And that's it for now. I have more pictures on my camera that have yet to be uploaded to the computer. Maybe next time it won't have to be a year's worth of posts. :) Until next time....

Family Pictures

As promised, here are the family pictures we had done in October.

Cody's up first. He's turning into quite the handsome young man. He is a great kid and very helpful. He's our official baby-sitter so we can have a night on the town once in a while. He loves playing guitar and Roblox on the computer. He also loves the X-Box.

Next up is Kenzie. She is our little pig pen. She can make a mess anywhere, I swear. Her saving grace is that she is so good with Kaden and Brooklyn. She will entertain them for hours on end, which is a great help to me. She is turning into a beautiful dancer and is also very good at tumbling.

Kaden is our goer. He loves to be doing something all the time. He especially loves to play board games together or play at a friend's house. He likes things to be clean and has no problem helping out around the house.

Brooklyn is our little princess. She's just as sweet as can be and fun to be around. She's a bit of a copycat and wants to be just like Kenzie. She's in dance and tumbling as well and doing great! She's very affectionate and loves to give hugs and kisses.

These guys were great for pictures and it turned out to be such an easy day.

And just so you don't get the wrong idea and think they're perfect all the time, this is how they really are!

Next up....Halloween. A this rate, I might actually get caught up before the next Halloween ;)

Soccer, Guitar, & A Field Trip

Cody and Kaden are both playing soccer this year. Cody has been playing for many years, this is Kaden's first year. It's a bit more difficult to get two kids to soccer each week, especially when their games are at the same time, but they enjoy playing, so it makes it worth the craziness.

Cody is the one closest to the ball. I know it's hard to tell, but I thought it was a great action shot!

Here's Kaden showing off his awesome soccer skills!

Cody had a guitar concert for his school guitar class. It was a Beatles theme and the classes all did a great job. Cody absolutely loves playing the guitar. He's getting very good and I really like to hear him play. At the concert, he was chosen to play bass guitar for a couple songs.

We couldn't get him to actually smile at us for a picture, so rather than choose the one with him pretty much scowling at us, here he is looking away.

Here he is playing the bass. He's concentrating very hard!

Brooklyn's preschool class went on a field trip to Black Island Farms in Syracuse. They went on a hay ride to learn about some of the vegetables grown on the farm and then all of the kids were able to choose a pumpkin to take home. They also played on the slides and went through a corn maze.
Here is Brooklyn holding one of the carrots they passed around.

Kaden and his pumpkin that he picked.

Next up....Family Pictures!

Really Big Pumpkins & Someone Has A Birthday!

Our neighbor grew some really huge pumpkins this year and he was kind enough to take a picture of our kids with them since our camera was still broken and we didn't have a new one yet. Yay for really nice neighbors!

I seriously can't believe how big those pumpkins got. I love this picture!

Next up was Kaden's birthday. Les was able to order us a new camera just in time to take pictures for his birthday. He turned 6 this year. He's growing up way too fast!

We surprised him with a bike and by his expression in the picture, I'd say he was pretty excited about it!

And of course, safety first! We got him a bike helmet to go with it. Unfortunately I'm not very good about reminding my kids to wear helmets, so I don't think he even knows where it is now, but it's the thought that counts, right?!

We had a combined birthday party for both Kaden and Cody with the family. Notice Jacob trying to help out with the candles. :)

Jacob was really determined to blow out some candles, but Cody wasn't going to have it!

I'd say the boys both had great birthdays this year. The kids just keep getting older and it makes me sad that it's happening so fast.

Coming up next time, Soccer, Guitar, and a Field Trip!

The first of many updates

Hey there, so obviously it's been a while since I've updated, but that's all about to change. This will be the first of many updates to come to catch you all up on everything that's happened (at least everything with pictures) since last September.

At the end of September we took our annual trip to Yellowstone! As I've said quite a few times in this blog, Yellowstone is one of my favorite places to go. We went a little later this year than usual, so we were worried about it being a bit too cold to camp, so we decided to stay in a hotel

Check out that crazy luggage of ours! We stayed at the Kelly Inn in West Yellowstone which was very nice. We took advantage of the free breakfast and the pool and hot tub everyday.

One of our all-time favorite restaurants in West Yellowstone is Wild West Pizzeria. We like it so much we ended up there twice in five days. If you ever go, you have to try the macaroni and cheese, you won't be sorry!

There are quite a few of these painted buffalo around town, which of course make awesome photo ops!

Here is one of the many elk that we saw while we were there. We saw many buffalo as well, unfortunately we didn't get many pictures of wildlife this time around, as will be explained below.

Just another cute picture of the kids. They can be so photogenic when they want to be.

We also celebrated Cody's 14th birthday while we were in Yellowstone. He's growing up so fast I can hardly stand it. He's a great kid and a great sport to spend his birthday in Yellowstone with his family!

Shopping in West Yellowstone is always a lot of fun. The kids really liked the hats!

Sadly, this is the last picture we were able to take in Yellowstone. This was taken at Grant's Village at the visitor center overlooking the lake. It was gorgeous there that morning, but very cold! Right after this picture was taken, the camera was dropped and we couldn't get it to work, but at least we were able to save the pictures that we had already taken.

We spent the rest of the week hiking around Yellowstone, seeing many buffalo and elk, one about 6 feet away from us on a hiking trail, and wandering through shops and visitor centers. We also took a drive around Hebgen Lake and ate lunch with Les's brother and his family at a cabin they were staying in right on the lake. It was a great family vacation and I can't wait to do it again!

Coming up next time on the Buchanan Family Blog, (said in your best Jeff Probst voice for all you Survivor fans) some really big pumpkins and someone has a birthday!