Christmas Card

For any who still check on this forgotten blog there are some updates below. We have had a wonderful year full of fun and growth. We thank the Lord daily for the gift of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What a blessing to our growing family the knowledge of His Plan is. We love all of you and pray a great year for all of us.

Christmas fun.

The week before Christmas our family went to Idaho for the funeral of my dearest Grandpa Miller.(I'll have to search for a picture of him.) He is the first of my four grandparents to die. He was up and doing until two weeks before he died and then he decided he wanted to move on from this life. We loved seeing the friends and family at the "reunion" and it was a happy funeral and a happy time visiting. Never-the-less it put Christmas prep way behind but we had a marvelous Christmas just the same. Thank heaven for unspoiled children!(for the most part:))
We were planning on some friends joining up for Christmas Eve but one by one they canceled and it was in this case, a blessing, because of being gone all week. We had a beautiful Christmas dinner just us! It was a first and really wonderful. My kids loved it! Here are a few pics I promised Annie I would post.

This is our traditional cranberry pudding cooking in a water bath.

Santa Clause came for visit shortly after dinner bringing bags of goodies and giant teady bears! The kids loved them and were still hugging on them Christmas morning. Yeah for Santa Kip!

Fun with Friends.

This was a much needed mommy get away with my two prego friends in CA. We sun bathed, slept all we wanted and all the fun girl rejuvinating things! It was a little too short but so great for what the trip intended.

Kids and Martin friends making rock mosaics.

Water Park fun with Sydney.

Swimming lessons with Ashley.

Girls night out with Sherrie and Mara. Sherrie came to town to visit friends and family. She came to swimming lessons with us and we enjoyed her lots! We hope she will visit us even when she is a married woman! :)

Cabin Reunion

This was truly a highlight. My siblings got together for a well planned and super fun Yellowstone Cabin Adventure. There was Playmill, dutch oven, shooting range(giving the kids a healthy respect for a gun and the adults some sport), hikes, tea parties and more. I can't be thankful enough for my parents and siblings! I love them so much!
Scriptures with Grandma

This camera is not my friend much of the time. The flash doesn't work when it should and does when it shouldn't. (I know it's the operator!)
This is Ellie with her notebook taking some notes on the previous days activities. The kids were better than expected for a scripture study with grandma.

Adventures with Grandpa
My dad made all the old enough grandkids "possibles bags" from scrap leather(Annie burnt their names on them)to take on their adventures. They had scarves, cats eye necklaces, possible bags and notebooks for their finds on their daily nature walks with grandpa.

Music Time with Annie

Beach Fun
Hebgan Lake is magical for us.

Hats in her element.

Uncle Lincoln giving out watermelon to sandy kids.

The water was a little cold but the sun made up for it.

Family Picture
Sporting our t-shirts.

Summer fires.

We had a few bonfires this year because Nate had enough scrap wood to make some fun fires. We live an hour away from so many of our friends and so we have to have parties to entice them here! Nate has gotten me a 6 quart ice cream freezer and an apple cider press to start our party gear. ps Apple Cider with dry ice is divine! Seriously.

Hattie is at home outside getting dirty.

April play

Here are a few posts just to share a few highlights with the limited pictures on this camera. (I just down loaded 600+)

This was a play Ellie and Nathan were in called Savior of the world. It was their personal highlight of the year. It was wonderful to watch them and my parents came for a visit to watch them too.

My baby!

Here are a few pictures because I said I would update.:) I have been very lax about documenting our life lately perhaps because I am so far behind in putting these pics in books that I haven't wanted to add more pictures to the piles!
These kids are growing up so fast! I am sad that Alyse is growing so fast. She is crawling and very independent. She entertains herself and feasts on the floor when she is not discovered! She is the happiest sweetest thing we have had in our house to date. I facebook-ed that every time I have a child I wondering how I can love the next one as much as the ones I have. I just know they can't be as cute or amazing as the baby I have but every time they get more amazing. How can you stop having kids I ask you? These little people amaze me! Every one of the kids are so in love with Alyse and she loves their attention most of the time. They have learned to be careful of her and she loves to be entertained by them. What a gift to have a baby around the house.

Christmas Letter

We are not on the blogging band-wagon as you can see but here is an update. I will attempt for a few family members who asked to update once a month.

2010 has been a good year for us! Alyse Ruth joined our family in August and has proven to be just what our family needed. She has been smothered in love from the moment of her arrival. Worthy of note is our first ever home birth with midwife and doula. It was a beautiful experience over all.(There was about 1 1/2 hours of not-beautiful and what a blessing our doula was!) The kids were gone for a few days and it was just Nathan, Alyse, me and a few visitors to enjoy the beautiful feeling of a new little person in our home. I need to add that my mom was here but she went about quietly cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and holding a baby so I could sleep. It was love at first sight for her siblings!

Alyse is not the only entertainment around here! Hattie(3) is our most colorful little one. She has a million expressions and is totally goofy. She teases Harrisonn(4 almost 5)something amazing. He finally has decided to tease her back so he can laugh instead of cry. Hattie wants to do all her older siblings do and she appears to have many gifts and abilities.

Harrison is our helper. He follows dad and mom around wanting to do what we are doing. He loves to dig, hammer, unload the dishwasher, sort the laundry or any task he can be assigned to as long as we are beside him. He loved attending a preschool at the beginning of the year and really loved swimming lessons this summer. He usually has a large smile on his face or can be coaxed into one.

Wells is very gifted gymnast and violinist. He rarely puts much effort into lessons but the results are above average. Oh how to inspire him! He loved swimming and enjoyed the high dive and diving to the bottom of the pool this year. Gymnastics was a blast for Wells until he got to gold level soon after he started. Then he didn't like how sore he got or the bigger kids teasing him so after a year of it we let him quit. He is now in a clogging class with Ellie and he is enjoying it.

I sometimes wonder what I did to deserve Ellie! What a jewel. She was baptized this Spring and had so many friends and family join her. She has been the greatest help to me. What a little grown up girl she is becoming. She loves reading, soccer, playing with friends, gymnastics, piano, clogging, swimming, legos and pretty much everything. She has such a love of life and learning. She's a rock star!

Nathan is so very busy running his fathers cattle and land business. There is a great diversity to what he does. He is not your typical cowboy. He wears his ball cap and tennis shoes on his motorcycle to round up cattle. He is "stuck" in the office conducting business but also runs machinery and helps his crew work efficiently with incoming and outgoing cattle. He took to the hills with his kids numerous times in July and August to pick huckleberries. It was a great stress relief for him and me! I was able to enjoy a few quiet moments at the house preparing for and taking care of a baby. The mountains and college football season are his preferred de-stressers. It is a beautiful time of the day when Nate comes home and the kids want his attention and not mine.

Lissie -I am doing great and feel so blessed to have these beautiful children and a wonderful albeit busy husband surrounding me. What a blessing it has been to have Alyse. She is the best medicine for us all. She grins and cuddles and gives us kisses.
We are still doing homeschool and although there are challenging days I love having my kids around. They are wonderful friends and are great learners. Not to say they aren't typical kids but more of the time than not I feel like we have a good thing going. This has been a great year for us and we pray that we will have opportunity to slow down and see more friends and family. We continue to love the scriptures and grow more aware of how nothing we have would be possible without our Heavenly Father's plan and our Savior.
We pray this will be a wonderful year for all of you.

Love, Nathan, Elisabeth, Ellie, Wells, Harrison, Hattie and Alyse

December pics

We went to Salt Lake City for 'Mike(Nate's bro) and Cathy's wedding in December. The trip was super fun and we saw so many friends and family. I wish we could have seen everyone. We were scheduled so much that we all crashed for a few days when we got back. (just a few days before Christmas) Pictures were such an after thought that I'll give you what I have but I don't have many.
Cathy and the boys.


Mike and the girls. Look at Hattie.


Can you see Hattie in the very back? Some of the girls are looking at her because Nate is holding her up so she will stay in the picture. She is our wild child.
There's never been a cuter wild child.:) She simply is charming! So much fun to talk to!

Halloween Fun

We had such a fun time around Halloween. Our adopted grandparents(we have many)came and carved pumpkins with us. When it came to trick or treating Hattie was so hilarious. Once she caught on to what happened at each house she ran every step of the way giggling and squealing. (Wells was a good sport to wear a costume he wore years ago. He decided it was better to go trick-or-treat-ing than to keep trying to find lost pieces of his much anticipated power ranger costume and miss the evening.)

Tall Ships

As part of an educational tour the kids and I went and toured the "Tall Ships" which was in our port for a few days. This is the ship some of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed on. We learned about sailing and how not fun it would be to have been a ship mate back in the day.