Here’s the fort that Tom made for Lilah, before all the cousins had arrived for the week. She loved it!

Lunch with a bunch of my high school girl friends! I had just had my surgery the day before and was so grateful that I was still able to go. I wish more people could have been there, but it was fun to catch up with those who could make it!

The boys decided that it would be funny to try on a few of mom’s wigs (with her permission of course)! Pretty sick if you ask me! 

Christmas eve dinner was a lot of fun! We all got to eat on mom’s special Christmas china and have a candle lit dinner. The food was delicious too!

After dinner we had a really fun time letting the kids act out the nativity… Angela described it perfectly on her blog, “First no one wanted to be the donkey, then Matthew & Caleb both wanted to be the donkey, then Emily-who was supposed to be a shepherd-decided she wanted to ride the donkey, meanwhile Lilah (Mary) tossed the doll out of the manger and hopped in herself, then Emily decided that looked like fun and hoped in the manger too.” We all laughed a lot, but it was still a very special & spiritual evening.

Christmas morning turned out really well. We went to church (9am), then came back and opened presents. I wouldn’t mind if Christmas was on a Sunday every year! The kids were all very excited, and I loved being able to feel their excitement. Lilah still wasn’t that great at opening gifts, but loved getting what was inside. She especially loved her very first all-fruit fruit snacks in her stocking! She just kept giggling, and I couldn’t get to interested in anything else. I was excited about our stockings this year that were filled with fruit, fruit snacks, fruit leather, larabars, honey sticks, and a few small gifts.

Dad, making good use of Tom’s new buckyballs. I don’t know if I’ve seen a funnier picture of him!

We got a chance to do some service for a neighbor.

Playing UNO with Grandma.

My parents got a cat for Christmas to help with rodents outside, and we all loved her! She was so sweet!

Playing with Ang & Jeffs new Wii game. This was so funny to watch!

Playing dodge-ball at the church.

The grand-kids all got hippity-hops for Christmas, from Grandma & Grandpa, so we tried them out in church gym.

Lilah & Emily rocking themselves in the little baby cradle. Theses girls were so cute together, and I think they will only become better and better friends.

We were able to all go out to eat this trip. It was a nice, relaxing night thanks to the babysitter who listened for the kids at home. Sadly, Travis (Lacey’s boyfriend) had to head back to Provo for a few days that very afternoon & missed our fun little outing. We were happy to have him back that weekend for New Years!

We all had such a great time together, and as always, it was difficult to say goodbye. Thanks again Mom & Dad for letting us fill your house with craziness! We love being there.

We also got to walk around Blickenstaff’s again. I feel like a little kid every time I walk into that store! Clover and Lilah had fun playing with the little shopping carts and riding the toy horse.

Lilah and our neighbor Lilia all dressed up and ready to go.

We wanted Lilah to get the experience of trick-or-treating. She actually enjoyed it a lot more than I expected! She loved saying “trick or treat”, and she really liked picking out “shiny toy things,” (or so she thought). She didn’t even know she had something edible. She didn’t try and eat anything. And every time our neighbors offered a non-edible prize she chose those (like bracelets, pencils, etc).

I thought we’d only make it to a handful a houses, but she loved the whole experience, and we had a great time visiting our neighbors. After arriving home, she soon lost interest in her pail and we added her loot to our own candy to hand out. Which was a good thing because we had a lot of kids stop by. I gave Lilah her first box of raisins and she thought it was the best thing ever! She carried it around for about an hour and enjoyed each little one.

Holidays are so much more fun with kids! We had a blast!

Well, our hosts really went all out for the party…it was so much fun. Mandy is so crafty and creative! Raf and Claudia were nice enough to have it at their home, and Raf made some delicious food (including a mouthwatering Cajun jambalaya)! The decorations were awesome and everyone dressed to fit their part.

Tom and I

John and Becky

Raf and Claudia

Ryan (the murderer!) and Mandy

In the end, none of us guessed the murderer correctly, but we still had a great time debating and making guesses. Thanks again guys!

To start off with, it was really expensive. I wasn’t hesitant to sign up for that reason, but assumed that for that price, it must be a well-organized race. On Friday evening I went to pick up my race packet at the mall. I left Tom and Lilah at home because I was just planning on running in, grabbing it and leaving. We had a party to get to that evening and a babysitter to pick up by 7. Well, when I got there I found a line that ran down almost the entire length of the mall! I could not believe it! Some people walking by even said they had to wait 2 hours to get their packets! I definitely didn’t have 2 hours…I arrived at the mall at 6:35 and was hoping to be back to pick up the babysitter by 7. Luckily I only had to wait for 40 minutes, but the actual room where the pick-up was located was a total mess. Many people’s packets were missing, names switched, and there were additional lines for certain names, missing t-shirts, etc. In their defense, there were 4,000 runners…that is a lot of people to keep track of.

Now skip forward to the morning of the race. We were told to arrive at the mall parking lot between 5:30 and 6am to ride a bus to the starting line. I arrived at 6 remembering the delays from the night before. Then I sat in another line on the cold concrete from 6am-7:45am! Not one bus showed up in that time. Finally the buses rolled in around 7:45 and tried to get us to the starting line. Our bus almost took a wrong turn and many others actually did end up in the wrong place. Some runners finally asked their bus driver to just pull over and they walked the half mile to where they knew the starting line would be.

After getting dropped off, the morning was pretty uneventful. We were lucky that the start time was scheduled for 9am. I was confused as to why they had it start so late when they wanted us at the buses so early, but now I wonder if they knew they were unorganized and knew they would need the extra time.

I lined up close to the front of the pack and they fired the gun soon after 9am. A lot a people go out really fast on a downhill course and I was quickly passed by many many people. About 1/4 mile in I ran into a friend, the daughter of Hawk, who ons Runners Corner (the store I run for). We ended up running together through mile 8. It was really nice to have someone to chat and run with. I had decided before hand that I wanted to go out conservatively for the first downhill portion of the race. We kept our pace between 6:05-6:30 for the first 4 miles. It felt like we were crawling along, but I was sure that a lot of people would die at the bottom of the hill and we’d be able to chase them down if we saved our energy and legs.

Pretty quick after we got down the canyon we were passing people right and left. We tried to keep our pace under 6:30 with the plan that we’d speed up for the last 5 or 6 miles. Everyone’s quads seemed to be suffering from the quick descent down the fist long hill, so I was able to continue passing people till the end. My friend and I split up about mile 8. She ended up doing amazing and taking 3rd overall with a 1:23 finish! My legs were a lot more tired that I had hoped they would be by mile 8, and I wasn’t able to kick it up a notch like I wanted to at the end.

I kept my pace between 6:25-6:40 from 8-13.2 miles. I was able to sprint down the last stretch, but that was all I had left. I finished with a 1:25:21 and 1st place in my division. I was happy with my time, but wish I could have closed out the race a little stronger. Seeing all the hilarious costumes along the way made the whole event a pretty unique experience!

Our good friends threw their annual Halloween Party on Saturday night and we were happy to get an invite! We even got a babysitter so we could just enjoy the evening and stay late. Tom and I decided to go as Wall St itself and a protestor. I think it turned out pretty well for pretty much throwing it together. We had fun with it. We played some games and it was funny to see a bunch of our friends running around in costumes making animal noises and acting out celebrities.

Thanks again Val! We hope to make it a annual McConnon tradition.

A bunch of girls in our ward have a Bunco night each month. This month they needed a sub and invited me to join in on the fun! Since it is Halloween time they decided to do a witches theme. We all dressed up like witches and Nikki decorated everything so cute! This group of women is such a blast, and we laughed all night!

Dinner was delicious and the game is always entertaining. I ended up with an adorable home-made Halloween wreath for my front door, which I had my eye on since I walked in! Yah! Now I finally feel like my home looks a little festive. I think I’ll do more decorating next year when Lilah will actually enjoy and appreciate it… lol Thanks again to Nikki for the invite and to Tom for having a little daddy daughter time!

We actually attended our Ward Fall Festival last year, and I can’t believe it’s been that long. Lilah was just a little baby, and made the most adorable pirate. But she fell asleep soon after we got there and we weren’t able to get a cute picture of her little pirate mustache. This year was quite different. We chased Lilah around the whole building all evening. She wanted to be part of everything. The people running the bean bag toss got to know her real well. They had little toy prizes, instead of candy, for most of the games which I was also really happy about. That way Lilah got to really participate without being offered something she couldn’t have. Tom was in charge of a game as well. He decided to do a golf game where you had to putt a golf ball into a pumpkins’ mouth. I wish I had gotten a picture.

I bought Lilah’s costume a couple months ago, but we decided to coordinate our costumes with her’s last minute. Luckily Tom had a few extra plain scout shirts hanging around from when he was younger and we turned ourselves into safari people. We had a great time, and I realized that we really have gotten to know so many people in this area. Last year I felt like I didn’t know hardly anyone, and this year was quite different. Yah for Fall! I love this time of year and all the festivities that go along with it!