Birthday Time!

 Happy 42nd, Rusty!

 Making a wish!  Yes, as you can see, there is a piece missing from his cake.  It was him, not me.  :)  In addition to the carrot cake, we had a lemonade cake with lemonade frosting.

Our favorite neighbors came over for cake and singing!  Thanks Bowen family!

Rusty's favorite color is blue.  He likes to golf, ski and enjoys watching movies.  He especially likes going to movies with his wife, but often goes with friends when it's a late movie.  ;)  He works as a Skilled Nursing Facility Administrator, and is really loved and respected by those he works with.  He is currently the Young Men's President in our ward, so is blessed to work closely with Porter and other great young men and leaders.  Rusty ran his 2nd marathon this past October in St. George, UT.  He is a great father to 5 children and a wonderful husband!  We love him!

Go Big Blue

 MJ had a great basketball season.  And she discovered a sport that she really enjoys playing!  Her 2 favorites are now soccer and basketball.  Her coaches were Coach Dunn and Coach Bowen.  Our whole team consisted of girls and boys in our ward, as were the coaches.  It was nice to know whose name to yell while cheering. :)  

Bringing the ball in...

Happy 6th!

I'm 6! 

6th Birthday with Petersen cousins!  Plz don't look at the cake.  I was trying to create legos.  Let's just say they were harder than I thought and they didn't turn out.  But cake is cake... right?

 Making a wish!

 Those are some scary looking faces on the front row.

 Ren loves to make faces for the camera.

 Never gets bored

 I think I have about 10 different versions of this...

 Ren and Landon's birthdays are 5 days apart.  We moms put out heads together and after seeing that they would like the same party with the same friends, we pooled our resources.  Lego themed...You can imagine that many of his gifts were legos.  And he has loved putting them together!!

 Friends!

 Ren gets another wish!

 Molly pulled together the cakes and cupcakes!  Very impressive!

 We had lego creation stations.  Coloring stations. Pin the head on the lego man game and others.

 Snacks

Balloons

Go Orange!

Ren is playing basketball!  He is fun to watch.  He loves playing and you can tell.  It seems he is always trying his best!  His tongue is often hanging out too.  He is on the Kinder orange team and we like to cheer for him!  He is pretty good, not the best out there or anything, but he knows how to dribble and shoot and rebound and keep his hands up to block.  For kinders, that's not bad!  He scored once in this game, and had the ball a lot!  We are happy that he is enjoying playing basketball!

Taking the ball to the hoop!

Block!

Hustle!

You aren't allowed to steel the ball at this level.  They are encouraging the kids to learn the basics, dribbling and all.  But Ren steels often and they have to stop the game and remind him not to.  :)

He shoots!  He scores!

Actually, I don't that was the one that went in. :)

This was when his teammate scored and he raised his arms and yelled, "Yes!"  Too funny!

Sunset, Moonrise

 This was the view from our windows tonight!  Amazing right?  The moon looked huge and bright!

City lights, so pretty.

Sledding

 Sledding with the youth and some families in our ward was a blast!  Above, Ren is riding a very dangerous contraption, while Dad videos to the side.  :)  The kids had so much fun!  As did I, though I just watched.  

 Ren treks it up the hill for another run!

 MJ and Evva are set to go barreling down the hill, while Chase watches on.

 Enjoying the ride!

 That was fun, let's do it again!

 Porter's turn!

 And he takes flight!

The boys built a mogul to do some jumps.  Don't you love his sunglasses?  Well, they broke by the end of the day, as you can imagine!

 Ellie chills out.

 Porter brought his snowboard, just in case....

 Yes, he must test it out...

 So cool

 Mom, did you get that?!

It ended up to be the perfect day for sledding, warm but plenty of snow.  In case you were wondering, Chloe is not in the pics, cause she was not there.  She refused to go because she looks like a marshmallow in her snow clothes.  She really needs new ones.  A few days later, she had some new, cute snow pants to sport for the next time!  Typical.  :)

Another Birthday!

 The big 38 this year.  My cake was pretty psychedelic, right?  And the little kitty characters were a nice touch too.  Just trying to keep me young, I guess?  We were putting pink candles on to match, and Ren really though it needed a blue one too, so there you go!

 Me and my hunny

 Here all my babies!  Can you believe how big they are?!  

Rusty and I spent New Year's Eve at the Regional youth dance that our stake puts on.  We were chaperones in charge of a game room.  We may have played a raging game of Apples to Apples!  :)  Porter was at the dance, while Chloe had made plans at her friends house.  It was fun and reminded me of a dance I may have gone to back in the day. :)  Ellie babysat the 2 little kiddos.  They all fell asleep and missed the ball drop on TV.  Not to worry, it's usually not all it's cracked up to be!