Dan's Birthday Party

Winter is a very busy time for birthdays in our family, so we have had many celebrations, but Dan's is the last one until April. It is so fun to have all our family close so we can get together often.
Sophie loves to crawl to Anna.
Not a very good picture of our family, but it's the only one from the evening.

Sophie loves her cousins.

Dan's German chocolate cake. Yum!

We all chipped in and got him a blu-ray player for his birthday.

Michael was teasing Sophie with this car. She wasn't sure why it kept chasing her around the house. Finally, she climbed on top of her Daddy for protection.

Sophie loves to play with her grandpa. Here he is pushing her around the house.

Justin has all brothers. Because of this, we often see things like this... (Justin won by the way! :) )

Jordan's Baptism

My nephew Jordan was baptized this last month. He is such a cute, fun boy, and we are very proud of him.
All Maxer wanted to do was hold cute little Tucker.

Sophie is never very far from Grandpa when he's got a nice plate of dessert.

And here she is scouting out everyone else's food.

Not a wonderful picture, but here's Mommy and Sophie.

New Years

Yes, I know I am incredibly slow these days in blogging. Being the RS President, training for the Salt Lake Marathon, and chasing a toddler around all day keeps me extremely busy. I'm trying to stay on top of it though because this blog serves as my journal.

New Years was so much fun! We spent the evening with my family and had a huge party! Here are Jake and Emma playing around. I really don't know how these kids kept going as long as they did!

Here is Danny taking a little power nap. He woke up and was all energy for the rest of the night. He was still running around when we stumbled out.

Here he is awake and holding still for about 2 seconds. And my beautiful sister April.

Sophie spent most of the evening with her grandma.

Here are my Uncle Shaye and Aunt Emily. Believe it or not, this is one of Shaye's more normal picture poses.

My brother Maxwell and his wife Paulette.

All the kids piled on the pillows at the end of the hall. At least it kept the noise centralized for a while.

Madison sporting her new hat from my grandma.

And Gracie

Jake had to go to the eye doctor, and they had to dilate his eyes. They gave him these glasses to wear, and he loved them. He wore them a good deal of the evening.

Some of the gang playing a very intense game of speed Scrabble.

And another exciting game of Sequence.

Jake had a low point toward the end, but like Danny, he too caught a second wind.

Jennifer and Jake

Here we are at midnight. We made it all the way this year; although, we don't look very chipper.

April and Kody looking very similar to us.

DeeAnn was still ready to party after the big ball drop.

Sophie woke up just in time for the noise makers and cheering.

New Years Day was also spent with my family. Here is Sophie ready to embark on our shooting adventures.

Justin and his new shotgun.

They call me "Ashley Oakley."

Sophie and Grandma

The shooting tournament begins...

My dad pretty much dominated everyone, but then again, he always does.

Christmas!

This post has taken me forever to get up because I was intimidated with the number of pictures. We had a fantastic time with our families! These pictures are in a little bit of the wrong order, but here goes.
After we opened presents at our house, we went to my parent's house to open presents with them.
Sophie got some cute new outfits.

Jennifer and I made this wall quilt to match the quilt on her bed.

Justin made this present for Jennifer along with getting her a gift card. The poster says "Jennifer Jo Houghton I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."

Now here we are at our morning at home. I got this wonderful camera! I was so excited I could hardly stand it! It is 12.1 mega pixels and it has a 20x zoom! (Ignore my lovely face without make-up...)

Sophie got these blocks. She loves them!

I got Justin this package. He is always able to find out what his present is, so this year I was really sneaky. I wrapped this package and put it under the tree. In it was a gun cleaning kit, and bullets.

After he opened that, I pulled this out of the closet...

It is a shot gun. Justin was so excited! Sophie, on the other hand, as you can tell from this picture, was not as happy.

On Monday, April came to visit, so we all headed to my parent's house again. Here are Sophie and Tucker playing on the floor.

April gave Sophie a bag, some pictures for church, and an adorable home-made Mr. Potato Head.

My parents bought a wii with their gift cards. Here is my dad and Danny boxing away.

And my dad finally got to open his big present. My cousin Megan Schaugaard painted this picture for my dad (my mom and us kids commissioned her). This is a picture of my grandfather who passed away. His favorite thing to do was fish. It made my dad cry when he saw it. She did such a wonderful job!

And April made Justin a case for his new gun.

Danny was in heaven hanging out in all the wrapping paper. He is such a funny kid.