Trip to Nebraska

Nikosha and I got to go to Nebraska to go visit my sister and her family. We had so much fun! Nikosha felt like a little mommy there. My sister, Jenny, has 4 kids that are 5 and younger, the youngest being 2 months. Nikosha probably spent about 90% of the time holding baby Parker and the rest of the time playing with the other 3 kids. She loved it and Jenny and I got to spend a ton of much needed time talking and hanging out together. We got to go to 2 different children's centers and go eat lunch with Remi at her school and Blake even spent his day off watching kids so that Jenny and I could go play a game of tennis. We also got to go to an indoor waterpark while we were there (I guess we never got any pictures of that, though). Nate even flew out and stayed for a day and then flew back with us. Blake just finished dental school and he is currently doing his residency for the Air Force. That's why he's wearing his cool uniform in the picture with Nikosha. We're excited to find out where they're going to be next year so we can go visit them again!

Austin Got Married!

Nate's brother, Austin, got married on Friday afternoon. He texted us on Wednesday to invite us. Austin put off inviting his family, but apparently they'd known since before Thanksgiving. Silly boy! They got married at the courthouse, but still had a pretty good turn out with most of both of their families there and quite a few friends. Don't they look so in love?!! I love it! We went out to eat at the Olive Garden afterwards with the newlyweds. His new wife's name is Kenzie, so we have 2 Kenzi Loftuses now. She has two sons that are now part of our family. Caden, who's 12, and Jameson, who's 7. We're so excited for Austin! Congratulations you two!

Annual Utah Vacation

This trip to Utah during the Holiday season has become our family tradition. It's so much fun to take a break and just spend time together as a family. We love to go see all the lights and feel the Spirit of Christ at temple square! Roman and Roberta and their kids came and joined us. We're quite the troop! We also went to PF Chang's for lunch. I love that place! Our family loves trying to eat with chopsticks too. And staying in a hotel...swimming is a must. I think we swam 4 times in the 3 days we were ther.

Fun with cousins & Winter Wonderland

The kids had a fun night with their cousins. Since they live about 2 miles away, we get to see them lots! But they still have a blast together because they are all so close in age!

Can you tell what Nate's excited for?!! It hadn't snowed yet in this picture, but his dream weather came true within a couple weeks. (Complete with a snowday from work. Yiippee!!)

This is our winter wonderland. All of these pictures were taken from within 50 feet of our house. Pretty crazy and beautiful, huh!? And these pictures were all before the huge storm that got everybody a snowday.

First Snow of the Year

We had our first snow fall of the year on Monday. My kids all had to get every piece of snowclothes on to go play in it for about 30 minutes and leave all the soak and wet clothes piled high by the door. I couldn't be too negative though because they were having sooo much fun. I had a great time just watching them and taking pictures. I'm amazed at how each child is different. One will love being outside for hours in the cold and another one will work so hard to get all bundled up and take it off after 10 minutes. And one of the others will wear their snow clothes all day, inside or outside. Too fun!!

So Many Things Happening

A quick re-cap of our last 2 months. In no particular order:

My sister, Jenny, surprised us and drove from Nebraska with her 3 kids and 1 on the way:

My brothers, Eric and Tyler, came for a visit:

Halloween:

Katelyn's birthday:

New foster brother, Robbie. A 24 year-old mentally handicapped boy, who now lives with my parents.

Nikosha playing soccer

Katelyn playing soccer

Nate's birthday

FREE STUFF!!

Since I couldn't get any of my pictures to upload in a timely manner (ugghh!!) I thought I'd share my excitement that I just got a shirt for each of my 4 kids, an outfit for Kyler, 2 weeks worth of groceries, and silly bands (a must for the kids) all for FREE!! How? Check out this video. It's not a scam, believe me, we checked out a whole bunch of resources to make sure it really works! Either go to my website and sign up when you see how awesome it is or you can e-mail me or call me with any questions. So, not only did I get all this stuff for free from Wal-Mart, but I also got $300 in cash!! You can't go wrong with this! It's so great!! I really want everyone I know to try it! If you don't sign up after watching it, I plan on calling everyone I know anyway, so you might as well sign up before I call and bug you! Hee-hee!