Christmas Card

For those of you whose email I have lost or don't have anymore, here is our Christmas Card this year.

The Hall Family 
CHRI S TMAS  2 0 1 0 !  

 2010 has been a great year for our family.  We have 

been so blessed that Garrett’s law firm has had a 

successful first year and continues to grow.  We love 

living in Liberty Lake and we have made many great 

friends.  We are thankful for all of you and hope you 

have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

Rylynn 

Rylynn started Kindergarten this year and loves it!  She 

loves to read and do math and, as always, loves art too.  

Rylynn loves making up games and activities for 

anyone who will go along with her. She is such a leader 

and good example for her brothers.  Most of all she 

loves being with her family and is a helper to us all! 

Carter

Carter started preschool this year!  He goes twice a 

week and he’s really enjoying it.  He is making lots of 

new friends and loves the puzzles and blocks the best.  

He has started to really love coloring this year too.  

Most of all he likes to play any game his big sister 

makes up! Oh and he still loves cars! 

Beckett 

Our little Beckett is not so little anymore.  He is almost 

1 ! and he’s into everything!  He loves playing with his 

big sister and brother and especially wrestling with his 

dog Ollie.  He loves blowing kisses before bed and 

racing down the stairs when he hears Daddy walk in 

yelling, “Dada, Dada!”  We can’t get enough of him. 

Gearing up for Christmas

We usually put up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving but we needed a few days to recover this year and we still had family in town so we put them up for a family Home evening activity on Monday.  My Grandma gave us a really sweet Christmas book as a thank you for having her for Thanksgiving so we read that before we started.  

The kids were so good about helping this year.  In the past I have waited to put up the fragile ornaments when they are in bed, but this year they got to help.  We only had one glass ball break.  Not bad.

Carter was loving feeling all grown up with the fragile ornaments!

For some reason Rylynn is making a scary face with the flowers.

She was a big help though.

Ollie was not much help but he looked so cute and cozy curled up in the Christmas blanket.

Our evenings efforts!

That weekend Garrett had an overnighter with the YM in the ward so the kids and I decided to do a little Christmas project while he was gone.  Rylynn was supposed to decorate this tree for her kindergarten class and it was supposed to be a family project.  

It was a lot of fun and the kids did a great job  It turned out so cute!

The next FHE we decided to make sugar cookies like we did for Thanksgiving but this time we were goign to deliver them to our neighbors.  Unfortunately they were too good and we ate them all.  Literally.  Don't worry, we made different neighbor gifts the next week:)

My kids got addicted to Rudolph and the island of Misfit toys last year, but we don't have the movie so they have been watching it on the computer.  They were so excited to see it again.  Even Beckett got to watch!  Other than that we have had baking, shopping, parties, and more baking, dance recitals, and all the craziness that is December.  Finally today was the last day of school and we are leaving Wednesday for our Christmas cabin in the woods as my kids call it.  We are excited!  Bring on the relaxing part of Christmas:)

Huge Slacker!!

Okay so I know it's bad when I am getting requests for me to update my blog because let's be honest, it's not like that many people read this.  Anywho, why is December so completely insane?!!  I can't believe I haven't even been able to blog about Thanksgiving.  The problem is that Thanksgiving was so much fun, but we hosted my Parents, both my sisters, my sister's kids and boyfriend, and my Grandma and after they left it took a few days to recover and then all of a sudden it was December and all the craziness had already began.  So here is the way overdue Thanksgiving post....

A couple days before all the fam arrived we got our first snowfall of the year!  Considering last year it snowed for about 1 second and my kids were really dissappointed, this was a happy suprise eventhoug it didn't really stop for awhile.  Rylynn and Carter woke up and went out to play first thing that morning.  They love snow!

Beckett was a big helper getting the house cleaned up for the guests:)

Like I said, it kept snowing!  This was the next day and the kids loved sledding in the backyard.  Even Beckett got a turn!

Have you ever seen a happier kid?

Unfortunately the snow and freezing temperatures complicated the travel plans.  My parents, Grandma, and little sister were stuck in the SLC airport for hours but they finally made it safe and sound.  I LOVE this picture!  This was the first morning when the kids got to play with Nana and Papa.  Papa was so cute with little Beckett.

And Abby was so good with little Ollie:)  She pretty much adopted him during the visit and literally tried to steal him.  As you can see he was quite comfortable with her.  That's how you know he really likes you, when he sits on your face:)

The day after they got here we got to go to Rylynn's kindergarten and see her little Thanksgiving program.  The kids sang 5 songs and they were really cute.  Then the last song was the chicken dance and we were all supposed to participate.  Nothing like getting the family together to do the chicken dance!

I loved the little Turkey hats they made for the performance.

The next day the women madly prepared food all day long.  The boys were in charge of keeping the kids happy so of course Garrett and my Dad decided to do the funnest and scariest thing possible.  They hooked up the sled to the minivan and drove around the neighborhood in the snow storm.

The kids could NOT stop giggling.  They seriously had smiles plastered on their faces the entire time.  I personally almost had a heart attack, but oh well.  

After the sledding adventure Aunt Abby kept the kids happy by baking and decorating sugar cookies with them.

Daddy just ate them:)

The kids had so much fun frosting with all different colors and sprinkles.

We didn't have many fall themed cookie-cutters so Abby just cut little turkeys and leaves out by hand!  

We waited until Friday to have our Thanksgiving so my big sister and her kids could come up from Portland.  They had a really scary and icy drive but they finally made it and we ate some stinking amazing food.

This picture is lame.  I don't know why I didn't get a picture of everybody together, but it was probably because I was too focused on getting some food.  I am a Monson after all:)  In true Monson fashion we cooked for 2 straight days and the food was amazing.  We had frogeye salad, cranberry pomegranite salad, homemade rolls, the best turkey I have ever had(Giada's recipe and her stuffing), mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, bacon brussel sprouts, green beans, swiss broccoli, pineapple yams, triple berry pie, dutch apple, pie and carmel pecan pumpkin cheesecake.  Seriously we are a bit obsessed with food.

After dinner the kids played in the snow and built these tiny snowmen while the adults rested.  Then we had our annual talent show which I only got video of and then had our annual candle passing ceremony where each person says what they are thankful for.  It was an awesome day!  It was so much fun to be with so much of my family.  I have never had a big enough house in the past to host a big holiday and it was so much fun.  I did get a little insight into the stress placed on the hostess, but when I finally just accepted that my house was going to be trashed I was able to just relax and have fun.

This boy loved his Thanksgiving dinner! The day after our Thanksgiving day, Papa took everyone to see "Tangled".  This was the first time Rylynn or Carter had ever been to a movie in the theaters and they were so enthralled!  Can I just say that I LOVED Tangled and that for the first time in years Disney lived up to the glory days of Little Mermaid.  I seriously can't wait to buy it!  Carter was a huge fan of the popcorn:)

That night we had leftovers and the kids built little graham cracker gingerbread houses.  They had lots of fun and made an enormous mess.

Nana helping out the girls

This little guy just ate the candy and was a big fan of the evenings activity!  Thank you to my wonderful family for coming and spending Thanksgiving with us.  We had so much fun!

What a difference a year can make

I have been thinking a lot this week about where we were this time last year and how much has changed for us.  For one thing, this baby has grown up a ton!  In this pic he was 3 months old and we were still in our little apartment.  We (I especially) were running out of hope that we would ever find a house to rent. Our time to give notice of moving out of our apartment was days away and we had been to look at pretty much every rental home in Liberty Lake to no avail.  None of them felt right and I was really discouraged.  

Look at this boy now!  He is 15 months and as busy as ever.  Into everything and wanting to be big like his sister and brother.  During the first week of November we got a call from Garrett's cousin's husband telling us about his friend and how he wanted to find a family with young kids to rent his house.  I did not allow myself to get excited or my hopes up because I had been dissapointed so many times.  So Garrett gave the guy a call and when he got off the phone and told me about the house I almost didn't believe him.  We got in the car and drove by the house that minute and again I was completely floored that this possibility had come our way.  Still I didn't want to get my hopes up too high.  

The next night we went to this house and walked through with the owner.  He told us to pray about it and I responded that we had been for over six months and that this was the answer to our prayers.  The next day we worked out the details of the lease and moved in a couple weeks later over Thanksgiving weekend.  

These babies were such troopers through those six months of Hell for their parents.  Between studying for the Bar all day, looking for jobs in the spare moments, me being pregnant and wondering if we would ever live in a house or if I would be able to have a VBAC we were two very stressed and discouraged people.  But it was as the scriptures say, "our trials were only but a moment" ( I can see that now in hind sight) and our Delivery was better than anything we could have hoped for.

November 4th marked one year that Garrett's firm has been open.  The fact that we were able to open a business and keep it open for a whole year in this economy is nothing short of miraculous and we don't have a day go by without acknowledging that.  We could never have done this on our own and never have.  There were so many moments when business would start to slow down and we would start to worry about the coming month and then the next day two new clients would walk through the door.  I have seen the Lord's hand each day in our lives this past year and it is so fitting for the one year anniversary of our deliverance to coincide with Thanksgiving.  I can never express enough thanks for the trials and miracles of the past 18 months of our lives.  We are so blessed.  It just so happens that the woman that lived in our house had a scripture in lettering over the sink in our kitchen and it is one of my favorite scriptures: "Be still and know that I am God."  I have looked at that scripture every day this year and remembered that I need to be still and trust in Him and that He has never and will never leave me alone.

Random events in October

Garrett got to go fishing a few weeks ago with some friends up in Nothern Idaho.  It was a little like reliving his childhood for him since he grew up steelhead fishing in AK.  Idaho isn't quite the same as AK or so Garrett has told me, but he had a great time none the less and brought home this beauty for dinner.

As an avid "Chopped" watcher I thought filleting a fish would be a piece of cake.  Well I was wrong and the fish was way slimier and slipperier than I expected.  This one turned out okay but the other side was a pretty bad hack job.  Oh well they still tasted good.

Garrett thought it was funny to take the head and make the fish head talk to the kids.  Actually the kids thought it was pretty funny too.  I was a little grossed out myself.

Proudly holding his prize.  We have pictures of him as a little kid holding up steelheads three times this big so Garrett wasn't overly impressed, but I personally thought it was huge compared to the tiny things I used to catch up at my Grandparent's cabin.

In other random news, we got Ollie neutered this week and he was pretty sore for a couple days.  Rylynn and Carter was so sweet with him while he recovered.  This was the first night and Rylynn tucked him into her soft pink blankey for the night.  He loved it.

My two babies in the grass.

I love this face.  Obviously these pics are outdated since he is walking now, but I still thought they were cute.