Carter is 4!!

As always with our New Year's Eve baby, we got to celebrate Carter's birthday with our family over our Christmas vacation.  Unfortunately Marianne and her kids and Abby had already left so they didn't get to participate in the festivites.  We started out by eating our traditional New Year's Eve dinner of fondue.  We ate the cheese course with the kids and we also had shishkabobs, but we decided to save the chocolate for the adults after the kids went to bed.  They don't really appreciate it and besides they got to eat birthday cake.

I planned on making the traditional Monson birthday cake for Carter but when I was making it he walked in and saw that it was NOT a Cars cake and was really dissappointed.  Luckily for him, the angel food cake was a disasster because the cabin was at such high altitude so we had to get him a different cake.  Papa was so sweet to drive down and specially order Carter a Cars cake as a surprise!!  Can you see the pure joy on this little boy's face??!!  He was so not expecting a cars cake and he was so thrilled to get one!

I know I look scary in this picture but the kids look cute so it made the blog anyway.  Carter is proudly displaying the two cars toys that came on top of his cake.

Apparently Carter and Thais heard us say to smile and Rylynn and Skyler heard us say to look drunk:)

Carter got to open presents from his Grandma eventhough she wasn't there.  Transformers!!

Jordan and Danielle gave him a cute card with money inside which he spent on, I bet you can't guess, a new Car!

But the highlight of the night was yet again from Nana and Papa.  Carter had asked for the monster truck wrastlin ring for Christmas starting back in October, but Garrett and I really didn't want to spend the money on it so we said we would wait till his birthday when it went on sale and maybe get it.  Well while Papa was waiting for the cake, he decided to pick up a gift for Carter as well.  Nana told him he really wanted the Cars wrastlin ring and so Papa got it.  

Seriously this kid could not have been any happier!!  I love Rylynn's expression of excitement too because she knew how much he wanted it.  Thank you for all the great surprises Nana and Papa!!

As if that wasn't enough, the kids got to play Santa bowling on the pool table!

Thais and Carter were very serious about how many Santas they had knocked over:)

And just because he was the birthday boy, Carter got to keep his very own Bubble Gum Santa bowling pin!  

Next came the Santa bean bag toss game.  Can you tell the theme of Carter's party games?

Rylynn was very happy when she finally got one in Santa's hat all the way at the top!  It was a really fun party and Carter got a lot of great presents but most of all it was so fun for him to get to celebrate with so many people he loves.  

Some four year old Carter facts:

Carter's preschool teachers are Miss Sandy and Miss Anne

Carter's carpool buddy is Billy

Carter LOVES to do puzzles and will spend hours putting them together

Carter loves to play with his big sister 

Carter can ride a big boy bike with no training wheels

His favorite colors are blue and green and he has a blue and green room!

Carter is in CTR 4 this year and loves his CTR ring.

Favorite movie: Cars

Carter loves to do flips on our trampoline and just started a tumbling class.

Carterisms: "Oh darn", "I'm gooder"

Carter is such a sweet boy who cries crocodile tears and has a heart of gold.  We love our sweet Carter boy and are so proud on him!

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!