Christmas in Colorado

We spend Christmas in Colorado with my family this year. We stayed at my older sister Danielle's home. It was such a blast. The picture above has her girls: Talise (8) (baptized while we were there), Renee (6), and our little miracle Macie (8 months). Andrew and Jacob absolutely adore their cousins. After overstaying our welcome at their home for two weeks, my children still hadn't had their fill of cousin time. What a great Christmas!

Andrew made this gift for me and Michael and called it "The best Christmas Present EVER!" We are grateful for the technology these days to save this present digitally. It didn't quite make it home in one piece in our luggage.

Family Photo on campus. Merry Christmas!

Holidazzle

I absolutely LOVE dancing. And I love Christmas time. But, I love even more that these two things became a standard weekend celebration for several weeks in a row. We had holiday party after holiday party for three weeks. By the end of the third Christmas (dinner/dancing) party I was warn out - we even left early because we were so tired. Lame, but true.

These pictures are from the Harvard Business School's annual Holidazzle. We were sorely over charged for an open-bar event but it was SO worth every penny. We danced until 2 in the morning. I almost forgot that I had to get up with children the next morning!

Most of these people are from Michael's section. The school splits the 900 students into 10 sections - named after letters in the alphabet. Michael was proud to be placed into section H. H is brimming with incredible people full of personality and talent. It has been such a blast for Michael to get to know these classmates. We loved spending the evening with them. It was the best date we had all year!




A special thanks to Andrew for helping me to get ready for my date with papa. I love you little guy!

A Time for Giving Thanks

We are grateful for so many things.
To start, we are incredibly grateful for our two boys.
Our marriage.
Our Savior.
Our Testimonies.
The roof over our heads.
Running water.
A safe vehicle to drive.
Our friends.
And plenty of food . . .

Two events down: Kristy's Shower and the Hampshire House Fundraiser. Two to go: Thanksgiving dinner with Michael's Learning Team and Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving.

It's hard to imagine Jennifer Smith being fooded out, but I was on the brink. Four large parties in a matter of 6 days made me not want to cook for a month! (and much to Michael's chagrin, I didn't!) Both Thanksgiving dinners turned out great. It was really enjoyable having so many great friends at our table that week. I don't know what we would do without such wonderful and loyal friends. Thank you all!

And a special thanks to Joel Williams for always entertaining our boys with the Wii. He was so helpful while we were busily cooking in the kitchen!

The Hampshire House 2008

In honor of my dear friend Catie Stubben, who is still battling cancer, decided that I wanted to host another party at the Hampshire House to raise funds for basic cancer research for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. So in September I applied to run with the Dana Farber team in the Boston Marathon again and was accepted! Overwhelmed by the thought of training for another marathon and planning another fundraiser, I decided to do things a little differently this time around. I was going to work on just the fundraiser and then work on the training. Last time, I had begun my training in September and threw the party in November and for three solid months my entire life revolved around this endeavor. Splitting this up this time around has helped keep the rest of my life a little more balanced.

Invitations went out and RSVP's trickled in until the event. We hosted around 60 friends for an evening of dinner and dancing. The Hampshire House was decorated so nicely and the food was delicious. Our DJ, Reggie, was amazing. We raised over $5,000 that night toward our goal of $9,000. I couldn't have asked for things to go more smoothly. We had such a blast!

Honoring Kristy Williams and her son

We celebrated in anticipation of Thomas Mario Williams the best way we know how . . . with food and friends! Two dear friends of ours flew in from D.C. (Leanna Kowallis) and San Fransisco (Regan Williams). It was a fun, but busy weekend. As you can see from the first photo I look exhausted . . . because I was.




We are so glad that Thomas is here safe and sound. Sometimes it helps to blog 6 months after the fact, things always seem better with a little time. I remember this weekend being really stressful because we threw Kristy's shower on Saturday, we had guests in town for the weekend, and then on Monday I was hosting a Dana Farber fundraising event. It was a non-stop weekend. Now that I look back at the photos, I can appreciate more how much fun it was!

Happy Halloween! I know it's almost April, but we're just getting around to posting our Fall happenings.
Life at HBS has been wonderful, but it is completely packed with things to do from dawn until dusk some days. I have, quite obviously, found no time to blog.

So, back to October . . . we went Trick-or-Treating to Beacon Hill again this year. It was a blast and the weather was so pleasant! We had been enjoying the winter cold a few days prior to Halloween so we were really grateful that weather cooperated just for this fun little evening.

This is the American Flag. I know that you know this fact, but . . . did you know that this is the very flag that is hanging outside of Sen. John Kerry's home? It's true. He was actually out giving candy to children this year. Last year he just had his house keepers passing around candy, but this year he was up for re-election, so it was necessary that he pass out his own candy!


Pirate Andrew says . . . aaarrghh!

Little monkey just wants to go home. Sad day. He'll soon understand how cool Halloween is.

Andrew's Birthday Party

What was Andrew's Birthday Party Theme? I'll give you one guess.



So this cake doesn't look very big, but let me tell you . . . it was a layered 16" round, 15 pound cake that fed at least 80 people! It was enormous and SO much fun to create.

Michael goes to class in "sections". There are 90 people in his section, and he sees them every day, all day, all week. His section was cute enough to invite Andrew, Jacob and I to come to class after the day was over to celebrate Andrew's 3rd birthday with them. I was admittedly worried how Andrew would react to 90 adults singing "Happy Birthday" to him. I was thrilled and surprised to watch him enjoy every minute of the attention!

Right as I walked into class, my children were swooped out of my hands to be loved and cuddled by Michael's classmates the whole time we were there.

This is Michael's classroom: Aldrich 109, Section H.

This is our resident HBS wild Turkey: Henrietta. Warning: She has a really mean streak! Luckily we were permitted to pass behind her without being chased all the way to class.



Have you ever seen someone SO excited for their birthday?


We had a few of Andrew's friends over to celebrate his birthday and to help us make train shaped pizza. Too bad you can't tell the shape from these pictures, there was SO much cheese and pepperoni put on top it buried the dough!

Happy Birthday my little love. I am so grateful to have you!

I love my boys!

Cape Cod

We had a few days off of school so we headed down to the Cape with some friends. This is the darling little Bed and Breakfast that we stayed behind. There is a little carriage house behind this that is just as darling and New England. It has two floors and each floor had two bedrooms and a bathroom with a living room and full kitchen. It was ideal for our three families. What a fun weekend!




These are Andrew and Jacob's friends. William is 3 and Oliver is 18 months. Perfect little playmates!


Even though it was the middle of October, the weather was seasonably warm during this weekend. We were able to get into the water to go "paddle" boating and splash around with the children. We just keep hoping that winter will not join us too soon!