Snow Snow and more Snow

We arrived in Ashton for Christmas to find more snow than Boise has ever had at one time. The boys spent a great deal of their time out in the cold; fishing, swinging, riding the snow plow, sledding, and more swinging!

Madison and Cyrus practically wore the swing set out. That was the sure way to keep them both entertained, even through frustrating colds and a short spell of the stomach flu.

That swinging business is hard work. Grandpa Case swung Cyrus until he was out cold!

Getting ready for Christmas

Lex and Cyrus drinking hot chocolate on top of the roof! They were taking a little break from our first annual outdoor Christmas light hanging. We finally got them up for our 5th married Christmas.

The first snow of the year. Snow was much more exciting for Cyrus at two years old than it was at one.

Our first true blue Christmas tree. With all the blue and silver decorations, it turned out to be much nicer than I ever expected.

Results are in: "Who does Cyrus look most like?"

From a total of 45 votes, the final result for our pole
"Who does Cyrus look most like?" was
Daddy 27 (60%)
Mommy 18 (40%)
Congratulations Daddy!

Talking to Santa at the North Pole

Grandpa Peek has a wonderful tradition setting up his

Ham Radio at St. Luke's and letting the children

talk to Santa at the North Pole. This year Cyrus was big

enough to have his first conversation with

Santa over the Ham Radio.

Grandpa Peek and Cyrus

Cyrus and "Scottie" (Santa's Elf)

Cyrus was very excited about the entire experience.

He was so happy to get to talk to Santa.

He was just as excited to see Grandpa Peek! He told Santa

he wants a Goldfish for Christmas and I think

he will be pleasantly surprised. It has been

fun to take Cyrus Christmas shopping this year because

he helps pick out his presents and then forgets

about them once we get home.

Boise Thanksgiving 2008

We have so many things to be thankful for at this

holiday time. We were so blessed to be surrounded

by family during Thanksgiving.

We also have the wonderful blessing of the Gospel truth

in our lives. We are so happy to know that this blessing

is what allows us to be an Eternal Family.

Thanks to my Mom's hard work cooking (and the assistance

of everyone else) we had a festive, food-filled Thanksgiving.

My Mom is sure a "Culinary Genius"! (Thanks Emilie!!!!)

Visitors come from out of town to help us celebrate Thanksgiving.

Grandma and Grandpa Case and Des, Tiffany and Parker came to

enjoy the holiday with MaLea and Jed who live here in town.

Cyrus really enjoyed the company of cousins Parker and Jordyn

and he's counting down the days until we go to see

many more cousins in Ashton for Christmas on his

"Potty Treat/Christmas Ashton Trip Advent Calendar".

Hopefully he will have completed his long but entertaining

adventure of potty training by the time we go.

Side note... *Much to my dismay, my ever-growing baby waist

grew an inch over the Thanksgiving weekend and continues

to expand every day. But so does my excitement!

Dinosuar Cyrus!

Uncle Jake helped Cyrus invent a strange device for transforming 

Cyrus into a dinosuar. You have to see this to know 

what I'm talking about. It's hilarious!

Just another day of "Cyrus and Jack playing".

We've had a special request from Cyrus to have more videos on the computer for him to watch.

Since his videos of "eating sugar" and "nursery rhymes" we have had to search back through our blog history to see the other videos we've posted before.

This video is simply the lives of Cyrus and Jack. Cyrus has already watched it twice, so I'm sure it will be worn out very soon, just like the others!

My first opera experience

I've never been to an opera but I managed to sing in my first opera. I really enjoyed learning how to move around on stage and the whole experience was so much fun. 

I was so relieved after the performance when everyone only had wonderful things to say about attending their first opera. They enjoyed the show much more than they expected to.

 

I look forward to performing in another opera sometime in the future. I'll let you know when that happens!

The wonderful adventures of Cyrus the Great

This morning Cyrus was so funny telling stories 

and learning to open the brown sugar jar. 

He is one smart boy, and very entertaining.

You'll get a kick out of these.

Cyrus has been saying and singing many rhymes and here 

is a video of just a couple of them. I had to get them on video to remember 

these adorable moments.

Happy Halloween Batman!

Cyrus, you make an amazing Batman!

________________________________________

Batman Cyrus spent all Halloween day

rescuing Boise from all the

Halloween candy. He will be disposing

of it slowly over the next year until he saves

Boise from the Halloween candy again.

________________________________________

Trunk-or-Treat was the best ever because Cyrus

played with Logan and Adam.

Becca, Mom and Dad took him around to all the

candy stops and Cyrus thought Grandpa Clown

was the star of the show.

________________________________________

All that rescuing and trunk-or-treating

is a lot of work for a little Batman.

Cyrus crashed before he got to sort

through all of his hard-earned treats.

What a day!

________________________________________

We can't forget the Harvest Party

at our ward with Alfy the Clown and the

frisby toss the weekend before.

*Cyrus had a blast*

Cyrus is going to have a little brother!

Sometime in March our second little baby boy is going to be

born and Cyrus will become a big brother!

Cyrus is a great helper. It will be wonderful to have a

little helper around when the baby comes.

His favorite new chore is scrubbing the wood floor

with the brissely vacuum accessory. His second favorite

chore is holding the dustpan after I sweep. He helps fold the

towels, cleans the toy room, and lots of other things!

Cyrus may just become the most loving, best sharing

big brother in history. He loves to see how people react

when he shares what he's eating or playing with.

We always give him a great big thank you and a hug.

Although we've been teaching and telling him about being

nice for a long time, he's now really grasping what it means

to be "nice". He uses this idea of sharing to remind us

how to share too. If we have something he's not supposed

to play with, he always says "Please share Daddy!" or

"Please Share Uncle Jake!". Hopefully he'll keep

sharing when the baby comes along!

If you've had patience to read this far, you can cast your

vote on the five boy names we're choosing from!

But just so you know, majority doesn't win...

We just want to know what you all think! :-D

1. Darius 2. Corbin 3. Gabriel 4. Cael 5. Gideon

Fun day at the Fire House

Jake is volunteering with Eagle Fire and he invited us to

attend their open house today.

We went and had a blast despite the freezing windy weather.

________________________

We all got to sit inside the fire truck. It looked awesome inside!

__________________________

We watched as they demolished this entire car.

It used to have a roof! I now know that I will be

safely extricated if I ever get stuck in a car!

__________________________

Jake gave us a tour of all the feats he had to

perform to pass his physical exam.

Lex and Cyrus took their shot at this thing...

whatever it is! It's harder than it looks.

___________________________

Now that we're finished with our adventure at the Fire House we have one handsome Deputy Fire Marshall on our hands. He's always keeping us in line.

*Plug for Jake and the Eagle Fire: Go to Haunted Woods this year where they will be volunteering!

Susan's English Toffee

SPECIAL REQUEST!

I want to have as many people as possible try out this

recipe and TELL ME how their's turns out.

It's easy and delicious so print this recipe and when you

have a few spare cooking minutes,

PLEASE TRY THIS:

SUSAN’S ENGLISH TOFFEE

1 cup butter (Land O’ Lakes BAKING Butter during the Holidays)
1 cup sugar
3 tbs. water
1 pkg. milk chocolate chips (Ghirardelli, Belgian, Hershey’s, or anything I suppose!)
2 cups sliced almonds

(The trick is figuring out exactly how long to cook the mixture. I’ve cooked it too long and it hardens too fast but sometimes I don’t cook it long enough and it doesn’t set up as well. So just keep trying until it’s just right!)

-Use a heavy skillet. Melt butter and add sugar and water on medium high heat.

-Stir continuously with wooden spoon and when mixture just begins to turn to a lighter yellow/very light brown color, remove from heat and stir 1½ cups sliced almonds into the mixture.

-Spread evenly onto a cookie sheet.

-While still hot, sprinkle chocolate chips over mixture. As they melt, lightly smooth the chocolate over the mixture. Then sprinkle remaining ½ cup of sliced almonds on top.

- Refrigerate overnight and when toffee is hard break it into desired sized pieces.

Easy Peach Jello Jam

This is the recipe I used to make my peach freezer jam.

Print it off and save it for the next time you have extra peaches.

I think it's delicious!

EASY PEACH JELLO JAM

6 cups mashed fruit
3 cups sugar
2 (3 oz.) packages jello peach gelatin
1 tbs. lemon juice

1. Mix fruit and sugar in a large pan
2. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes
3. Add Jello
4. Freeze in freezer containers

Makes 3-4 pints

Our new daily routine

Lex and his business partner Don started a logistics company

and they are at work by 7AM!

This is Lex hard at work at the new office.

So we have all been going to bed earlier

and waking up earlier.

I get up when Lex leaves just before 7AM

and Cyrus wakes up about a half hour later.

The other day Cyrus and I watched the sun rise together because he woke up at 7:28AM. He surprisingly just sat and watched out the window with me for a good 15 minutes while he woke up.