Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! 2008 Another year, how quickly they pass. Here is our family update!

Russ has decided to join the Utah County Search and Rescue Team. It seams he doesn't get enough excitement in his 9-5 job at Footnote.com. The first year is a lot of training and he is excited to get all the fun gear like GPS and beacons! It is all about the gadgets! Russ has gone on some great hikes and trips this year to Zions, Arches, and Moab. His greatest adventure is when he comes home and is ambushed by all the kids!
Tyler is 9 and in the 4th grade. He really likes his teacher and class this year. He is involved in the violin program at school and still takes piano from his grandma. Tyler also takes Karate at the Rec center with his mom! Tyler's favorite things this year are the Wii, Pokemon, science projects, photography and reading.
Casey is 7 and in the 2nd grade. He is involved in Soccer, karate, and piano this year. Casey's energy and desire for fun is overwhelming at times. Molli thinks it is very funny to watch Casey play the Wii because he jumps around and kicks just like the characters in the game. Casey's favorite thing is to stay up late and talk to Tyler and Dalton way into the wee hours of the night. Which explains why it is so hard to get him out of bed in the morning. We are hoping he will grow out of that trend before he is a teenager! Fat Chance!
Alyson is 5 and in pre school for the 3rd year! Alas for her mom, Aly missed the kindergarten deadline this year. So to pre school she goes, but only 2 days a week this year. Aly is very smart. She is reading small books already and can sound out 4-5 letter words all by herself. Aly also loves to go to Karate with Dalton and Casey once a week. Most of her time is spent playing with Littlest Pet Shops and inviting friends over to play. Way back in March Aly tore open her middle toe on a piece of sheet metal while visiting family in Saint George. It severed her tendon and took 6 stitches to heal. That was not much fun for poor Aly.
Lydia is 18 months and runs the place! She is never more than 5 feet from Molli during her waking hours. Lydia is already a comedian and likes to get the kids laughing at the things that she does. She is starting to say real words like, more, up, done, grandpa, mom, baby, no, and how you doin'. Soon all the baby will be gone, which makes her mommy very sad. C'est la vie!
Dalton is 7 and in the 2nd grade. Dalton is Molli's brother. He is staying here for a few months and going to school with Tyler and Casey at Vineyard Elementary. Dalton too is very much addicted to the Wii like Tyler and Casey. Every spare moment those boys are playing some game together on the Wii. As for non electric things he loves to play with Legos and Magnetx. Dalton had the not so fun experience of breaking his arm in August. It was a nasty break, the Radius slipped right off the growth plate and broke the Ulna! It was very disturbing to look at! But 6 weeks in a cast and all is better.
Molli is just trying to stay afloat the sea of misplaced items and kids homework! Having 5 kids to wrangle and manage is proving to be a great challenge. When she has a moment to herself she tries to scrapbook or organize photos on the computer. Molli has a new passion in Karate, only, she has little time to practice at home so advancement is slow! It is hard for a 32 year old to take a class with a bunch of 8-10 year olds, but hey, you gotta start somewhere! During the summer she is involved in the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival which is a lot of fun for her. At church Molli is still the Activities Committee Chair, which she does not enjoy very much. Thank goodness the Ward Christmas Party is finally over! She gets to kick back now and enjoy the holiday!

We wish you all the best holiday season and for Christmas to truly be wonderful this year!

Love, The Blacks

Let it Snow!

Here we are all ready for a fun day sledding.

I love sunsets! Especially in the winter.










This is the sunset in Beaver, UT on 11-29-08







Here is what the sun was shining on at the same moment.








Smashing pumpkins is fun, At least for the cows. My mom asked if we could give our old halloween pumpkins to the cows on grandpas farm so here we are smashing them up. Grandpa always enjoys counting his cows. Today we counted 15, at least 19 times!

For Thanksgiving we went down to St. George. We love to go to Snow canyon and play in the sand dunes. Here Chris is showing the boys how to make some awesome leaps.

This is Aly on her 5th birthday. She had a great party by the way. But I would like to point out that she had no bangs in this picture.






Just a few days after her birthday, Aly was playing in a body pillow size pillowcase, and zipped herself inside. Well, she caught her hair in the zipper and just figured she would solve the situation herself. So she hopped over to the scissor drawer and managed to get a pair out and proceeded to cut herself free. Well, she had to cut right to the scalp and about 3 inches long. Notice the kinda empty side on the left of this picture, there is a hole because there is no hair there! I had to cut her bangs back pretty far to give her a little balance! Then while I was cutting her bangs she moved and caused me to cut more than I was planning on, and so her bangs got pretty short. Luckily hair grows back!

Here we are having fun at Liberty Land in Lehi,


Lydia loves skeletons, I am not sure why. She loves to poke their eyes!

October 28-31, 2008
I am crazy, I know, but this year, we needed a new roof, and by golly that is what we got in 3 1/2 days! Blood, sweat, tears, and a piece of my thumb are all up on that roof. Luckily I had a lot of help and we can rest assured that the roof will not leak for at least a good 10 years. I was surprised how many people thought it was strange to see me working on the roof, don't all housewives reroof their homes?











As you can see, I laid around a lot on the job!











This is the damage I did to my thumb 1 hour into it! It wasn't that bad of a cut, but I went into shock anyway, and barely got off the roof before I started to black out. Luckily Casey was home to take care of me and get me bandages. The good thing about fingers is that they heal really good. If you looked at my thumb today, you wouldn't have guessed I almost smashed it to bits with a hammer!

Mini Update

Well, Stress takes a toll on me. I admit, I am having a hard time hacking this motherhood stuff. My house is a mess, my kids are unruly and I don't get a full 8 hours of sleep as recommended by the FDA. Now, those of you who have known me for years will testify that I very rarely, like 5 times in my life, have had a zit. Well, I must be going thru puberty finally, because my forehead is covered in them. I am just devastated! This picture is after 3 weeks of actually washing my face every night (something that I NEVER do) and 1 week of finally treating it with OXY Clean, (which really makes me feel like a teenager!) They are smaller, but still there! Ugh, I know, poor Molli! Whah Whah Whah.


As for the rest of the clan, same old same old. Dalton got his cast off finally, and he is really happy about that. He finally gets to do some fun stuff like Karate, and he loves it! Casey is taking the class with him too and they have a blast. Speaking of Karate, Tyler and I have also been taking a class together. I am the oldest in the class. That is kinda humiliating being 32 in a class with a bunch of 8-11 year olds. But now Tyler and I are Yellow belts and we are in a class of teenagers! Maybe that is where I got my acne! Alyson was 2 weeks shy of being allowed to take a karate class so she will start next month. Pretty soon we will all be able to gang up on poor Russ with our Karate skills.

My friend asked me if I would roll the fondant for her son's wedding. Well, they turned out, ok. Charm City Cakes won't be calling me any time soon. It was fun to experiment though.







Look at Lydia and Alyson just laying back in the shade, eating pringles! They know how to kick it!







This is on Womens Confrence. My friend April had an extra ticket to go to Salt Lake and see the Confrence, we were in the 8th row. Really nice seats. It was fun to see all the General Authorities and Presidencies of the Church.







This is Isis our cat. She lounges on her back all the time.







My sleeping angel

Time marches on.

Casey turned 7 on August 13th. As usual we had a pool party.









Casey, finds any excuse to have fun. We emptied a bunch of old water bottles in the front yard, and that became a huge water fight. Luckily he was the wettest guy there!









We got to go to Boon Docks, Tyler loved the bumper boats.









The biggest thing to happen was that Dalton fell from our blow up waterslide and broke his arm. Check out the s bend in his wrist. He sliped it right off the growth plate on the Radius and cracked the Ulna. Well, the patched him up good and now we have just 2 more weeks in a cast. Poor guy missed a lot of fun swimming, jumping on the tramp, soccer, and especially riding his bike. But we survived the pain and itching so far, just a few more days.






Aly and Casey are loving soccer. Aly is the fly away hair girl on the left in yellow.







Lyida is about 15 months now, and she has learned that crying is very effective in getting what you want. So this face, messy and frustrated, is a very common face around our house. We just think it is the cutest little pout.







Our dishwasher tried to burn our house down. Check out these burned wire caps. And no, it wasn't poor wiring on our part. We had a Bosch, it cleaned great, but the wires that came from the control pad grounded on the frame, and caused a power surge, and melted the power cord. Nice. So now we need a new dishwasher, and we are not getting a Bosch or a KitchenAid. Bad experiences with both. Anyone have wonderful machine you would recommend. So far we have gone thru 4 dishwashers in 9 years. Something Wrong Here!

How Do You Keep Up?

I don't know how you bloggers do it? It is almost all I can do to take the pictures in the first place. Let alone scrapbook them, and then blogg about them on top of it! So this is us since June.
This is Lydia and I playing doggie bone.

My sister Tierney came out to visit.

This is my rear view crew. With 5 kids now that my brother Dalton has come to stay for a while, This van is bursting at the seams.

Dalton was stung by a wasp. OUCH. And we heard about every painful day!
Aly was bit by a dog the very same day as Daltons wasp sting. Aly was trying to play ninja with a dog at a friends house, the dog was taken by surprise and whipped around and got her top lip. Luckily it only broke the skin in one place and bruised the others. The dog had all its shots so she should be ok in a few days.

This is us trying to get a tick off of Alys head when we went to Deer Creek. Just for your information, do not try to suffocate the tick like we did. All it does is kill the thing, and then you worry about it backwashing into the bite area. You are supposed to just get some tweezers and pinch by the head and pull the sucker off. And it takes some pulling. Russ said that the Doctor pulled up Aly's scalp about a half inch before it finally came off.
This is the actual tick. Tyler has an Eyeclops that you can look at things on the tv with. That chunk of white stuff in the ticks mouth is Aly's scalp. Even after the thing was dead it would not let go and the skin ripped off when the doctor pulled the tick off. Totally Yucky! Wear your bug spray!

This is Tyler and Lydia on Puff at Chuck E Cheese

Here the kids are at the Eccles Dino park in Ogden. They could care less about the dinos, they just like to feed the fish there!

Lydia loves watermellon.

We are on a hike to a waterfall.

This is Dalton and Casey going thru the waterfall.