Super Sledding!!

The day after Christmas we went sledding with Jen's sisters family: Deb, Brandon, Cam & Kayla

Jesse & Ethan

Ethan, Cam, Kayla & Jacob

Rock Canyon Park near the Provo Temple. It is like this giant bowl that you can sled inside the bowl and on the outside.

Christmas at Home

We had a nice & relaxing Christmas at home with just our little family.
The top gift was for sure the Wii!!

Jen made Christmas breakfast:
Panettone French Toast with blueberry syrup & powdered sugar, fluffy eggs, sausage and orange juice.She made Christmas dinner too ... sorry, no pictures of that.

6 Foot Snowman!

Jesse made his first snowman.
He made it 6 feet tall and it took him 2 hours.
Jess even put real coal on for the eyes! He was so fat that the scarf wouldn't even fit all the way around his neck.

Jacob helped out a bit with a couple piles of snow.
Ethan wanted to build his own, but gave up and went for just doing snow angels.
Then they gave up after an hour and came in for hot chocolate.

The results ....

Good job Jess!

Santa's Reindeer not forgotten!

The boys sprinkled a mixture of glitter & oats for Santa's reindeer on the snow on Christmas Eve. The glitter is so it will sparkle in the moonlight for the reindeer to see in the night to find our house and the oats (oatmeal) is a snack for them while Santa puts the presents under the tree.

Cropper Christmas

We went to Grandma Nez's for our Cropper Christmas party.
It was fun and LOTS of yummy food!!

Grandma Nez & Jacob

Here is the food I made for it:
Pumkin Crumble (thanks for the great recipe Katie!)
Scalloped Potato's
Cranberry, White Chocolate Chip
Oatmeal Cookies
Auntie Deb, Mia, Jacob, Ethan

Bowling 1st timers ....

Jesse took the boys bowling for their first time while I had to stay home and study for school. Sad ... I missed their first time bowling! They loved it though!!

Their cousins (Cam & Kayla) met them there too.

Here are their final scores.
(top: Ethan, middle: Jacob, bottom: Jesse)

Happy Holidays 2008!!

Here are our Christmas Decorations this year.

Wreaths like this that were pre-made at Michaels craft store were available for around $30/each. TOO much for me!
I made TWO of these wreaths for $12.00 total ... yes,
that is $6.00/each!

I (Jen) put the lights & ribbon on myself. Then I let Ethan & Jacob put the decorations on all by themselves where ever they wanted. After they went to bed I only moved a few towards the top that they had clumped at the bottom.

Cropper Cousins - updated group

This cousin picture includes the newest addition ... Cole.

Later next year there will be 3 more cousins to add to the clan.
Congratulations Bev, Becky & Chaleen (Graig Jr.'s wife)!

Cousin Cole's Blessing

Today was Cole's baby blessing by his father. Isn't he a cutie?!!

Keller Family
Adam ~ Sarah ~ Cole

Our sister (Debra) made this cake. She is so talented with cakes!

Cropper Family

November came and went for me!!

Okay, so there was a scarcity of posts from me this month. I think I made up for some of them the month before ... LOL!

I didn't have my camera out as much as I usually do, was busy with work and school. I will have to do a post on a cigarette discussion I had to have with my 4-year old at his request!

For Thanksgiving we went to Grandma Nez's house for breakfast made by Deb & Brandon for all of us ... thanks you two, it was great!! A few hours later we went to dinner at Chuck-A-Rama with some of Jen's family and Jesse's mom & sister were able to come down from Logan to spend a couple of days with us as well.

Sorry, this picture is from 2 years ago with Jesse's mom & sister. Like I said, I didn't have my camera out as much this past month.

And what happened to November this year??!!

Happy Birthday to ME!!

Since I (Jen) am the only one that does these posts I guess I will have to say, "Happy Birthday!" to myself!!

It is funny, this week I have had 2 people at two different times (that I don't really know) this week tell me that I look like I am 19 ... thanks people! So maybe and hopefully when I am 47 I will look like I am 33?!!

Yesterday morning at 7 o'clock I woke up to a "Happy Birthday" song by Jesse, Ethan & Jacob. With a cute little carrot cake (one of my favorite cakes) with just 4 (thank goodness!!) bright flickering candles, a rose balloon and a musical birthday card. This was a real surprise since none of them said one thing about it to give it away ... not even Jacob!!

Later in the day my nice little 4 year old gave me another (unplanned) gift of a clogged toilet that I tried plunging for 1/2 an hour and gave up on until Jesse got home to snake it for me, I don't care much for doing that part and I didn't know where the snake was anyways ... darn!

That night my sisters Debra & Becky were nice enough to take the boys to see Madagascar 2.

Which they all loved of course, and then fed them a pot roast. Thanks ladies!!

While Jesse & I got to go enjoy our own movie "Eagle Eye", this is a must see action packed movie if you haven't yet. Then we enjoyed a good Brazilian restraunt (Tucanos) with good adult conversaton.

I can't wait to see what the next 33 years will bring for me!

2008 Elections

Our voting poles opened at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday. Jesse and I got the kids up at 6:00 a.m. to head to the poles with them. Jesse was second in line while I stayed in the van with the boys while they watched 'Curious George'. Ten minutes before the poles opened the boys & I went inside to stand in line with Jesse, by then the line was out the door. A lot of people were impressed that we would bring our kids at that age that early in the morning with us to vote and told us what a good example we are, to show them that voting is an important thing.

So to all of you parents, even if you did not take your kids that early in the morning to the poles ... you still had to wait in line for a long time with your kids and that is a challenge in itself!! Thank you for being such good examples to them!

In closing I would just like to say thank you to all of you California voters who got out there to vote yes on Prop 8. And I know quite a few of you really pulled up your arm sleeves and actually helped to arrange rally's, went door-to-door, made phone calls, etc. for this to pass. This wasn't just for you, but for the rest of the United States. Thank you again and congratulations.

Preserving the Institution of Marriage

Cornbelly's Corn Maze

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Annual Cornbelly Corn Maze. The boys loved the fast slide, 4-wheeler bikes, corn maze and the other fun activities.