November 2013

So here I am, all ready to start writing about our adventures in 2014 so far and I just realized that I skipped November and December 2013!!  Maybe I would rather forget??  Freudian slip?  Nah. Those were great months!  There were a TON of pictures from November.  It was a busy month.



The first weekend of November, Alicia came down to do the Snow Canyon Half Marathon with me and Amy happened to be coming through THE SAME WEEKEND!!  WOOT WOOT!!  It made for a fun weekend, indeed!

He took all our 10 animals to the Pirate Island Pizza place.  We sat, they ran amok and nearly got us kicked out.  Ha!  Oh well.

That same night Braiden and his Freshman football team were recognized at the Varsity game for having an undefeated season!

Max particularly loves football games...as you can see.  He does everything possible to NOT actually stay in the seat with us or watch the game.  If he wasn't so darn cute....

Saturday November 2, 2013.  
Snow Canyon Half Marathon 
AND my personal BEST TIME EVER!  Ran with Alicia and Kobe!  (Well, I ran a bit behind them)

Before the race.  I particularly love these races because they DON'T start at the crack of dawn.  8am is a great time to start a race and SNOW CANYON IS GORGEOUS!!  

This is what happens when you hand you camera to a 14 year old and ask them to take ONE picture...this isn't even half of them.  Sheesh. Good thing there is no film to be wasted.

I should mention that this race was almost completely DOWN HILL!  Good for time, bad for the quads.  Wow.  I couldn't walk the next day.

Speaking of the next day, We were watching my nieces so we had a large crew with us.  Nevertheless, we decided to take them ALL to breakfast at the Bear Paw Cafe.  YUUUUUUMMMMEEEEEE!

Did I mention that the Bear Paw Cafe has the MOST amazing pancakes, french toast, omelets, etc.  The pancakes are the size of a dinner plate...or my head.

The next weekend, I was able to go on a quick trip to California with Whitney and of course, we cant go to California without visiting Disneyland. YES, I went without my kids.  I have done it and I will yet do it many times in the future, I am sure. 

We visited with my dad, Norma and the boys a bit.  It was a really fun visit.

Triplets??  HA!

The obligatory scenery picture.  It was November, my favorite time of year to go.  Love, Love, Love the holiday celebration.

Me and Whitney, Me and Whitney, OH and another one of me and Whitney. After all, it was just ME and WHITNEY that day!!  That was a way fun day.  Beautiful weather, not too crowded.

AND...my BFF from my junior high years, Sherry, met us there and hung out with us for a while.   People used to think we were sisters.  Loved seeing her!

Eric turned 41 this year!  We continued our annual tradition of making a cake and decorating it for him.  The kids are getting better and better at this but one of these years, I expect they will ask if they can just go buy one for him.  Braiden is not interested anymore so its totally Paige and Cams thing.   

These were my many attempts to get the kids to wish Eric Happy Birthday on Facebook.  Can you tell that Braiden was thrilled?  Max would not hold still.  It was quite comical. I love these silly kids.

Thanksgiving this year was at my moms house. Ray, her new beau, fried a turkey for his first time for us.  It was DELICIOUS...and quite entertaining to watch.  

I never thought fired turkey would be so yummy.  It was perfect.  Also it was a beautiful day in St George.

Grandma decided to have a little pie with her whipped cream. 

November's favorite RANDOMS and SELFIES!

January Adventures (Fairy style)

I love this picture.  We don't get this many of us all together terribly frequently.  We are missing Christy, Julie, Bonnie and Ben.  8 out of 12 aint bad! (taken in January 2013 on our trek to California for the Tinkerbell Half Marathon).

We happened to get there on little Sammys birthday!

January 20th was the Tinkerbell Half Marathon.  This race was especially cool for me because Braiden trained and ran it with me...well, he ran with me until about mile 9 where he got bored...and ran ahead. We carpooled to California with Whitney and Ashton as well as some of Ashtons family who also ran the race.  It was really fun hanging out with those guys.

The race started at 5:30am which required us to get up at 3:30am...ugh.  But it always ends up being worth it. Braiden got his first exposure to a Half Marathon at Disneyland with 15,000 other runners.  It was a blast!  Like the socks?

Lets just admit it...I am cheap.  I have no problem snipping online proofs as you can see because I don't want to pay $17 for 1 5x7 print.  You still get the basic idea, right??  Notice Braiden's "AWESOME" socks.

Post-race...LOVE that medal!!!

...and of course who wouldn't spend a couple days visiting the park after the race?

January favorite randoms and selfys

(notice Braidens Brace-less face)

Way behind

What the heck?  I am terribly behind on my blog and it has recently become more important for me to keep it up to date.  This really is the only proof that I exist (ok thats not even close to true but it sounded dramatic enough).  I am going to start back in March mostly becuase those are the pictures I can find but should January and February pics suddenly make themselves known, be prepared for an out-of-sequence post.  I gotta get this stuff published! 


In March we did yet another family trip to our favorite happy destination.  This time we drove and it was a really LOOOOOONG drive.  That was 9 months ago and clearly remember how LOOOOOOONG that drive was.  But of course we had fun and Max put the 3rd notch on his Disney belt at the not-so-ripe age of 9 months.

This visit was particularly special because my brother Johnathan had just come home from serving a 2 year LDS mission in Boston. It was so fun to see him, hear his stories and see how he has grown up.  He and my other brothers (the big ones)are such good examples to Braiden.

The next day the Disney adventures began...

You get one post a day cause its way too late for me to be blogging right now.  Till tomorrow.
Loves.

Baby David's Blessing Day - September 5, 2010

Since August 19th cont'd...Special Braiden and mom trip

One of my funnest childhood memories was the time that my Dad woke me up early one morning and said "Wake up, we are going to Disneyland!" and we did. It was so fun to be surprised that way. We also lived in California, 30 minutes from Disneyland so it was much easier to do that. Well, if you haven't figured it out, we are big Disneyland fans. Maybe because Eric and I we both born and raised in California and Disneyland was a huge part of both of our childhood memories. So anyway...I decided that since I had a 4 day weekend for Labor Day I really wanted to surprise Braiden with a mom and me trip to Disneyland. So I did! It wasn't easy keeping the secret but it all worked out and we had so much fun.

The week before we actually spent in St. George with my grandma helping her get over a bit of an illness she was experiencing. My company has an office down in St George so I went down, with Braiden, and stayed with her. Braiden stayed at the house with my Grandma during the day while I was gone and helped her get food and took the dog out. He was such a good helper. You can bet by the time I got home around 2pm he was begging me to take him to do something. He went swimming everyday. He now thinks he is Michael Phelps.

On the way to California we made our obligatory stop in Las Vegas but I am becoming less and less enchanted with Sin City. Braiden really wanted to stop at the M&M Store so we did. This quick little "jaunt" turned into a 3 hour ordeal. Ick! Las Vegas on Labor Day weekend. Stay Away.

We finally made it to my Dad's house on Friday evening and went out to dinner with the whole familia. It was fun and I finally got to meet Sam, my little 8 month old brother. Those of you who don't know the mechanics of my family, hang on...

Me and my dad, I am the oldest.Braiden playing with Dads guitar. He looks so natural with that, doesn't he? Thank you Rock Band...These are my two brothers from another mother. My little Latin brothers Sam and Lee.
Here we go...Left to right: Lee, Braiden, Paul, Norma (dad's wife), Sam, Mary, Me, Julie, Dad.Not so little Sam WatsonI love this, I had to take a picture of it. This is a perfect lesson in not counting your chickens before they hatch. My step mom, long ago, bought this teddy bear hanging with all the kids names on them. Little did she know that there would eventually be 6 more kids in the Watson family. So Ben improvised and drew the 4 then my dad added the last two after Lee and Sam came. I love that its still on the the wall. I hope he leaves it there for a long time.
So I learned after this trip that its really important to spend time with each of your individual kids. I think Braiden was really hungry for some mom attention. In the craziness that comes with being a full time employee and a mom with very young kids it gets easy to look over the important things just so i can get through every day. Braiden and I had a really good time and he loved the one on one attention. I kind of did too. I didn't realize how much I didn't know about my son. Looking forward to the next one, Bud!!