beard growing contest

yes, that's right. a beard growing contest. one of tyler's first year friends decided to start an annual beard growing contest. the contest began right after the thanksgiving break and continued until the end of finals (december 19th). i admit i was not that excited about this from the start. sure the contest part sounded like a lot of fun, but kissing a guy with a beard sounded gross. but tyler was excited to participate and actually kept up with the best of them. i was surprised how long his beard got by the end. i was also surprised that i secretly starting rooting for tyler and was excited that his beard was so long.

on december 19th all of the participants, the wives and the children met at Bigg's Roadhouse for some steak eating. there the wives voted for the longest beard. the winner would receive a free steak dinner, courtesy of jeff and sarah nance.

here are most of the men that participated. take a look at how hairy some of them are!

i posted this one so you could get a good look at who won. taylor, the one with the baby, won the contest.

and on a side note...look at all this snow. this is in wauwatosa where we live. i guess it got dumped on since i've been in utah. i guess the people from wisconsin weren't lying when they said the winters were bad.

p.s. thanks sarah and byrdie for letting me steal pictures off your blog.

lovin' family and lovin' vacations

this vacation definitely goes down as one of my favorites so far. why you ask? because i was with my family. my complete family. every single sister, brother, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, neice and nephew were all there. and we all get along and have fun together. sure it's a little crazy sometimes, or maybe very crazy all of the time, but that's the only way i would have it.

we started off the vacation with my youngest sister getting married. both of them were extremely happy and my sister looked beautiful.

the women spent the morning making thanksgiving dinner while all of the men played in a flag football tournament. then we ate our delicious dinner. this year we had three tables set up to accomodate everyone. this was the first year we had a designated "kid table." they loved it. of course they would...no adult supervision! i don't think they realize that the adults loved it better. then the women happily turned all of the cleaning duties over to the men.

spending quality time with each other.

spening some quality time with the kiddos.

spending some quality time with the adults.

spending some quality time feeding the ducks.

and not spending enough quality time spleeping.

this year we left with only 1 er visit, 6 people throwing up, 5 upset stomachs, a couple of colds and tons of great memories.

and for your viewing pleasure-mike joined our family this past august. he was obviously holding out on us because we never knew that he had this cool talent.

happy thanksgiving

happy thanksgiving to all of you! we're headed out to texas to enjoy some time with the fam, attend my last siblings wedding in the dallas temple, and eat some good food 'till we're stuffed.

before we go we wanted to share some things we are grateful for. tyler always says that thanksgiving gets forgotten because christmas follows so close behind. there is no denying that when you walk through the stores this time of year and start thinking about all of the things you want. i've done it. i won't deny that. so before we caught up in the hustle and bustle...

we are grateful for (in no particular order):

family, friends, wisconsin, medical school, medical school acceptances, our home, little katleyn, our working car, airplanes, cheaper gas, a place to put a large food storage, my dear husband, warm water, cold water, carpools, and technology like webcams, cell phones and email, and of course, our Heavenly Father who has provided all of these things and more for us.

have a safe and happy thanksgiving!

really cheap really awesome

check out this blog. this girl, Dani, has created an awesome cd made up of 222 of the best pages from the last ten years of the friend magazine. these cds are only .50 and look like they have some great resources for fhe lessons. take a peek, she's only selling these cds until january 20th.

http://danicreations.blogspot.com/

i want

why do i do this to myself? wishing for expensive things after medical school has begun...sigh.

thoughts after election day

i saw this quote on jill's blog. i loved it because it explains exactly how i felt after everything was said and done on election day. only this woman expresses it so much better than i ever could. thanks for being so articulate soule mama.

"I'm excited today. I'm so very full of hope. Most of all, though, I'm relieved that it's over. I hate how politics - and election time in particular - divides our country, and divides friends and families - because I don't think we're really as divided as the political culture would have us believe. I like to believe we're more united than that. That we do all stand on some common ground, even though we may not always agree on the specifics."

amen to that.

savoring fall

fall in wisconsin. i didn't realize how much i could enjoy this season. the colors are amazing. the weather is, well, mostly nice. festivities everywhere. you just can't beat that. i've been taking advantage of this awesome time of year with plenty of photos of katelyn. probably too many, but that's a parents job i guess. the weather has been so kind these past couple of days. up into the seventies. we couldn't resist and had to get out. we spent time at the zoo, played at the park, took a nice long walk and played in the leaves. here are some pictures of our adventures in the leaves.

preparing to toss...

definitely her favorite thing to do in the leaves.

experimented with crawling around. wasn't quite as fun.

wishing she could play in somebody elses backyard.

the crunching noise was a favorite too.

very rare, a posed picture.

now we're just waiting on the season's first snow that the weatherman claims is coming this weekend!