Over the river and through the woods, to Granmother's house we go!

Over Martin Luther King, Jr weekend we drove to UT to visit Wayne's grandma as well as his cousin, Aunt and Uncle. We had such a great time. I still need to upload pictures, but here is a super funny video of Tyler singing to the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Snow Valley in Running Springs CA

This past weekend we went skiing in Snow Valley, CA. It was SO MUCH FUN! They had a ton of new snow due to all of the storms we've been getting. We enrolled Tyler and Elise is ski school and at the end of the day they felt confident enough to go out again, and again. On the lift Tyler said, "Mom, why is skiing so much fun?" Wayne and I were thrilled that they had such a blast. Here's a video of them. Wayne fell down a couple of times on this little flat area. In his defense, he's great at snowboarding. Anyone who boards at all knows how hard it is to keep standing while going so slowly on almost flat terrain :).

Funny girl

I had to post this comment, it was so funny and I'm afraid I'll forget it.

Here's the back story. Elise has an aversion to flushing toilets due to an unfortunate overflow incident. Understandable. She's finally comfortable using our toilets again without someone there to rescue her should the water level rise uncomfortably high, but this is not the case at school. As a result, she's had a couple of accidents, but has been able to hide them from her teacher. Just the other day she had her second accident which prompted a conversation where I told her that she needed to talk to her teacher if it happened, and that I sent extra clothes to school in the event of an accident, etc., etc.
I talked with her teacher the next day about her toilet aversion and we made a game plan. Then after school I told Elise that I talked to Mrs. Hernando. Then I asked her what made her uncomfortable going to the potty at school. She looked at me and smiled and then...she waved her hand...the fingers spread...in front of her face and while gazing upward with a dreamy look on her face said in a sing-song voice, "It ALL began" then a pause "last Thursday. Or maybe last Tuesday." As she's saying this she's kind of shaking her head, smiling, and babbling on and on...never once mentioning her fear of potties or the last accident she just had. It was all I could do to not burst out laughing. Ahhh, my funny girl. I wish I could've caught it on video.

Random Pics

Here are some random pics that I thought I'd post just to give some idea as to the goings on in the Dahl household this fall.

First:

Soccer, soccer, soccer!



Second:

We lost some teeth at our house:

Tyler and Elise actually lost teeth on the very same day! Elise is missing her two bottom teeth...I couldn't find a good pic with those teeth missing. All you can see is her top teeth! You can see that Tyler is missing one top tooth and one bottom tooth.

Not necessarily third:

Here are some pics of Sienna growing up:


I think I'd better hurry and publish this. The natives are getting restless.

New Family Pictures

We decided to get family pictures taken as a gift for my parents...we haven't had a picture of my side of the family in about 10 years. Here are some of our favorites:
















It was a VERY cold day, but we think the pics turned out great and are so excited to finally have them!

Tyler's 7th birthday!

I can't believe he's seven already. How time flies! And boy did we ever celebrate. First, we went as a family to Disneyland. Here's a pic of Tyler with his presents there in the park.

Then, later that week, we had his birthday party at a very fun place called Kid Concepts. It was seriously one of the best birthday parties we've had. The host was absolutely hysterical and the kids just loved him. He had them playing all sorts of silly games. During dinner he asked them questions about Tyler (favorite t.v. show, favorite color, etc.) and if they answered correctly, they got prizes. He also had them do silly things if they won, like writing Tyler's name on their forehead or pouring ice down someone's back. They just loved it. It was truly very, very fun. And easy! Which is what we needed during this busy, crazy time!
Here's Tyler and his friends at his party.

And here's Tyler with his haul at home.

Sienna's blessing

Sienna's blessing was really special. Wayne's mom found a good deal on a plane ticket and was able to come down, which was so wonderful. Additionally, Brian and Julie were able to come. They initially had plans to go to Sacramento, but thankfully, things were rearranged so they could be there. Hurray for family, whether small or large!
Here's our family. Believe it or not, this was one of the best pictures.

Mommy, daddy and Sienna

The boys.

All of the boys.

All of the girls.

Big sister and Sienna in her blessing dress.

Sienna...

Sienna and more

I'm going to slowly update our blog. I'm going to try and go from oldest to newest so that they post in order!

Here's a pic of Sienna with big Sister:

And another shot of Sienna

Here's a picture of my birthday dessert. My mom, dad, Brian and Julie came up for dinner at our house. It was so fun to have them all there! Sadly, I have no pics of everyone, but here's one of our family. How lame was that???!!!

New Arrival!

August 28, 2009 at 7:45am we welcomed a beautiful new baby to our family, Sienna Leigh Dahl. She weighed 8 lbs 2 oz and was 20 inches long. The labor was quick and relatively painless (thank goodness for modern medicine!) and she is such a joy. We feel so blessed to have her as a part of our family. Elise wants to hold her every second that she can. Tyler likes to hold her too, but can't let on too much because she's a girl. Jason has pretty much avoided her so far, but I'm sure that will soon change. Here are some pics!

Too much stuff!

Last week Tyler and Elise went to science and art camp every day. They had SOO much fun, which is a good thing, 'cause they're going again this week too! Friday was my mom's birthday and we decided to go to Disneyland after the kids got out of camp to celebrate. The plan was to pick the kids up from their camps and head straight there. I thought that they would have quite a few things to bring home after the week, but HOLY COW, not only did they have a ton of stuff, but a lot of it was quite large! My trunk was full! I'm going to get a picture of them with all of their things and post it...maybe after this week is done. What on earth am I going to do with all of this stuff???? At least I can immortalize it with pictures before accidentally disappearing. :) (Okay, I won't get rid of all of it...)

Saturday we went up to Santa Barbara with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law to officially celebrate my mom's birthday. It was really fun seeing the house where we used to live and letting the kids play on our old elementary school playground. The same tables that I sat at for lunch were STILL in the lunch patio. I showed Tyler all of my old classrooms. It was great. Then we went downtown to eat and spent some time at the beach. It was so hot downtown, I thought the beach would feel great, but there was a really chilly breeze. Brrr! The kids had fun swimming anyway and Brian made a great drip castle/wall with Tyler. I got my suit on but was too chicken to do anything but get my feet wet. Wayne and my dad went in with the kids while my mom, Julie and I sat comfortably on a beach blanket. Afterwards my mom, dad, and I went to Solvang and had some delicious Ableskeivers. YUM! It's such a beautiful little town...I highly reccommend a visit. I was lame about taking pictures, but my sister-in-law with her awesome camera took some. Hurray! Julie just e-mailed me some pics...here they are!



One super funny thing...Saturday morning, Jason comes around the corner to our family room wearing Tyler's darth vadar helmet and carrying a lightsaber when he breaks into song...yes, the Star Wars song....dum, dum, dum, dum, dee, dum, dum, dee, dum. It was SO CUTE!!!!! I ran to get my camera and begged him to do it again, but he ran off. I WILL get it on video and post it for all to see. It's seriously hysterical!