Temple Square Lights

 Every year we have a family tradition of riding TRAX downtown to Temple Square, having dinner at a new place and seeing all of the lights.  This year we added a tour through the new City Creek Mall and some hot chocolate to finish the night off...In case you missed it, we LOVE hot chocolate - all flavors and kinds!

Here are the kids out front by the big tree, there is always a man there playing the bagpipes and we always watch him play Christmas carols, and then Brett gives the kids a tip to place in his bucket.  Its fun, and the kids really enjoy the music. It was pretty cold this year, but is always so much family fun, we would not miss it!

During the Christmas Season

 We have been having so much fun picking and carrying out out advent calendar activities!  Here is a taste of what the Cushings have been doing every night during the Holiday Season.


Decorating our Christmas tree.  We always get a live (real) tree when the children are home with us on Christmas morning.  This year Lowes supplied the tree, but I am hoping that next year I can talk Brett into find one that we can cut down as a family.  In addition to the tree, the kids strung the extra lights around their bedroom windows.  They are on a timer and go out before it gets to late, but have proved a handy nightlight for Alex!

 Every year Grandma Deb supplies us with Gingerbread Christmas houses.  Every year Brett takes charge of this activity.  He is very patient in letting the kids built what they want, create crazy things, and take as much time as needed to accomplish the task at hand.  You might notice in the pictures that this year the kiddos made candy animals to add to the houses.

 Another Advent activity that we have never done in the past, but will continue in the future, was the lights out at Thanksgiving Point.  You stay in your car and drive through these tremendous light displays of villages, giant flowers, elves.  They provide 3-D glasses so you can really have a visual experience...they do make the lights look pretty cool!  Here are the kids in the car as we drove through.

 After driving through the light displays, we visited Santa's reindeer.

 Kept warm by the fires.

 And then went into the cafe for hot chocolate (which was REALLY good) and cookies!

 So far we had one big snowstorm...Here is what dad and Alex built!

 Alex fooling around with some of the neighbor gifts!

Cousin Rosie

 This is our cousin Rosie. My brother and his wife and their two girls just moved here from Oregon and it was the first chance that we have had to see these cousins!  We are so excited to have them down here with the rest of us Utah Myers!  Since we have not seen them very much, we had Rosie up to our home for a few days for some cousin time...we had such a great time with her and learned that she is excited about EVERYTHING! The kids really tried to she her a good time, and having Rosie around gave us the opportunity to be more active!

One afternoon, after Alex got out of school, we decided to visit Wheeler Farm and feed the ducks and visit with all of the animals.  The weather wasn't the best, but it did not stop these two.  Alex was so excited to show Rosie all of the animals.  He knew exactly where they all were and explained to her about them.

Alex was like the chicken whisperer.  They were following him everywhere.  I was teasing him and saying that I thought that the chickens wanted to marry him, and he thought that was pretty funny!

Here they are trying to scrounge up some filthy old hay on the ground to feed the cows. Rosie was a little unsure, so she kept her distance.

Mean old geese!  as the kids threw them bread, they kept getting closer and closer.  Here is Alex, pinned up against the car and Rosie making a break for it.  They did have fun, but next time we will stick with feeding the ducks and not these nasty old guys!

Roxy and Rosie became pretty close...Roxy knows who the crumb dropper is, when they visit our home! 
And Rosie loved crawling around with her, giving her treats, and just generally checking up on her.

We quickly found out that Rosie loved to go outside!  She followed me to the mailbox, the neighbors, to pick up the back yard, looking for moles, leaves, pinecones...whatever it was, she loved it!

One day it was too rainy to go outside, so she rode cars around in the garage!

McKaleigh playing Tinkers with Rosie.

Alex and Rosie and I in bed on her last night at our house watching a Christmas Special on tv. 

Now, I did not get any pictures of Colton with Rosie, but he was one of her favorites!  She calls him "Mountain" and he really loves that she has given him a nickname.  Every morning she would wake up and holler...."Hey Mountain" and he would yell back "Hi Rosie".  It was the cutest thing EVER!  We had so much fun with cousin Rosie and can't wait to have her up again!

Daddy

As most of you know, Brett has been traveling for work.  We miss him when he is gone, but know that he is doing great things there and for our family.  Alex wanted to draw a picture of Brett...and here it is!  He even drew arm hair (which is something he is fascinated with). I love this picture and think it looks just like our dad, smiling and happy all of the time!

First Year Advent Calendar

This is the first year that our family is doing Advent Calendar activities and I don't know why we never did this before!  I decided that the calendar would be made of family fun and service activities that would enrich the lives of our children and give them something other than presents to think about.  It's been all about the presents lately, so I was excited to get this started - hey, better late then never? Right?!  Some of our activities include: Ice skating, visiting Temple Square, driving to see famous Christmas lights, "snowflaking" our neighbors and leaving nice Christmas notes, poems, or stories, cleaning out rooms and taking toys and books and games to the shelter, going to the food bank and helping there, donating poinsettias to rest home elderly without being seen.  I am so excited and the kids are too!

Recent Randoms

 Life has  been busy for the Cushing family!  We have lots of "to do" lists on every page of our calendar and most days we end up rolling alot of stuff over!  It seems like we have done some really fun family activities, but unfortunately, we ALWAYS forget to bring the camera with us! Now, I know that this is nothing new but I would really like to try to remember these family moments!  We have been on lots of family dates and a few couple dates.  We have been to the movies, concerts, and on family walks to the park.  We have spent time with cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents - most of which have gone undocumented.  Here are a few pictures that we did get...

Halloween - Alex went as Batman and Colton as an army figurine. 

 Funny story:  A few days before Halloween, we were practicing with Alex what to say when you go to people's doorway to trick or treat.  He is sometimes really shy and in that the niceties get lost (please and thank you and your welcome).  So we thought we'd give it a dry run.  Brett pretended to be the candy passerouter and Alex came up to trick or treat to him.  The candy exchange is made and Alex just turns around.  I then prompted him, "Alex, what do you say now?" and after thinking for a few seconds turns around and says "is that all I get?"  Needless to say, we had a little bit more practicing to do!  Alex fills our home with laughter and joy.  He loves being entertained and never lets time just "go by".

 A few weeks ago we had a BIG snow.  I don't think we got that much snow the whole year last year and boy did we take advantage of it!  The boys got suited up and played outside with friends everyday that they were able to.  They built a snow fort, went sledding and marched all over in it.  I do so love a giant snow!

 When the boys went outside to play in the snow, Roxy followed me around and looked at me like this.  She really wanted to go outside with them.

 Then, when she got outside, she just stood there and then came back up to the front door and wanted to come in.  I think it was colder then she thought it was!

  On Veteran's Day, Colton was chosen to help lead the Veteran's Day salute and part of the flag ceremony at school.  Then all of the children sang a song for the Veterans.  I cried and cried, but luckily I had one of my best friends to stand by (she is a crier too), so I didn't look too weird!

 I love our life, its filled with so many wonderful moments and such joy - everyday, and I am lucky to be living it!

Family Pictures

 We have been planning on getting new family pictures for quite awhile now, but with schedules and trips and work it has been quite a task finding a time when everyone is around.  Today we braved a huge winter storm and with Colton throwing up made it to the photo session.  I think the turned out pretty darn good!

FLORIDA! Our Trip of a Lifetime!

We have, as a family, been saving for a few years to make this trip happen, and this is how it occurred.  When each of our children turn kindergarten age, they get to go on a vacation with mom and dad.  McKaleigh went to Legoland and the Wild Animal Park in San Diego.  Colton went to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo. With Alex's kindergarten year approaching Brett posed a grand idea.  What if we made his kindergarten trip a family adventure and took everyone, but made it really spectacular?!  Well, that's what we did, and it turned out great!  We set aside 8 days and packed as much as we could into those days as we could.  We arrived at the Orange Lake Resort in Florida where dad hooked us up with a "beachfront/poolside" condo (with more amenities than we could even take advantage of while we were there - we literally could have spent the whole 8 days onsite)!  Then we planned out our days hitting all 4 Disney Parks, both Universal Parks and then hopping to and fro whenever.  We got up at 6:30 a.m. almost every morning (I know not very relaxing) and were at the park entrances by 8:30 a.m. then we were going all day and headed for home each night about 10:00 p.m.  The kids were troopers and were always excited to hit the next thing or chat about what was happening all around.  This was truly the Trip of a lifetime!

(p.s.  The pictures do not accurately reflect the timetable of days and time spent)!

Disney's Animal Kingdom was definitely one of my favorite parks.  There was so much to see and do and take in, and it was different than the glitzy theme parks we had already hit. 

One of our family favorites was the morning safari ride.  We were closeup to all of the animals and got out really early in the morning, so we saw them eating, roaring, running and playing in the early hours.  It was so great.

 Here I am pointing out animals to Alex on the safari. They really were so close and active, which made it that much more fun!

The kids and I looking are in the safari car and having a great time taking it all in. It was so fun to see them so excited about everything that they saw.

 A large termite mound - which was bigger than the kids are!

 We rode a train into the petting zoo portion of the park. McKaleigh commented that she hoped that we would be able to pet exotic animals - like lions and bears (to her dismay they were goats and pigs).

 Here is a rare photo of mom and dad.

Another with Chip and Dale with the kids.

 Alex and his "llama" encounter.  He kept petting the goats and saying "dad...look, i'm petting a llama."  I guess we should visit farms more often?

 They had a bird show, which I thought Alex might enjoy because he loved the parades so much.  I was right.  He was cracking up at the talking ones - and dad so enjoyed watching him giggle at their antics.

 There were lots of educational stops that taught the kids about animals and conservation.  It was really amazing of all of the big attractions and craziness of the theme park setting, this was one of our favorites. The listened really attentively to what each of the educators had to say.

 Here they are making different types of rhino lips.  They learned quite a bit about animals, sounds, conservation efforts and what they can do to help.

Here we all are waiting for another parade to go by.  Alex just loved watching the parades at each park. Although this picture might say otherwise, I really am having a good time!