Our Christmas Miracle!!!!

This Christmas was really great! We had a ton of fun with the girls watching the sweet, excited, surprised expressions on Christmas morning, caroling and dropping off goodies to friends on Christmas Eve, teaching them more about Christ's birth, sending and receiving the Christmas cards and putting them up for display, playing in the snow, attending Christmas parties, going to Grammy Judy's for Christmas and just being together! I love my family and feel very blessed.

For the Miracle part......we found out we are pregnant and due in August and are very excited! For me and my sweet family that was the very best Christmas present of all. Alyssa is already asking me daily "Mom, what does the baby look like today?"......maybe I shouldn't have told her quite so early but its fun to have the girls involved!

Beller opeing her gift from Lys on Christmas Eve (princess flashlight)
Alyss opening her sweet purse from Booboo

The girls is their awesome princess jammies from the Fife's! They looooove these, thanks guys!

Alyss in one of her Christmas sweater's (really mom a Christmas sweater?.......)

Christmas morning in the new dress ups!

Bella on her prize possesion and is it just me or does Alyss look like part of that box?

Daddy and his girls getting ready to play in the snow!

Christmas dresses!
Settling down for a long winter's nap!

This is how Ryan found them snuggled up together in Lys's bed on Christmas night, how sweet are they!

Takin one for the Loftin Team :)

This picture is a little blurry, my apologies. For our ward Christmas party last weekend there was a talent portion. There was a sign up sheet that floated around one Sunday and I of course signed us up to sing and dance! I continually told my family all week "ok guys we've gotta get somethin together for the Christmas party but nothing......... So it came down to Ryan asking Alyss that morning if she would like to sing at the talent show and she said "yeah dad, sure!!" She practiced up on I am a Child of God and when it was her turn (Ry had coached her with her intro before hand), she bravely went up in front of a packed gym full of people chowin down on their dinner and said this "Hi Everyone, I'm Alyssa.........Merry Christmas!" and then she sang the sweetest 1st vs. of I am a Child of God I have ever heard.

Way to take one for the team sweetie, you did a beatiful job and made mommy cry happy tears!

Bella did try to make a grab for the microphone and not knowing what she had prepared Ry snatched it from her. But she stated that she wanted to sing too. Later on this week we were driving home from somewhere and Alyssa said, (totally out of the blue).....Dad, Heavenly Father is going to put you in time out for not letting Bella sing.

Would love to show you our Thanksgiving pics...............

However, my sweet 3 almost 4 year old decided to be in charge of taking some pics at some point while we were at Grammy's and erased all of our Thanksgiving pics. You may ask yourself was I angry or frustrated about this??? Let's just say after I gave Alyssa a good talking to about how the camera is not a toy.... yada yada yada, I put myself in timeout. About an hour later I told my mother in law it was time for me to stop pouting about it, what's done is done. But seriously though one of the pics I had was truly priceless and I have thought of re-enacting it but don't think we'd do the original justice. I guess this helps us to know what to get her for Christmas! So...... this is a tribute to my precious girl who I cannot stay upset with !

So the skinny on Thanksgiving or the fat whichever way you want to look at it:
1) taught Uncle Kent how to make/eat the oh-so-yummy white choc. covered rice crispy treats 2) watched movies every night after the kids went to bed w/Uncle Kent until we were delirious
3) Turkey Din din with all the trimgs at the church with Gram Marty's Fam @ 1pm
3.5) Time to purge ourselves and get ready for Round 2!
4) Turkey Din with Great Gram and Gamp Loftin back at the Loftins same day @ 5pm
5) Black Friday Shopping with Marty, (didn't get up too early tho and still got the deals which we were very proud of :)
6) Bowling extravaganza with Uncle Kent
7) The guys took their ritual fishing trip
8) And we finished our trip with a GLORIOUS VICTORY over the BEAVS!!!!!! 65-38 GO DUCKS BABY!!!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving Lyssie Lou Who!!!

Pretty hard to be very upset with this face darnit.

Lys and Bellie Boo snuggling!
Dance your lil jig girl. :)
And here is the Head Turkey!

Hughson H.S. Reunion / Trip to Cali

October 18th, 2008 was the big 10 Year Hughson High School Reunion for Ryan!!! (GO HUSKIES!!!)

With high school being one of Ryan's fondest memories there was no question that we would make the trip (not to mention that even if it meant driving all the way to Cali, it was worth it to be able to go on a date). It was a lot of fun, great food, fun pics from back in the day to look at, and lots of reminiscing going on. Although we were missing a lot of Ryan's close friends we were glad we made the trip! Below are some pics from the reunion and our visit to the pumpkin patch!

Lys said she wanted the Biggest horse they had!! (mind u this was her 1st time on a horse ever, brave girl)
Lys is trying to figure out how to feed her sister to the giant wooden pumpkin thing.Bella had a great time on her pony ride!!! (do you see the sheer terror?)

At gram's house, this is how we found them sleeping after coming in to check on them.

Pumpkin patch!Reunion pics

Sorry this is pretty pointless its very hard to see anyone but what the hey!

More reunion pics......(you can't really see it very well but the guy in the white shirt had the coolest mustache ever!)

True story!

These are our pics from one of the last races we ran which was the Oregon State Fair Run in August which includes free admission to the fair and a shirt. Who can pass that up right? Even though you are all sweaty its a good time for the whole fam!!! So I felt like I prepared harder for this race than I had in comparison to other races I had run over the summer and really wanted to see what I was made of so.......I lined up along side Joel who is faster than lightning and took off trying to keep up with him at the start which was almost painful in a way just getting the breathing figured out at that pace, once I allowed myself to slow down I was doing alright and clipping along at a decent pace, Ryan was somewhere behind pushing the girls in the double stroller (which is so fun and I have such an awesome hubby to do that.....you rock honey!!!) anyway, on the homestretch of this 5k I felt people steadily start to pass me at which point I was muttering things of a competitive nature that I cannot repeat about the people passing me which surprised me because typically I'm a little more tolerant. I rounded the last corner and was soooo happy in seeing the finish line just down the stretch, so I turned it on, I really wanted 1st in my age group (when I have placed it's always been 3rd place, it's tough though all these other 30-somethings really have something to prove, I guess :) anyway I could feel someone right on my heels so I gave it all I had and as I exerted that extra bit of energy I could feel leaking and I realized I was peeing myself . (This was horrific and I immediately attributed it to birthing two babies ) However, as a 30-something myself with everything to prove I ignored it and carried on through the finish line with a small trickle of pee running down my leg and you better believe I beat that guy that was right on my tail (good thing I had dark shorts on)!!! I am proud to say I finished that 5k with a Personal Best time of just around 25 min. and I placed.......(you guessed it) 3rd!!! And my amazing double stroller pushing husband pulled in around 28 min. and placed.....3rd in his age division. What a stud I was so very proud of him especially since with the stroller & girls it tacks on an extra 70 lbs to his 250 he's already carrying. We each got a ribbon and finished off the morning with the fair which the girls absolutely loved! I'd like Joel to know if he reads this how very appreciative we are for running this with us just to try to win some Doodle Bop tickets for our girls. And this was the day before he and Lisa went on their month long amazing journey through Europe. (Last year Joel ran so fast and won like 6 tickets to any concert of his choosing at the fair but for some reason they didn't have the rockin prizes like they did last year just some weird black hats with a catchy "NO METH" slogan on them for the big winners woohoo!!)

Hi Ho Silver..........and away!!!!
Our Cheerleaders!!

The Crew (Joel, Bella boo, Ry, Lys, and me) post race

Bella and a cute little mini horse at the fair (just her size)!

Bella's my cautious baby she doesn't like riding on the horses yet!
How cute are they?!?!?

My Two Dorothy's

Here are the chick-a-deez dressed as Dorothy's. Bella insisted on being Dorothy after figuring out that's what Lys was gonna be. They looked super cute and we sprayed sparkles in their hair. This was a super fun Halloween. We crashed our old ward's Halloween party cuz for some reason our ward's not hip on the Halloween action yet, which is all good (we're a new ward so still lots of kinks to work out). But that was fun and we took the chicks trick -or- treating at the mall and in the sweet neighborhood where they hand out the full size candy bars so they did quite well for a being 2 and 3(and so did mom and dad), we just shared a large snickers from one of there baskets a few minutes ago!!! The weather was AWESOME, best weather I can remember for Halloween in a super long time.....no rain, and almost 60 degrees!

Our girlies
In case you can't read Ry's shirt it says "You can't scare me I have daughters"

Some nice TMNT artwork on Ry's face by one of his former seminary students

Waiting in line for the goods at the mall

Ahhhh...There's no place like home!

My Sweet Bella's Birthday

This is my sweet 2 year old Baby Bella in all of her Birthday glory and (sister in the background claiming her stake on one of Bella's gifts from Mom and Dad). I love my sweet Bella soooo much she is a joy to our family and makes us laugh constantly. Her favorite new word is Wookit and she has recently taken on an English accent which is hysterical. She wants to do everything Alyssa does and they are truly best friends it is a beautiful thing to witness the love between sisters.

Mommy loves you Bella, here is a shot from our Chuck-E-Cheese Birthday Extravaganza!!!

Such a big girl now and yes that is the same birthday hat from the year before I'm from Eugene, I recycle, that's what we do.

Bella's 1st B-day!!! I'm also trying to show off my cake decorating attempts

Fiesty from the get go!! Bella just a couple days old!

New Talent Discovered!

So our friend Keith Halladay in our ward offered to take some pics of our fam and so we let him :) and he was FANTASTIC!!!! Since we've never had a 1 year pic of Bella we figured it was high time to go for it. We love Keith and the awesome job he did and believe he is Albany's newest up and coming Photographer!! GO Keith!!!!!! Here are some of the beautiful pics he took!

Catch up.

This is my oldest child declaring war on everyone smaller than him......
This is our departing photo op of all the cousins from our Reunion 08 at Bear Lake
Hey sometimes $#@* happens!
My oldest is learning the fine art of being a true lady!!!
Aunt D with Lys and Olivia tooo cute!!