Christmas Morning

Christmas 2012

Friends and Family: 

Merry Christmas!  We always love ending our year by giving you all a look into our family’s last year of events.  Not too much has changed for us, but we were certainly blessed throughout the year.  Tyler still works with Henry Walker Homes and was promoted to manager of the drafting department.  He also works as the membership clerk in our ward’s Bishopric.  I still work at the Clearfield Aquatic Center as a personal trainer and recently quit as the gym’s manager on duty to spend more time at home.  I still serve as the Young Women’s president in the ward mentoring and teaching about 30 girls ages 12-18.  I find the calling extremely challenging at sometimes and very rewarding at others.  I suppose that is how the greatest blessings come about.  Rachel (6) entered kindergarten at Jefferson Academy Charter School.  She is excelling wonderfully and enjoys her new friends.  I had a hard time leaving her and miss her most days, but I know that she will bloom as she learns to function in her small world.  Wesley (2) spends most of his days pretending to be superman.  He finally mastered learning colors after what seemed like an eternity, but he loves learning his A,B,C,s and has virtually taught himself to count.  We are all very excited to add a little girl to our family next April.  Adding to our family is always quite the trial, but we can’t wait to meet her and give her a name. 

We send you all happy holidays and best wishes into the New Year. 

The Lloyds

Well THAT was unexpected

I was nearly killed by an exploding Pyrex dish tonight:

I turned the stove on to heat some water for tea and went in the office while it heated.

A few minutes later, I heard an explosion in the kitchen.

I had turned on the wrong burner and apparently a hot stove + a glass baking dish = a bomb in your kitchen.  

The worst part is that there were brownies in that dish  :-(

Boise Trip

We made a quick trip recently to Boise.

This is (what's left of) the farm that I lived on as  a kid:

Most of what was the farm is now large homes:

Mary McPherson Elementary looks exactly as it did in 1988:

Boise farmer's market:

The kids got balloon animals. Wesley's sword was ruined in about 5 minutes.  Rachel carefully guarded her unicorn until we finally threw it away the other day:

Wes was fascinated by the construction of a highrise building and wanted to spend the morning watching the crane move things about:

Nature Center:

We went to the open house of the remodeled Boise Temple:

Halloween

Each year as the kids get older, we get worse and worse at taking pictures of them.

With that, here is the Lloyd's Halloween 2012, as depicted in literally the only two pictures we took this of the kids in their costumes this year:

The first with our Russian neighbor Lyudmila:

And the second of them running around with some of the neighbors:

Rachel's Birthday / 1st Tooth

Rachel lost her first tooth last month.  It took the tooth fairy three days to remember to come.  :-(

She also turned 6!  $6 for our 6-year-old girl:

Opening presents with help from the cousins and Wes:

We caved and bought her a Dream Lite, a pillow pet with an LED in its back that shines stars on the ceiling and costs $29:

Nobody in the family likes cake, so she blew out candles on a cupcake:

Kodak Moment

We may be losing our high-tech manufacturing jobs to overseas workers, but- good news America, we've still got Kodak!  (for now)

Fall

We took the kids to Grandma and Grandpa's garden to pick out pumpkins this week.  Here are some blurry and overexposed pictures of the fun:

Tracy Aviary

We went on an outing to Liberty Park and Tracy Aviary a few weeks back.  Here are some pictures: