December...

Right now as I'm writing this Ashley is on an airplane flying home from Washington DC and Tyler and Brittany are driving from Rexburg. I am so excited!!  Everyone will be here by Christmas Eve...

these little t-shirts say "Who needs Santa Clause we have Grandparents"                    Mark and Jacki Bracken's son Dallen is in between Gage and Zane

Our cute little Zane Robert....   

and Gage William, they are 7 months old now!! Gage is our little thumb sucker-always happy!  They are at such a fun stage right now-smiling and laughing, rolling over and trying to crawl....oh no!!      We are so lucky they only live a few minutes away!!

My nephew Tanner and his darling wife Charee had their daughter, Chloe's  1st birthday party... just look at that yummy cupcake!!  She is the only girl cousin with all of these little boys!! 

My brother Paul's son's-Mark, who just moved here...and Matthew who was just visiting from BYU-Hawaii.  We have more fun with this little scottish red haired hat, that Bob and I actually got when we were in Scotland a few years ago...Bob's birth place!  Even with that matted ragga- muffin hair, Dallen and Zane are still cute!  And a couple of cousins pictures.

Carson right after Primary Activity Day about missionary work....and his flag football season!!  This was his first year of playing football.  He was on a team with two of his buddies.  We had fun watching him!!  The season went by way too fast!!   

Our Thanksgiving...

This year was a Klepinger Thanksgiving... We were suppose to have 33 Klepingers for dinner, as you can tell we had some families missing...Jay's clan and Terry's fam were sick and they were missed!! ( Along with Ashley, Tyler and Brittany.)

It was suppose to rain all day but it actually turned out to be a beautiful day and the children were able to play outside!!  After a fun day we headed over to my sister's house for a Bracken get together. 

Midnight-"Twilight" Birthday Night!!

My birthday just happened to be the night Twilight came out!! (I have 4 sisters that all live close by and we always get together for our birthdays) So this was perfect!!  We met at my sister Connie's house at 9:00 sharp and ......

ate yummy stuff...

I stold these cute collages from Lyndsie's blog!!

My sister's-Connie, Joan, Lorette and Lynda made me wear these vampire teeth with a tiara and pinned the "Bite Me" sign on my coat-which I pretended I didn't know was there-while we waited in line!!  We always have so much fun when we are together.  It was good to have our daughters with us too!!  And our neice Jacki!!

I Love all of you-thanks for such a memorable B-Day!!!  

*(I started this post on the 18th of November and here it is December already!!)

Carson has been our lawn boy since Tyler went back to school-he does such a good job!

Sorry Tyler you're out of this job when you and Brittany move back:)

This is at "Rocks and Fossils Day".  I was in charge of the helping the children make pet rocks!!

I stopped by to see the boys one day and Caden asked if he could come home with me and I told him that I had a meeting and I wasn't going home.  He didn't say anything for a while and I could tell he was thinking hard about something-then he said that he had a

  good idea, he would stay in the car while I was at my meeting.  Lyndsie and I started to laugh -he just needed to get out of the house and have some Grandma Time.  How could I leave him.   I had about 15 minutes, so I put him in the car and we ran real fast to the dollar store, he wanted to ride on the horses and then he got to pick out a few toys and 

Waa Laa- I took him back home and Lynds says he was a happy camper the rest of the day!!!!

I love love love being a Grandma!!! 

Tyler and Brittany are going to be moving to Arizona for their off semester, 

Jan.-April!!

We are so excited!!

We LOVE Brittany!!

Can't wait for Christmas!!  We missed them at Thanksgiving!  Marilyn,  Brittany's Mom, called me to get my stuffing recipe-she had asked Tyler if there was something special that I made that he wanted for thanksgiving dinner and that's what he said:)  I told her not to tell Tyler that it's just StoveTop-(with sauteed onions and celery, pecans and bacon)   

Lyndsie and the Twins on their 6 month B-Day!!

Our Halloween!!

At Carson's school they let the children grades K-3rd grade dress up and march in a parade around the school.  I'm so sad this will be his last year...but we'll have Caden to go and watch in a couple more years:)     I got to go and help out at his class party.

All ready for the Party....

Zane and Gage

At the ward party....

We Love Whit...

We love Whitney......She went to beauty school her senior year and then went to BYU-I right after,  her and Tyler were up there together for a semester after he got home from his mission.  She froze and decided after a year to stay put in Az.  Now she's working doing hair and in July she moved with some girlfriends into a condo.  We still get to see her often!!!

Loving the green eye-shadow Whit

Bob, getting a free hair cut:)

Carson got braces this past week and he had to go and show Whitney at work!

OOPs... here is an after..

and before....

Look at this smile...don't you just want to kiss those checks!!!(I get to)

Grandpa and Grandma with our 3 little guys that we just love soooo much!!

Bob is holding Gage and I have Zane.  Look how cute Caden is.  Always smiling!!

October Break in California

Last week Carson had a few days off from school...so we were able to go California!!  We had so much fun at "Knotts Berry Farm".  When we lived in California we lived near Magic Mountain and every year we'd get season passes and we'd go to Disneyland a couple of times a year but I think we only went to Knotts Berry 1 or 2 times the 10 years we lived there. Carson was born in California but we moved when he was only 2 weeks old.  When we were at the beach one day he asked us why we would every move from this place:)
When we lived in Orange County this is the beach we'd always go to, Aliso Creek Beach, it's between Laguna and Dana Point.  Fun family Beach!! Love watching the sunsets!! 

Newport Beach

Carson knew that Brian would think these cars were cool!!

It's so different having just one child at home.  We're so happy we have Carson!!  He keeps us busy:)

Conference Weekend....

We were so excited to see Tyler and Brittany for the weekend!!  We went to Bob's mission reunion friday night and Tyler and Brittany went to his, they were both in SLC.   We were able to do a few fun things with Carson before that evening...then we just happened to bump into Hunter, after sunday morning's session. It was so wonderful to be there and hear from our  Prophet and leaders of our church.  

My nephew Tanner (Connie's oldest) and his wife Charee and their daughter Chloe(isn't she the cutest!!)  were able to join us for conference on saturday in our hotel room...you can see Elder Bednar in the background:)  Then the men went to priesthood meeting and we all met afterwards for dinner!!
This is a place that is all over DC ...Ashley introduced us to it when we were there in March. Now they have one in SLC - Five Guys,  the best hamburgers ever, sorry In&Out!  And they get their potatoes from Rigby Idaho-Brittany's hometown!!  We just had to take a picture.


The weekend went by way to fast...It was great to be together...But we missed Whitney, Ashley, Lyndsie, Brian and the boys..It felt good to know that even though we were all spread out, we were all listening to the same talks, at the same time and feeling all that love and hope!!

Road Trip to DC...

I can't believe that it's been a year exactly this week that I drove back to DC with Ashley... It was so much fun and so exhausting .  We drove from sun up until sun down 4 straight days.  It always puts a smile on my face when I think of some of the funny things that happened to us...



We didn't have time, or we didn't time it right, to stop and see very much but Ashey wanted to see the motel that is now a museum where Martin Luther King was assassinated .....

We stopped at the college Ashley went to as a freshmen in Virigina......

And of course Graceland....

Here is the view from Ashley's apartment.  That's a mall behind those Condos...

They call this area little Provo because there are so many Mormons in this area...

A view from her room...

The living room....

We had a couple of hours to see some sights-The Washington Monument..

The Lincoln Monument...

oops.. this is out of order..and her dining area...

Miss you everyday Ash.....