Christmas Letter

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are planning many exciting events for New Years Day! We’ve had a great 2009 with lots of new adventures.

Colin: Colin is now more than half way finished with his Master of Business Administration degree from Carnegie Mellon University. In one short week he flies to Pittsburgh for a week of intense academics. We’ll miss him for sure! He’s still working full-time at Goldman Sachs in Salt Lake City and was recently promoted to Team Leader! He works a lot of long hours and in his downtime at home enjoys playing video games on the Xbox and is super excited to jump on the PS3 he just received for Christmas. He's the Cub Master in our ward and is still learning the ropes of the scouting program.


Jen: I’m still teaching fifth grade at Sprucewood Elementary in Sandy. It’s my seventh year and is proving to be a little challenging. I’m enjoying the work though and have a wonderful team and I really enjoy working with them. I miss my boys during the day but look forward to possibly staying home with them next year. I'm currently serving in the junior nursery in our ward. We have a lot of little kiddos but they are all so cute. I still keep up my blog as regularly as my schedule allows. I love digital photography and it’s been made so much more enjoyable with the Nikon SLR camera I received on my birthday this summer.


Ryan (4 years old): Ryan is so much fun to have around our home. He’s really smart and surprises us frequently with his newest nuggets of knowledge. He is in his second year of preschool and is learning how to read, write, and count. He loves cars, cartoons, and playing with his buddies. He's pretty good about sharing with his little brother and teaching him new things. It seems like he’s always on the go.


Evan (22 months old): Evan is really a funny little guy. He likes to entertain us with his own sense of humor. He’s in to everything. He follows his brother and me wherever we go and tries to see how many messes he can make and toys he can break. He’s learning to speak very well; he can pretty much say anything he wants to. Sometimes we have to figure out what he’s trying to communicate but overall he’s quite talkative. Evan loves playing with balls, stuffed animals and he adores bath time!


We are looking forward to Colin graduating in one year from this month, and I look forward to being a stay-at-home mother. Ryan is excited to be going to Kindergarten in the fall. Evan’s going to be turning two in March; I just can’t believe it!

We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! May God be with you and yours this Holiday Season and in to 2010!

Love,
Jen, Colin, Ryan and Evan Dean

Evan's First Hair cut

Well Evan is 22 months old and has never once had his hair cut in any way, shape, or form. And, well, his hair was quite without any form. It was very long and was getting quite tangled and snarly every time he did anything. Gels and combs were of no help. So, we broke down and took him in for a haircut. I just love the way it turned out. He looks quite cute and very grown up. He was really good and held still for the most part. He didn't squirm when they brought out the razor to trim up his ears either. He loved the attention and was excited to have a balloon and a sucker when he was through. Here he is before.

Sitting in the airplane chair, it has a buckle!

Going in for the first snip. She saved a lock for me :)

This is him during the cut.

It's all coming off.

The stylist was trying to help me get him to smile by saying; "Show Mommy your teeth." So he grabs his teeth and starts saying, "teeth". Ha ha! He does know how to say "Cheese" when he's getting his picture taken.

Look, some style to that hair!

She thought he had pretty cute curl. Yeah, not really. At least not compared to Ryan or me.

Here he is all done, all cute, and enjoying his treats.

And running away from Mommy and the camera!

Christmas Afternoon

In the afternoon we went over to the Grandparents and did some Christmas gift exchanging with them. It was a lot of fun and a lot of craziness too. The kids had a great time and Evan had really figured out how to open gifts by then. Ryan got a Batman convertible car/airplane and has hardly put the thing down since. He would open a gift then go back to playing with the airplane. Evan got a fun Fire truck and he's had a lot of fun moving the levers around and making the ladder swivel. I'm super excited about my new spice rack, luggage, and dress boots!
Thanks everyone for the wonderful gifts. We love them all, and we love all of you!
Ryan and Grandpa before opening gifts.

Evan with some new skater shoes!

Emry was excited about all of the ribbons and bows. Now that she's CRAWLING! she was glad to finally be able to really get in there and play with her crazy cousin boys.

Ry Ry

Jess and Emry. I was so glad that she liked the toy I got for her.

Cole, Justin and Dad being Paparazzi with it.

Mom opening an awesome Teflon pan!

And look, a shot of me!

What a wonderful Christmas it has been.

Christmas Morning

Did Santa come?
Yes, he did. Santa came for Ryan.
A castle, for his action figures and imagination to run wild. A Dinoco blue Lightening McQueen inside his stocking.

Santa came for Evan.

A basketball hoop and ball.

All of the presents before we tore in.

Ryan discovers Santa has come...

and, he's excited about it!

Evan coming down the stairs. A little groggy after having been up ALL NIGHT LONG!

But not too tired to make a basket.

Basketball!

Evan sees Ryan's toy and thinks it's pretty sweet, spends the rest of the day ignoring his hoop.

Ryan notices that Santa put a blue Lightening in his stocking.

Colin's ready to open a gift...

and his wishes came true. PS3!

Ryan was very good about opening his gifts. After each one he said thank you and then promptly returned to his castle.

Evan eventually got the hang of opening gifts and nearly opened several gifts that were not his own.

Colin opening gifts.

Jen opening gifts.

We were all very spoiled Christmas morning. We had a great time together. It was quite magical.

Christmas Eve'ning

We spent Christmas Eve evening together with just the four of us. We ate a nice dinner (on new Christmas dishes that I got last year), read the Christmas story out of the scriptures, opened a gift, drove around and looked at the lights, and tucked the boys in to bed. It was a lot on the agenda but it was everything I was hoping to do, and I am glad we were able to fit it all in.
The new dishware. We ate ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls. I thought I'd taken a picture of the food, but I guess not.

My grandma Veva gave me two full sets of these, 5 pieces per setting, 8 settings. Colin says we'll have to have 4 more kids. :)

After bath time and scriptures, we let the boys each open a gift.

I think we had to help Evan with his.

Colin thinks I'm boring, but it was matching pajamas. He did think they were super cute though.

So cheesy!

So goofy!

Then we took them out to look at lights. We drove up near the Draper temple. Lots of those big, I mean huge, homes are in foreclosure but we did get to see some cool displays.

Ryan fell asleep on the way home.

Evan went to bed with Ryan.

However, he did not sleep the whole night through. In fact, he spent most of the night awake. At around midnight he jumped into bed with us. I got fed up with him being in there about an hour later and Colin took him back to bed. With several trips to the bed and back, he stayed wide awake until about 4:30am! I could not believe it. Colin and I barely got any sleep at all! It was insane. We have since recovered.

Christmas Eve: Day

We got a nice snow storm on Tuesday which left us plenty of snow for a "white Christmas".

So, we decided to bundle up the kids and take them sledding, in the back yard! Yea! I love having a back yard. Colin pulled the kids around in the taboggan. They loved every minute of it, and when they were done, we just went inside.

Weeee!

Lovin' the sled.

My two boys all bundled up and loving the snow!

My hot husband doing all the work pulling the kids around the yard. He shaved his head a few days ago. He's so cute in his corduroy coat.

Evan trying to go solo.