Will is FIVE

Yea William! We had a blast celebrating Will's 5th birthday last Wednesday. We went to breakfast before school and ate with Bobbi and Kimmy. I brought cupcakes to Will's school for the celebration. And at dinner we went to Applebee's and ate with my Mom and Dad and Kimmy and Ashley. The staff came out and sang to Will, he was so excited! It was fun. The only downer was the baby got sick and Blake couldn't come to any of the fun events cause he was playing nurse to baby. Good Daddy. Will only kind of noticed and he had a great birthday! On Saturday we had a birthday party for Will. His grandmother from Pennsylvania came into town to celebrate his birthday too. Will had his b-day party at Jeepers, it's an indoor amusement park for little kids, or as Blake calls it, a cesspool of disease. We had a good time, but birthday parties are exhausting. I didn't sit down all day. Oh, and I got sick thanks to me kissing the sick baby all the time. Here's some photos from the few days of William David Loder's birthday celebration.

Busy Busy...

This has been a busy last couple of weeks. Blake and I had friends from Kentucky stay with us a couple of weeks ago. I actually didn't take one picture of them... so I guess I will show you a pic of them from the wedding in August.
We had fun with Sarah and Jimmy in town. They came out to look for places to live in case they make the move to AZ in January... good to know your options! we really enjoyed having them around. I could imagine having game night with them any day of the week and loving it. The last night they were in town I made a sort of hodge podge of italian foods for dinner. The baby loved the spaghetti! So did Will, plain, just like Uncle Ben.

And then...

Kimmy graduated!!!!! Yeah, her name was actually listed in the program! It's for real.




and then I drove back down to Mesa from Flagstaff on Friday for Blake's holiday party and Saturday was my work holiday party... where Blake and I won so much in the casino portion that we won three raffle prizes! One of which was an Ipod Shuffle. So exciting.
On Sunday we met all the Loder's at Joe's Crabshack. It was so cold we actually bundled up the baby. Mitten Baby!!!
Will loves Joe's Crabshack cause he can play pool before dinner. He is really good at chalking the stick. He was too funny, making up rules and playing with his hands after he chalked the stick. Cute. I can't believe he is going to be five tomorrow. Time has really flown by too quickly.

Yeah it's been awhile

I finally found some time to upload new pics of the kids and give you an update.
So, I cooked my first Turkey this year. It was a long process, but it was tasty. I won two turkeys from work and I got a brine recipe from my girlfriend Katie. The night before Thanksgiving I had to prep the birds and submerge them in a salt and brown sugar brine. Jenny came over and helped too. We put one of the turkeys into a heavy duty trash bag and into the roasting dish. As we were transferring the dish into the fridge a piece of thyme poked a hole in the bag and turkey juice spilt all over the back and bottom of my fridge. Annoying and gross!!! Well, we cleaned it up and triple bagged 'em. It was well worth it, the turkey was delicious. I also made Granny's mac-n-cheese and Marie's sweet potato caserole. Both of those dishes were good too. Blake made his Granny's stuffing, also delicious, and we made so much that we have eaten leftovers for the entire weekend. It was enough to feed Kim, Ben, Alyx, JD and Jenny all weekend too. After Thanksgiving my family traditionally takes our family photo for the Christmas card, but it was raining too hard and we rescheduled to Saturday, here's some of the pics.





The day after we took these pics I dressed up the kids in little outfits I intended to use in professional photos, but lately things have been tight, so I took the pics myself and I think I took some winners. The kids had a good time too. The baby was more interested in throwing rocks, and Will, of course, obliged in throwing them too.
We took pics at the Dobson Ranch Inn, where our wedding reception was held, and at Bobbi's new house in Scottsdale. We had a great time playing in her backyard!