”Love You Mamma”

How do you scold a little girl who will not stay in bed? When the little rascal is handing out free kisses and hugs before you can work up a decent scowl? And using sugary words like- “Love you mamma” {over and over}?

Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

Beautiful Girls

Carly is wearing a hand-painted polar bear necklace (she collects animal jewelry).

My Mini-Me!

Promotion Dance Reunion

Christmas Dance Concert

Double Bed

Reflections Winner!!!

Carly won her school reflections contest with her original oil painting “Beauty is a vacation with my family at Rainbow Bridge”

Tyler’s “Hole-in-one”

Travis’s “Soccer Field”

Congratulations kids!

Halloween Monsters

Tinker Bell (Princess on the outside, Monster on the inside)

Really Creepy Skeleton

Dead Princess Fairy (With Vampire Cousin)

Still-Bleeding Skeleton

Monster Friends

Halloween Pumpkins

Poor Baby

Travis opened the car door while Emily was inside leaning against it. She fell out onto the cement curb and split-open her eye. Ironically, it was nearly four years ago that Travis’s rock throwing sent Carly to the emergency room for stitches in HER eye. TRAVIS!!!

First priesthood session with Dad

Twice a year Eric and a few friends (and recently their sons) solicit tickets for the priesthood session. They make it an official “guy’s night out” by grabbing a bite to eat afterwards. This time Grandpa Hep joined Tyler on this momentous occasion.

Birthday Boating

What better way to celebrate a special day than having fun on grandpa’s boat?

Happy Birthday Tyler- We Love you!

Black Island Farms

Eric and I took the kids on a hayride through the pumpkin patch. We lost our way inside two of the largest corn mazes in Utah. And we slid over and over again down a giant black pipe slide. One of our favorite family nights ever!

MVP

The most talented player on his team!

Feet on My Face

Recently, while trying to enjoy a relaxing Saturday-morning shower, I heard Travis sputtering angrily, “Oooh yuck, gross, disgusting”. He burst into the bathroom and made a beeline for the sink. He began vigorously scrubbing his face with soap and water.

“What happened?” I questioned, poking my head out from behind the curtain.

“Carly put her feet on my face”.

“CARLY”, I screamed, “Is that true?”

From around the corner I heard a faint repentant, “Yes”.

“Okay Carly”, I said, “Either you owe me an extra job today or you have to let Travis put HIS feet on YOUR face”.

She looked thoughtful for a moment then ran off quickly”.

Less than a minute later it was Carly who was running like mad to the bathroom sink yelling, “Oooh yuck, gross, disgusting”, and then vigorously scrubbing HER face clean.

It was HILARIOUS!!!

A Big Bad Monster

A Big Bad Monster

By Carly Mansell

Once there was a big bad monster. People said that he did horrible things and scared away little kids. The people nicknamed him Brain-jail because he had a big brain and spent most of his years in jail. He could do amazing things and it took lots of strong men to capture him. He was very smart. But there was more to the story than most people believed. Brain-jail was not really bad at all. He was a good monster and he liked little kids. But Brain-jail was scary looking and had such a large head that people were afraid of him. The day he broke out of jail he ran home to hide. He thought that no one could find him but soon he was discovered. The people tried to capture him and send him back to jail. He tried to tell the people that he just wanted to be their friend. Soon some of the people started to believe him and by the end of the day Brain-jail had friends. The next day when he walked out of his house there were people clapping for him and glad to have him in the neighborhood. Brain-jail was finally happy and thankful to have people around him who treated him kindly.

The End

Elder Mansell

My nephew, Michael (living in Dallas, Texas), paid us a visit prior to receiving his mission call. He is so enthusiastic about serving and gets extremely animated when discussing his beliefs. He reminds me so much of my Eric, fourteen years ago- so driven and high on life!

Hummm…. What happened to that guy? Oh yeah… he has four kids now and is constantly complaining that he needs a vacation.

Anyways, Michael will make a fantastic missionary! As a side note: A few weeks after his visit he was called to the Ogden Utah Mission.

Arizona Vacation

Bruno is a close friend of the family, who has spent weeks at a time visiting us on five separate occasions since 1995. Bruno lives in Forbach, France, though he is hoping to win a green card in the lottery so he can move to the states permanently. Shortly after his arrival to Utah we hit the road for Mesa, Arizona to visit family. We stayed with Matt and Shari for a few nights and then the boys and Emily drove home. Carly and I still had the Mrs. America Pageant to attend. Mom and dad flew in that afternoon and I accompanied them to Tucson. Shari and her two girls, along with Quincy and Carly met us the following evening to watch Heidi perform in the final night of the pageant. We flew home the following day.

The trip was a well-needed change of scenery. The drive down was relaxing. We watched several movies on the new DVD player and listened to the booming sound system, though I most enjoyed visiting with Quincy. The kids swam at Shari’s house, went bowling for Sam’s birthday, and celebrated Nicole’s birthday with a piñata. The kid’s favorite part was just being together with the cousins they love so much! I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with three of my sister-in-laws. It was fun to catch up!