Lowell B-day videos catching up

I know you've all been wondering about out tradition of putting our b-day song videos on here. Well, I'm just a little behind. But dont worry here come three all at once. Hannah really enjoys any b-day videos. I hope you will enjoy them as much as she does. Oh, as a side note, you may notice that we really don't care too much about whether the candles match up with our ages. :)

December 2009 & Christmas

I had to add Tustin asking if there was room at the inn. It's too hard to move it to its section.

So this is Christmas Day dinner at the Keller home, 2009

It was a wonderful day filled with much cleaning & little rest. Travis had me going a mile a minute. But it was all worth it when it was done.

Happy Tracker before we eat our wonderful feast.

We had a green salad, stuffing, turkey, & mashed potato-broccoli casserole with gravy. Mmmm!
This was my first ever, turkey, that I baked. Travis did help.

Travis getting ready to carve.

Ahh, yes. Travis' first gift, before Christmas. The trojan horse hiding what else was coming. He made this beautiful dvd, cd, vhs, cabinet with his own two little hands. I asked him to put doors on, and he did!

Tustin with his flarp from Uncle Ezra. He played with that for several hours, never letting go. But when he did, it was bad news. It got stuck somewhat in our carpet!
It was a hit. :) Thanks Uncle Ezra

The be-a-utiful bookshelves that Travis set up Christmas Eve night, after I had fallen asleep (around 3am). So gorgeous. I love them, and they are now filled with all of our books.

Travis 53inch moose from last year. He made this beautiful plaque and mounted it to the wall with HUGE bolts. These are heavy antlers.

Here's Chrismas morning, before the kids attacked everything. It was just me & Tracker awake, enjoying the quiet before the "storm". We got up at 9ish. It was a late night. I'm amazed how I can now sleep in Christmas morning. But not too amazed. :)

Here is the tree, and if you will notice, the beautiful RUG! Travis is such a good santa! He and I had been talking back and forth about getting one for our living room. I'd been checking prices for several months, looking at patterns.

Well, Travis, spur of the moment decided he'd do it for me and suprise me! Well, I sure was, and am loving it. It makes our home more homey. I love it!

Christmas Eve night, at the Henderson's home. We are singing carols and Travis has seat-belted the children on his lap so they will be still. :)
I had to put this one in because of Tracker's cute little smile.

Here are James & Lisa Henderson with Abraham, he's 4, Trayton's good buddy.

Trayton is not too happy about that.

Here is Anna Henderson holding Eli Richards. Playing Mary and Jesus, when the wise men came bearing gifts.

Here are the shepherds and the sheep (Tracker). And he's also wearing his Christmas pajamas from Gramma Nancy. :)

Tustin was not excited about being Joseph. Silly boy.

Brian Richards reading the Christmas story from the scriptures with Parker Richards while the children played the parts.

It was a fun-filled evening. We had a finger-food dinner with clam chowder. We did the nativity scavenger hunt that Mom gave me last year with the kids. Travis brought a ton of fireworks, including big ones you shoot off, and they explode in the sky! We had twirly hand held thingys, black cats, and even a flare that they shot off which landed on a tree, but the trees fine, nothing more happened, thank goodness.
Then we did the nativity and sang lots of Christmas songs, including several piano solos & a flute solo by Leah Henderson. Travis finished it off by offering icecream floats all around. Maybe a new tradition.

Here's an older picture of our little dinky snow man. I actually rolled the snow myself, it was fun!

Here's Travis' birthday cake. He turned 28 on the 19th. I made him 4 layer dessert, his favorite.

Here's the boys sitting on the couch. They looked so cute, I had to take a picture. :)

Tracker making a really cute, silly face. I love it!

Travis' birthday card from Great Grampa Keller. Very cute letter. He did a good job!

Here's the boys right after we brought home the Christmas tree. We put the lights, silver garland, and ornaments on. Last year we didn't put up a tree so, it was real enjoyable this year.

Searching for the perfect Christmas tree at the Eberline's home in Sterling, Ak. They're in our ward. The boys had a lot of fun finding animal tracks in the snow.

Blast from the Past

Here are some photos I recently took. Oops, was that actually 24 years ago? Time flys when you're having fun!

Here is a family picture we took right before Nettie was born; March 1985.

Here are Jacob and Tim in a hammock we made from a quilt. This has always been one of my favorite photos and I'm glad to be able to resurrect it.

Here is Nettie and Mom. This would have been 31 May 1985 or early June.

Here are Jacob and Ezra computing on my TI 99/4A; the first computer we ever owned. It had the Basic programming language on a cartridge and also used cartridges like a game console. It played Tombstone City (a Pacman clone) and other games.

Here is Mary holding Nettie. She looks pretty excited. She needed the practice of holding a baby for preparation for later in life.

Nap Time

I love to see my children sleeping. It brings me so much peace and joy. I mean that in a serious way not haha, I get so much peace when they are sleeping. Although, that is true also! There is something about seeing my children sleeping that gets me everytime I check on them before I go to bed at night. How I love them!

Simeon didn't get a nap this day, and he crawled up in the kids' chair and fell asleep. I watched him as he drifted off to sleep and it was so cute!


I'm back to making Lizzie nap now. She has refused for several months now, but she gets so grouchy and bossy when she doesn't. I laid down with her to help her stay there, and of course, I ended up sleeping with her. Thankfully Simeon was already in bed. She's got the cutest chubby little face!


Yeah, this guys is pretty cute too. I love him too, but he's not so precious looking when he sleeps. Maybe it's because he doesn't have any baby fat on his face like the rest of the family.

It's a.....

Sorry Tiff I had to copy your title!!

GIRL!!!!!!

Yes, the Kellers are finally having their first girl. I am sooooooo exstatic & gitty & full of happiness & joy I don't know what to do with myself. :)

I believe there were many people actually praying for me. Many friends & people in the ward. They take a look at my belly & the 3 boys running beside me & can't help hoping for a girl along with me. So I happy to say, the Lord is blessing us with a girl.

As we walked into the clinic to get the ultrasound Travis was teasing the boys saying, "We're gonna take a look at our baby brother." Then Trayton would pipe right up & say, "No! It's a sister!" So Daddy didn't get his boy this time (he's taking some alone time to come to grips with reality).

Sorry, we don't have any ultrasound pictures of little Naomi Renae, so you'll just have to imagine. Hehe!

Family Photo Shoot!!!

This was the last picture taken & you can tell Tustin isn't liking it very much. He's lost the ability to smile!! It's hilarious!

I didn't edit these through picasa, except for the last one (done by Gina).

I really wanted a Dad & His Boys picture. But Tracker & Tustin are so far gone, it didn't turn out so well.

But I think it's pretty funny. I really see my boys in this picture!! Tustin's gaping mouth is just too funny!
This picture & paragraph was supposed to be at the top.

So on Saturday we took some pictures outside. :) They turned out wonderful! I'm really pleased w/them although it was freezing for the boys & Tracker didn't smile for ANY of the pictures. That's a-okay w/me. Trayton was actually shivering in his personal picture, and Tracker is about to cry. It was pretty funny to watch their faces at the very end! I won't post the family picture we'll be sending out. You'll get that when we send out our Christmas cards- hopefully within a couple weeks!!

These were taken by our friend Gina Smith. She also edited this photo for us. :)

Box fun

I found a $5 box of hotwheels tracks at the thrift store last week. It was packed full of stuff, and the kids loved pulling it all out and covering the living room floor. I let them have them out there for three days, and then I couldn't take it anymore, they had to be put neatly away in the playroom after that. I think Joseph and Lizzie had just as much, if not more, fun with the box than with the tracks.

Simeon LOVES cars, so he had tons of fun with this ramp that was in there. He kept laughing out loud every time the car would go down. I had just as much fun watching him as he had doing it!

For three days this box sat in my living room, and every time I went in I would find Joseph or Lizzie, or both in it. One day Lizzie sat in in with her blanket and pillow and watched a movie. Sadly I couldn't stand it in the house anymore, and Lizzie has to go back to using the floor or the couch again.

Watching the Christmas devotional on BYU tv and having milk and cookies. Bekah is the only one who lasted through the whole thing. The other kids were sent to bed one by one as they got to tired to be reverent. It was so nice to be able to pause it and put kids to bed and still get to see all of it! Bekah was so tired that she slept in an extra two hours the next morning. Huge thank you to the First Presidency for choosing to have BYU broadcast it so that people like us with lots of small children can actually see it and enjoy it at the same time!

Here is our Baby Jesus in a manger this year. He even has his hands up like the babies in a lot of the nativities you see! He kept rolling off and would sit back up for me to put him up there again.

Santa Clause

Well, my friend Nikiesha Richards & I just got back from visiting w/Santa at the local fire station. It was super fun. We got there too late to see Santa riding in on the fire truck, and to see the lighting of a big Christmas tree. But, thanks to a friend, we knew the secret to getting in the front of the Santa line in order to not have to wait an hour or more. We were family #5 in line, I believe out of 100 at least.

So we all took a picutre together w/Santa & Trayton gave Santa his Christmas list-eek. I never remember doing that as a child (if I did it was to Mom). and I think I like it that way, cause then they are just thinking of themselves & what they want for Christmas. Anyway they each got a bag w/gloves, a christmas bendy toy & a candy cane. Then we went to get some goodies- which there were a TON! We each got several cookies & some hot cocoa. All free!

Then we went outside to leave and saw that they were giving hay rides on a big flat bed semi. So we had to get a ride and sing "Dashing thru the Snow" It was a bit frightening, I thought I would fall off whenever it turned. Then we went and got a big picture next to the lighted Christmas tree outside & my feet got soaked from the snow.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience & I believe we'll have to keep up this tradition every year. Here's some pictures.

Standing in front of the lighted Christmas tree.

We got a close up of Santa as he walked in the door to go sit down.


Trayton getting on the hay ride.

Probably our best picture w/Santa. He's reading Trayton's list.

This would have been good, but my stinken camera likes to take blurry pictures.

Yay for kids to make Christmas exciting again!!!!

I forgot to mention that the local newspaper- Clarion, was there taking pictures & asked for our names as he wrote them down. So we may have our picture in the newspaper tomorrow! And they'll most deffinitely have a decent picture.

Lots of Snow

We are so grateful for the freshly fallen snow. Travis has been out yesturday & today non-stop plowing. As Travis calls it "Money falling from the sky".

Above: This is what happens to our trees when it starts raining after it's snowed about 4 inches. All the birch trees were drooping and hanging over the house. The snow was so wet & heavy.

The night before it began raining Travis decided to help the boys make a snow bear.
It was very fascinating watching for the first time, as Travis rolled the ball around and the snow just attached itself and became larger & larger.

Trying to help you guys understand how beautiful it was to wake up to 3 inches of snow about 3 days earlier. It was such a wonderful feeling. So peaceful & calm.

Me kissing the snow bear.

Travis, the boys & the snow bear. Which is bigger than Travis!