The Bitter Family 2007

This has been a fun year for us. Busy as always, but not too eventful. Dave continues to work at SMUD as a programmer, enjoying his 6th year. We cannot express what a huge blessing it is to have stable and challenging employment. Dave has been so blessed with his technical-computer-mumbo-jumbo talents regarding computer things. He's had an opportunity to be in a role where he continually works on more and more complex systems and always seems to enjoy it. Ever since he replaced his mountain bike (for his birthday) he's been riding with a group a friends on an almost weekly basis and is loving that as well. Now that it's too cold to ride, he's taken up the fake drums with his new "Rock Band" game. Dave and his friends formed their own virtual band (the "8 Ball Bearings") and they periodically tour the virtual world, entertaining their thousands of virtual fans. Dave is ending his 4th year of teaching the 16/17 year olds in Sunday School. He is so good at relating to those kids. He spends his time with our boys mostly playing video games or building some kind of really intense train track that resembles a rollarcoaster. The boys are so excited when Daddy gets home, he's the fun one. I am the "nurturing"one I guess. I am constantly in a state of learning how to juggle everyones schedules and homework. I now have three of the four kids in school which keeps me in the car alot. I have continued to enjoy some of my previous hobbies as well as developing new ones. I enjoyed a tremendous amount of sewing this year. Everytime I am invited to a baby shower I make the mother a blanket. It is "sew" fun to be creative in that way. I also enjoy photography as some of you already know. I was able to take the family portraits of many friends of ours this fall. Click on the link to my photography blog to see some of the fun I've had capturing fun moments with friends. I don't read much anymore, but I finished off the Harry Potter series with book 7 this summer. I was also introduced to the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyers. So many women in my ward were raving about these "vampire romance" books, I decided to see what the big deal was. I am so obsessed with these books now, it's not healthy. I highly recommend them to anyone! I am currently serving as Assistant Activity Days Leader (the 8-11 year old girls) at church. I spent a lot of this year running (on the treadmill). I began in February and began to really enjoy it and actually look forward to running everyday.

We have been so blessed this year. We are amazed at how blessed we are to have such wonderful, healthy children. They make us very happy (most of the time). We are so grateful to have the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives. We have a fabulous ward family and a home to call our own. We have food on our table and clothes on our backs. We know we have so much to be grateful for. We hope all of you will have a very Merry Christmas and an exciting new year!!

Logan 7 1/2 years old

Logan is awesome! He never ceases to amaze us with his growing intellect. He reads like a maniac and remembers everything he reads! He started 2nd grade this year with a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Morris. He checks out multiple books a day at the library. He reads them, then brings them back at recess to get more. He reads at above a 6th grade level. This summer we were thrilled when he read the first four Harry Potter books. He lost steam for Harry Potter when school started so he hasn't finished book 5 yet. He has already read the Book of Mormon on his own and starts it again when he's done. He enjoys math too. He is already asking us about Algebra. He loves making up secret code languages to write in. It's fun to try to dicipher his codes when he gives them to us. He has great grammar and makes sure to correct anyone who uses incorrect grammar, mostly Mason gets the brunt of it. He loves to play video games with Mason and Daddy. He enjoys building "inventions" and playing with Legos. He is a peace keeper in our home (most of the time). He is very protective of his younger brothers and is good at sticking up for them when they're being repressed. He is always happy and enthusiastic about life. He cherishes his "sleepy toys". He's got a bed full of friends, mostly Pokemon plush toys but there are a few random guys he's found. Logan is a never-ending ball of energy with so much to share with us.

Mason 5 1/2 years old

Mason is such a mature 5 year old. He reminds me sooooo much of me when I was his age. He's even inherited my silly "Snoopy smile". Unfortunately, he's got the bad with the good. He is super sweet and lovey, very passionate about everything he does. He is a bit on the dramatic side though. Hey, I always say he's as close to a daughter as we're going to get. He is so "boy" though. Very rough-n-tumble and loves running around outside. He is really good at the monkey bars. He is enjoying his first year of school very much. Kindergarten suits him. He has so much fun with the kids in his class and he tells me he has a "girlfriend". I'm going to have to worry about this one. He loves to play video games with Logan and Daddy. They began the year off with lots of Pokemon and are ending it with lots of Mario. He is such a sweet helper. He has helped me "clean up" many times and relishes the praise he receives when he does good. He has a great vocabulary for his age, I assume it's all the reading we do with him, but I think he looks up to his older brother a lot too. He has a great memory....he retells the scripture stories we read to him and seems to enjoy learning about all the Book of Mormon heros. He cherishes his friends and always looks forward to us having people over to the house. He brings a lot of life into our home and a very sweet spirit. It's been so fun watching Mason grow this year!

Noah age 46 months (almost 4!)

Noah is such a character. He is very animated with us at home. He is very shy and quiet around everyone else. That's weird for us, we never expected a shy child. He's learning to come out of his shell since he started preschool this year. He goes to the same preschool his older brothers went to so he was already familiar with it. He still is a little sad when I drop him off every Tuesday and Thursday morning, he always says to me, "Mommy, I'll miss you". It's sooooo sweet! He's very lovey and enjoys cuddling in bed with us in the morning. I can almost always count on him to wander into our room somewhere around 5am and crawl under the covers with me. He loves watching the Backyardigans and is so cute dancing and singing along to all the songs. He was Capt. Jack Sparrow for Halloween and still loves to pretend being a pirate. He has a really good sense of humor, good comedic timing actually. He is really good at making us all laugh. He finally got the potty-training down and he gets to wear "big boy underwear" all the time now, even to bed. This is something he is very proud of. He will be a "Sunbeam" at church starting in January, I wonder if he'll sit still because he's shy or if he'll get comfortable and be crazy. I guess we'll see. Noah always makes us smile, and we can't bear not to squeeze him!

Roman age 22 months

I don't often get my kids to pose well for me, but today was a good day. I figured it was a good time of year to show how much he's grown and what he's up to. I've never sent out the form Christmas letter telling everyone what my kids are into, etc... Here's my chance to fill you all in.
Roman is our little angel! He is as sweet as he is cute! He is just learning how to talk and it is so fun. He says "mimi" for Mommy and he finally started saying "daddy". He is really good at saying "nooooo", of course. He is hilarious when we get him saying "oh ya" over and over again. He's just like his brothers, rowdy and loves to wrestle in the mix with them. He's pretty tough and doesn't cry much when he gets bonked or falls down. He loves it when we read to him, which we do everytime we put him to sleep. He is our first child who we call "a runner". This means he loves to run off whenever he sees an opening and when he hears us call his name he runs faster in the opposite direction. What a stinker! He's really quite fast too, very agile, not clumsy at all. He has the most infectious belly laugh when you tickle him. He has amazing blue eyes and people always comment on his "strawberry blond" hair. We're sure it'll fade soon, but it's fun to have a fair one. Roman is such a blessing of peace in our home!

SMUD Christmas Party

Here are some of the crazy amount of toys Dave has at his desk at work.

Dave loves Jack Skellington, here is some of his collection.

Here are the boys following Dad around the office checking things out.

SMUD Children's Christmas Party

Logan in front of his buddy Spongebob!

Roman was really cute hanging around with Daddy

Here's all my boys with Santa! We waited a good 45 minutes to see him. Each boy got to sit on his lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. I think he told Dave to get off pretty quick, he's a little heavier than to other kids.

Dave is the biggest kid of all. Just look at all the toys on his desk! The boys love to see all of daddy's toys. One of Dave's co-workers was at his desk with his son when we got there. His son was so excited to see all the cool toys on his desk. Some kids never grow up.