We have had a great summer. It was way way too short. The kids our growing up so fast. Brandon is a dating machine. He is a junior in High School and will be off and gone on a mission before we know it. Matthew got baptized and it's been wonderful to see the difference it's made on him. Ellie continues to blossom, she is our sweetheart. Michael makes us laugh, we love the 4yr old uncensored attitude towards life, for example, on the way home from church, he is in the back seat and yells, "I call to be the first one to get naked!"

We are Vikings!

To contrast Ellie's tea party, Matthew had a Viking party. The kids loved the How to Train your Dragon movie so it was our inspiration. They shot arrows, had an epic water balloon fight, and killed a dragon, lots of destruction and mayhem.

A perfect day

Matthew turned 8 this year. He wanted Brandon to baptize him, Dad to confirm him and me to give a talk. He got his way. It was a very special day, but maybe not to Michael...he was not happy about getting dressed up in church clothes on a Saturday. Thank you to all of our family that came, especially Ben and Mauvia who literally drove through the night and then Mauvia and Zoe performed a beautiful muscial number. Thank you, we love you.

A beautiful day

We went to General Conference, well we just stayed on the Temple grounds and listened to Sunday's session. It was a lot of fun. Brent was teasing that I was trying to get our picture in the Ensign, I told him I didn't think that was very funny. What was funny was coming home and finding a picture of Michael pointing at Angel Moroni in The Scroll (BYU-I's newspaper)

Happy Halloween

Our ward Halloween carnival is always a huge deal with the youth providing the activities, like golfing, bowling, fishing..nail painting. For the first time I think ever, the whole family dressed up, I thought Brent was a good sport..by the way he is DJ Lance from Yo Gabba Gabba, a kid show.

Let's go for a ride!

Ellie's Halloween costume was so cute we had Jess (cousin) take some fun pictures. Ellie loves horses and was excited to finally get the chance to ride. The other cute girl is Annie, she is our bishop's daughter and Ellie adores her.

Best Friends

We had the best week!! Matthew was in heaven because of Isaac. Our house feels sad and empty without Isaac, Eliza and Smith. We can't wait to see them again.

Michael's haircut....

After many, many months of pleading, Michael finally let us cut his hair. It was torture for all of us, but probably worth it. Brent had to promise to take him golfing, (and the real golf, not mini!). We can't get over how small his head is!!

Ellie's lemonade party!

We kicked off summer with a Lemonade/Garden party. Ellie enjoyed having her cousin Eliza all the way from California to visit. Thanks again to Dave for the awesome pics.

Brandon has a good group of friends. They had a great time at Prom and many thanks to Dave for the great pics.

Butler update: We Want Summer!

Yes, we may look like we're having fun, but we are so done with winter.

Instead of a Valentine's party in Matthew's class, we opted for a Chinese New Year Celebration, dragon parade and all. Instead of Valentine cookies, we had eggrolls. Good fun.

Ellie is building a tower out of magnets.

This has been a great year for the Butler family. Here are some random pictures from this year, the professional looking ones were taken by cousin Dave. We look forward to all the things to come in 2010. Matthew will be getting baptized, Ellie will start kindergarten, and hopefully Brandon will be getting his driver's license. We have been incredibly blessed and wish all of our friends and family a wonderful New Year.

This may be one reason the blog does not get updated so often, when he's not on the wii, he's usually on the computer.

Ellie and Monica, or the Pink Ladybug and Snowwhite

Ellie participated in two Nutcrackers this winter, as a snowflake and as a chinese dancer.

Michael turned 3 this summer, and by the way, he loves golf.

we found a baby bird in the yard.