Tribute to my wonderful dad!

It is amazing how much you realize your parent's know after you have kids of your own. It seems like I am always calling my mom and dad to ask them a question or just to get there advice. My father has always been nothing but a wonderful example to me. When I think about Adam as being the father of my children, he has a lot of the same personality and qualities that my fathers has. My father has always patient, loving, worthy priesthood holder, kind, man of his word, caring and many more qualities that I love. I have always been a daddy's girl. I remember being young and just following my dad around as he did work outside or in the house. I just wanted to know how things worked and how to fix stuff. I loved being able to be with my dad and to be able to talk to him. As I have gotten married and moved away from home, I have not had enough time to spend with my dad. I feel that sometimes I take him for gratitude. I never say I love you enough... So I love you dad!

A couple of months ago my dad was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease or also known as ALS. This is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. My dad has have several EMGs to evaluate his nerves. For now he is only showing the ALS in his legs. It has not reached his arms yet. He had two EMGs about a month apart and they showed no or little progression between the two. This is very good news. He will have another EMG next week to evaluate any changes again. He will then go see a specialist of ALS up at the University of Utah in the middle of January.

This has been a very hard time for our family, but if anything good has come out of this it is that we have grown together as a family. Thank you to everyone for your support and concern.

Halle's first time seeing Santa and Bentley's first time not crying!

We had a family Christmas Party on Saturday night in Lehi. We had a wonderful dinner. We sang songs and got to spend time with lots of family. After we sang Santa Clause is coming to Town, guess who showed up...Santa! Bentley was so excited to tell Santa that he wanted a plane, a helicopter and a train. He walked right up to Santa, grabbed his hand and said, "Hi Santa, I want a plane, a helicopter and a train." He sat so still and did not move for longer then I had ever seen him hold still for. He loved seeing Santa and loved him even more when Santa gave him a train. Halle just sat on Santa's lap and didn't make a peep! She got the movie Horton hears a who.

The Russon Family Picture!

We took these pictures over Thanksgiving with my family. We have my parent's cute little neighbor Whitney take our pictures, but they turned out really good. I can't believe how big our family is getting. Kyle is taller then me by a couple of inches and is in Junior High, High School next year! Wow! I can't beat up on him very much anymore. Kim is almost 19 and is going to school to be a pharmacy technician...Time just goes by so fast. Jenny and Steve are doing good, both are working and they are living in Orem. Look how cute my mom and dad look...I love them so much! I have always love my parent's. I probably never tell them that enough. Sometimes it takes almost losing something in order to realize how lucky you are. I am so grateful for everything that they have done for me and my family. I could have not asked for a better family!

Bentley's new saying...

I just wanted to share with everyone the cutest thing Bentley said to me yesterday for the first time and I have no clue where he got it from. He said, "Your the best momma in the whole world." He can't really say his "W" yet so it sounded really cute. It always makes me feel good when he says stuff like this. Although, it is usually after he gets in trouble. He is such a sweet talker already!

Halle's Christmas dress

This is our beautiful Halle in her Christmas dress this year. She is getting so big. Yesterday she started rolling over on her side and screaming because she was so mad that she could not roll over onto her tummy. She is so cute and is going to be a drama queen. Boy are we in for it...

Family Pictures...

These are our cute family pictures that we just had taken by our amazingly talented neighboor. She is a stay at home mom that is extremely good at taking picture. She is just starting to take picture professionally. If anyone would like to try her out, just give me a call and I will give you her contact information. She is really good and does it for a really good price.

Halle got her ears pierced!

We pierced Halle's ears yesterday! She looks so cute I had to post a picture for everyone to see. She did really good and hardly cried at all. She is our beautiful little princess!

Twilight

My mom, sister's and I were so excited to go see Twilight. We ordered our tickets 2 weeks prior to opening weekend. We went and saw it last Friday night and we were so disappointed. We are all huge fans of the books and the movie just didn't do it for me. It was really cheap looking and looked really cheesy. I think they could have done a much better job and picked much better actors for the show. I think the whole theater was mad at us because we had a hard time to keep from laughing through the whole movie. We had a great time talking about all the lame parts on the way home. OH WELL!

Halle's Blessing November 2, 2008

We blessed Halle Jo Clements on November 2, 2008. She was blessed by her wonderful father. She looked so beautiful in her blessing dress. We thank everyone who attended and helped with food prep. Thank you to all that helped bless our wonderful little girl.

Halloween 2008

Bentley was Peter Pan for Halloween this year. We made him put on tights, and let me tell you he hated them. It took us so long to get him to put them on. After he got his whole costume on he LOVED it. We had a hard time having him take it off. Bentley loved getting candy and loved eating it just as much.

Halle was Tinkerbell for Halloween. We went to our neighboors Trunk-or-Treat this year and she ended up winning cutest kids custome, ages 0-8. It was not even our ward and she won.