Christmas is coming!

We did two trees this year. One up and one down. We cut them down ourselves, and I am so happy with how they turned out!


I made this one our "fancy" tree. I put all our our breakable ornaments on it, and bought some new balls. I love the look of it! It matches my front room!


This is my Willow tree nativity. Jeff gave me the creche for Christmas last year, so this is the first year I have seen it all together, and I love it!


I made the stockings last year, and Jeff's parents brought us back the olive wood nativity from Israel last year.


Our "kid" tree! This is in the basement, and looks so festive and colorful!

Drum roll please........and the news is.....

I'M PREGNANT!!!!! Yes it is true. I am 13 weeks and due in mid June! I have been feeling constantly nauseous, but this has been the best pregnancy so far for morning sickness!!!! No throwing up so far! I am hoping all continues to go well and that we will have a new baby after school lets out this summer! The kids are hoping for a boy, because as they say, it is our pattern!

Sara at CDT

Sara's toothy smile

So Sara lost her top front tooth last night! It has been hanging precariously for a few days, and last night I finally convinced her to let me look at it. I stuck my fingernail up behind in and flicked, and whala, it flew across the bathroom! She was so proud of herself, that she let me do that! And I am loving her cute new smile! She said "now I am half way to being able to sing "all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth"!!! Her other top front tooth is loose also, along with two more on the bottom!! Poor thing can't eat an apple or anything like that! Anyways, pretty exciting!

Cookie monster

Happy Halloween!

So Happy Belated Halloween! It has been so fun to see everyones pictures.






This year we had a bunny.......



A Jedi knight.....

and a baby......!

We grew all these little pumkins in our garden! Next year hopefully I will figure out how to make them bigger.

Arches/Canyonlands Part 3

So it was back to arches for the final day! Tons of fun!


Delicate Arch!!! Way cool. This was a 3 mile hike, and the kids thought it was harder than the first day hike we did. But it was sooooo worth it! Very beautiful!



Sara hanging out looking at the arch.



Here we are at double arch. The kids found little beds in the rocks and relaxed.

Evie fell asleep and really sunk into the backpack.

Here we are standing under turret arch(maybe???) and behind us are the north and south windows.

Arches/Canyonlands part 2

So this was the first time any of us had been to canyonlands. It was kind of like a small grand canyon. It was very beautiful, but not as hands on as Arches.


This little mesa freaked me out, because there were no fences around it. Yes, right beyond us is a major drop off!!!



Sara and Robbie taking a break.



Mesa arch. Notice the difference in the color of the arch.

A stunning vista!

So you will notice Evie isn't wearing any clothes. At lunch time we stopped at a picnic area. After the kids were done they were walking around. All of the sudden we heard screaming! Evie had fallen into a cactus! Poor baby. Her pants and socks were so covered, that I just threw them away. I picked cactus out of her legs, arms and hands for over an hour.......definately the low point of the trip. I didn't have a change of clothes for her so we just slathered her with sunscreen and went along our way! Very tramatic for mom and baby!

Arches/Canyonlands finally!

We had so much fun climbing and exploring all the little crevices and cracks. Evie was a champ and sat in the backpack the whole time!


Jeff and Evie climbing near Navaho arch. This was the kids favorite arch, and our hike that day was 4.5 miles!!! What champion hikers!


Landscape arch. A piece of this one fell in the early 90's so they don't let you walk under it anymore.



Evie loved playing in the sand at sand dune arch.

Look closely and you will see Jeff, Sara and Robbie at the top of Sand dune arch. This was the other favorite arch because of the sand!

Sara and Robbie sitting on top of a very high rock! (I zoomed in close)

Snow Day in October?????

Sara and Robbie woke up to find it snowing last sunday morning, so they rummaged through the storage room, found the bag of snowclothes, and were outside playing before I even woke up!!