Sunday, December 26, 2010

What a fun Christmas this year. We started off on Christmas Eve and went to Jeri and Lee's for their traditional Christmas Eve dinner. It is always fun to go and spend that time with them and besides that they always have really good food and played some Canasta. Christmas morning we got up and went to Lorrie and Scott's and watched them open their presents. After that we had Scott's yummy omeletts and Lorrie's yummy caramel pull aparts. They got a wii this year and so we played some games with them on the wii. We left there and went to Jamie and Eric's and played one of their new wii games and ate some of Jamies yummy coffee cake. After Jamie and Eric's we left and went to Jon and Gingers and had a yummy dinner with them and had a good time visiting with them. For Christmas this year the kids gave us a beautiful picture of the Logan temple (it is the temple Gary and I were married in) and they also gave us a book that Ginger had made with pictures from the whole family. They were both beautiful. We talked to our families in Hawii and Georgia and found them well and happy. We spent part of Christmas Eve day with Ro and Larry and Beth and Randi. Talked to Thelma and Helen on Christmas day and found them well also. Thelma has just received her mission call to Paris France Youth Center and leaves Mar. 21. Many blessings of family and friends this whole year. We love you all!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Winter Beauty

I thought we were going to have a brown Christmas here in Spanish Fork. It would snow and then it would rain and the snow would be gone. However, it started to snow on Mon. and kept snowing. We had the driveway cleared out Monday night when we went to bed and when I got up Tues. morning there was 10" of snow in our driveway. It was wet, heavy snow. I went out to shovel and would never have gotten it done except for 3 wonderful neighbor boys that came over and helped me out. Bryce Elhert, and 2 of the Baum boys came over. I was so grateful to them. I love the beauty of the earth when everything is covered in white. I had to take some pictures of our yard so I could remember how beautiful everything was.
It looked like a "Winter Wonderland"



This is between us and the Newmans with their lights on their trees.











Shane cleaning his truck off



I don't think Caddy liked the snow too much. It was soo deep she couldn't even leave the deck.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Playing in the snow

On Nov. 20th we got some snow. I was glad we got even just a little bit because Brandt and his family were still here and Cameron hadn't been around snow for 3 years and Daniel had never seen that white, cold stuff. So even though there wasn't lots of snow, not even enough to build a snowman, they did get to experience it and had fun playing in it.





Oops, Daniel lost his shoe. Brrrr






Sunday, October 24, 2010

Bryce Canyon Trip

Gary and I took a trip to Bryce Canyon on Thursday, Friday and came home on Saturday. It was an awesome two day trip. We started out on Thursday and headed to Manti to do a session there. We got there and got our suitcases, holding our clothes, and headed up to the temple. We got almost to the door of the temple and some worker told us that the temple was closed for 2 weeks. Well that was a let down. We hopped back into the car and headed to Bryce Canyon. We stayed in a town called Tropic. Not much there, but it was a pretty little place. We had time to go do some hiking on Thursday. Friday we got up and wanted to do some hiking but it was raining. We drove to a museum and they said there was a trail that we could take to see a lot of hoodoos, so even though it was raining, we got our umbrella and put our jackets on and went on a hike. After that we were too wet and cold that so we went back to the hotel and got warmed up and just vegged out. Saturday came to us with the sun shining. It was a beautiful morning. We gathered our things together, checked out of our hotel and headed down the road to the Kodachrome Basin. There we went on several hikes up the trails and along a path that made me wooshy. I didn't dare look down because I didn't like what I saw. I don't like heigths and so it was a challenge for me, but I made it. Hurrah. When we were done hiking we headed for home and came home most of the way in the rain. We got to Utah Valley and was greeted with snow on the mountains. We had a wonderful trip and got to see some of God's beautiful country. We were grateful we could go.

Rock Candy Mountain


More of Rock Candy Mountain

These are Hoodoos






The old Juniper trees are awesom







This was our hike in the rain. It was pretty slick hiking up to this spot.

Gary in the rain

Gary on one of our trails

See the trail going on ahead of Gary. You can't see how high up
we are. This made me nervous to have walk across and I didn't
dare look down





A cave we saw on our hike









Gary climbing up a slick rock

whew, he made it!







This is what we saw when we came into Utah County--this is Payson Mountain

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Happy Halloween

On Saturday, Oct 16, we had our annual Halloween Party. This year we held it at Jamie's house. She has the perfect spot for it. We all enjoyed ourselves eating lots of chili and way too many ghoulie goodies. Jamie had everyone break into groups and went on a Scavanger Hunt. Each group got a penny and they had to go to different homes and ask them if they could give them something to better up the penny. One group came home with a lamp, another group came home with $2.00 and 1/2 of a 2 liter bottle of Pepsi, and the other group came home with a white pumpkin. It was a fun evening.

Of course the I have shown the food first because it is so fun to see what everyone brings.

Here are some eyeballs brought to us by Ginger


These are devilish deviled eggs made by Lorrie

Suckers from Sams

Ghosts in the Graveyard by Jeri and Kaci
And here are more ghosts by Joanne

Scarey Pumpkin cheese ball by Lorrie

These are the decorations.
Here is a hanging spider





A scarey witch
These pictures were drawn by our own little artist, Mark. He is so talented


Now here are the costumes that people wore.
The first one here is the Grimm Reaper, worn by Brandt.

Benjamin's costume is sitting beside him. He was a bee

Here are Cameron and Mark

Cameron

Maddy our cute little butterfly.

Evan

Mark who is Iron Man

Mark

Tyler the caterpillar and Daniel the monkey

Grandpa and Benjamin
Here Maddy had some little thing on her head that she found while playing

Tyler the caterpillar

Evan and Tyler

Amy our 50's girl

Joanne the weird

Jeri and Kaci

Zach

Lorrie and Alex

Colton

RJ

Jon and Ginger

Eric and his brother Lee

Kelsey Hansen, (Shane's girlfriend) and Shane

Jonathon and Brandt

Lorrie and Benjamin