Ice climbers

Today we had a fun day out and about here in Utah county.

Leslie, Kyron and their family returned to Richfield last night after a busy few days. Let me first give you a small picture of our day yesterday. All of you parents know how fun it is traveleing an hour or more with children crammed in a car. Yesterday, we drove up to the copper mine just west of Herriman. It's not really that far (only about 45 minutes each way), but there was 11 children when you count mine, Leslie's, and Brandon's (he and Michelle arrived with their children yesterday to visit for a few days). Cousins were squealing with excitement to see eachother and wanted to ride together in this car or that, but this child was to tired and needed a nap, and this child needed that..... You get the picture. Well we drove up to the mine, which John had just been to a few weeks earlier, only to find it was closed because of ice for the next few months. I think the adults were all more disappointed than the children.
So we had to figure out what to do, quick, without disappointing to many people. Brandon was trying to count all the temples in Utah and how many he could see right there in Salt Lake county, so we decided to drive over to the Oquirrh Mtn temple so they could see it up close. Then we could also make up our minds on what to do and where to go. I had fun there trying out my new camera lens.

This is Leslie's baby Maggie looking up at Angel Moroni.

Abby is always wonderful to pose for a pretty picture

But, she isn't always wonderful about walking around, John had to carry both Abby and Macey around.

We finally settled on a trip to Cabellas!!! I mean who is crazy enough to take that many kids to a hunting store! We did, and yet we ended up having lots of fun shooting the target guns, looking at the stuffed animals and watching the fish. Alyssa was quite disgusted someone would kill an animal to have it's head put on a wall, but other than that it turned out to be a great outing.

Today we tried to keep a little more low key without all the traffic driving, Brandon didn't really like how fast everyone has to drive here in Utah, and so we went up provo canyon. My parents and Brandon and never seen the ice climbers before and so we had some fun by bridal veil falls taking pictures and watching the ice climbers. I know a few of my friends from Kauai that would really enjoy the ice climbing, but personally they all seemed a little more than crazy to even try that. Climbing up a sheet of ice does is definately not on my bucket list! Maybe that's why Hailey is afraid of heights, an inheritance from her mother.

There was a little bit of snow on the trail to the falls, but this was it! It was mainly ice.

Here is a picture of my parents at the falls

Brandon, Michelle and their 3 childrent, Parker, Emily and Payson.

We drove on up to Sundance ski resort to see if there was any snow. All I can say is wow there is no snow in the mountains yet!

After this, we took the kids to Alvin and the chipmunks, they loved it, I loved it and John fell asleep in it!! He's a great dad to even come with is! My dad stayed home with Macey so they could both nap during the movie :)

The kids had a super fun day and they loved having their cousins here for the last few days.

A Beautiful Christmas

Today is Christmas and we have had a wonderful day! I can't say that about this morning though, well it was wonderful but .... Last night when the girls were tucked into bed their clocks were checked and we discussed that no one would be coming downstairs before 6:45. Let me explain, Hailey won a $50 gift card to toys r us from John's company for a calendar drawing she drew, and so she had her new walkie talkie's ready to page dad before coming down the stairs. Abby slept upstairs on the futon so that all three of the big girls could come downstairs and enter the living room together, it was all planned out perfect. At 5:50, 3 little girls entered our bedroom to see why we wouldn't answer the walkie-talkie pagings that they had been sending, someone had changed all there clocks in the night to be an hour ahead of time... and who could that be? Don't ask me, parents would never do that sort of thing, maybe our dear elf Jewel returned with Santa and decided to do a little more mischief in our home.

We did have a wonderful Christmas morning and our girls all loved their gifts from everyone. Hailey got a new cruiser bicycle, a pottery wheel and a new outfit for her American girl doll.

Alyssa just wanted the Hawaiian American girl doll they had this year, Kanani, and she did get her. She came with a paddle board and she also got two other outfits. She asked for this doll because she thinks that she'll give this doll to Macey when Macey is old enough, it's the Hawaiian 2011 doll and since Macey was born in Hawaii Alyssa thinks she needs the Hawaiian doll, sweet thinking sister.

Abby was so excited to get her a little leap frog pad to play games on, it looks a lot like my iPhone. Thank you Santa, for now maybe she'll leave the games on my iphone alone. She also receive a little car type thing for outside.

Macey didn't join our family until a little later this morning, 6 am isn't when she gets up! She got a pink tricycle, a cute outfit, her daddy made her a rocking horse and last of all she got a really cute build a bear monkey that my sweet neice Ashley helped me make a couple weeks ago.

This year, my dad and mom came to visit us for Christmas, they got here on Friday and will be here until next Friday. I'm so happy they could be here, it's not often you can pull my dad away from the San Luis valley for more than a few days. Our girls love having their grandparents here and it's really nice to be in our new home and have an extra bedroom.
Alyssa has been in our Primary's childrens choir and so she sang a beautiful song in church. John went over early to make sure we would get good seats and when I got there about 5 minutes early, there was nothing left. It even went back into the gym. It was a wonderful way to splend our Christmas day, remembering our Savior. The choir and the Kohlers did a wonderful job and made this a perfect Christmas Sunday.

I didn't want to spend lots of time cooking on Christmas day and so we prepared most of our dinner the day before, it was very nice because all we had to cook on Sunday was the ham and then put a few casserole dishes into the oven for cooking. Having my mom here was wonderful, not having to do it all. I just remember last Christmas, living in Kauai we didn't have family near, but we did. We had Dale an Genevieve Keep and their family over for dinner, they were our family there and we miss them so much this year. It would be nice to be amoung all of our families at this time, we love and miss all of you that couldn't be here with us.

Leslie and Kyron drove their family up on Christmas day after their sacrament services and will spend the next two nights here. John thought it would be fun to set up a tent in the basement for the kids to sleep in, and they are excited! Our basement is quite warm and then Leslie can have Hailey and Alyssa's room with the futon and two twin beds for her little girls. Abby is the most excited to sleep in the tent, I don't think she'll ever want to come back to her bedroom again!

It's a brown Christmas, Charlie Brown!

This morning at 8 am I was talking to my dad on the phone and checked our weather. It was a mighty 12 degree's here in Provo Utah and a whole -15 degree's in Alamosa Colorado. I'm not to very pleased with either one, but my house is warm so that makes up for it all. On my phone's weather tracker, I also noticed that it was 72 degree's in sunny Poipu although it's only 5 am there. Yes, I still check the weather there frequently and kick myself, the weather I miss the rest I was prepared to leave. We're still not used to it though. Abby got up and put on a tank top and shorts, I did put away all the summery clothes in a closet drawer months ago. But, I guess she was tempted to wear some of her clothes that hadn't been out for months. I will add she must have got toasted in Kauai because her tan never faded, she has a perfect tan and looks great in her summer clothes.

There is no snow here though and I did make a similarity to last Christmas, it's a brown Christmas with a tad bit of green. Last year on Christmas Eve we spent the day at Kalapaki beach and well the sand was brown, in the background we had the green mountain's and beach resort, here it's winter, so it's brown, but our grass still has a touch of green in it :) Here is a few pictures of us playing in the sand and boogie boarding as we waited for Santa to come in on a canoe.

Really, I'm not complaining. This Christmas will actually be a lot better Christmas, we are in our own home, we'll be surrounded by family and we are really happy here. Last Christmas we were starting to pack and had boxes all over and I didn't have time for anything. My parents are on their way out here to spend Christmas with our family, Brandon's family will be coming in a few days, Matt and Kamelle are coming over on Christmas Eve, and Leslie's family will come up late on Christmas day to stay for a day or two. I love making Christmas candy, well I guess I should say I love eating it and the humidity was always to high to make any.....so this year I have been working on it all and though it's not perfect, it's still yummy.

Today we'll be visiting the mall so that Hailey and Alyssa can see Santa, I can't believe they haven't seen him yet this year. Last year they visited Santa at the company party, ward party, school program, and at the mini mall, this year they have yet to see him and so we better hurry up. Abby and Macey visited Santa at the mall a few weeks ago and well as you see in the picture above, Macey acted the same way this year with Santa. Definitely not picture worthy! Maybe today we'll be able to get a picture that is worth keeping.

Every night John has been reading a different Christmas story book to our kids. I love this time of year and I really love all these books we have slowly collected. The look in our girls eyes as they listen to the stories, feels my heart so much love. They know why we celebrate Christmas and they know the true meaning of Christmas. I'm really excited to see them tomorrow night as we read Luke 2 and have the girls act out the nativity with their cousins. I remember doing this so many times as a little girl, walking down the stairs at my grandma's, anxiously waiting for our part in the nativity. It's some of the best memories. We've never been able to do this before, but it's a time for new traditions to begin.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you can all have a Merry Christmas and remember our Saviour and those around you as we celebrate this wonderful holiday. Love you all!!!

PreSchool Christmas Program

We started our our Christmas programs by going to University Mall Thursday to watch our cousin Kaeden and his preschool sing a few songs on the stage their. They were all really cute and did a really good job.
At first I couldn't find Kaeden along the wall where they had everyone taking pictures, then I just looked for the tallest kid and there he was. Abby as you can see would not be nice at all when trying to take a picture of the two of them together. I wanted a fun picture of the two of them to send to their other cousin Nathan, but it didn't happen. Macey and Braxton had a fun time during the program also.

On Friday Abby's preschool met in an auditorium in the BYU Harmon building. It was very well choreographed, the kids had parts and sang about 10 songs in 20-25 minutes. Abby's part was "The sleigh bells are shined" and she was so proud of her little part.

Abby will by Abby though and while all the other kids sit up straight she's slouching in her chair and playing with her cap.

She did try to look cute and smile at her mommy lots! (I meant to crop out that boy on the top row in this picture)