More Winter Fun

The kids had last week off of school. Don't ask me why, it's basically comes down to, "Well why not?" Regardless, Dee had to work but we needed to get out of Dodge for a bit. Our friends have a second house in Mt. Shasta they offered to let us use for a couple days. AWESOME! Close enough for Dee to work and far enough we could get away and have fun.

Monday we were absolutely lazy. This is how the day started. Love it!

Then a walk in the woods. They were super excited to find snow. Not much, but plenty to play in. I think everybody got hit in the face with a snowball.

Back for hot chocolate, more board games, more TV. Heaven!

Dee was able to get Tuesday off and he took the three oldest skiing/snowboarding. Carter and I met them for lunch and to play in more snow, then home.

It was so great to get away for a bit. To play, to relax, to not have distractions pulling at us from every side. Love family time!

For a couple extra pictures, the first is Tyler's last Pinewood Derby car/snowboard Turned out pretty awesome.

Next is a picture at my Great (Grand?) Uncle Les Wheeler's 90th birthday celebration. He's the one in the center. This was just a portion of the people there to celebrate him. What a great man! My dad came from Utah, my Aunts, Uncles and cousin came from Idaho. It was so fun to see them!

Awesome Webelo and things that make me smile

Ty officially received his Webelo Scout badge. The Blue and Gold dinner was this week where he was presented with the patch. We're so proud of his work and so thankful for his great leaders who take the time and put forth so much effort to helping him.

As tradition dictates, the Scouts make a cake with their fathers. The theme was Wild West. There is a story behind this one, but let's just say it couldn't BE more scout-ish! Love how it turned out. :)

I mentioned a few things that make me smile. One is the rounding up of our poor dog. Did I mention how very patient Pete is? Love his look in the last picture.

Ellie has become quite the monkey. The picture on the left is at a birthday party she went to at the gymnastics place. She is much higher than she looks and climbed probably 5 times all the way up. Amazing girl! The picture on the right is her Valentine box for school.

Another thing that makes me happy is Tyler's grades. I had a picture on here but it stated his school and stuff, figured I'd better just leave it off. He's really been struggling in math this year and has finally brought all his grades up. Wa hoo!

The next smile probably won't make McKenna happy, but maybe she'll stop taking pictures with my phone... :)

And last for today - Ellie's LOVE for reading. There is a point my kids have all hit where it stops being hard or a chore to read and they can't get enough of it. She's hit it!

Hiking In January

Lovely weather here. I know at least one of you reading this just made a grumpy face at me (mom) but that is one of the joys of being in the North State. To celebrate we thought we'd try on the gift my parents gave us (National Park Pass - Awesome gift!) and go for a hike.

I'd love to be able to tell you where we are. Somewhere around Whiskeytown somethin or other. All I know was on the other side of this wall was a long and beautiful way down. You know the kind where for a fleeting moment you wish you had wings? Maybe that's just me. And it's not so fleeting. Anyway...

I don't know if you can see Carter's face in the next one. He looks worried as if he's going to fall.

As you can tell, he doesn't worry long.

Love this picture. Can you tell who Pete's favorite is?!

Some Days Are Better Than Others

Some days are better than others.

This was my post on FaceBook yesterday and I thought I'd expound a little for you. At first the day sounded like a disjointed country song... (even if it is actually a U2 song quote)... but I added the good parts in italics so we could see them. It took me a day to see all the good stuff.

• Dee's Grandma passed away last week. She lived a good long life and it was not unexpected, still his Grandma passed away. We were able to see her over Thanksgiving. She made a surprising connection with our little Ellie that was precious for me to see. The funeral is tomorrow in Utah so he made arrangements to leave with his brother yesterday and drive out returning Sunday. The weather has been horrible and I was so worried they'd be caught in the storm, but they made it ahead of the storm - no stopping for snow at all.
• He was already away on business when he found out so he came home for one night this week and left again the next day. This is the first and last week it hasn't been packed with extracurricular activities for the kids. Although it's busy, it's not so busy I have to pick which place to be, because I can't be two places at once.
• At work he is launching a new medicine soon. What does this mean? It means additional travel, it means study at home, it means tests to take and pass, it means work mode. Not necessarily a bad thing when expected, but all consuming. He planned on taking his last big test before he left so he didn't have to worry about work while he was with family. More on this in a minute.
• We've had incredible weather here until a couple days ago. Again, not unexpected. Before he left yesterday morning he cleaned out the fireplace from the night before and filled our woodpile. Love that man! He dumped the ashes on our burn pile, which was pretty high. It caught fire immediately. I'm talking 4 foot flames. Glad he didn't throw the ashes into the trash! I went out to turn the hose on (just in case) and realize the pipe had a crack in it from the freeze the night before. Not a big one, just a leak. However, Dee was going out of town and wanted to fix it before it got worse. He turned the nozzle and a 4 foot high spout of water shot from the pipe not too far from the flames. Irony. Again, of all pipes to break that was the best one. Not by the house, no risk of flooding. Glad it happened before he left and not after, also. He was able to fix it and the burn pile was no hazard after the initial flames settled down.
• The kicker of the day, however, was when he sat down to prepare for his test. He was checking his email and there was a new one from work. It basically said there would be a conference call tomorrow (this morning) to announce a layoff and who would be affected. Not. Again. Sick. Angry. Frustrated. Scared. Unsure. Numb. Now, we all know what a worrier I am. On the outside I was just fine and on the inside all this was happening. As Bono so simply stated, "Some days are better than others." Dee still had to leave. Time would not go any faster or slower. All we could do - again - was pray. After Dee left, after the fires were out and the floods had stopped I fell to my knees and prayed. I started with counting blessings which took a while because it's hard to do that when you're angry. After a while the pleading came and the hope for understanding until I was through saying what was filling my heart and mind. When I stopped and listened I was filled with peace. I knew it would be okay, whatever "IT" was. God has a plan.

Today we know he was not laid off. He still has a job. A job which, even though it requires him to travel or study late into the night, he enjoys it and it provides for our family. Today is more like a U2 song, and less like a country song. Today is better than yesterday.

Summary of Christmas - JOY and photo dump

To show you all the Christmas glee at our house this one included lots of pictures. I tried to collage them so the post isn't super long, but it is what it is.

The first part of Christmas for us is decorating. I love to hang up Christmas stuff, I love the way it makes my house feel. Only a couple of pictures of it, if you want to see the whole thing you're going to have to join us for a Christmas!

Second: The Christmas parade. The two oldest were on a float this year for their school's performing group. The pictures turned out horrible so imagine yourselves there. Small town parade where you know lots of people IN the parade and lots of people WATCHING the parade. Fun stuff.

Third: School performances. I didn't have a good picture of Mk & Ty's performance because I was at the snack table and couldn't see the kids well. Small picture of all the stuff I made for the fundraiser. Mrs. Santa had nothing on me! Great picture of Ellie and Dee before hers. They had a record turn out for her school, over 200 kids, and you could CLEARLY hear her singing. No surprise if you know my little Ellie with the big voice, but still made me literally laugh out loud.

Fourth: Christmas Eve traditions. We hold our "big fancy dinner" Christmas Eve. I have reasons for that and if you're truly curious you can ask me later. We watch Santa make his way on Santa Tracker. We also read the story of Christ's birth from Luke and open Christmas jammies. This year we were so blessed to have my best friend and her family join us. We played some board games, ate too much, admired the men's fantastic shirts, took pictures and truly enjoyed the day.

Finally Christmas morning! The kids' favorite presents were the bike for Carter, Tyler got a box of tricks from Aunt Mo which included the "nail through the finger" which he wore for a couple of days even playing video games, McKenna got a box of rocks :) from Aunt Mo and a signed by the entire cast poster of "Wicked" from Gordon and Kristi and Ellie's favorite was all her art supplies (especially tracing paper. That's right Dollar Store tracing paper. Thanks Santa.) The picture on the bottom left was our living room AFTER the tornado. We had strawberry waffles, took a nap and went to church.

And last, but not least a couple of my favorite pictures. This one is Carter while decorating the tree. He found a stocking - and tried to put it on.

My favorite picture is my little artist Ellie Christmas Eve. <3

1000 Watt Smile

I have lots to post about but I'm going to do a quick one today about Ty. What, you may ask, would make him be celebrating with a huge bowl of carmel corn? (Don't worry, he didn't eat it all himself.)

He got his (first set) of braces off! YAY he's free until High School! Remember the before picture?

Here's the after picture.

Love that 1000 Watt smile!

Thankful

Over the river and through the woods to Heaffy's house we go! We were able to go to Utah for Thanksgiving this year and were so spoiled. Heather and Andy are always wonderful hosts in their beautiful house. We feel so welcomed and loved while we're there. The food is ALWAYS amazing (as you can tell by the pictures) and we're all a good 5-10 pounds heaver when we leave.

(Amber brought stuff for gingerbread houses, that is Ellie with her "Animal Hospital". Greg is next to her with their amazing salad. The last picture on the bottom was all the pies. Heather and Jesica spoiled us all with 18 pies! The food was AMAZING!)

Top L: Andy and Heather Top R: Lee and Carter working on the gingerbread houses.

Bottom L: Gordon and Brandon Bottom R: Grandma Trujillo and Ellie

Brandon returned from his mission from the Philippines exactly 4 days before this trip to Utah. We were all so excited to have all the cousins together for the first time in years. It's amazing to me how quickly time has flown and it's evident seeing them all together. Unfortunately I didn't ever get a group shot of them together but they are all grown up now! (Except my kids and Revis, of course. But now the smallest one is my GRAND NEPHEW AND NIECE! How did I get old enough for that?! I am so proud of them all, though. It is so great to see the adults they have grown into.)

Brian, Ben, Dee, Brandon and Gordon heading out the door skiing.

We had enough snow to play in for one day. Just right for me but I think the kids wanted more. Ah well, at least we had that!

This is my grand-nephew Bert and my grand-niece Marley (with her parents).

I also took some "time off" and went to dinner with some girlfriends. I hadn't seen a couple of them since High School and it was so good to catch up. Laughed a lot!

We were able to go to the Powell's for my dad's birthday (see him plugging his ears? We're great birthday singers!) and to decorate the tree. I also got to meet my new nephew Dax - SOOOOOO cute! He let me hold him a ton and was such a sweet baby. All my siblings came out too and mom had cinnamon bread. Loved it!

I am so thankful for family. I am thankful we are able to see them. I am thankful for a safe car and a safe trip. I am thankful to feel so incredibly loved!