Tubing

One of the days we were in Kemmerer we went tubing down this pretty steep hill they have in town! It was so much fun! Ella was so excited to go but we didn't really have any "real" snow clothes for her so we improvised with lots of layers and plastic bags over her bundled feet! It ended up working pretty well. After a bit of being out there she wanted to shed some layers, so really why invest in snow clothes when you can just be ghetto like us and make your own snow shoes! Ha ha. ( This was Crystal writing) But from now on Chad will be commenting on the rest of the post.

**This is Chad signing in for my quarterly blog chime in.**










This is the steepest hill SW Wyoming has to offer.



The tapered sweat pants and hiking boots combo helped me fit right in Wyoming style. I got compliments at the local grocery store - "Yeah, killer boots man!" - Lloyd Christmas



Ella's boots. Don't judge, we weren't planning on this adventure so we had to improvise. Yes, those are plastic bags with rubber bands holding them secure to her legs.



"I love sledding in less-than-adequate apparel."



This is Ella trying to karate chop the camera.



"I'm not bored, I have hypothermia. I feel so warm, what is that bright light?"



This looks deceivingly unsafe.



Cousin Phil and I experimenting with the most dangerous way to go down a snow slope, elbows joined like we're doing a do-si-do.



The result: gettin jacked up on the ice skating rink.

Christmas Part Dos

To start out here's a random little photo shoot I attempted by myself with my kids after church awhile back...It was not easy trying to keep them sitting in one place and not bugging each other or trying to run away! I definitely need an assistant the next time I try it!









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Yes I am still catching up on Christmas pictures...
So just for a recap, On my first Christmas post I wrote about how we had a Christmas Eve at our place and then we traveled to the Henkel's in WY for Christmas morning. For some reason we didn't take any pictures of us opening presents at the Henkels (bummer) but they were very generous gift givers and we had a lot of fun spending Christmas day and few days after that with them! Here are some of the pictures from our time there!



I think this picture is like the only one where Jack is smiling...long story short, Jack was sick when we went to the Henkels and the doctors had given me some Amoxicillin for it...everything seemed to be going fine and he seemed to be getting better and then for some reason we got to the Henkels in the morning and by night he started acting really strange and clingy and he became a complete wreck! He didn't sleep more than a half hour that whole night, he was so not like himself and pretty much would only let me hold him. It was a rough time there for awhile, we weren't sure if it was the antibiotics causing him to have the weird reaction so we stopped giving them to him. After a couple more days he started to get progressively better thank goodness! (so I just barely noticed Jason's face in the background! Ha ha, good one Jason! :)



Little buddies... El and her cousin Caz have some good times together.



Deer just hangin out in the Henkels front yard.



Grandpa and little buddy Jack. Pretty much the only other person that Jack would allow to hold him was Grandpa, he didn't even want to go to Chad when he was acting all weird and clingy! But
G-pa he accepted! Go Grandpa Don!



We celebrated Chad's 28th birthday while we were there in WY. This was the cake I made for him (it didn't turn out as pretty as the first time I tried to make this particular cake but It was still just as delicious!)



The awkward birthday boy! J/K just an awkward face :)



For some reason Chad and his dad decided to do a face off with each other like they do in the Ultimate Fighter, not sure where that came from but it was funny.



Our little Bella glued to the T.V. again...ever since we moved and left our T.V. with our renters she gets really excited to see a T.V. again! It's kinda funny, she actually will just tell people randomly, "I don't have a T.V." all matter of factly. I actually don't mind too much having it gone, our computer works pretty well as our "T.V." now and Ella has gotten pretty good at pushing random buttons on it to make her movie replay! Seriously, f I don't notice that her movie has ended she will try to push buttons to make it start over again and a lot of the time she gets it, the little stinker! She is a smart one I'll give her that much!



Riding the grandpa horse!



Chad's cousin's that live in Mesa, AZ came up to visit while we were with the Henkels and Chad and his cousin Phillip had a good ol' time "nerd alerting" on the Iphone playing "Tap Tap Revenge" (a version of guitar hero for the Iphone.) It was funny to watch them, they were really focused as you can see. :)



Cousin Rachel all cute reading her book on the couch.



Uncle Jason at his finest! :)



Waiting to go to church.




My little buddy, looking so sweet.

We had a really good time while we were there with the whole family! It's sad to have Christmas all over and done with! I love family get togethers! p.s. (I have a bunch of pictures from when we went tubing while we were there but this post is getting really long so I will just put them on a separate post after this one...)

Next on our travel itinerary was traveling to Boise to visit my parents. It was quite the deal for my kids to get to have Christmas 3 whole times! Pretty much Ella started to believe that Christmas would never end and opening presents would be a daily activity! My family were very kind to us as well and spoiled us with some great gifts.



Jack loved the whole opening present experience!



Ella got a Cinderella princess purse with necklace and gloves included so of course her and Papa Lamb had to go dance at the ball. The only thing Papa didn't bargain for was that she NEVER wants to stop dancing! :0)



Inspecting the goods... Looking over his new briefcase and wearing his new jacket my mom the expert shopper found!



Cute little beanie boy.



Loving her new chalkboard.

Both sides of our families were SO sweet to do all that they did for us over the Christmas break! We had a great time with both of our families and feel so blessed to have both of them!

Question??

Why can't strictly CHEESE for every meal be a balanced diet?











That would seriously alleviate meal time battles with this little girl!

Merry Christmas... part uno

For the Christmas break we had a pretty eventful time. To start off the holidays we had our own family's Christmas, Christmas Eve night...it was interesting making up a way to incorporate Santa coming to our house that night while we were still awake but we made it work! I had Chad go outside with a bag of jingle bells and shout "HO HO HO, Merry Christmas!" and then stomp around some. When Ella heard that she was SO excited, she goes, " Santa said Ho Ho Ho, he so funny!" So then I told her that we had to go in their room so that Santa could bring the presents! She was bouncing off the walls with excitement! It was so much fun this year with both our kids but especially Ella because she is starting to understand what the present opening thing is all about!



Jack's first ever attempt at opening a present and he did a pretty good job...loved the paper of course!



After opening the first present Ella just wanted to play with it and was fine not opening anymore we had to keep saying you can play with it in a minute first open this other present. It made me realize that less is definitely more with kids, I'm pretty sure she would have been fine with just one present! But us being the excited parents couldn't stop at just one, oh well now we know that she is easily satisfied!



After awhile though she got the hang of opening all of them first and then she could play with them. It was fun to watch her excitement.



Chad picked out this dump truck for Jack and once he saw it he was super excited! He didn't really care about much else after that.



Other than sucking on Ella's new play baby bottles!



One of Ella's absolute favorite gifts this year!



Belle from beauty and the beast as a toddler was quite the hit as well!



She got a little doctor kit to play with as well and had a lot of fun giving her dolls medicine!

The next day (Christmas Day) we left at 6:30 in the morning to go to Chad's parents house for Christmas with them. We wanted to leave early because we wanted to be able to talk to Dallon, Chad's brother who's on a mission and was supposed to be calling around 10:00. On the drive up we were passing through Blackfoot and we got pulled over! I think the cop must have been bored and just ticked off that he was working Christmas Day cause seriously it was so ridiculous what we were pulled over for. SO he comes up to the window to talk to Chad and it's still pretty dark cause it's early in the morning and I was sitting in the back of the car with kids feeding them breakfast. He looks in on us and is shining the flashlight in our eyes and he goes, " Do you know why I pulled you over?" and Chad responded, " Um I'm not sure." (He hadn't been speeding or anything.) Then the cop goes, " I pulled you over because your driving is Terrible!" Chad just kind of chuckled awkwardly unsure what to say and was like "Really?" He responded, " Well that concerns me that you don't even realize...You were going over the lines into the other lane weaving around...is there something distracting you in here (as he shines the flashlight in the kids and I's faces again. Chad was like, " No, I don't think so, I mean I didn't go over the guard rail or anything (what he meant to say was the bumpy strip thing that helps you know you are going off the road) the cop seemed a little taken aback by Chad's comment and sort of laughed and said, No you didn't hit the gaurd rail but you were not driving very safe and you need to be more aware of your driving...blah blah something like that. SO then he goes back and checks all the stuff that they check and comes back and says I'm just going to give you a warning but this could be a $75 fine and 3 points on your license so be more careful." Chad and I couldn't help laughing after he left because of the way he was like, your driving is TERRIBLE (with some definite annunciation on the terrible part.) It was so weird though cause I was looking up from time to time and it didn't feel like we were weaving around a lot. Chad was eating sunflower seeds though and maybe they were really distracting him :) I just think that guy was being REALLY nit picky! The best part about the whole experience though was that I kinda got some redemption from it because Chad has chastised me for drifting to close or over the line and he was the one who got pulled over for it! Hehe Love you though Chad!

While we were in Kemmerer Chad gave me the last present of his Christmas gifts to me....a new CAMERA! I was so excited! It's a Canon D50 and I love it to pieces! I have not uploaded all of the photos from it onto the computer yet so there will be more to come of our Christmas extravaganza! These pictures were from our other camera.

While we were in Kemmerer Chad and I celebrated our 4th anniversary on the 28th of December...which is truly a horrible time to have your anniversary, right next to Christmas and Chad's birthday on the 26th! SO many events all in one shot! It's just crazy! Chad and I decided that for our next anniversary we are going to celebrate in the summer sometime so it can have its own special time instead of all jumbled in with the Christmas festivities. It's just hard to really do anything when we're visiting our families and wanting to spend what short time we have with them together. Anyways we made it work and it was a lot of fun! We decided to go on a double date with Didi and Jason (Chad's sister and our brother-in-law since they were up there too and we've never gotten to go on a double date with them and hey when ya have grandparents willing to sit for ya who could ask for more! thanks again grandma and grandpa Henkel!) We ended up driving 45 minutes to Evanston a little bit bigger of a city than Kemmerer to see a movie and go out to eat. It was a lot of fun and worth the drive for the experience we had there! The movie theater there which i think was only playing like 4 movies, seriously looked like it was straight out of a horror movie! The drapes in the theater were shredded in one spot like a wild animal went loose there. There was some kind of water damage all over the entire wall, it looked like mold was growing on it. Plus it smelled like sewage and some what of a cleaner smell that was trying to mask it but was failing miserably. There were taped broken seats, insulation almost falling from the ceiling...my explaining this place really isn't doing it justice, it should have been condemned! Ha ha but it was so funny laughing and joking about how weird the place was. Definitely a once in a life time experience.



Here's a pic from when we were at dinner at this country restaurant that I can't remember the name of. The food there was so yummy though!



Aww Dut dut and Jason! Good times with the fam and we'll definitely have to do another date night with them again sometime!

I'm off to bed... more to come though...soon!