Devin just received his mission call! He will be serving a Family History Mission in Salt Lake City! He is very excited, and we are really happy for him. I am swinging from overjoyed, to freaked out! The kid leaves in one month! Yes, four weeks. His farewell will be on December 26th, and he reports the following Saturday. Yikes!

Winter

This picture is actually Liam on his birthday trip to Salt Lake City, but it did snow like crazy for a little while, so it counts. Unlike the rest of the kids, who picked a major activity, Liam only wanted to go to Cabella's to play at the shooting gallery, and to hang out with mom and dad. That was the easiest yet!
I fondly remember Christmases when there were fun toys wrapped up and crowded under the tree. Now? There are a bunch of little (but absurdly expensive)presents under there, and it looks pretty sad. I think next year, no matter what the gift, it's going in a big ol' box and getting wrapped, just so the tree will look like I think it should. I don't even have any good pictures of this Christmas, and those I do have haven't been downloaded yet. Sorry, people!

Where the heck did September go?

Geez, school just started and now it's October, and the kids are starting to figure out how to get the most candy on Halloween. Zac showed us a video of Colby walking and as soon as he can get it to my e-mail, I'll post it. I have to admit, the kid is pretty darn cute. But in the mean time, enjoy a few pics of my off-spring. Oh, and the grizzly bear paw print we saw on a hike this summer. That is as close to a grizzly bear I ever want to be. The other pictures are of Trey and Jazz cheer leaders on his birthday trip, and Rianne at the Hotel Monaco in SLC for her birthday. You can tell that Trey is thrilled to be surrounded by a bevy of beauties. Hee, hee! Give 4 years and he will look much happier.

Finally home from Vacation with Pictures!

We went on a marathon of a vacation because Dee said that he wanted to drive across the country once. Well, this was his once. We visited Des Moines, Nauvoo, New York City, Washington DC, the coast in Deleware, Wisconsin Dells, and Mt. Rushmore. Here are the photos.

We had such a good time! We loved NYC. The crowds on Times SQuare were a little much for Devin, but the rest was really great. We went to Ellis Island and found lots of family names, but since I have never really checked out our family history, who know if any of them, besides Dee's great-grandfather, were relatives. It was cool to see that there were Isaaks, Quigleys (lots of Quigleys), Zacs, and Kudlacs. The kids loved all the Smithsonian museums in Washington. Devin and I forced everyone into the Art museum, and we agreed that we could have spent an entire day just there. The day we spent at the beach was fantastic. We watched dolphins play and then we discovered there were lots of jellyfish. Liam got a little too personal with one, but didn't seem too traumatized. On the way home we played in a water park, and discovered that I love wave pools, but not tube slides. Now we are busy recovering from all our fun and getting ready for school.

So I haven't been updating this at all lately, and I honestly feel kind of bad about it, but not enough to get me motivated. Part of the problem is that since our computer crashed again, I haven't been able to download our pictures from my camera to the computer and then to here, and there have been some really good ones too. The kids this year have decided that instead of getting a big birthday party with friends, they would rather go do something special with mom and dad, and so far that has been really fun. Trey picked a Jazz game, and Rianne decided that she wanted to see "Hello, Dolly" at the Hale Center theatre in West Valley, UT. We had a blast at both activities and can't wait to see what Devin and Liam pick.

Our big thing this summer will be our trip across the country. We are driving with four kids from Idaho to Maryland and back. This will either bring us closer as a family, or only the survivors will be returning. (I'd better hit the gym more to make sure that I am one of the survivors.) We have some really fun activities planned like seeing a show on Broadway in New York, a visit to Nauvoo, and touring the capitol, and pentagon in Washington DC. I hope that I will be able to post those pictures when we get back. Grrrrr. What good is a blog with no pictures?

Spring Fever

For our birthdays, Dee and I went to Salt Lake City to see a Jazz game and do some shopping. We had a great time, and the only downside was that the weather there was perfect and beautiful and then we had to come home to snow, snow, and more snow. It is really depressing and just made us antsy for spring. But then we headed to the mountains the following weekend for some snowmobiling. Liam and I both learned that trees don't move for you. Darn it. Liam didn't learn from Rianne's lesson about the wisdom of wearing a helmet when riding on machines, so his meeting with the tree was a little rougher than mine, as evidenced by the pictures. I am hoping for no more such incidents for a very long time.

So Much Fun

We've had a crazy few weeks with Zachary's birthday, followed by the Superbowl, then Dee's birthday, and Valentine's Day coming up. This week I've had Hillary's kids staying with me, and we have had so much fun. They have made us laugh at all the cute things they say, including some stuff I'd bet their parents wish they hadn't! Rianne has been a jewel by helping so much with them, in fact, she is Eli's favorite person. The house is trashed, but I'm not going to even try to clean it up till I have it to myself again.