Girls' weekend

My cousin returned from his mission last week and the girls decided to make a trip to St. George for the homecoming (and a little vacation on the side).  The weather was amazing and it was so good to get away and re-charge!

We spent Saturday in Zions.  I have never been, except a quick pass through when we hiked the Subway years ago.  It was just beautiful.

 We left Grandma in the lodge for a few hours and hiked Angels Landing.  It was quite a hike!  This is looking down when we were part way up.

 "Walter's wiggles"

 When you get to Scout Lookout (2 miles up) there is this sign before you do the last 1/2 mile.

 Unfortunately, my mom and I couldn't go any further, but Nicki and Paige made it all the way!

 We waited below and took lots of pictures.

It was so much fun and I can't wait to take the kids back some time!

Olympic speed skating trials

Danny's mom got VIP passes for the speed skating Olympic trials and we were lucky enough to be invited to tag along.  We arrived and were met with a delicious buffet and this awesome ice sculpture.

We watched some fun races.

And them we were seated right behind the awards ceremony.

We tried a few of those photo prop cutouts.  This one cracks me up.

And tried sitting in the bobsled (it's MUCH harder than it looks).

I didn't get any pictures, but we were also able to go out and skate in the ice, which was pretty cool!  It was such a fun day, brought back a lot of great memories of the Olympics in SLC.  I'm really excited for the Olympics to start!  Go USA!

Christmas 2013

Christmas dress clothes

Our church is at 9 AM, so we were rushing and these were the best pictures I got of the kids.  They were so cute!

Sick of sick...

I cannot remember a Christmas in my entire life when everyone in the family was healthy.  Not one.  I vividly remember many Christmases when everyone was throwing up.  Even one when Nicki and I went to a family party all by ourselves because everyone else was sick.  Last year we passed around a nasty 24 hour stomach flu bug that literally went through EVERYONE.  And the worst part was that I started it while Danny and I were supposed to be having a weekend get away in SLC.

Anyways, this year has been no different.  Caydence has been running a fever and coughing for almost a week now.  It's been pretty rough.  We have literally been stuck in our house for 5 days now. I'm kinda losing it.  Danny came home after day 3 and I just burst out in tears.  I was even supposed to be hanging out with a bunch of friends I haven't seen in a while, but I just couldn't get my emotions under control!  Embarrassing, but true.  She is finally starting to get better, but it is just breaking my heart that she has missed her dance recital, a whole week of school, Polar Express day when they got to wear pj's to school, and her class Christmas party.  She has just been devastated and it's breaking my heart!

Just needed to vent my pitty party for a minute.  Things are looking up, I am just grateful that Will hasn't caught it (yet) and that maybe we will be done with it by Christmas!

The rest of the random photos part 2

I took the kids to Davis Cup (marching band competition) and they loved it.

 Good thing Will is getting some masculine dress ups for Christmas....

 Caydence loves to watch Paige cheer at games.

 Picture day!

 The cute result:

 Caydence's school shirt.  It's pretty crazy to send her to Windridge (my elementary school!)

 Woke up one lovely Sunday morning to this...

 Will and Caydence love to do the Jillian Michaels work out DVD with me.  Some of us like to dress up first.

 I went to my first parent/teacher conference as the parent.  That was super weird, I felt like I should still be the student.  I seriously still feel like my 16 year-old self.  Her teacher gave us this and I couldn't help but chuckle.  "When I grow up I want to be...Rapunzel!"

 We've had a couple good snow storms this week and the kids keep begging to play in the snow.  I HATE it!  It takes them about 16X's as long to get them ready as they actually last out there!  And then I have wet clothes, floors, etc. and they think they HAVE to have hot chocolate after every time out there!  I should be more fun, but I really hate it!

 And my favorite, they wanted to play reindeer/Santa, ha ha!