Playing Hard!

This weekend was really great.

Muppy and Pops took us and my sister's girls

to the Provo Beach Resort.

We had a blast!

There is so much to do there and we completely wore ourselves out!

The big kids started off the day off at the flow rider.

Brian surfing:

(he's still sore)

Chloe on the boogie board:

Noah on the boogie board:

Lillie and Addy in the playground.

We had to peel them out of there!

All the pictures I got of Milo are blurry.

He was go, go, go!

Noah on the ropes course:

Chloe was brave and tried to ropes course too.

She did great!

We also managed to squeeze in some snowmobiling this weekend.

Here we are up American Fork canyon.

It's so great that we live close enough to zip

up for a couple hours to sled and play.

It's so pretty up there.

The kids had a great time!

As you can see, it was a thrilling ride.

Put Lillie right to sleep!

We're all a little worn out, but we had a great time!

Science Fair

Noah entered his first Science Fair last week.

He and Brian decided to test Hotteez hand warmers to see

how hot they get, if they actually stay warm for 8 hours and if

there's anything you can do to make them perform better.

Here's Noah taking the temperature of 5 different warmers they

set up with different variables.

He had to take the temp every 15 minutes for 5 hours.

At the school setting up.

As you can see, our display wasn't very amazing.

Quite honestly, we were just happy to have finished on time.

We've been joking that all Noah learned

from this experience is what big

procrastinators his parents are.

But we felt good about the end product

and Noah enjoyed the experiment.

Not too bad for our first Science Fair.

So, you can imagine our complete surprise when Noah came home

today with a gold medal.

He won 1st place in the 5th and 6th grade division!

We had some high-fives and a good laugh about it.

Now he goes to Utah Valley University to compete in the Regional Science Fair.

(woop woop!)

Down in Mexico

Brian and I took off to Cabo San Lucas for a long weekend.

We forgot the camera, but it didn't really matter,

because who wants to take pictures when your kids aren't around?

Here are a few iPhone photos to sum up our trip:

The resort we stayed at:

The view from our room:

View of the beach, while on a water taxi:
Are you jealous yet?

Brian always has to check out the yachts. Funny thing?

The biggest one in the bay was from Park City, UT.

(not the one in the photo :)

Getting geared up for our whale watching trip.

We were in a fast, little Zodiac raft, so we were right down near the water.

We saw several humpback and gray whales.

We would see them just as they would dive down,

so we would see their tails flip out of the water.

But at the end we saw a gray whale breach a couple times.

They are huge! It was pretty exciting.

We got a couple of good beach days.

Brian snorkeled while I read a book. It was really nice, the sunburns

were totally worth it!

We went into downtown Cabo one night for dessert with some friends at

a great place called Edith's. It had a great atmosphere and they put

on a fun fire show with our Bananas Flambe'.

After a few days of warm sun, we were back on a plane headed home.

It was so nice to hang out together and relax. The only problem

is that now I want to go back...

A BIG thank you to all our family who took care of our kids!!

Anyone want to volunteer to watch them next year? :)

This is what was waiting for us at home.

Maybe being back home isn't so bad!

Christmas!!

Christmas has come and gone. It always surprises me how much time

it takes getting ready for Christmas and how quickly it's over.

Here are a few highlights from this Christmas.

We started our holiday off by visiting a live Nativity in Alpine.

It's put on by a family who donate all the contributions to

Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City.

They recreate the streets of Bethlehem with Roman soldiers,

lots of animals and different booths with vendors.

Then you go into the stables and find Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.

It was so dark we didn't get any good photos, but it was really great.

Our annual candy canes. We made candy canes twice this holiday.

Once with friends and again with my sister and her little girls.

I think we've finally got it down!

We finally took the kids in to see the new fossils at the Natural

Science Museum in Salt Lake City. And do you know what?

They weren't even there!! They're on tour somewhere!

Good thing we got to see this guy:

On Christmas Eve we went iceskating with Muppy and Pops and

my sister Erinn and her sweet girls.

Can I just say, iceskating with small children is HARD work.

We were feeling the burn!!

Milo was the last one in our group to get off the ice, he loved it!

We got the kids up the canyon on the the snowmobiles before the

weather got too cold. They would sled down mountain and

we'd zip them back up to the top on the snowmobiles.

Everyone stayed warm and had a great time!!

A few pictures of our Christmas morning.

We had such a nice time. Everyone was healthy and happy.

There was lots of excitement. Lots of hugs and kisses and thank you's.

It really was so nice.

This is just a small glimpse. We really packed a lot into one month!

It was so nice to spend time together as a family and with grandparents

and cousins. I hope your holiday was as wonderful as ours!!