Holidays 2012

Grandma Gwen always makes the family delicious homemade, hand-dipped chocolates. As of this year she is no longer able to make them because it is a LOT of work and her body doesn't like it. Eric and I asked her if she'd teach us how to make them, and she agreed!!! We spent the night up there and she let us copy all of her recipes, taught us how to make the fillings, and told us a bunch of her tricks. I went back up to Ogden a few days later so she could teach me how to dip them in chocolate.

 We sure love Grandma Gwen, she is one strong lady!

 Reese enjoyed hearing the story of Christ's birth over and over again. She decided it would be fun to dress up like Mary while she colored her Nativity coloring book.

 We went with David, Nicole, and Amber to temple square this year. It was raining like crazy, which wasn't all that enjoyable for walking around looking at the lights, so sadly we didn't roam as much as normal. However, we did get to ride Trax, which was the kids favorite part.

 The train was PACKED!

 We met the Warburtons at Cabela's for a little outing before Christmas. The dad's took over the guns at the "shooting range", it was pretty funny.

 We were surprised and excited to hear that Santa was there. The kids were stoked to go sit on his lap. Reese told him she wanted a Hello Kitty toothbrush (this girl always requests a toothbrush for Christmas, no wonder she has such pretty teeth :)), Ivan got a little timid once he was on Santa's lap but still said that he wanted "toys".

 Here's a portion of the chocolates we made this year. I hope to get better over the years. Especially at tempering the chocolate so it doesn't get white streaks through it.

 On Christmas Eve we went to my parents to eat our tradition shepherd's meal, open Christmas PJs, and watch the living scriptures nativity movie. The cousins always LOVE being together!

 As soon as Ivan had his batman jammies on, his character turned into batman as well. Here he is showing his strong muscles.

Christmas morning was wonderful. Reese and Ivan were both really excited this year, which made Eric and I feel like kids all over again.

 The day after Christmas we left on a roadtrip to Oregon, to then follow the coastline South to Anaheim, CA, where we were going to meet my family for a week long trip at Disneyland. Our excursion was pretty exciting, with snow covered highways, snowstorms, and lots of fun site seeing.

 Although cold, it was BEAUTIFUL!

 A giant motorcycle :)

 Wild burros

 L-O-N-G stretches of slippery snow packed roads.

 This was a really pretty abandoned farm that we spotted and had to go check out.

Ivan turns 2

Ivan likes to work with daddy when he builds.

 For Ivan's second birthday we spent the day at Discovery Gateway museum and had a combined birthday party (dinner and cake/ice cream) with Amber.

Halloween 2012

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Ivan reminds a lot of Bam-Bam from the Flintstone's so his costume was a no-brainer. Reese wanted to be a princess, Sleeping Beauty in particular. Not sure why since I don't know that she has ever watched the entire movie - it is kind of scary! Eric had a Halloween work party at the Capitol this year so we decided to go all out and dress up as well. Eric was Fred, I was Wilma, Ivan was Bam-Bam, and we talked Reese into being Pebbles (by telling her we would spray paint her hair a color). At the Capitol we had a fun lunch and then Mrs.Clause took all the kids around to all the offices to go Trick-or-Treating. Reese was very good at saying "trick or treat" and "thank you". Ivan was very particular and would spend quite a bit of time at each bowl picking and re-picking out the perfect treat, usually something in a blue wrapper.

We had our traditional Ellis/Christensen pumpkin carving night, except without pumpkin soup or David and Nicole :( I was too busy with school, and David and Nicole are living in DC right now. Still a good night though! Reese was OBSESSED with digging the pumpkin guts out and then 'massaging' them for the next hour.

We went to Cornbelly's with Jared, Sarah, and Parker Swanson. They had the AWESOMEST slide with some pretty wicked bumps. I didn't go on it but got a kick out of watching everyone else go. Jared landed on his back after the last bump. The kids loved it!

The day of Halloween I took the kids up to Foothill Village, a shopping center. All the stores were participating in a trick-or-treating party. Reese said she really wanted to be Sleeping Beauty, so she got to do a little costume change and wore tons of sparkles in her hair. The kids totally loved it!! That night we went to Chipotle for dinner, because if you showed up in costume you got burritos for $2 each. It was packed with costumed people - SO fun! Ivan went caveman style, with no shirt under his little Bam-Bam outfit; he was the talk of the restaurant, seriously, his little bare chest was to die for cute! We then went to a party at a friend's house. I love that my kids are so comfortable with our adult friends and that our friends treat them so special, it's no wonder that once we get to a party they leave mom and dad to go hang out with the other adults :)

Trip up North - August 2012

At the end of August Eric and I traveled with Emily and her kids while they made the move from Orem to Vancouver Island, B.C. We were mostly there just to be a support and to have extra drivers to rotate driving during the long drive. Eric and I didn't go through the border, we only had 3 days to make the trip in and besides that, I forgot our passports. The trip was bittersweet. We are so happy for Emily's family and all the neat adventures ahead but we miss them like CRAZY already!

 On the way back to Utah we stopped in Seattle to say hi to Eric's long time friend, Alicia. Then we headed west and made our way south along the Oregon coast. It was GORGEOUS!

 Saturday was our "fun day". We toured around and did some fun stuff. We went to Astoria, OR to some of the locations where Goonies was filmed.

 This was Data's house, which was right next door to Mikey's house - if you even know who or what I'm talking about.

 We stopped at a bay down the road from the Goonies' houses and there were tons of sea lions. I have never seen any wild ones up close before so it was seriously intriguing. They are big! And so funny to watch interact with each other!

 We stopped at Cannon Beach, it was beautiful!

 Then we went and did a little shopping to find me a full body wet suit so I could enjoy boogie boarding in the cold water. We were successful. We found some fun looking waves at Hug Point and went out boogie boarding for a while. It was invigorating and SO incredibly enjoyable!

 Food! Probably my favorite food on this trip was eaten on a pier. We had fresh oyster stew, the oysters weren't even chewy at all, unlike every other oyster experience I've ever had, and clam chowder. Both were divine and warmed our chilled bodies right up. We of course followed those soups up with way too many fish and chips - I don't know why we thought we could eat as much as we ordered.

 In our extremely full-bellied states we headed to Tillamook, OR to hit up the Tillamook factory. I am a cheese fanatic, and although we were stuffed to the brim, we couldn't pass up the cheese sampling table. SO fun!

 Down the road from the Tillamook factory is another cheese factory. We didn't go inside but did enjoy the old farm equipment and the interesting farm animals.

 Someone said their was a large Air Museum nearby. We never did spot it...

 We went on a really cool hike. It is called the Trail of 10 Falls. There are 10 waterfalls you can potentially hike to. We took the slightly shorter route, which was still plenty long, and saw 7 of the 10 falls. It was nice to get the blood moving and exercise off the excess fish and chips, not to mention the GORGEOUS foliage and waterfalls.

 Both nights we found really cool camping spots to sleep at. Camping, at least the way we do it, is so heavenly! We slept completely soundly, perfect temperature, wonderful smells, ah, I wish I could sleep that good every night! The view in the early morning before we had to make the long trip to Provo was breathtaking!

 The road stretched on and on and on! Seriously, although every day we drove a ton, the last day was not near as enjoyable. It really did seem like we were driving forever! I was so grateful my mom demanded she keep the kids, knowing full well they wouldn't enjoy the constant driving.

We were both super tired from having woken up really early the last couple mornings to start our excursions, we had no extra time left to take detours, we finished our Clive Cussler book, which was entertaining us, and we needed to get home to the kids and get things in order for Eric to go back to work the next day. It was a loooooong last day.

 We took one longer-than-5-minutes stop. In the middle of nowhere there were a few old buildings and a couple plaques that told about the place. The buildings housed a bunch of men who worked to build the roadway. There was a picture of their weekly menu, which was pretty awesome, it consisted of maybe 20 items that were mixed up in different ways to make different dishes.