Tuesday, January 22, 2013

MN to LA

On Friday, Dec. 21st we left on our 2 day drive to Louisiana.  We were going to leave around 6:00 am, but Iowa got a huge snowstorm the day before and made the roads there a complete mess, so we had to push back our start time to 9:30/
Good-bye house!
Happy kids ready to go to Gramy and Grampy's!
And here we are in Iowa.  The roads we completely covered in ice and there were cars and trucks and semi's off the road for miles!  I bet we saw 100 cars that had slid off the road.  It was crazy.  We were so grateful we were kept safe.



 It took us over 6 hours to get to Des Moines, and it was only suppose to take 3 1/2.  Luckily both kids crashed after lunch.

 And after 9 hours we finally made it to Missouri!
 About an hour out of Kansas City we stopped for some dinner at good ole subway, Jackson's fav.

We stayed the night in Joplin, MO and this crazy cat was up a tree in the hotel parking lot.  The kids got a kick out of it.  And we were thrilled to get out of the car and not even need a coat!  Londyn was super excited to see grass too.
 Saturday we drove though Arkansas and Louisiana.  The weather was sooo much better than the day before.  Northern Arkansas was beautiful.  Then a little before lunch time we hit the back roads and were done with the lovely freeway = (.  And at about 6:30 pm we made it to Lake Chuck with 2 happy, but tired kiddos!  They traveled so well!!  We were blown away!




Christmas FHE

For Family Home Evening one Monday night in December us and another family went over to our neighbor's house and had the kids act out the Nativity story, complete with a real baby Jesus- thanks baby Sailor!

Then we went in the kitchen and made homemade butter mints. YUM. 
Jackson hard at work.
 Jackson's finished product.





"Pre-Christmas" Christmas

Cody's parents came to visit mid-December to see Londyn perform in the Nutcracker and to celebrate Christmas with us. 
Before the got here the kids and I whipped up some gingerbread cookies and had a lot of fun decorating them! Can you guess which one Cody decorated?!
 Our cute little mouse for the Nutcracker.  There were about a billion little mice, so she only got to perform in one performance.  She did great though.  She was the "lead mouse" so she was the 1st one to come out and run around the stage.  I'm glad she had that part because it made her easy to spot since they all had masks on.

 Some of the loot from Santa...
 The big prezzies...
Excited to come down stairs and open presents!
 Saying good morning to Nana and Papa first,

 Happy kids opening presents.

 Happy daddy opening presents- a new black suit!
 Playing with the new tramp while me and Nana shopped til we dropped! Thanks for coming Carla and Chuck.  We had such a great time with you guys!

J Boy

These are all from last summer/fall, but I wanted to post them because they're so cute.  Like the pics in the next post, I found them on Cody's phone and sent them to myself days before he dropped his phone in the toilet.

 He LOVED playing with the hose.  Even if he was fully dressed.
 This is one happy boy after dad made his hand-me-down girl bike into a super awesome spiderman bike!
 Finding sticks (of course) when we were out exploring River Falls, WI last summer
 Playing golf with Cody and his dad when he came in town back in September.
Little monkey up in the tree outside of Londyn's dance studio.
This kid is ALL boy.  And we love him to pieces!

1st Day on the bus

This post is totally out of order, but I found these on Cody's phone before he dropped it in the potty and lost everything- so glad I emailed a few of his pictures to myself, like these.  This was Londyn's 1st day riding the bus to school back in September.  Oh for it to be warm again, I think in was - 10 today.
She's such a big girl!  She loves riding the bus to school!  We've only missed it a couple of times and have only had to chase it down once!


Monday, January 14, 2013

Unexpected trip to Utah

Cody's grandma passed away just before Thanksgiving.  At 1st we didn't think we would be able to go to Utah for her Cody was going to be at a meeting in New York.  But we felt like we should be there so we rearranged some things and got it figured out and flew out there.  Cody still had to go to NY so he met us there and I flew solo with the munchkins.  

 It was a bitter sweet trip, sad that Grandma Carol was gone, but so nice to see everyone, especially baby Cate! She is so stinking cute!
 After the funeral we went to visit some friends. We went to Cody's old office, which was good but also weird. Then we went up to out old neighborhood to check on our house and pop in on old friends. Only one was home though! It was fun to see Brittany's new baby, Maddox!
 We met up with Cody's family later that night for dinner and by that night the kids were exhausted!  This is how we found Londyn in bed!
 Of course we had to go to Kneaders for french toast.  That was one happy girl!
 We also got to visit with Annie and Brooklyn and Cooper Duckworth.  Poor Brooklyn was in the hospital, so we got her a little stuffed animal kitty to help cheer her up!
 Then we stopped at another favorite place- Hire's.  And had a yummy burger.  That had totally remolded the inside!

 One night we also visited our friends Dustin and Jill and their 2 girls.  Then we went to see our friends the Simpers and we headed to City Creek for dinner and to see the Christmas lights.
 And we also stopped by my Aunt Taya's new house to see the finished remodel.  It looked amazing!  This house needed so much work and they did such a great job!
It was a jam-packed 3 days and we didn't get to do everything or see everyone, but we did a lot and most importantly we were there for Cody's mom as she said good bye to her mom.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun this year.  We didn't travel anywhere and didn't have any family come into town, so we celebrated it with some friends from our ward (church). It started out as such a nice day.  It was about 60 degrees so we worked on our yard for a little bit (laid a flagstone path) and played a little flag football with our neighbors.  

Then I made my first ever pie crust and triple berry pie from scratch.  I forgot to take a finished picture of it, but it was yummy!


 And here are a few pictures of the group. We had a great time.  The food was all so good, the kids had a blast playing with all of the other kids and that night after pie it started to snow!  Perfect day!