Our Christmas Miracle

The night of Christmas Eve was the longest night ever!  The girls refused to sleep.  Mainly Pais who was a crazy person and kept waking Hunt up in the process.  Around 4 I finally gave up and took them downstairs to watch a movie.  Hooray for Christmas movies being on 24/7 that night because I fell asleep and who knows how long they stayed up after that.  At 7 when I woke up they were passed out on the couch.  I guess we have finally reached the "christmas is way too exciting to sleep stage" of life.  Little did they now we had the best present for them.

Chris was scheduled to work over Christmas this year.  Super sad but I think the fact we told Hunt Santa was coming twice really made not having dad around easier to deal with.  Luckily (sort of) for us Chris ended up sliding into another truck during a snow storm a few days before Christmas.  His company policy is to suspend all employees after they wreck until they can take a positive drug test.  Since it happened to fall over the holiday his drug test didn't make it through in time and we found out Christmas Eve night that he could come home for Christmas.

That night he drove 6 hours to Bozeman, hopped on a flight to Seattle, then another flight to Portland, and finally the last flight he landed in San Jose around noon Christmas day.  We didn't let the girls know he was coming and I just told them I had to go get a really big present.  When he walked in Pais could not stop laughing and Hunt wouldn't let him go.  It was the best and I'm so glad we were able to end the day together as a family.

 One of our Christmas presents from Uncle Mike was tickets to the aquarium.  We found out going to the aquarium over a holiday is a bad idea, the place was packed.  Instead of looking at fish we spent the day taking a million awkward self photos of ourselves.

 During this awkwardness Hunt lost her shoe and Pais was determined to put it back on her foot.  Sometimes I really feel like we are a "special" family but at least we have each other!

We also took the girls to their favorite park.  They got brave this time and wanted to try out the zipline.  Their faces were hilarious!

 Best Christmas Ever!

December Favorites

I'm slowly getting around to posting about the holidays at our house.  It's coming in segments and this first one is all about the different things we did that were really fun and could be a post on their own but I'll just show pictures instead.

 We spent a lot of time in the snow! This is the first year in three years that I haven't had a husband home all winter long who takes over 100% of all outdoor winter chores.  I actually have to shovel and it stinks!  Since I always have my two little helpers with me we went and bought them their very own pink snow shovels and now pretty much everything we do revolves around using our shovels.  The Utah Lake boat harbor and the random cattle slaughtering place we found out west can thank us for plowing their snow.

 We went to Thanksgiving point to see Rudolph again.  Pais wasn't a very big fan.  She wasn't a fan of her cookie from Slurp after either so she must have been having a bad night.

 We decorated three different Christmas trees this year.  We're practically professionals now.  We'll be offering our services to the public next year because every single one of your ornaments on the same branch is going to be the "in" thing.

 Poor, poor Molly was reunited with her BFF Huntley.

 

We went to Christmas in the park in San Jose.  Auntie April was super nice and took the girls on lots of fun rides.

 We decorated aka ate lots of frosting a gingerbread Christmas tree.

 We had fun and got super spoiled at our family Christmas Eve party.  I didn't take any pictures of this besides a few of us getting ready in the bathroom before the party.  Super lame.

Last of all we had lots of fun hanging out at Poppy and Annie's.  They always have the best treats and Annie treated the girls to their very own pedicures. 

Stay tuned for the next segment in Christmas and our very own Christmas miracle!

Sledding

During the time Chris was home over Christmas break the one thing he wanted to do was go sledding.  My attitude was more on the not so positive side of this activity since every single time we've taken the girls sledding we spend more time getting them dressed then we actually do sledding.  Drives me crazy.  Luckily Chris refused to give in to my whining and off we went.

 On the drive there Huntley informed us she was not going to cry this year.  She was right. After going down the hill with Chris once the girl became a maniac in the sled.

Paisley on the other hand still cried the entire time down the hill.

She had to sit and watch big sis having all the fun.

 After some time she decided watching wasn't much fun at all and she did dare go down the hill without a sled.

 Huntley got brave enough she even went over a jump but said she would never do it again because it hurts too bad.

 It ended up being so much fun and I'm really glad we went.

And the fact Chris was nice and took me here afterwards wasn't half bad either.

Ringing in the New Year

Our New Years Eve wasn't anything special.  We stayed at home all cozy and warm and made pizza and watched movies.  It was a fun night but I didn't even take one picture.  The next day we wanted to do something a little more exciting and who better to call to hang out with then Grandpa!

 Grandpa took us for the girls first ever experience of bowling.  The girls were rocking those shoes.  I've never thought of bowling shoes as cute but I wanted to take Pais's home!

Plus to even make it more fun Grandpa brought Russel and Scott with him too.  I've never seen a kid who can pose so well with a bowling ball as Russell can.  He's a natural.

 At first they all had a blast picking out brightly colored balls and shoving them as hard as they could down the ramps. 

 After a few frames a few people tended to get a little bored and had to resort to other measures to entertain themselves.

 But not Huntley.  That girl is definitely her Nini's granddaughter and was on fire the whole game.  She scored 114 (yes that was with a ramp and bumpers, but still!!!) and would have kept right on going the entire day.  She was always willing to give Pais a few pointers here and there.

 We had such a fun time and can't wait to go again.

Happy New Year

Hello 2014!!!

I am so glad you are here.  2013 was such a crazy year for us right up until the very end that it feels so good to start fresh.  The holidays are always extra busy but on top of that we also sold our house so during that time I was also trying to pack and find a new place to live in a few weeks since I was going to be spending Christmas in California.  Things ended up falling through with the house so we are still in it and sort of getting back to a normal routine.  Well as normal as you can get when you are trying to sell your house.  I've finally had a free moment to sit down and catch up on the past month because we had so many memories I want to record when I found this cute little slide show that Google had made with my pictures.  It made me cry and realize that even though a lot of hard things happened in 2013, a lot of really good ones did too!

2013 Recap Video

This is the video I made with our 2013 pictures.  I like the other one much better since I have a tendency to pick the pictures I think are the best and not necessarily the pictures that depict real life.  It's still fun to have multiple videos to look back on though.

Hunt's 2013 Video

Last but not least we have the video Hunt made.  If you've been around her at all lately, you'll laugh.  To say she is obsessed with this song would be an understatement.




The story behind the song:

A few months ago we were walking the dogs, aka letting the dogs run behind us on a dirt road while we drive the car.  I had our three year old neighbor Bee with us.  The girls were taking turns picking songs.  My kids were sticking to the kiddy basics of Twinkle Star, Old McDonald, Baby Bumblebee, etc.  When I asked Bee what she wanted to sing she yelled "Katy Perry." I didn't know how to bust out Katy Perry so I hurried and youtubed "roar" and we've been singing it ever since.