Christmas Break in Moab

We had a great Christmas.....the kids woke up about 7:00am and wanted me to make a fire in the family room before they started opening presents. Paul always makes everyone wait until he is showered and dressed before we start. Of course, there were LOTS of LEGO's. The family got all the rest of the Nancy Drew games that we didn't have. We also got a Hardy Boys game too. The kids all like to play them together.

Paul's friend Jorg from Germany sent a box full of gifts for the whole family. Every gift was perfect for the recepient.

My mom did a great job in making Aprons for everyone. Now there will be no excuses for not helping me in the kitchen.

The big family gift this year was a trip to Moab. We went with our Friends Shawn and Shar and their two kids. We found that it was less expensive to rent a condo for the six of us than to get two rooms at a motel. It was so nice. The condo was new and everything was super clean. Paul and I had our own master suite. The girls had a room with a queen bed and the boys had another with two twins. The kids all shared a bathroom. We could have fit two more people on the hide-a-bed sofa in the loft if we needed to. I also liked having a full sized kitchen stocked with pots, pans, and dishes. We cooked or packed a lunch for nearly all of our meals.

The most exciting thing about the trip was the Jeeping. We had never done anything like that before. The friends we went with got into jeeping a year or so ago and finally convinced us that it would be a fun family trip.

It was cold and there was snow on the ground, but the Jeep really could go just about anywhere you wanted it to. Who needs a snowmobile?

Christmas Card

Double click to see larger image

For the last few years I have been really busy in the months leading up to Christmas. (In addition to everyone wanting fall family photos, there is always some huge project that I seem to get involved with that is due at Christmas. This year is no exception) I have less and less free time so I have resorted to sending out a "top 10" 5X7 card instead.

For those of you who got a card and wanted to know more, here are the other highlights that did not make it to the top ten:

I started teaching Digital Scrapbook classes.......This has been really fun for me. I don't think my design and layout skills are impressive enough to land a magazine spread, but I do feel like I have enough technical knowledge of Photoshop (elements) to get other people started. Most of it just comes from working in it with photos for the last 6 (or 7 years.


I got photoshop CS3 this last summer and have had alot of fun learning that. (although I still did ask for the newest version of elements for Christmas...because it is easier to work in)

I also got a new camera and have had alot of fun with more megapixels, which is what kept me busy all fall.
This fall I got released from the Relief Society 2nd counselor. After a two week break I got put in Young women's as an advisor. Nicole is in Beehives for a few more months, and that is fun.

Paul is working on a HUGE project for the US Navy. It is for heaters on the next generation aircraft carriers. It is very time consuming for him and requires allot of extra research and documentation and time at work before the project can even get built.
Paul continues to play city league volleyball and basketball. Last winter he got knocked out and went to the hospital with a concussion, but signed up again this year. Below is a photo pf Paul painting the lines on our basketball court.



Nicole made National Honor Society, and has finally almost stopped growing in height. She is just over 6 feet tall in bare feet. We had to start custom ordering her pants and jeans (JCPenny) because no one sells a 38 inch inseam and 26 inch waist.
She got her braces off this summer and is turning out to be a stunning young woman. She loves Band and plays the Alto saxophone.





Erik joined the school choir last year much to my surprise. It has been years since I saw him actually sing in church. He has to go to school early in the morning, so he must like it. He is also on a city league basketball team as well as a competition one. Paul is the coach, and they seem to enjoy that.
He will turn 12 in Feb. and is already getting that "young man" look about him. He is nearly 5'6" and I am waiting for that huge growth spurt. He is a great help to me. He is always good to get his regular chores done and then do alot of "extra" chores for pay.
Erik likes to cook (and eat what he cooks) and this year he wanted to make me a birthday cake.




Natalie started Basketball and Ballet this fall. She is always so full of life and fun to be around. She has really started to progress in reading. Her favorite subject is Math, though. She will be having another operation on her ears this winter. This time it isn't her eardrums, though. She has something growing in both her ear canals. I'll post on how that goes.



Karl will start his first year of basketball next month. He is doing very well at school, although he is always reminding us that he "knows it already". Paul started reading Hardy Boys books with him and his reading is way above grade level. He is a very sweet boy and not a day goes by when he doesn't give me a hug and a kiss. He and Erik cannot get enough LEGO's. It is nice that they both like them since there is nearly 5 years between them.

We hope all of you have a great Christmas season and look foreward to hearing from you in the year to come!

The Trouble with Gifts

To give or not to give....that is the question. NOT! The real question is WHAT to give. What to give Co-workers (for Paul) and Neighbor gifts (for me) seems to be the hardest at our house. Then it is followed by what to get friends and family. The kids present another problem of narrowing things down, and making sure they still want that item by the time Christmas rolls around.

I was reading an article this morning about the worst Christmas Gifts people had gotten. Have you ever gotten a really strange gift? Have things ever been really unfair? Did Santa ever forget you?

I can never seem to remember what I bought and for whom the year before, so Paul has had me keep track since 2003. We enter everything we get (or plan to get) into Exel as well as how much it cost so we can at least attempt to stay within budget, and keep track of who gets what. It makes it alot easier to make sure that the kids get about the same amount of money spent on each of them. It also usually means that the two of us know what we are getting, and for Paul it works great since he doesn't like suprises. He tries to get me one or two "unexpected" suprise gifts since he knows how much I like that sort of thing.

This year we thought that we were doing so good until last night when Paul went to check on an order from Amazon.com and discovered that even though he ordered in November, it will not arrive until Dec30th-Jan9th. I think we got at least half of the kids gifts in that order.

As far as bad gifts? A guy I dated when I was 16 that gave me a humidifier. I wasn't sick or anything, so I really didn't understand why he gave it to me.

I SPY TREE

We have a fun thing that we do at our house. We like to play I SPY with the front room tree. We collect things, some of them everyday items, and others are miniatures. The kids sometimes even have a hard time trying to find things that they hid. I took a photo of part of the tree so that you can play too. This year we have about 75 items, but one year we did 101. Try double clicking on the photo to make it bigger.

Ballroom Dancing

This last summer a girl in our ward asked if Erik would be interested in Ballroom dancing. In order for her to be on the team she had to find a boy for the team.

"NO WAY" was the reply.

The local teacher was offering Summer classes as you go for just $5 each week, so I told Erik that all I wanted him to do was try it once. If he didn't like it, he didn't have to do it. He went and was hooked.

This fall he tried out for the team and made it. The high-school age group is quite large with many popular kids in it. (might have something to do with several shows on TV)

He has enjoyed going to the practices, but refuses to demonstrate what he has learned, so I was pretty amazed when I saw that he had learned so much. I had to share the video. It may be the only time you see him dance;o)

He starts out in front on the right, but most of the dance is on the back left.