Christmas in Washington

I know I haven't blogged in almost 2 months but there is a reason. My family has been apart and I am finding it difficult to take pictures without my girls around. We are moving AGAIN! Yes, again (with a big heavy sigh) This will be move 51 for me and 11 for Dave and I together. Dave and the girls are already in Vancouver and staying with Grammie (Thanks Grammie for taking care of my precious family.) Dave got a great job up there and Kim is already in school. We weren't sure if she was going to be allowed to go back to kindergarten because she didn't meet the deadline for her birthday for Washington but she did in California. They did let her start and between Grammie, Dave and Aunt Heather, Kim makes it to school every day. (Thank you again to Grammie and Auntie Heather for all of the help you have given to Dave and me.) We are renting a duplex as of Jan 15th. I have to finish up my job before I can move up. I will be moving up with our belongings that weekend. Dave and I get together as often as we can so I can see the girls but it has been pretty rough. When we finally are together again living under the same roof it will be 3 months of seperation. I am so grateful for eternal families. The knowledge that we will be together forever has made this seperation bareable. It is still difficult but we are pushing throw it. We were able to spend Christmas together which was a much needed time together.

I didn't have my camera for Christmas so I am copying pictures of my girls from Heather's blog page. Thanks Heather :) I am hoping to get more pictures from all the other family we were able to see so I will post them as soon as I get them. :)

We spent Christmas Eve with the Butlers and had a great time. Auntie Heather taught the girls Christmas songs and they sang them. Okay Kim and Norah sang Hadley was too shy to sing.

Grammie Cakes as Hadley calls Grammie read the Christmas story out of the Bible and everyone played a part. Dave was a sheep. (No picture of Dave, Sorry it really was a sight to see) Kim was the angel.
Hadley was Mary. I can remember doing the christmas story play when I was young and I was always Mary. I never had to speak just sit there. Hadley did it perfectly. Aunt Misty gave the all the kids Jammies. They had fun changing and waiting for Santa.

Inspiration from Yosemite

My sister-in-law Misty, takes the most beautiful pictures and so I decided to try my hand at it. These are just some of the pictures I took at Yosemite. Thank you Misty, I started to see life in a whole new world. I wanted to capture a piece of the beauty there and bring it home. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

8th Anniversary in Yosemite

Dave and I just celebrated our 8th Anniversary. I can't believe it has been 8 years already. It felt like only yesterday the girls were born and we got married. We have had a great 8 years. This year Dave surprised me by planning a special trip to Yosemite National Park. He went last year with his scout troop and couldn't wait to take the girls and I there. We left Saturday night right after I got home from work and then we drove to our hotel in Mariposa about 40 miles outside of Yosemite Valley. We got up and drove around the south and west end of Yosemite. We saw several animals. The girls had a great time looking out their window for different animals. We saw a 4 point buck (this one is for you Andy)About 10 deer...
2 Coyotes....
And Yes a BEAR! It was a very little cub but none the less a bear. Dave and I both wondered if this was a baby bear where is his mommy??? We didn't stick around to find out... We hike 2 granite hills. This one was so huge you can hardly see Dave and the girls. We walked pretty far up together and then I ran down the hill to get pictures so you could get an idea of how huge this rock really was. The rock was surprisingly really easy to walk up. We got to some pretty steep angles and still had a great footing. There is a little dot in the middle of the rock... That is my little family.
We let the girls run as far and as fast as they wanted to straight up the hill. They actually got pretty far but the got tired and sat down to wait for Dave and I. I am amazed how little oxygen there is at 8500 ft. It couldn't have been how out of shape I am... Okay maybe it could. The views were breathtaking.We then stopped for lunch at Silver Lake (at lease that is what I think it is called.) From a distance it was the most amazing blue I had ever seen. Dave said when he went last year the water was really cold about a foot below the surface. We also climbed this rock... The girls had so much fun climbing and playing on the granite. It was such a great view we took pictures from every angle. I think in all together we took over 180 pictures. So I had to be very selective on the pictures I post. :)

I have always wanted to see a redwood (or Sequoya) tree that is more than 20 feet in diameter. Well we did. This tree fell down several years ago and is on the very beginning of a trail. I couldn't wait to see what else there was to see. The picture of the biggest tree didn't turn out but this one tells a little of how big these trees get. Some of them are over 3500 years old. And I learned something really interesting... It takes a Sequoya 20 years to drop a pine cone. In this picture below the roots aren't even completely in the picture.

Primary Halloween Party

We just had our Halloween Party for Primary on Friday. The girls were so excited to go that they were ready an hour before we had to leave.

Kim wanted to be Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) this year. That is all she has talked about since we went to Disneyland in Septemer.

Hadley on the other hand couldn't decide. So we went through several different ideas on what she wanted to be and finally she decided on a ballerina. We had rented Angelina the Ballerina from the library and she started dancing around the house. We got her some dancing slippers and she even wears them to bed.
Kim also has a school parade at school on Halloween and a party that they are looking forward to. So stay tuned for those pictures. :)

Who does she look like?

Thanks to Jessica I found this great website. Plus I get prove that my kids actually look like me. I wonder if the meter was trying to tell me, "This kid doesn't look like either of you."



The first time I did this I used a different picture of Dave and Hadley came out 6% more like me. I like this picture better of Dave plus, she looks equally like Dave and I. :) If you would like to try it just click on one of our pictures.

Kim turns 5!

Kim turned 5 on October 9th. She got several cards from school and they sang to her. She loved going to school on her birthday.

I decided to make her a birthday cake that she would never forget. Well that is for sure. The cake took me just about 4 hours to decorate. I baked the cakes the night before and froze them to make it easier to frost. I had a great time making the cake.
Kim also had her first real birthday party. We had 3 friends come over and play. Kim asked if they could have Mac n Cheese for dinner. So we made dinner, opened presents, ate cake and needless to say played REALLY Hard.

We also went to the Golden Gate bridge when Misty was in town. These are my pictures from that day. Misty got some great ones too.
The girls were hanging on the rings while Dave pushed them. At Kim's school they had a fall festival called the Westival. Dave, Mike (our really good friend) and the girls had a great time. We donated cupcakes and Dave served for a while. They had the greatest time. I am wish I could have been there.

Catching up!!!

I apologize for not posting in so long. I have accepted a promotion within Extra Space and we have moved to the San Francisco area. For several years Dave has been wanting to go back to school and now he is enrolled and going back. So now we have 2 of our family in school. Kim has started Kindergarten this year and is adjusting well. She is in one of the best schools in the area. The girls and I had to move up a few days before Dave so that we could get her registerated for school. She has afternoon Kindergarten which is pretty much all day. She starts at 11:40 AM and she gets out at 3PM. Here are some great pictures of Kim's first day of school.

Kim's teacher is Ms. Blythe. Kim says her teacher is the greatest and Ms. Blythe just adores Kim. Kim hanging her backpack. We didn't get a chance to go to the pre-school day, where they told us that the kids eat lunch during the day. So we had to get her a lunch box which she hangs right behind her backpack.

Kim was asked to write her name on how she got to school on her first day. Since the town is so small there is no bus service. The kids either walk, drive or ride their bikes to school.

Kim and Hadley saying goodbye. Kim was very excited about going to school but Hadley was very jealous of all of the great things Kim gets to play with. Kim sitting waiting for the rest of the class to get settled.

Hadley got really bored waiting for Kim to get out of school.

Kim and Hadley are seperated for the first time in a very long time. They surprisingly enough did really well. But they were very happy to see eachother again.

Kim was the first in line out of class. She is the class leader many of the times when they go to the library, PE, computer class, science class and recess.
Kim is showing off her first school project called "Helping Hands."

Hadley on the other hand is going to "Daddy's School." Dave and Hadley take Kim to school and then go for walks, the library and they work on her colors and numbers. They both are having fun.

Last Minute Trip!

I got home from a very long month of traveling. Being home only 20% of the month I was ready for a break. I had travelled all over California these last few weeks and I get a call from Dave saying we have something planned for this weekend so be ready. I thought it would just be a great relaxing weekend at home. Little did I know we weren't staying home this weekend. At the very last minute we decided to go to Zion's National Park in Utah. Yes you saw that right we were in southern Utah this weekend. We really needed a weekend out with just our little family. It gave Dave and I a chance to chat and the girls got a fun time with both Mom and Dad with NO work! We took some great pictures.
We stayed in St. George, Utah on Saturday night. We stopped by to visit the Temple in St. George. It was so beautiful.

We got some great pictures of Zion's National Park.

A picture of Dave and the girls standing on the slick-rock. It isn't really slick until it gets wet. So needless to say it was really easy to walk on.

This hill was really neat. It was white on the top portion and the bottom is red. It looks like someone put a white rock on top of a red rock. The picture just doesn't do it justice. We had a great time as a family.