Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas...

All our bags are packed, we are ready to go... I hope you know that I was singing that too.

Well friends, we are off. Heading back to the homeland for the holidays. The kids are very excited and Tanner has earned enough stickers on his chore chart to get his present for the journey. So, hopefully Santa finds the note and can get our presents to us elsewhere... wink, wink.

We as a family hope that you all have a glorious holiday season, and that you all get what you deserve (good or bad... hahaa.) Be good. Be safe. Remember the true reason of the season.

Baby it's cold outside...

Well, we did it kids, we made it all the way up to 0 degrees outside. Yup, that isn't what I call warm weather. But really, who wants warm weather? Christmas is a comin' and I want snow. Well, after this weekend, I don't want anymore, but I do want it to snow in Idaho so that we can have some serious ski time. Allow me to share why we haven't left our building for 3 days.

This is mid storm...

A few hours later

The drifts covered one windows...

And this is what it looks like today, if only they had mountains, this would be awesome.

Fortunatly Santa came to see us a few hours before the snow started.
Then we decorated gingerbread men and made little pinecone Christmas trees. It was fun, Tanner thought Santa was pretty cool, but he didn't tell him what he wanted. Oh well, a lump of coal it is!


Tis the season, be good.

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I think I will use a Christmas song phrase for every post this month...

Well, here is our Christmas tribute this year. We didn't bring our tree, decorations, ornaments, anything really. But I did bring our stockings. So we made a tree out of wrapping paper and I let Tanner decide what shape and colors the decorations would be. We had a good time making it, and Kate has a good time un-making it. We enjoy redecorating it as we come across the makeshift ornaments around the house.

We have also had a few snow storms come through. They have each dumped a decent amount of snow. It is expected to start snowing again around 11:00 tonight. That is right kids, our weather people are so good that they can predict the time of the snowfall. It makes me laugh because they are fairly accurate, I think it is the lack of mountains that helps. Anyway, Tanner and Kate (really just Tanner) wanted to go out in the snow, so we pulled out all of our snow gear and went out. It was fun. And cold. As it turned out, through all of my careful packing, I only packed one of Kate's gloves, so she had to wear mine. Not to worry, we have since found replacement gloves.

Tanner loves to build "ice sculptures" in the snow. This is his tunnel through the mountain "ice sculpture".

"It goes all the way through, see?"

He was so proud, as was I...

I am glad that my children enjoy the snow, because it is here to stay. But I am not complaining, it is just getting me excited for Christmas, and with Christmas, we get to go home and go skiing, see family, and open presents. Probably in that order... just kidding Nana and Grandma, we will come and see you long enough to drop the kids off! Wink. Wink.

The End

Do you see what I see?

I have felt, for some time now, that Kate and Bill Murray share a common feature:

Her hair is seriously out of control serveral times a day. I love the little wings she gets over her ears. And I also love "What About Bob?".

This, that, and the other thing

I think I have informed you of Kate's obsession with accessories... you know the rule about taking one thing off before you head out the door? Well, it doesn't apply to her.

This is the Tuesday night crowd... Alisha and I take turns making each other dinner on Tuesdays because the honeys have late class. It is always enjoyable when she cooks. Can you tell these kids like each other?

Kate also loves her swimming suit. She wears it all the time. I usually put it under her clothes, because it doesn't always match...

We walked across the Stone Arch Bridge. It use to be a railroad bridge, now it is a pedestrian bridge. It was cool.

Kate clawed Tanner's face... nice little sister, huh?
My children may or may not have received my dancing genes... I promise, you will never see me dance long enough to find out...

As for Thanksgiving, we spent it with some of the other MHA families, it was fun. Tanner has been asking for a gi-normous dinner ever since. I just try to make whatever we are eating dramatic in some way to make up for the lack of gi-norous-ness. So I hope you had a fantastic Turkey day, and that you all ate way too much! And a bit of a late Happy Birthday to Evan/Dad/Grandpa. Hooray! Peace out!

The Minnesota Daily

Tanner loves to pick up the paper whenever we are in the office... they aren't much to read, but they make great paper hats...

Kate hanging out, constantly distracted...

Tanner playing football with dad... great follow-through kiddo!
Short and sweet, just like my favorite kids... wait... short, yes... sweet, hmmm...

Happy Halloween...

Last week we went back to the Children's Museum and visited Spooky Hollow. It was really fun, it started out with a guy telling a fun little story of spooky hollow, you joined in by clapping and stomping and such along with the story. Then we entered Spooky Hollow where we experienced all the things from the story. This is the spider web we couldn't crawl over, go around, go under, so we had to go through kind of thing... it was really cute, love the museum.

Then we went with a few MHA buddies to the ZOOBOO. (I told you we would go...). The kiddos were sick and didn't get out of the stroller, they just pathetically raised their buckets as we went through the treat stations. It was actually somewhat nice because we weren't chasing them.

Oh my sweet babies, all ready to go trick or treating (This was Friday, a friend organized a bunch of families so we could go around the neighborhood.)
Walking home with heavy bags of loot... Tanner is a shark and Kate is a cupcake if you can't tell.Last night we went to the ward Trunk or Treat, sorry no pictures, they looked the same. And tonight, Tanner was very excited to hand out candy to the trick or treaters. He had the door open before they even knocked. It was fun, then he ate watermelon with Cory in his "All my friends are monsters shirt", this is what it says and also what he calls it.

I hope that you had a great Halloween and that you all have belly aches from the excess of candy hanging around your house. And a quick Happy Birthday to Randah and Emily, hooray for halloween babies!

The End.

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The Childrens Museum

The kids and I went to the Minnesota Childrens Museum the other day with a few friends. It was really fun, I think we will become regulars. These are huge fish hanging from the ceiling like a huge mobile. They spin and stuff.

There was a little town to play in, they loved the grocery store, post office, and restaurant the most.But they also loved this place, they are on the TV screen if you can see them. They were rocking out to She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain.
We spent a while in the Water Works room. They had a big table of bubble soap and tables to play with water, and float ping pong balls through tubes.

Tanner loved the boat racing table. There are flood gates at the top and after the water builds up, you open the gates and race your boat.

This was a big area that had lots of nature scenes for the kids to run around and play. Best of all, it had a gate so they couldn't escape!
Kate loves phones, so imagine her excitement when it was nearly her size!
Tanner and I went to the creative lab and painted leaves.
The leaves hanging up at home...This is a cute little candy shop a few doors down, we stopped for popcorn.
We had a lot of fun, and we will definitely be back (especially during the winter months).

the kiddos

Kate's favorite hat... sorry guys.

Who doesn't love freshly whipped cream? We had crepes for conference breakfast, and this was Kate's favorite part. Yummmm.
This is Tanner picking strawberries in grandma's garden... obviously not a very recent picture, since we haven't been in Idaho for many weeks now.

Tanner and Isaac (son of Cory's cousin Rachel) running through grandma's garden... we missed the corn by a week... really? come on!

How do you sleep? Comfy, no?

Random, I know, but thanks for stopping by!

Coolest place ever...

So we live in a cool place. Yeah, we have no dishwasher, no washer, no dryer, no A/C... whatever, this place is all about entertaining us... you remember this waterslide that came with pizza...

Well, then we had a Pow-Wow that came with corn... and lessons in dancing and such...

Then, we took a school bus to an apple orchard (different place... all about the apples... still fun!) The kids loved riding the school bus and not having seatbelts. I love the massive amount of apples we came home with... yummy! Tanner and I climbed trees to pick apples. His limb was about 2 feet off the ground, he thought it was awesome that he was in a tree.

Then tonight, we attended the Diwali festival to celebrate Fall. They had indian food catered and cake and glow sticks for the kids. They also had dancers and they taught people a few Bali dance moves. The kids had fun dancing and the chowed down on cake when we got home!

I am telling you... we live in a sweet place!

The Zoo...

Yeah, I know... I said I would post about it a while ago. Oh well, better late than never! Alisha and I went to the ward play group at the zoo. The zoo is awesome and free. We were late, so we never found the group. But all the same I like Alisha, and Tanner, Kate, and Grace like eachother too, so it was really fun. This is (most of) the Conservatory... oh my pretty...

They had a baby giraffe, so cute...


and a baby orangutan...

We thought Cory and Sam should grow mustaches like this guy...And the gorillas were HUGE...Tanner loved the seals, they do a little show with them...And the fish swimming in the polar bear pond...

This tiger was pacing almost as much as Cory does...Jump Kate...

Me and my babies in front of the pretty flowers... doesn't Tanner look genuinely happy?

It was really fun, we plan to go again for the Halloween ZooBoo trick or treating. Hope you are all having a nice day!