Thanksgiving in St. George

Thanks to our wonderful friends, Gary and Nikki, we were able to go to St. George this year to spend our Thanksgiving there. It was such a nice change and we enjoyed our time. We were able to go to a couple of different places to let the kids play around (not real hiking stuff, but perfect things for the kids and way cool things to see) We took lots of pictures of these two days and I really tried to narrow it down but there are still a ton of fun pictures I had to put in this blog. This first pictures are of the kids at a park called "Pioneer Park" (I am pretty sure that is what it was called).

Here's Derrek and Nathan on a rock they climb up.

Through out this park there were little alcove's, perfect for the kids to sit in, lay in and pose in. This is Rylie and Maci posing for a cute picture.

Derrek and Nathan in these perfect little Alcoves to lay in

Family Photo

The boys wanted to take turns taking a photo of Drew and I

This is our whole clan, minus me, I was taking the picture.

We were staring right at the sun, so this picture was a little difficult.

This is a pic of our CUTE friends Gary and Nikki and their little girl Maci

We went to this park after our Thanksgiving Feast and Gary was being quite the goof about how full he was. He kept sticking his gut out as far as he could so I had to snap a shot of it. this is the type of guy we had to put up with all weekend, VERY enjoyable.

The kids pretending to hold up this rock

This rock had perfect indents for rock climbing, so everyone gave it a try

Derrek

Nathan

Even Maci and Rylie tried. Rylie was the first and she never made it beyond one step

Rylie was up on this big rock and the easiest way to get her down was to drop her to Drew, but she decided just to jump to Drew--The trust a child has for her father.

Nate--what a poser!

It was such a cool picture of Nate, we got all the "boys" in there

The St. George Temple, and a glimpse of all the people that had the same idea as us.

This was a little shelter built in the rock, it was so cool inside. It is amazing the kinds of places people use to live in. This even had a fireplace.

Family photo-We went to Snow Canyon and hiked around a little before we had to go home.

This was such a cool place that we stopped by. On the left of the picture are names and dates written in axle oil of pioneers that crossed through here. There were tons of rock climbers here too and we watched them climb this huge mtn. for an hour. Too bad I didn't get any pics. of that, or how steep this thing is.

Quick family photo right before we packed up to go home. It was so much fun and we say our big thanks to Gary and Nikki once again for sharing your home with our family and your Holiday.

Utah State, Hey Aggies all the way

The last two seasons Drew has bought season tickets to USU football and has been having Father/Son moments with Derrek and Nathan. Today they thoroughly get to enjoy the game in the cold, snowy weather. You have to be a total AGGIE to endure such weather when you know your team (unfortunately) is going to lose. This was taken with Drew's phone so not the best quality but you can see just how agonizing it is, not sure still if this is from the weather or the Aggie's themselves. Way to be the only LOYAL fans there guys.

Update

I totally did some updating on my blog so please scroll down, there is a lot of new posts that I put up. I don't love this blogging for hours because you let yourself get so far behind that it is what it takes to get you caught up. I am not sure where my time has been spent lately but it has not been blogging. I am not up to date on everything so enjoy, and please share your comments with us.

My hugs are out shopping

Okay, I am not good at posting things when I don't have some cute picture to go along with it but Rylie said something that broke Drew and I into laughter that I don't want to forget.
We were putting her down for her nap and Drew was taking her so he asked her to go give me hugs and kisses. She came over and gave me a kiss and then walked away. I teased her and said that I only got a kiss and I was still waiting for my hug. Well her response was "Well I gave you a kiss and I don't have any hugs to give you because they are out shopping!" Okay whatever, how do you argue with that. Drew took her to bed and asked if he could have a kiss and her response was, "Well I only had one kiss and I gave that to mom, the others are out shopping with my hugs!" Where do they come up with this stuff?--Too cute!

Gymnastics

Today was Rylie's last gymnastic night and it was a night for the whole family where they went over everything they learned. Here is Rylie striking a pose before going in. Yes I am fully aware that her outfit totally rocks but she picked it out and there was NO changing her mind about it--WHATEVER!

Here is Rylie and her friend Ashley following instructions from teacher. I am not sure what they were suppose to be doing because Ashley has her hands on her head, and Rylie has hers on her knees.

Here they are sitting waiting for the "disc color" they are sitting on to be called out so they can do their trick.

Here is Rylie showing her "ready" position.

This is her doing her log roll--she did really well at this.

This is Rylie doing the seal walk, not to brag, but she did the best by far and it was so cute.

Here she is doing the crab walk--I am sure all of this leads into something useful, just not sure what that is. She had fun doing it all though.

And finally the cartwheels! She wanted to take gymnastics so bad so she could learn to do a cartwheel. I kept trying to teach her and was not successful at it but she finally learned how and she is a cartwheel maniac, she is always doing them all over our house.

Here they did certain jumps into the hoop. I love the way she is looking up at her teacher for validation and approval. Such a sweet and innocent look.

Here is how they warmed up for cartwheels and practiced them before doing them on the main mat.
Overall, Rylie had such a blast doing gymnastics and looked forward to going to class every time. Her teacher was even hoping she was 4 so that she could be bumped up to the 5-8 yr old class because she just ate it up and was ready for more. Too bad she is not old enough to go to the older class, but for now she doesn't know better and loves it.

Happy Halloween

Sad, but true, here are the only pictures I took of my kids on Halloween. I was not a very good picture taker this year. The kids had tons of fun going trick-or-treating this year and I think that Nathan and Rylie enjoyed running to the door every time someone knocked to pass out candy just as much. This year Derrek went to a boy/girl Halloween party and seemed to have lots of fun. It is one of those things that you can't believe you have a child old enough to go to something like this, but after much deliberation he went and had fun.

This year the kids didn't want to carve their pumpkins because they didn't want to dig out all the seeds and clean out the inside. So we painted them and they had lots of fun doing it. Derrek made his into a nerd, Nate made his into a football player--helmet and all, and Rylie just painted away until her heart was content. I can't believe we didn't take pictures of the final products but they turned out great and the kids loved it. We were also making sugar cookies at the same time, that is why my house is such a mess. Loads of fun that night!

Drew's Cake

Drew had to make a cake for our ward Halloween party and I told him that he was totally in charge of this cake and that I would be there to support him. He made a few minor mistakes because he didn't feel it necessary to read the instructions but in the end it turned out pretty good. The kids were totally excited that "Dad" had made this cake. If you can't tell, it is suppose to be a scarecrow.

CRAZY Hair Day!

It was crazy hair day, but Derrek didn't go too over the edge with his hair style. He has always been the more conservative type but he had fun with what he did.

Nathan on the other hand, knew just what he wanted--As you can see he has no problem being a complete GOOF BALL! He too knew exactly how he wanted his hair and had fun doing it.

It snowed on crazy hair day and it was enough by the time it stopped that the kids were out playing with friends building a snow man and having a snowball fight. This picture was taken when it first started so it doesn't show just how much we got but we ended up with a few inches--enough to play with.