Merry Christmas part 2

Later on Christmas Day we spent some time with my brother's girls and watched them open presents. Keaghan (almost 3) is getting so big and it is fun to watch her play with all of her toys. She is a cutie! We enjoyed listening to her talk about everything. Grandma gave her some puzzles for Christmas and she was able to recognize most of the letters in the alphabet on that puzzle...she is smart! Laiken (10 mos.) is at the age where she just wants to be with her mom, but she had a few moments of bravery and left mom's arms and played with her new toys. She is so close to being able to walk! I really enjoy these girls and have had fun watching them grow up!

Yea, Dad is here!!

Laiken standing

Keaghan playing with her new flashlight

Keaghan will not look at the camera when you are taking pictures so Dave got creative & was able to get this picture of her sitting in her new camp chair.

Grandma teaching her how to fish with her new pole

Laiken & her new toy

Laiken trying to figure out her toy

Merry Christmas!

We would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! We are sitting here relaxing with family...life is good! Santa was good to us this year! I absolutely LOVE Christmas and the opportunity it gives us to see family and do fun things for each other. We are so thankful for all of the gifts we received! Thanks to you all.

Christmas Eve with Holly's dad's family:

Gunther with his Christmas "necklace"

Grandpa, Holly & Dad

Dave's new t-shirt

Christmas with Holly's mom's family:

Uncle George & Buddy

Mom with her mountain of presents & Chester

My new slow cooker...YEA!!!

Dave & his new church shirt

Andy & his new PJs

Update

Dave has been bugging me to update our blog because he hates it when no one updates their blogs. I guess he likes reading about what everyone is up to, including himself. So, this is for you babe!

We are in Kansas for Christmas and have had an enjoyable time so far. We sort of left town quickly last Friday to head this way because a big storm was moving in to Utah. We had some hairy spots with bad road conditions, but overall it wasn't too bad...it could've been worse.

I've included some pictures of our trip and what we have been up to the last few days.

We broke down and got a new camera for Christmas. I was sick of all of our indoor pictures being blurry so we splurged and got a very nice Nikon! Dave took this picture of our tree with all of the lights in the house turned off. It was dark outside even. The only light was the light coming off of the television. Pretty impressive if you ask me!

This is where Buddy sits most of the time on our road trips. He wants me to let him sit on my lap so bad that he'll just sit there and stare at me.

When the roads were bad it was dark outside and I was too stressed about Dave's ability to keep us on the road with crazy people flying around us that we didn't get any pictures, but this picture is of the clean roads in KS. We essentially drove straight through the night and only stopped once for a two hour power nap. Rough!!!

Missy sleeping soundly on our trip. Overall she is a pretty good traveler.

Our not-so-white vehicle when we got to KS.

Missy is allergic to KS or something. She has been scratching since we got here and finally this morning had had enough. She got my attention by crawling on the chair up over the laptop just to sit right on my chest. With mom's help we were able to get some "medicine" on her and she is sleeping peacefully now. You would think with all of the snow and freezing temperatures that there would be nothing alive to irritate her skin, but I guess there is something. Poor dog!

Dave playing his Wii. He has put in several hours in the last three days doing this activity! He keeps reminding me that he is on vacation though so it is okay.

SNOW

Our first significant snowfall of the year!

Holiday Fun

With this being our last weekend at home before we hit the road for holiday travels, we decided it would be fun to do something different. I love seeing plays and especially love Christmas related plays. I told Dave that this year I wanted to start a new tradition for our family and see one Christmas related play. I gave him a short list of local plays I had found including the Christmas Carol and other classics and asked him to pick which one he would like to see the most. He picked Plaid Tidings and I'm very glad he did! Plaid Tidings is the holiday version of Forever Plaid. I got to see Forever Plaid with my aunt and uncle in Chicago when I was in high school and then they treated Dave and I to this play when it was in Kansas City one year. We both really enjoyed Forever Plaid and was hopeful we would enjoy Plaid Tidings. Plaid Tidings did not disappoint. We got a healthy dose of laughter for the evening! For anyone who hasn't seen Forever Plaid, we highly recommend it and for anyone who has seen Forever Plaid, we highly recommend Plaid Tidings! I think seeing Forever Plaid first is good, but not required...they do a recap of Forever Plaid in Plaid Tidings.

The local Plaid crew

We ventured out Saturday afternoon to fight the shopping crowds in search of a tree topper for the 8th Christmas in a row. I am VERY happy to report that we actually found one we both agreed on this year...AMAZING!!! We found it at Target. Dave was almost tempted to come back and buy it at the after Christmas sale, but I was too worried that it would be gone by then and didn't want to chance it. I am very happy with our choice and think it fits our tree nicely!

Dave has been busy studying for finals. He had his first final last Thursday and finishes up finals this Tuesday. One day while my mom and I were visiting over Instant Messenger she got the brilliant idea of giving Dave a finals survival basket. She is so thoughtful and creative! She asked me if I would gather the goodies for her and deliver them to Dave while he was studying. I rushed right out to Wal-Mart and gathered all of the "goodies" that Dave loves in life (or at least a good part of them) and put together this basket. When he saw the basket he got a huge smile on his face. He has really enjoyed eating all of the goodies. Thanks mom!

BYU vs. Boise State

We went to our first BYU basketball game of the season last night. They've been playing for a month already, but we've been busy and haven't been able to go to any of them until last night. We both had a good time! I haven't been to a college basketball game since my days at the University of Kansas so it has been a while. I'm not sure about Dave's past attendance at college basketball games...

Cosmo chatting with some kids

Go Cougars!

We decided to move up in the stands instead of being so close to the court. I couldn't take sitting that close to all of the students for very long!!!

It wasn't a very close game. In fact, we left at the end of the third quarter because the score was so lopsided in favor of BYU!

Halftime is one of my favorite things about sporting events! This halftime performance did not disappoint!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

The tree is up!

The stockings are hung!

So, we've been searching for a nice tree topper (Dave would prefer one that lights up) for years. We hit up every pre and post Christmas sale we can find and still have not found one we really like. Does anyone have any ideas on where to get a nice tree topper?

We also had this dilemma with our tree skirt. Finally last year I bought the material and my friend Shandra made me a tree skirt (I'm not a very good seamstress). I got the material I wanted and it is square instead of circle...everything I could hope for!!! I may have to think about making a tree topper, but not sure that would even be possible...

Thanksgiving Trip To Idaho

Dave's brother, Jake, and his family moved to Moscow, Idaho in Aug. to attend Law School at the University of Idaho. They used to live only about an hour away from us and now are about 11 hours away. They also had a baby boy about 5 weeks ago so we decided a trip to see them for Thanksgiving was a perfect idea. Even though the trip was long, we are both glad that we got to spend 3 days with them!

We even had the pleasure of seeing Dave's sister, Ann, and her family for a day. They used to live about an hour and a half away from us, but about two months ago moved to Vancouver, Washington. They made the 6 1/2 hour trip to Moscow from Vancouver for the weekend.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day filled with GREAT food and good conversation. Jake and Megan were great hosts and made sure we were well fed! They had just purchased their own Wii so "the boys" were entertained pretty much the entire weekend. They invited some of their friends over for Thanksgiving as well and these friends brought their Guitar Hero game to play on the Wii. I have to admit that I did have a good time playing that!

Uncle Dave & Gwen


Aunt Holly & New Baby Ira


Holly, Gwen & Ira


Guitar Hero Stud

Concentrating hard

This video is really dark, but if you look closely you can see Gwen dancing in front of the television. She is dancing to the music on Guitar Hero.

On Black Friday, Jake and Dave made two trips to Shopko and two trips to Wal-Mart, but didn't really buy anything. They were just window shopping. I had to work a little bit that day so Dave was able to spend some alone time with his brother. The second trip to both of those stores included me so they could show me what they found. We also wanted to get a present for Gwen since her birthday party was on Saturday.

Saturday morning the entire crew decided to venture out for breakfast at Shari's. The food took so long to finally come out to us that the children had long since moved on to other forms of entertainment...running around the restaurant! It was fun to have everyone together and to watch the cousins playing together. You could tell they all missed each other!!!

The rest of the day was filled with Wii entertainment, more shopping and Gwen's 2nd birthday party. Everyone was worn out by the end of the day, but it was a good day!

Gwen opening presents

We left yesterday morning and made the 11 hour trip back home. I absolutely love going on road trips especially to brand new places, but I always love to come home as well. We made this trip without our dogs (our neighbors kindly watched them for us) so by Sunday I was ready to see them again as well. On the trip home I took some pictures of the scenery. I thought the drive would be much more interesting, but really there was only one part of the entire trip that was absolutely beautiful, the Payette National Forest. These are pictures from that part of the trip.

Thanks again Jake and Megan for letting us come visit you! We know your lives are busy right now and we appreciate your taking time out of your busy schedules for us! You guys were great hosts. Also, thanks Ann and Justin for coming over to see us as well although we know Ira was more of the reason for the trip than us (wink wink)!