Saturday festivities

Today we decided to go on a walk with the dogs. Yes, sometimes we are good and responsible dog owners. And for those of you who haven't yet seen our new addition to the family, below are some pictures.

The girls - a little sideways. She's a lab-australian shepherd mix. Name Kiko. It means spot in Hawaiian (so we were told).

The boys. Tobie, actually holding still and being good for a moment. James too :o)

Here is a picture of James helping me decorate the tree :o)

Today I finally decked my halls with boughs of holly! I think it looks pretty nice, if I do say so myself. And James was a good helper - watching me the whole time :o) But he has an excuse, cause he just had eye surgery. Gotta love the men!

Thanksgiving

Happy 4th Birthday Kylee!!!!

Finally the day has arrived for Kylee. She has been waiting for this day for a few weeks now. Her birthday was actually the 23rd but we didn't celebrate until the 25th. For months she has been wanting a sponge bob cake for her birthday so I made her my version of the spongy character. She was pleased with the results so that is all that matters...and now he is all gone.

I can't believe that my baby is 4 years old, boy does time seem to go fast. Happy Birthday!!

Christmas Tree Hunting

Trudging through the woods looking for our tree.

Here's a good one. Everyone stand back so we can get it cut down.

Good it fit on our jeep and now it is all tied up....but maybe we should turn it around so the branches are the other way while we are driving home...dang.

The kids had fun. Although they say their favorite part is playing in the snow.

Halloween 2009

This year again Kylee wanted to be a princess so we bought her the crown and wand that she wanted so terribly bad. But after I took the tags and things off the wand she informed me that she didn't want to use the wand because princesses don't have wands ( 3 year olds). She wanted dress up shoes too, but I couldn't find any at the time so she wore some purple shoes instead.

Brittany wanted to be a butterfly. At first we tried to talk her out of it so she could find something warmer, but she insisted and so that is what she was. It acutally turned out cute and she absolutely loved the costume.

The girls both scored in the candy area. Parties at school, trick-or-treating at Jon's work, and then again in our neighborhood. They got the most at Jon's work. The nice part of the going to his work is it is warm and the candy is fairly centralized.

All in all it was a successful, fun day.

China

This is the terracotta warriors in Xi'an. Amazingly there are over 8,000 lifesize soldiers that were created as pottery to protect the emperor after he died. Pretty impressive. They were all painted as well, but being buried and then exposed to oxygen has made the colors fade.

Here is James giving me a rickshaw ride. He is a very good driver ;O)

Yep, me on the Great Wall of China. It was absolutely amazing and extended as far as the eye can see. Definitely recommend it to everyone!!! We didn't have a picture here together. so sad

This was at the summer palace. It was the place that the emperor built in Beijing because he was jealous that anyone else in China would have a prettier summer place than him. So he built a huge lake and beautiful palaces everywhere. I think he accomplished his task. This was one of our favorite places.

This was in the backyard of our friend's house. I thought it was interesting that they had all their gourds growing off overhead vines, and this one made a perfect nose for James!

We decided to go on a bike ride whilst there. But this is also a picture of our friend's backyard.

This picture was taken from the north side of the Forbidden City in a park that allowed us to look inside the gates.

So, I guess I should finally post some pictures about China. I know most people saw this already, but in case you wanted some highlights again.

We loved our trip and probably could have stayed longer. Next time we'll go south!

-Shelley and James

Current Creek Fishing

We went to Current Creek this weekend with some friends for a little fishing. This was our fist official trip with the kids doing their own shore fishing. They had hook and worms. We had both our Nemo and Princess fishing poles out in the water. The princess pole was the most popular with the fish, although Nemo had a bite. Both girls were able to land two fish each. I don't know if Jon ever got to sit, he seemed to be running back and forth between the girls fishing poles and trying to get his out once in a while. He is going to have to teach me how to get the poles ready so he doesn't have to run back and forth so much.


You would never guess that our little bug girl is so squeamish around the fish. As you can see below she didn't want to have anything to do with the fish she just brought to shore. However, when they were strung on the string she would play with them in the water.


Kylee on the other hand seem very proud of her catch and wanted to hold it herself. She wanted to touch every fish that the kids caught today.

Halloween Pumpkins

After school we got out the markers and the pumpkins (from grandpa and grandma) and set out to decorating our pumpkins. We have not graduated to the actual cutting of the pumpkins, they are still content just coloring them.

Moab Trip

We went to Moab around Sept. 25 with Jon's neice's family. The kids favorite part was playing in the sand at camp. Of course we went on two 4 wheeling trails. One of them was a lot harder than expected. In my opinion we went the wrong direction, because the guide book said to come down the trail not up (which is what we tried). If we had come the other way we wouldn't have had the hard section to go up that we were wondering if we would make or not. But it was the most exciting part of that particular road. I guess you can't go 4 wheeling without a section like that.

This road is called Long Canyon and we drove it to Dead Horse Point State Park. It was harder than it looks and of course there was no way around the roughest part.

We went to Dead Horse Point and Canyon Lands They both had very pretty views. Brittany's highlight was looking for lizards. Kylee even found one I had to take a picture of.

These are called Shafer Switchbacks were on the road we took to Canyon Lands. We even passed some bikers riding up the trail. I think I would rather ride down than up on the bikes. We passed one person who was walking his bike up some of the switchback. Of course you don't have to take these roads, but they were there and more fun than the paved roads.

I think the road we drove down to get to our camp site was called Kane Creek Road. On this particular road are cave dwellers. I was amazed that people actually live in these caves. Some of the entry ways looked nicer than others, but I can't imagine that it would cost a whole lot to live there.