Home Life

Well, today we’re back home now (although it feels good to be back in our own house after all that travel).  We left Texas yesterday and drove to Dallas to the temple there.  The freeways were incredibly hard to follow.  The signs aren’t posted until right before road splits, and I always seemed to be in the middle or far right when the road we needed split left, or in the far left when the road split right!  It took us a little bit to get up there, but overall I think we saw a more “scenic way” there!  🙂

After stopping at the temple (unfortunately the grounds were closed due to it being Monday), we started on our way again.  We decided that instead of going home the way we came, we’d drive over through Little Rock, then by Memphis, and up through Southern Illinois.  It mapped out to only be about 50 miles more and we thought it would be worth it to see something different.  🙂

When we got to Little Rock, we went to the Old Mill, what my web research said should not be missed when visiting the city.  It was very close to the freeway.  The kids complained at first about having to stop, but when we got there, they loved it!  It was an old rock mill nestled in a beautiful place along the river.  From the look of the place, it’s no wonder it’s one of the most popular places in town for family pictures, wedding pictures, etc.  Pictures can’t do it justice and we took a bunch!

By the time we finished there, it was getting dark and we really needed to hurry on so we could find a hotel in the Memphis area.  We still had a few hours to drive.  When asked if the kids liked the stop, the decision of the Old Mill was unanimous!  🙂

We kept driving across Arkansas to the Memphis area.  We couldn’t find any hotels we wanted to stay at there so we kept going north a little way until we found something and then we stopped for the night.  We had a great day spending time with each other (except the stress in Dallas on the freeways)!  🙂  The only negative was that every time we stopped, it kept getting colder and colder!  When we got up this morning for the 7-8 hour drive home, there was frost on our van and if it had feelings, I don’t think it would have been very happy!  🙂

We got home between 4 and 5 with plenty of time to unpack, start doing wash, and recoup from the trip.  The kids don’t have to go back to school until Monday, but unfortunately, I have to go back to work tomorrow.  🙁  It was a GREAT vacation that we are glad we took.  At first, I think Angela was the only one who wanted to go (due to the excessive driving), but we all are very happy we went.  The 2200+ mile driving trip wasn’t too bad, and we saw a lot of things that were new for us!

Happy New Year everybody!!!  We are excited for a great up and coming 2012!

Today we slept in (church was at 11) and I especially enjoyed not having to go to any early morning meetings!  🙂  We ate breakfast and then got ready to go to church.  The kids were a little nervous to go to a different ward, but we assured them that everything would be OK and that they would survive!  🙂  We weren’t sure how Ben would react since not only were we away from home going to church, but this was his very first Sunday out of Nursery and in Sunbeams!  😐  Everyone did great, however!  Ben was a little whiny but we left him anyway, and the Sunbeam teacher was awesome with him and although he was still nervous about being there, he did great!  Zach thought he was really cool because he went to Primary with Nate and Tanner who are more than 2 years older than him!  🙂

After church, we came home and before everyone got undressed to lounge around for the day, we took family pictures.  They turned out really good and I think that this one will be our picture for 2012!  I love my new camera!

We couldn’t wait to change into comfy clothes and relax for the rest of the day.  We were all still pretty tired from the night before!  🙂  The boys played with Legos most of the afternoon, and all the kids played games together, went on an afternoon walk, and enjoyed the 70+ degree weather!  We have to go home tomorrow, and we’ll REALLY miss that!  We won’t have 70 degree weather for the next 4 months!

The last couple of days have been wonderful!  The weather has been AWESOME (in the 70s) and we have really enjoyed going outside, relaxing and enjoying our time with family.  We could definitely handle this kind of weather all year round!  🙂  The kids went for walks all over, fed horses, and they did some crafty stuff and made fun necklaces…

Today we relaxed for most of the day, and then in the afternoon, Angela and I took Jeremy and D’Neill  out to a movie.  We saw War Horse.  It was pretty good.  We then went over to  Rudy’s BBQ (a gas station with a restaurant) and picked up some Texas BBQ to take home for New Year’s Eve dinner.  It was awesome!  We had brisket and pulled pork that would melt in your mouth!  The sauce was great too!  Angela and I bought a couple of big bottles to bring home… One regular and one “sissy sauce” that we will enjoy as a family…

I also saw one of my favorite signs there.  It totally fit me to a tee…

After we ate dinner and were stuffed, we just sat around, watched TV, played games, and waited for midnight.  By the time that rolled around, we were barely awake (I know, we’re getting old)!  We said our “happy new years” wishes and we all went to bed.

Happy New Year everyone!

This morning we got up early and headed out!  We were excited to get to Texas and get our driving over with.  What the kids didn’t realize is that once we got into Texas, we still had about a 5 hour drive to get to where we were going!  🙂

We crossed the state line and stopped and a rest area and tourist information center, to get a better map, and to stretch!

We then drove down through Dallas, past Waco, and finally arrived at Harker Heights.  It is a suburb of Killeen and is right next to Fort Hood.  Harker Heights (where Jeremy and D’Neill live) seems completely out in the middle of nowhere.  When you come around the hill, however, along with Killeen, it’s MUCH larger than you would think.  That area is home to Fort Hood adn the III Army Corps.  It is the largest active duty armored post in the US Armed Services.  It covers about 340 square miles and is right between Waco and Austin.  There are about 90,000 people stationed there, and when you add all the civilians as well, it’s pretty good size for where it’s located.  We heard that when people go on active duty, the place becomes almost like a ghost town.  When they all come back, the place is busting at the seams!

It was great to see Jeremy and D’Neill and their family.  They were pretty excited to see us, although we probably came storming in like a heard of buffalo!  🙂  It was great to see how much their kids have grown!  Almost right off, the kids got an eye-full!  🙂  Jeremy and his buddy had just come back from hunting and skinned and quartered the deer right in their back yard!

It was really funny to watch the kid’s faces as they cut the thing up!  Ben and Zach (obviously) were extremely interested, while the girls didn’t want to have anything to do with it.  🙂  We got a great laugh over that!  Welcome to Texas!

This morning we left very early and started our drive to Texas!  We are going down to Harker Heights to visit Jeremy and D’Neill and their family (Angela’s Brother).  It’s about a 17 hour drive down, but we decided to make some stops along the way and have some fun!

Our first stop was in St. Louis.  We had never been to the top of the Gateway Arch before, so we decided it was about time.  It was a really cool experience…

We were wondering how the elevators worked in the thing since it is an arch, and it turns out it is an 8 car cog tram that slowly makes it’s way up.  You sit in these little egg-shaped cars that are very small and could be very crazy if you are claustrophobic!  🙂  As you make your way up, the car tilts, and then swings which makes it like a bumpy ferris wheel.  It was a little nerve racking but fun.  🙂  When we got to the top, the views were amazing!  The day could not have been more perfect and you could see all around (the city on one side, and the Mississippi River on the other.

The boys particularly loved it!  Kirstyn kept making comments about the Percy Jackson books because one of the events took place in the arch!  🙂  There’s quite a bit of history in the city and we were able to talk to the kids about some of it (before they glassed over and got bored).  In the picture above, the courthouse with the green dome roof was where the Dred Scott case was argued back in 1857.  Pretty cool!

After coming down from the top of the arch, we visited the Museum of Westward Expansion in the basement area of the arch.  It was pretty funny…   They had a large wall of pictures and descriptions of the Lewis and Clark adventure and there were many pictures of the Salmon River Valley, etc.  The people there were very excited to tell us all about it.  That is until they found out Angela was from that region and may have known more about the area than they did.  🙂

We wandered around the beautiful grounds (nice for December – in the 50’s) got our family picture taken by a passer-by, and then headed back to the car.

We then drove over to the St. Louis Temple and spent a few minutes there admiring the building.  It is hard to believe that it has been 14 years since the open house we attended before its dedication!  😐

We then were off to cross the state of Missouri to Joplin, down into Oklahoma (which I had never been to before) and then on to Texas.  We were very interested in stopping in Jopin, because that is where the F5 tornado came through last summer, destroying a bunch of the town, and killing a bunch of people.  When we pulled in, we initially couldn’t tell anything had happened until we drove a little north of the city to where our church building “had been.”  When we arrived in the area, we couldn’t believe what we saw.  Although it had been 6 months from the tornado incident, there was still a huge amount of devastation.  An area of about a mile wide (north and south) and as far as you could see (east and west) was totally trashed!  All the trees were completely stripped and all that were left were the trunks.  Homes were completely destroyed, the high school was ripped to shreds, and there were places that houses had once stood that were now just empty plots of dirt with not even a single blade of grass.  The people had started to rebuild so there were some telephone poles up and some power lines, but they have a ways to go.  The place where the church building stood is now a barren plot of ground and there is no evidence that a building was even there.  🙁

From what what we could tell, the two pictures above were taken where the church once stood).  The top one (we think) was taken right on the church grounds.  You can see what happened to the high school!  Pictures don’t really express the amount of damage and it was a very humbling experience to drive and walk around the place.  To see where entire parking lots were ripped up and lamp posts were ripped off their bases was just amazing.  The strange thing is that when you got to the edge of the damage, the roofs all looked new, but the trees were fine and there was no additional damage.  It was just a mile or so wide area that was carved out of the earth.  Living in Illinois, we hear the tornado warning sirens all the time, and there have been a couple of tornadoes come close, but nothing like this.

It was starting to get dark, so we jumped back in the van and headed into Oklahoma, where we are now spending the night in a small town  just southeast of Tulsa.  Tomorrow we’ll be up and on the road early so we can get to Texas and relax!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

This morning we got up early, got dressed for church, and then all went down to see what Santa had brought!  It is always fun to see the excitement on the kid’s faces on Christmas morning.  They love to be happy and we love it when they’re happy!

I think the kids were all excited about the stuff they got.  Angela got a laptop and I got a digital SLR camera which both of us are VERY excited about!  The family got a new Wii to replace our broken one, Sarah got money for college :-), Brittany finally got a new mp3 player, Kirstyn got some DS games and other stuff, and the boys were very excited about their Bat Cave (shown above)!

I think it’s wonderful that Christmas falls on a Sunday this year.  After enjoying the Santa presents, we all jumped in the car and went to Church.  We only had Sacrament meeting this week, but boy was it wonderful!  The choir sang a bunch of musical numbers (all three girls sang in the choir), and Sarah had a full-song solo.  She was so nervous about it because practice wasn’t going as well as she wanted.  They added Brittany and and another choir member to do a beautiful backup, and it turned out AMAZING!  Sarah was so beautiful up there singing.  It brought tears to our eyes (although some of these tears were ones of relief that it went well)!  🙂  It’s wonderful that on Christmas Day, we can more fully remember Christ in our activities.

As soon as we got home from church, on came the pajamas and we then opened the presents from family and from each other.

We had all kinds of fun and got some really fun and cool things!  Angela’s sister-in-law made us all aprons which was really cool!  We needed those to keep all that food off of our clothes when cooking!  🙂

We then spent the rest of the day enjoying each other’s company, playing games together, enjoying our new presents, and doing not much else!  🙂  What a relaxing time!  We have been so blessed this year in all ways (spiritually, temporally, physically, etc.).  For that we are very thankful!

Merry Christmas everyone!

As always, tonight we had a GREAT Christmas Eve!  As in years past, we had a great dinner, caroling, and nativity!

We got together with 3 other couples and their families for dinner and had a wonderful spread!  By the time we finished eating, we weren’t sure if we could walk out to the cars to go caroling!  🙂  It’s always fun to get together with friends for a great meal and to socialize.  We really appreciate this tradition that we have now been doing for about 5 years now…

After dinner, we all piled in our cars and drove around the area singing Christmas carols and delivering plates of cookies to families.  We were well received.  The only issue we had is that at one place (along a busy road), Zach and Ben jumped out and ran across the road without looking!  😐  There were cars coming and it was a close call!  They were so fast, that I didn’t even have a chance to get out of the van before they were gone!  One of the other ladies that was there with us about had a heart attach along with me!  Fortunately we had two cars with us and Angela was already around the corner so she didn’t see it first hand!  Boy did those little guys get a talking to!  Other than that, we had a blast!

We then came to our house and acted out the Nativity.  This year we had a baby, so we didn’t have to use a doll!  🙂  It was a lot of fun and although it seems and looks really corny, it really makes Christmas Eve complete!

After acting out the Nativity, we went upstairs for a hot chocolate bar.  It was wonderful and everybody drank hot chocolate and ate cookies and pastries until they were ready to go to sleep from food overload.  🙂  What a great time we have every year!  We really look forward to that.  Other than the kids getting presents on Christmas Day, we almost look more forward Christmas Eve and the activities we do then!  Well, time to throw out the reindeer food and put out Santa’s plate, so we’ll see you tomorrow!  Merry Christmas!

Tonight, Kirstyn and I went to the second night of the Collage Concert at Metea.  Again, all the groups sounded outstanding and did a GREAT job!  It was a little more relaxing because Kirstyn and I didn’t have to worry about the boys making noise.  🙂  The Severn family in our ward sat by us.  We gave the two extra tickets we had to them.  They enjoyed it very much and were amazed at the talent the kids in the school have.  After the concert, Kirstyn and I came home and then Angela went up herself and volunteered to sell CDs.

Welcome Black Friday!  For some VERY STRANGE reason, the girls were totally excited to get up early and go shopping!  😐  They left at about 4:30am by themselves.  Angela stewed about this for awhile.  She couldn’t sleep with them out by themselves so she got up, got dressed, and went and found them.  They had a lot of fun together and it wasn’t too bad.  I guess the places they went weren’t too overcrowded.  The cool thing that happened is that Sarah entered into a drawing for a $100 shopping spree at one of the stores and WON!!!!!  She was totally excited and spent every dime!

As for the rest of the shopping, most of it was done on-line from the comfort of our own warm house.  I have sworn off going outside and shopping on Black Friday.  The funny thing is that the deals you get on Black Friday aren’t as good as the deals you get if you wait until closer to Christmas!  The retailers start to get nervous and start discounting things more heavily!  🙂

One of the things that really bothers me as well is that people have been starting to celebrate Christmas earlier and earlier.  This year, right after Halloween, Christmas stuff starts going up!  I hate that, as we really do need to celebrate Thanksgiving!  We need to celebrate our blessings and what we have been given.  That said, I refuse to put up even a single Christmas decoration, a single Christmas light on the house, or anything until AFTER Thanksgiving!  I know it will be colder to be outside stringing lights, but I guess I’m stubborn that way!  🙂  That said, we started bringing things up and decorating our house.  We didn’t get very far, so we’ll finish tomorrow!  🙂

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!  We hope you had a wonderful day today!

Angela and Brittany started off the day healthy and well!  They got up early and went to our Stake President’s house (Scott Clark).  He hosts a Thanksgiving Day neighborhood 5k run which is becoming quite popular.  There were quite a few people there this year.

The rest of us were smart (or dumb if you love running in the cold) and stayed home in our nice warm house.  We then started feeling guilty so Sarah, Kirstyn, Zach, Ben, and I bundled up and went for a nice walk around the lake and the neighborhood.  It was nice to get out!  🙂

Brittany worked the rest of the day (with a little bit of help from Angela) to prepare our Thanksgiving Day meal!  She really wanted to be in charge this year, and did a GREAT job!  She made a great-looking turkey cheese ball that was a hit, and everyone loved the spread she made!

Great job Brittany!  We sure enjoyed our meal!  This year, we decided to relax and not do anything with anyone else.  I think that Angela really needed a break from stress and Brittany sure helped out with this!  🙂