Christmas & A Visit From My Parents

We had a fun Christmas holiday!
Here are some things that we did to celebrate the season.

Neil and I went to the temple in December and walked around the temple seeing the lights.

We had our ward Christmas dinner and Santa came for a visit.

We spent Christmas Eve with Darrin and Donae at her sister's house.
The kids got to be a part of acting out the nativity there.

My parents came shortly after Christmas to visit us. It was so fun to have Grandma and Grandpa at our house. There was lots of good food, gifts for the kids, and lots of late game nights with my Mom.

Grandma and Grandpa brought presents and the kids got to open one every evening before bed. After opening their present they gave hugs to Grandma and Grandpa. That was our family tradition while growing up. We gave our parents a hug after each present. My kids love it!

We LOVED having them here!

New Library

We finally got something cool a few miles from our house. Our new library opened on November 1st and we have already been a few times. I love it! The desert scenery is so beautiful and the walls of the library are pretty much all windows. Every time we have been there we have been like the only ones there. But we have been loving having it all to ourselves. I have been loving having access to all of the new books and that when we check out movies we don't have to drive 15-20 minutes to return them. Yea!!!

Here is the view from the library parking lot.

This picture shows how close this landscape really is to the parking lot.
Aaron and I outside at the tables having our snack.

Here were a few taken at the Grand Opening Celebration on November 13th!
(I wasn't there-it was the day after my surgery-but Neil took the kids).That is a hawk on top of that saguaro cactus.

I'm sure there will be lots more trips here yet to come.

Halloween

**I did a few more updates, scroll down for more new posts below.**

We had our ward Trunk or Treat the Friday before Halloween. I brought our camera and had great intentions of taking pictures. Too bad I never pulled the camera out of the car. Luckily Aubree grabbed the camera on the drive over to the church and snapped a few pictures.

Here's the one she got of Aaron (AKA Spiderman).
Notice he's biting his nails under his mask.

Here's the one she got of Andrew (AKA Spiderman).

That would have been it for our Halloween pictures, except there was someone in our ward who was snapping pictures all night. He got quite a few of us, which I pulled off of Facebook.

Aubree wanted to be a witch with a scary face. I found this green makeup and nose at Wal-mart. It looks nothing like the picture on the package. (I have not been known for my makeup skills, and this was after the 2nd attempt-we had to wash it off the first time and start over.) But I think she does look pretty scary though.

Is he biting his nails again here?

Here's Neil and I, and yes, this is what we were last year as well. Maybe we'll try something new next year.
Spiderman (picking his nose?) and Geisha girl.

Me passing candy out of our trunk. I went all out this year and got these two lanterns at Dollar Tree to decorate the trunk. Woo Hoo! Good thing I had pants under my Geisha dress or I might have been in trouble. I had no idea how much of my pants were showing.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Another Surgery on November 12th

My sinus surgery went well and now the next step in my healing process is to have a tympanomastoidectomy (say that 3 times fast). I have pretty much had chronic ear infections for the last 20 years. This surgery should restore some of the hearing and help to stop the recurrence of ear infections (won't that be a dream)! The left ear is the worst and so we are starting with that ear (unfortunately they cannot do both ears in a single surgery). It is scheduled for November 12th so please keep me and Dr. Heiland in your prayers.

It's Been 15 Years Today

It is so hard to believe that it was 15 years ago today that I entered the MTC! Here is a picture of me with my sister Angela at her apartment in Provo. This was right as we were leaving to drop me off at the MTC. It seems like forever ago and just yesterday . . . all in the same breath.

This was the good ol' MTC District (minus my companion who was taking the picture).

Here is me and my MTC companion Sister Dye pointing to our missions.
My comp was pointing to Los Angeles, California and I was pointing to Arcadia, California. It ends up, I didn't end up serving in Arcadia. Back in the day, if you have a medical condition, you would have to meet with the MTC docs to discuss if the area you have been called is medically ok for you. Because I have asthma, the MTC doc requested a mission change due to the smog that would be in that area of CA. My call was resubmitted to the First Presidency and they would pray about whether a change was right. It was not guaranteed that they would change my mission, but it was a possibility. It was the entire 3 weeks that I was in the MTC that I didn't know for sure where I would be serving. And of course, that is the question that everyone asks you the whole time you are there. I got sick of explaining why I didn't know where I would be serving and so I later just started making up places that sounded cool. A couple of days before I left the MTC I was called to the Eugene, Oregon Mission.


This was my fan club who was at the airport in Salt Lake to see me off. My sister Angela on the left of me, then on my right was my best friend growing up, who was also my Ricks College roommate-Season, and another Ricks College roommate who was attending BYU at the time-Jaylynn.

Funny story (maybe not so much then though): Because of my mission change, I had to fly out at an awkward time for the Eugene Mission. There was no one else coming to the mission at the time and so I had to fly out by myself (usually you fly with a group of missionaries who are going to your same mission). This feels a little awkward because you are taught the whole time you are in the MTC to not be alone and to always have your companion with you and here I am all alone. I arrive at the Eugene airport expecting the mission president and his wife to be waiting for me. There was no one there. I go and pick up my bags. Still no one. I pull all my bags up to a seat and sit down and wait for a long time. Still no one. By this point I have a lump in my throat. Maybe no one here even knows that I have been called to this mission. I finally look in the phone book and call the mission office. They did know that I was coming they had just made a mistake on the time.

Fun With Cousins

We had Thayne and Jen's kids for a few days while they were out of town. My kids loved having their cousins stay at our house. We did some fun things while they were here, but the only pictures I took were when we went to Chuck E. Cheese.

The whole group.


Aubree on the jump rope game.

Aaron loving the off-road vehicle.

Andrew must have just had a victory that I caught on camera!

Kaden and Andrew

Ella and Aaron

Aubree and Hailey