Garden of the Gods

After Thanksgiving we had a few days to spend together before parting ways.

Friday the girls went Black Friday shopping while the dads and kids went to see Rise of the Guardians. We didn't do the super early shopping, but still braved crowded stores and enjoyed some lunch at Mimi's Cafe.

Saturday the weather was gorgeous. Not often is it in the 70s at Thanksgiving in Colorado, so we decided to go to Garden of the Gods. I guess everyone had the same idea because it was packed. We finally found a place to park and a great trail to hike. I think everyone had a good time and we got some great pictures.

This is what I want to do, horseback riding through the Garden of the Gods!

This is the first time Grandma Kathy has been with all her grandkids.

I love this picture of Emma!

"Enough pictures already!"

Mom might kill me for posting this picture, but I love it :)

Shadows on the rocks

Our little climber

This is at balanced rock, where you can get fun shots like this!

Doesn't this look fake? The color of the sky and the rocks were just so bold that we look like we're in front of a green screen.

And my favorite shot of all. My handsome men.

This was actually the first time we'd been to Garden of the Gods too. Can't wait to go back!

Thanksgiving Day

Now that we're in the midst of the Christmas season, here are my Thanksgiving pictures!

I was so excited to be back in the United States this year and to share this holiday with family again. Though,  truth be told, I did miss having everyone from Dan's unit packed into our tiny apartment with great food and great company. I guess that means we're always making the best of our situation and enjoying the holidays no matter what!

This year my mom and brother came down from Denver and my sister drove up from Phoenix with her family. It's the first time my siblings and I have been together in about 5 years! And of course, any excuse to get the cousins together is going to result in great fun.

Everyone arrived on Wednesday (except Kevin who had to work and joined us for the feast on Thursday), so we quickly started baking. Pies and salads the day before, rolls, turkey and sides on the big day.

Don't these rolls look amazing? They were.

Here are the cousins spending some quality electronic time together. Cade and Kyle or racing on the DS, while Drew and Alex are sharing an iPad.

On Thursday morning we all got a hankering for some carbonation, so Marcus did a drink run for us. Ahh... refreshing.

I had to get a lot of pictures of the cousins all together because it doesn't happen very often. Here they are eating lunch and then enjoying some Thanksgiving activities that Aunt Valerie put together.

And seeing how my sister and I are craft bloggers, we had to come up with a few crafty things to decorate our tables. 

And of course, don't forget the food! Everything was delicious and plentiful. We truly had a great Thanksgiving Day together.

Of course we did more than just eat, but that's for another post. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving too!

Excuses

I know it's been a terribly long time since I've blogged. I have plenty of excuses which all seem pretty valid to me.

1. I'm used to doing more of a travelogue, since we were the only ones in Korea and people wanted to experience our journey, and we were constantly seeing new things, blog posts were easy to come by. Now I need to get back in the mode of blogging to keep a history of our family's events, not just our outings.
2. Umm.. I'm busy! Who isn't?
3. Right around Halloween our life got kinda turned upside down, and I'm not ready to blog about it yet, but it put a halt to a lot of things, including blogging. I just wasn't up for it.
4. Flu bug, we all got it the week before Thanksgiving, (which is MUCH better than getting it during Thanksgiving, right?) so by the time we were all feeling better it was time to get the house ready for guests!
5. Thanksgiving! I will blog about it, my sister has already beat me to the punch.
6. Wisdom teeth! I had my final two wisdom removed right when Dan's parents came to visit, so there wasn't any time for anything but slurping up jell-o and pudding. Blech. 

How are my excuses? Well, I hope to get caught up quickly since the holidays are upon us and there's always a lot going on during this great season.

And it can't be a post without a few pictures. Have I mentioned the gorgeous place that we live in? Colorado Springs is nestled in some gorgeous mountains and we get some spectacular views. Dan called me one morning on his way to work and said if I had a chance I needed to get out with our camera and get a few shots of Pikes Peak and the moon. I was intrigued and boy am I glad that I did. Just check these out!

 So despite life's trials, there is much to be thankful for and partake in.

A little fall fun!

Last Saturday we enjoyed a visit from Grandma Kathy and Uncle Kevin, and we turned it into a fun Halloween day!

First we made Halloween cookies. We make Christmas cookies every year, but this is our first time doing it for Halloween. I kept it simple with only two shapes of cookies and two colors of frosting. Also target had some adorable halloween sprinkles (which kind of sparked the whole idea...) to put on top!

Hi Nikki!

Grandma Kathy made this awesome Halloween afghan, and the boys sat on it all day. They were sad when it wasn't there the next day. Guess I need to make some afghans!

Then it was time to carve pumpkins. I found some Avengers patterns for the boys and we helped them (more like carved for them). Next year I think we'll just let them do basic faces that they can carve themselves, even though these turned out awesome. Uncle Kevin's is in the middle. Dan and I have yet to do ours, but I'll post pictures when we do!

This is the beginning of our Halloween celebrations. We have a church activity this Saturday and of course, trick or treating on the 31st. This is the first time we've lived in a neighborhood so we plan on doing some traditional door to door candy hunting!

Loving Life

The Honda Odyssey that we purchased had a car tag allowing us into the Cheyenne Mountain State park. It expires soon so we took some time a few weekends ago to explore. It took a little while but we finally found some trails and had a great time. [I just wish they had been this excited at the Grand Canyon!]

Looking at a lizard!

Aren't the mountains just gorgeous? I get to look at these every day.

i LOVE this picture!

You can barely make out the deer in this picture. The boys were off the trail looking at something when a deer came running straight at me. Thankfully it turned up into these trees, i don't know what i would have done.

The boys loved how much climbing they got to do.

Check out this butterfly! It's just like the ones we've seen in museums that pretend to be part of the wood.

We had a great time, and maybe now that it's warmed back up little we'll head out there again!

Four Corners

Yes, I'm still blogging about our road trip from 2 months ago...

After we left the Grand Canyon we made our way to Four Corners. I mean, when you're that close you have to stop, right?  How many times can you say you've been in four states at once? And how often can your entire family each be in a different state without DCFS coming and arresting you? hehe...

Actually, it was kind of a weird place. All those buildings behind us are little vendors. They had a little bit of food, but none of it seemed appealing. We thought there'd be restaurants around so we timed it to hit the Four Corners at lunch time, but instead had to drive another hour or so to the next nearest city (which had a Wendy's and Wendy's is awesome b/c we missed having a Frosty in Korea).

So here's the obligatory picture, a keep in mind we had just been camping for 2 days with no showers, hence the bandana for me, but that doesn't explain Dan's scruffiness. He just boycotted shaving while he was on leave for 30 days and decided to fashion himself with chops.  ::grumble::

And that is what we did while waiting for our house to close! We had to get back to Colorado to attend a UFC event that I bought Dan tickets for for Father's Day, and also to sign him out on permissive TDY and to get Cade registered for school. Sooooo we still had another 10 days in a hotel (if you can call it that), and it was torturous. August 20th couldn't come fast enough. We moved out of our apartment in Korea on July 5th and finally had a home 45 days later.