Holidays 2014

I'm not doing to good at not being busy....

Here's a recap of our holiday season from 2014!

Thanksgiving:
We drove to Utah and stayed with the Robert McBride family. We gathered together with LOTS of McBrides for a wonderful feast. Dan smoked a turkey on his Traeger and it turned out super yummy, just cooked faster than we anticipated. We had the Newton family, Kristina McBride family, Papa Jon and Nana Dee, Jon McBride family, Phillip McBride family, Cobb family, our family, and a Barrow kid as well! It was a lot of people in a small space, but we always make it work. Lots of games were played, food eaten, I learned to make tamales and the cousins had tons of fun playing together. Unfortunately the flu that soon ravaged most of the country started to make it's appearance with Alex on Thanksgiving night and by the end of two weeks at least 2 people from every family that was present ended up with some sort of flu.

Christmas:
Since we had just done a Disneyland trip and a Utah trip, we stayed home for Christmas, which is really the way I prefer it anyways.

 There was crafting

Temple trips

 Holiday concerts

A fantastic opportunity to see our friend Chad play in the pit for How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Making gingerbread houses with the Bennetts!

Sledding!

New Christmas PJs that I altered a bit with my Silhouette

The annual Christmas cookie decorating party!

My mom and brother came down for Christmas, and we started a new tradition, The Christmas Eve box. It included slippers, popcorn and a Christmas movie. We didn't quite make it through the movie as Cade wasn't feeling well and we were all tired.

Christmas morning was fun!

Cinnamon rolls and silly straw glasses!

Dan got me the AWESOMEST gift, and handmade set of Matroyshka dolls to represent our family!

Christmas day we invited a ton of people over for a feast and games. It was a little crazy, but we love entertaining and having lots of people over.

New Years:

Not my favoritest of holidays, but we're so glad to have the Bennetts to hang out with and make it fun! We played pass the pigs, Super Smash Bros, Minute to Win it games, Mario Kart, ate a bunch of finger foods, and did some little confetti fireworks at 10:00pm. Yup, we're those kind of New Year's people, lol!



There you have it! Now maybe I'll catch up with the rest of life :)

Bucket List 2015!

I'm sticking with my bucket list instead of resolutions. Here's my list from 2014:

• Go to the top of Pikes Peak either by driving or by the cog railway
• Play with friends more
• Save money
• Cade's baptism!
• Combined birthday party for the boys
• Summer road trip
• Camp 4 times
• Accomplish these three projects around the house
• Learn guitar
• Get Dan promoted to E6!
• Go horseback riding at Garden of the Gods
• Lose more weight :)
• Finish my Korea blog book

Hmmm, i didn't do as good as the previous year! But I am proud of the things I did accomplish, especially playing with friends more. We've had quite a few parties at our house and have gotten quite good at entertaining! And as you've probably noticed we've become good friends with the Bennetts and we really enjoy spending time together. I'm also really proud that Dan was finally promoted to Staff Sergeant! It only took like forever :) 

So for this year's list I'm just getting the feeling that we won't be here in Colorado much longer. It could totally be me getting antsy because we've never lived anywhere this long. It could also be because Dan's been here the longest of anyone in his Unit. They even just got a new Commander. As we know very well, anything is possible in the Army, so for all we know we could be moving this year! Because of that, in my list this year are a few things we want to do while living in the West and in Colorado.

• Summer Road Trip- didn't happen last year, but it most likely will this year. We're thinking Yellowstone, Idaho, maybe Utah and then back over to Colorado.
• Go River Rafting! Not sure if this will be with the kids or not, but something we definitely want to do
• Horseback Riding at Garden of the Gods- I chose something else for my bday last year, but it's gotta happen this year! I will regret not doing it if we move!
• Finish Korea blog book- this is super time consuming, but will be well worth it when I finish. My goal is to finish it so it can be a Christmas gift!
• Save enough money to have 2 months rent/mortgage on hand. We plan on renting out our property so it's good to have some back up money in case it goes un-rented for awhile.
• Camping! We've really enjoyed our camping trips and hope to do some more. I won't put a number of times because we've found Dan's summer schedule to be so unpredictable that we can't even reserve a place too much ahead of time. 
• Do the incline. It's time!
• Be less busy and more productive. 
• Work ahead!

I think it will be a good year! I look forward to seeing how it all pans out :)

p.s. it may sound like i know something about our future in the Army, but i really truly don't, it's just a feeling!

Halloween 2014!

Better late than never!

We had a fun Halloween with pretty mild weather and good friends. The Bennetts came over and we ate chili, cornbread, went trick or treating, and then warmed up with hot chocolate and donuts!

Alex wanted to be a mummified puppy. I think it's because they had been studying ancient Egypt in school, and he's obsessed with puppies, lol.

 Here's the pumpkin Alex designed and helped Daddy make.

Cade wanted to be a Ninja with Caleb, so we got a few extra bits of ninja gear to up his already existing ninja costume.

And here's Cade's spider pumpkin!

It's great to have such good friends to spend the holidays with!

Alex and Conner

The whole gang! Happy Halloween!

Royal Gorge Railroad

Yes, I am WAY behind! :)

Dan and I had our 11th anniversary on October 6th, which happened to be a Monday, and he happened to not be working! See, he often works on the weekends and gets a comp day on Mondays. With the kids at school that equals a date for us!

We decided to do something a little different, and we got tickets to ride the train at the Royal Gorge down in Canon City.

They had this creepy guy in the model train...

 We were being a little silly!

The views were very interesting. It was a lot more rocky than we expected. We partially went to see some fall foliage, but there wasn't any!

There were lots of abandoned pipe lines, water ways, buildings and artifacts along the railways.

The railway goes under the Royal Gorge Bridge, which is apparently the world's highest suspension bridge (partially because of the starting altitude).

At one point of the ride you could look down on the rails and see tons of coins! I'm sure the workers come by and make a few bucks!

We had fun doing something different and enjoying some time with each other! 11 years down, eternity to go! :)  Man I love that guy!