Christmas, Snow, Quads, Inner Tubes Oh My

All of us in the snow having a great time as a family at christmas time!! We celebrated the Christmas season with my Mom and Step-Dad this year we left Apache Junction around 5 pm on christmas eve and arrived in Prescott Valley well to it just plain being cold, we both are loving it. We played games for a little bit before going to bed. We all woke up around 7 am and proceeded to open up our presents, well almost we took a detour before we started the opening up of our presents, we played a white elephant gift exchange with my family (my siblings and their spouses were also there) Scott ended up with the movie Doom and a jar of change approximatley $6.00, I received an apple bread mix. My Mom and Step-Dad had another little surprise for us there were presents under the Christmas tree for 6 dwarves and Delbert had the key as to which dwarf got which present. I was Happy and I got a Walmart gift card. Scott was sneezy and he received a gift card to Home Depot. My brother-in-law Jaycen was the designated present hander outer. We received a box of our favorite cereal from Santa (aka Emily), a scrapbooking kit (from Jaycen), homemade sign with our last name on it (from Emily), an ASU Shirt and Hat (from Scott C.), and we each received in our stockings a movie ticket to Harkins theatres, and lots of candy. Scott and I gave each other our christmas gifts before we left for Prescott, Scott received the new Jeff Dunham DVD, A gaming console to try out and see if he likes. I received a Kitchen Aid Mixer. We both received courtesy of Scott Moccasins. They are so comfortable. Well onto all of the pictures on this blog post, we went on Saturday to play in the snow near Strawberry. We took one Quad and a couple of inner tubes and we hiked around in the snow.

This is my step-dad Delbert getting ready to ride an inner tube with my sister next to him. Delbert had so much fun doing this. We hooked two inner tubes up to the Quad and went riding behind it having a blast.

This is my sister-in-law Emily waiting to ride along with my husband Scott, I rode the inner tube with my brother Scott after my husband went, I had alot of fun although my tushy was frozen from riding on the inner tube.

My Mom and Delbert taking all of us kids for a ride on the inner tubes. Thanks for bringing the inner tubes and Quad you guys! We will have to do that again sometime.

Happy 6th B-day Hunter Haws

Were you naughty or nice this year?

This year my husbands family decided to join in with his older sister Maries in-laws traditions for christmas. They get together with each other on a weekend night and eat good food and celebrate being together, around 6:30ish a special visitor comes with his wife to visit all of the good little children. Santa and Mrs. Claus sit in their living room and call each child up by name (Magically of course) and the kids sit on their laps with the traditional question from Santa "Have you been good this year?" comes the reply from the small child yes. With the pictures all taken of the kids by their parents they get a surprise from Santa, they get a present from him to open up before christmas! The picture above is of our niece Anne-Marie she got a Dolly and a little stuffed Lamb from Santa. Scott got his name called and his present was a book light to help him read in the dark. I was at work so Scott got my present from Santa, I got a bracelet. I was sad that I missed all of the little kids and their experience with Santa and Mrs. Claus, but there is always next year. We want to let eveyone know that we love you all, and we appreciate all that you do for us.

I came home tonight from work with these sitting on our kitchen table, and who is the wonderful culprit? That would be my loving husband. Aren't they just gourgeous. I also got a card that sings a song too with a wonderful sentiment in it. Thank you so much hubby!!! I have reason to believe that I recieved these beautiful roses because I have just started a job at Hobby Lobby in their scrapbooking department. Let me tell you having to learn at least 10,000 that is right 10,000 new codes just in scrapbooking and having to also be trained on the register (and the codes that they have) is the most fun I have had since well I don't know when. If you cannot already tell I was being sarcastic to the previous sentence, but you have learn them in order to do your job right, right?

Church happenings during sacrament

We went to church today and sat in the back, we were one of the only couples sitting in the back when sacrament started, after we partook of the sacrament we had families sitting all around us with little children, this one family sitting directly in front of us had 5 children, this one little boy about the age of 4 would turn around and flirt with Jodi, he then by process of elimination because there are only two of us in our family right now worked his way over to scott to ask him questions and he decided to get really really close to Scott's face and put his little hand on scotts go-tee and feel it, he thought that it was cool i guess. i was trying so hard not to laugh because we were in sacrament. his poor mom just sat there staring at her son mortified that her son was doing these things, but he was so intrigued with scott and what scott was doing. I almost forgot during sacrament we determined that there are only 4 boys of age that can participate in the sacrament, and one of them I spied as only being about 4 foot 11 and pointed him out to scott that he was really short, he looked at me with his evil eye and stated there is nothing wrong with being short, for those of you who are not his siblings that read this blog when scott was of age to particpate in this sacred duty he was a little bit smaller than that boy, you could always tell where he was when they lined up at the back of the pews. Thankfully scott grew up and is 5ft 10 inches tall, 6 inches taller than me.

just wanted to post this image of the temple that scott took yesterday night

A Night at the Temple for the Christmas season

We went to the temple this evening to meet up with my siblings and their spouses and my father and his wife. We all arrived and listened to the musical group that was performing that evening which so happened to be the junior high that us kids went to and amazingly enough the director of the choir was the director that we had when we went there and she still looks the same. We wheeled my dad around in a wheelchair (provided by my step-brother Jarrod. Thanks alot, it helped greatly) we enjoyed being together and watching my dad just love every minute of it with his little camera taking pictures left and right, and then my husband with his camera catching us doing funny things because we did not know he was taking the picture, he got some really good ones that I will post. It is always the best thing to enter through those gates of the temple and just feel complete knowing that all is well and that you can enjoy the time spent there with family and the beautiful lights that were presented this year they do just a beautiful job. Well until another posting, we hope all of you who read this have a beautiful holiday season this year, and remember that life is precious dont take anything for granted. We love all of you!!

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

It is amazing that you are already 5 years old!!

1 of many Birthday Parties

Today we went over to my mother-in-laws to celebrate a couple of birthdays in December. We sometimes tend to celebrate them together since my husbands family is so big (31 people with one more coming early next year). It just gets way to complicated to have a b-day individualy with so many people in the family. We got there and played outside with all the kids that were there at the time. We tried out the new fire pit that Scott and his Dad built (with help from lots of little hands and big hands). It works great, the kids loved helping to build the wood pile for the fire. We then grilled the food and ate all of it. It was good! We celebrated our nephew Jonathan's 5th birthday, we had costco cake YUMMY! With all of the babies and kids there Jodi had her fill of children for a couple of days. Scott watched hockey and the home team lost (the Phoenix Coyotes) but his favorite team won (New Jersey Devils). we do not get the channel that hockey is on so he was so excited to be able to watch it, most of the kids like to watch it with him. Scott had his fill of seeing his little friend Baby ARD (her real name is Anne-Marie) Jonathans little sister. She loves to see him and they sit and watch TV together. Until the next Birthday party which will be in a couple of weeks, we will see his family again.

A shout out to Laurissa for her Birthday, have a great day

A days of downs soon to turn up

Well today has been a very difficult day, Kim (my step-mom) called me at about noon and said that my father was in the hospital! He was at his appointment with his oncologist and had had a seizure right in front of the doctor, they ambulances him over to Banner Baywood (his oncologist is only 2-3 blocks from the hospital), so I called my brother and sister to let them know the situation and was in the Blazer before I even called my husband to let him know where I was headed. I got to the hospital and Kim met me out front to take me back into the emergency room area where he was at. He had just got back from a brain scan to determine if there was anything wrong immediately in his brain. It came back as being fine. I waited in the waiting area and then Kim came and told me that they were giving him a room. By then my sister and brother and his wife had shown up. So we stayed with my dad until 10 pm they are going to keep him Thursday (they are going to be doing a cat scan and an MRI because this is not the first time that this has happened to him so they want to do more extensive tests on him to determine why this is happening) so he may come home Thursday or Friday, we will have to see. For those of you who are reading this Blog and do not know already my father is battling, Gastric Carcinoma "Stomach Cancer" right now and he is in 3rd week of 6 weeks into his treatment of Chemo and Radiation.

Traveling into action for the Elk

Well for the last part of Thanksgiving Scott and I had to make a quick trip to Alpine, Az. My Stepdad and Mom had gone hunting for elk over Thanksgiving, he got a elk on friday but could not get it nor the Quad that he was using down the mountain very safely, so we were called into action (so to speak!), so we took off on saturday in the early morning to go up to the snow and cold. It was so great we both loved going up there, we stayed with Delbert and my mom at their little cabin at the Beaver Creek Lodge in the middle of know where. The wind was the only thing that was bothersome, because it made it colder of course. As you can tell by the photo Delbert is so happy that he got the elk, and guess what most of it once it is processed gets to come and live in our garage in our freezer because we have the space for it.

1st Blog Entry

This is a brand new thing for us this thing called blogging, I have been to a couple of my sister-in-laws websites and enjoyed reading them, so we are starting our own. Any suggestions on how you can find cute stuff for you blog let me know, Thanks.