Sledding

The kids had their first experience in sledding. The outcome was different than expected. Megan had a blast and Daniel not so much. I think he only went down the small hill maybe five times and then he was done. We practically had to aim Megan towards the car and hope she got enough speed on the way down to land in the car.

Singing in American

At lunch today, someone at our table had a birthday. The server asked us if we would help sing to the birthday girl. My boss jokingly asked, "In what language?" The server said, "American."

Utah lost...

Then Max Hall opened his mouth...

Enough said.

Recipes

I've been having so much fun scrapbooking digitally that I have now started reorganizing my recipe book.  My mom put together a recipe book with all my favorite meals that she would cook while I was growing up.  I received this book when I got married.  Since then, I've found new recipes that I enjoy making and the family enjoys eating.  They are not placed in a very organized manner in my book.  My friends showed me the template they created to organize their recipe book.  Their recipes turned out so cute that I thought I would try them with mine.  I wasn't sure if I was going to organize my recipes this way, but once again, I tried it once and now I'm hooked.  It's put new life into cooking for me.  I am not just cooking because my family needs to eat or for enjoyment (I really do enjoy cooking).  I'm cooking so that I can take a picture and put it on the recipe card.  Using this template makes it so easy......and way cute!  Click here to receive your recipe template and a tutorial on how to use your template.

San Diego

We took another trip. This time we went to San Diego. Our trip began with a night in Vegas. We drove the strip so the kids could see all the lights and how neat Vegas looks. We went to church the next day and visited the Las Vegas Temple.
The next day we drove to San Diego. It was so nice. The sun was shining and it was a very comfortable temperature. We got there on Sunday.

On Monday we went to Sea World.

Daniel was big enough to go on the Journey to Atlantis ride. He was excited to go on this ride. After going on it once, Bryan asked if he wanted to go again and Daniel said no. He wanted nothing to do with it after that. He thought it was fun but too scary.

We watched Shamu and friends.

Took a ride on Elmo's flying fish and two other rides (I don't remember the names. They were the only rides all of us could go on.)

Played on the huge playground.

And just had a ton of fun.

We bought each of the kids a souvenir. Daniel picked a stuffed Shamu. It's funny, he can't remember the name Shamu. He will begin talking about it and then stop and ask us what the name is. Megan is usually the one that reminds him the name.

That night we went to La Jolla beach and felt the water on our feet and watched the sun set.After the beach we went to the San Diego temple. We were able to see how pretty it is a night up close. Of course the temple grounds were closed as so we did not take a picture.

Tuesday we took a Harbor Freight Excursion. This was an hour ride around the northern bay area.

It was neat to see sea life in the ocean. Not just at Sea World. We saw lots of sea lions. We also saw them training a dolphin.

We also saw lots of other neat things.

After the harbor tour, we went and toured the aircraft carrier "Midway".

In the brig.

We spent the remainder of the day at the beach. I believe the majority of this activity is on the video camera.

It was a great get away. We all had a lot of fun.

Moab

This past weekend we took a trip to Moab. We really only had one day to do whatever we wanted. So we decided to spend the day in the Canyonlands. Here's a quick summary of our trip.

This was our first trip camping with our camper.

We went to dead horse point.

We hiked up whale rock.

The kids found something on the way up......

A lizard!

Me, Daniel, & Megan at the top of Whale Rock.

We hiked along the rim of Grand View Point Overlook.

We ended the day with some off roading along Shafer Trail. This trail took you below all the sites we had just previously visited. You can see the trail we went along in this next picture.

Our trail began with some switch backs.

The rest of our adventure on this trail is on the video camera. Hopefully we'll get some of the videos up in a bit.

Big Cookie!!

The primary presidency in our ward held out a carrot (well, a cookie) for the kids to read the Book of Mormon with their families in the year 2009. We worked our way methodically through the book about one chapter a night just telling the stories in words the kids can understand. We finished just two weeks ago. When the primary said big cookie, they weren't kidding!!

And if you think that was a cheap way to go through the Book of Mormon, I have two challenges for you. First, you try getting your 3 and 5 year-old to sit through a verbatim reading of the book. Second, ask Daniel the next time you see him who Nephi's favorite Old Testament prophet is or as Megan how Abinidi died. It was a lot of fun.