Christmas Break 2013

Holidays! I love them! The best two weeks of the year are over Christmas. I always get so excited about the Christmas break. The time is coming where we will not be able to have so much time off but this year Dan and I were able to finagle our leave time to work out so we had a little over a week off. We started out on Friday December 20, 2013 for the Bishop gift exchange then afterwards we headed straight to St.George where we spent the rest of the time. I love being with our families whether in St. George or Farmington. We usually only get a short weekend together so it was so much fun to be able to spend all that time with the family.

We went hiking, slacklining, biking and more. We stayed up way too late every night laughing, watching movies, and playing games. We ate way too much food for any human, I think I am still in a sugar daze. 

Nativity show at Tuacahn

 

La Familia

 

Taislee and LJ at the park

 Dan Teaching Taislee how to ride her new bike

 

I mustache you a question

 

Dan Starting out on the highline...

 

The fall...

 Hectors turn

 LJ's attempt

 Failed

 

Family Hike

THANKSGIVING
 November 27-30

Who doesn't love Thanksgiving? I was so excited to get the party started. It was a crazy week at work so I counted down the minutes! Dan was taking his first of a series of terribly hard tests in order to get his CPA. 7PM on Wednesday we were ready to get the party started!

Thursday, day of thanks! Kelsi, Dan and I had to get up early so that we could run the 5k Turkey trot for Kelsi's school. It was not our fastest time by far but it was a good way to get the day started! Afterward we had an impromptu family Turkey bowl football game. I'm terrible but I do enjoy a good game. Afterward we of course ate, and ate, and partied and ate and played some more.

Friday we did some shopping and played with the kids and that night we had our bi annual Thanksgiving family hockey game! Every other year the family rents out the ice and plays a game of hockey, even the kids have their own little goals. We had dessert with our extended family.

The rest of the week we just hung out and had good quality family time! It went by far too fast but Christmas is right around the corner. The tree is up and cookies have been made!

Gun Show & Half Marathon
November 15-16

Friday night we went to a fundraiser for AMAR, it is to help Iraqi children. It was a unique fundraiser but I thought it was really cool. We were able to shoot some amazing guns and see a 500 pound pumpkin explode. I enjoy shooting but am not a master gunman so it was really fun to see my dad, Bryan and Dan get excited about them.

The Grandmaster shot the gun first...it was a lot louder than we anticipated

 Brent getting ready to shoot the big gun!

 It is always fun trying out new things!

 Kelsi found the camera

 Dan Shooting another gun, I shot it as well, it's so accurate I finally hit a target ha ha

 

We were able to get a tour of the convoy

 This gun was HUGE!

 Dan was a perfect shot with the machine gun, Bryan got a big kick back ha ha

The Great Pumpkin meets its demise!

 

We spotted a train and had to climb aboard. Kelsi was scared we would get caught

Saturday we finished our first ever half marathon. Honestly I never thought we would do one or that I could possibly run that much since I have always hated running. I dreaded it, but we got there and once it started I started to feel better about it. Around miles 7-9 our knees were hurting but we pushed on and we finished! The last two miles seemed endless since we pushed ourselves. Dan finished far ahead of me at 1 hour and 54 minutes, I came in at 2 hours and 12 minutes for a total of 13.2 miles! It was a blast and we have decided we will be doing more! We are accomplishing things we never thought we would do so I am excited to see how far we can push ourselves!

We did it! We were cold, wet and sore but it was so worth it!

 

Boys Trip/Xavier Baptism
November 1-3

Dan had a boys trip planned with all the boys in my family to go to St. George for a weekend and last minute we found out our nephew Xavier was getting baptized and Dan was requested to baptize him. So Dan drove with the boys and I drove by myself to St. George where we made both events happen. He had a good time with the boys, they went shooting, golfing, to Enders Game and ate a lot. I spent the weekend with the Flores family helping with the baptism. It was a great weekend and we are so proud of cute little Xavier! They were able to bless their little boy Noah as well that same weekend so we got a lot accomplished!

The boys out to eat

 Blowing stuff up....such boys

 

Cute Xavier...couldn't find one from the baptism