Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Reflecting on 2012

Here's a collage of some of our memorable moments that may or may not have made it into a post, but things I that I still wanted to share. Sometimes I took pictures and thought, "hey I'd like to blog about this!"

Spring 2012- Finding the hole in our air mattress.
We miss the Pierces, who used to live in Salt Lake. They would come over sometimes on Sunday for "Sunday snack". On this particular Sunday Matt mentioned, "we need to find a leak in our air mattress. We think we should take it out back on the pond." If you dont know Eric, you should, he's kind of spontaneous and the fact that he did this is not a surprise. In response to Matt's crazy suggestion, Eric, in his very "Eric-like-manner" said: "Let's do it right now!" So withouth further thought, they did.

At this point I wondered if Eric was going to be stuck. :)



Eric is trying to listen for the "hole"

Here's a picture of the Pierce's cute kids, Kinsley & Aila.

They let me babysit their kids.  We finger painted and Kinsley, the oldest, thought it was great, Aila on the other hand was pretty excited to see mom walk through the door when the night was over.




They love my son and I love watching them talk to him. They use high pitch voices and make everything sound "cute". Aila keeps calling him Baby Boston. :) (She has a cousin about the same age that is named Boston.) They're always trying to get him to look at them and play with them. I'm sure one day he'll appreciate all the female attention.


REAL Salt Lake. We were kind of hoping we'd go a lot but this seems to have been our only game of the season. 







Trying Something New 2012
We got to do somethings for the first time.


I roasted a marshmallow over the stove

Shot a gun (and being pregnant was a first too!)

We made these reflecting light things at boyscout camp (that was a first too!)



Matt's first with his wet suit in icy cold water!


 Second Grade 2012
I taught my last year of second grade. Man, I miss those kids! We took a field trip to the zoo.
We studied about animal habitats and then went to the zoo to "examine" if the animals had everything that they needed in their habitats at the zoo. My kids for the most part thought the zoo was doing their part but a lot of them were pretty unhappy about the elephants, giraffes, and especially the bats.

They thought the elephant enclosure was too boring. The elephants needed real toys and not just fake ones.The zoo had failed the elephants. They also thought it was unacceptable that the zoo had a "fake" tree for the giraffes. The giraffes needed a real one. As for the bats, the enclosure had too much light. The bats needed to be in a room that was pitch black.

My super cute class. We told them to all wear white shirts and blue pants that day. It made it easier to spot them at the zoo.
This particular class was a lot of fun too. For example, they were tired of being called "little kids" so as a class we thought we should write letters to the "bigger" kids and tell them what we think. They wanted to impress the older kids by using big words and decided to use the word "colossal" (we saw this word in a text we were reading once) to describe themselves. I told them they weren't really giants and couldn't call themselves colossal, so they thought to use it in another way.

They wrote, "we may be little but we are colossal learners!"

Teaching second grade is really that much fun.


Out doors 2012
We definetly got our share of national parks this year.


Zion
Arches


Glacier

Yellowstone

Jackson Hole


For Thanksgiving we headed down to Moab and did some mini canyons and camped out. My sister came along with us too. 


She really "digs" dirt. :)






We camped under this arch!



Baby 2012- Probably the biggest change of the year!
This little  man is SO MUCH FUN.  He is pretty easy to keep happy and I believe he is SO SOCIAL. If it's just me and him he seems pretty bored until someone new walks through the door and then he's all smiles. When we take him out he loves looking at the people and loves it when someone stops to talk to him. These pictures were for my sister's birthday. I took them and then posted them on her facebook page.

                                         

 

Baking 2012
With my recent discovery of Pintrest I've started trying out a lot of new recipes. My most favorite this year has been the donuts.
Making donuts!
Get this... chocolate eclair cake. Best cake ever! SO GOOD.
 I was so proud of myself for making Matt this bouquet for V-Day.









Biggest Excitment of 2012 (next to having a baby)

Seeing a bear!

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Christmas


Christmas? Where to begin.... well this was a year of firsts. 

1. First Christmas with baby.

  


2. First year we put lights up on our house!




 3. First time we checked out the Christmas scene in S-L-C.
I didn't take any pictures but we did witness a "live" nativity. Fully equipped with a live camel, sheep, cow, baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and a mini Bethlehem market place. It was pretty awesome. KSL also had a "Christmas Light" google map where they made it easy to drive around the city and see some pretty awesome displays. We saw quite a few light shows put to music. Those are my favorite! Where you turn on your radio and hear the lights twinkle to the beat in your car.

  One block had the whole Christmas story (from the Bible) on display as shown below.  Each house had one of these huge signs sitting on their front lawn with a scripture and a picture.



 One street had every single house with a cool light display. They had this banner, as you entered the street, that said something like "Welcome to Christmas Street" or something like that. I liked this one the best. The dragon I thought made a great substitute for reindeer.


3. We got to spend Christmas with Matt's family this year too. Not the first time we've spent Christmas with them, but the first time we spent Christmas with them in... Pocatello! (They moved a few months ago.)


My super cute niece.

I told her it was cool to put a bow on your head. :)

Matt lighting the candles for this awesome nativity.

Grandma Elton Christmas morning

Matt showing off Tomatillo's bath toys.

Auntie Kim

Cousins. :)

Ainsley got this tunnel as well as this pink back pack. She loves them both, as you can tell.
 As for our son.... I dont think he really cares about Christmas. I think all he cares about is if he can get it to his mouth or not.


 





Luge

Earlier in December, Matt got the chance to try out luge!


We have a friend who competed pretty seriously in luge. He's traveled around, competing, quite a bit when he was younger. He's now a coach and spends his days teaching English and his winter nights coaching luge. At the Olympic Oval, in Park City, they let people pay to pretend they're in the Olympics too! (Okay... not really "pretend to be in the Olympics" but at least see what it's like!)

Here's a video of Matt going any where from 47 to 52 mph. He's at the very last bit of this 30 second clip.



  A snap shot of Matt going REALLY fast, in case you missed him in the clip above!



Matt posing like an Olympian with his sled.

He's pretty excited.


  I'm not sure if you can read his red hat, but it says "Team USA". Matt was SOOOO excited about this red hat when he found it at home. He thought it only too appropriate for the event.

The excitement was too much and Tomatillo decided he'd rather sleep.


 Iara is married to the luger that brought us here in the first place.
She's pretty into this sport too. Every Thursday she comes up here for practice.