Passing Something Along

I saw this on a friend's blog -- and love to give and receive comments (and surprises)... SO --
Here's how it works-the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive, at some point during the year, a handmade gift from me. What it will be and when it will arrive is a total surprise!
The catch is that you must participate as well-before you leave your comment here, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going. Then come back, let me know you're going to play, and sit back and anticipate the arrival of your gift! Remember that only the first 3 comments will receive a gift from me, so be quick!

Happy 16th Birthday Jenessa Rose...LOVE YOU!

Ginger's First Day

Today we welcomed Ginger into our home and our family. We were warned that she gets very carsick and would more than likely throw up on our venture home. Well, she cried for about 10 minutes and then fell asleep. No problems there. She is such a delight. She chased Christopher around the house for quite a while today. When she stops suddenly, her tail end goes off to the right. It is hilarious. We laughed all day. On our first day, we were ACCIDENT FREE! Wahoo! I know that won't last, but she did awesome. She seems to really like being under the kitchen table. We have a crate that we want her to sleep in. We kept trying to ease her into it all day to no avail. During dinner, we put her in there and she whined the whole time. It was hard to listen to her and not pay her any attention. We all ate very quickly. Afterwards, we couldn't get her back in the crate, she kept going under the table to sleep. Finally, Aaron put the crate under the table and she walked right in and crashed. Easy solution, she'll just live under the table. The night is still very young, so I'll post and let you know how that goes. We love her tons already!

Sledding with the Hornes!

For New Year's Eve this year we decided to take the family and head up to the hills for a sledding adventure. We went with a great family in our ward named the Hornes. There is a state park called Hyak about 45 minutes away. The park rangers groom a sledding hill that is perfect; not too long but just long enough, not too steep but just steep enough. You pay 10 bucks to park so the price is right! Here are some pics and videos. Enjoy...

When we were done we had some hot chocolate, tail gate style. On the way home I gave the family a bit of a scare. :-) I wanted (no, I needed) to test how slick the road was. So of course, I gunned it around a turn exiting the parking lot. Well we all found out that the road was very slippery! We did a 180 and surprised the Hornes when they came around the corner and found us facing them. Good times! Needless to say we went slower the rest of the way on the snow packed roads!

2008 in Review

I thought I would follow another bloggers lead and post our year of 2008. It was a great one! We spent a lot of time together as a family and had some fun visits from family and friends.

In January, Aaron was able to go snow caving with the scouts. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of that trip. The temp at night was negative 2 degrees! BRRR! Also, Aaron was able to go to the temple with the girls and do Baptisms for the Dead.

In February, my brother Scott and his wife Nicole came for a visit. Nicole almost caught a fish at Pikes Market. During February, we were also able to take a tour of the USS Abraham Lincoln. What an amazing privilege and experience!

In March, Christopher introduced us to the sport of Lacrosse. We LOVE this sport. So fun to watch and Christopher is a natural.

In April, my mom and sister Christy came for a visit. We took in the sites and good food at Black Diamond Bakery and took a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island.

May was a busy one. Jaycee tired out and made the "A" team for Marauders. She has some serious soccer skills. Preston also tried his hand at baseball. He picked it up so quickly and is a natural as well. Also, our good friends from Utah, Steve, Kim, and Devyn Olsen came for a SH-visit. :-)

In June we headed to Orcas Island for some camping at Moran State Park. AWESOME trip! If you have the means, we would highly recommend it. Here we are getting ready for our first ever kayak adventure.

July we went to Port Angeles and the Olympic National Forest for the 4th of July. WAY fun trip. We stayed at the Salt Creek Recreational Area. This was a great camp! Here we are at Hurricane Ridge in the National Forest.

August was our tip to Utah to spend time with the Jones and Hatch families and take a trip to the cabin.

September was back to school. I don't have a picture of my grin from ear to ear.

October is when Nessa kicked some serious butt in swimming. Go girl!

November we enjoyed a great Thanksgiving. Every year we say it is the best Turkey, but I can honestly say 2008 was the tastiest!

December was full of family Christmas activities. We made cinnamon rolls as a family, went to movies, sledding and read scriptures on Christ every night. Oh, we also shoveled a ton of snow! It was a white Christmas. This was a year to start many new traditions. Thanks to family for all the ideas!

Here we are making the cinnamon rolls.

Yee Haw! What a fun year!

and GingerSnap makes 7!

Let me tell you a story. Aaron's Dad, Step Mom, and Grandma decided to send money this year for Christmas. They wanted us to decide what to do with it and let them know through pictures what our decision was. So...we had a family meeting. We decided we would all give out two ideas and then take a vote. I voted to go buy a bunch of presents and drop them off at Toys for Tot. Or, I suggested we go somewhere for the weekend and play. Aaron voted for a Home Depot card or Stereo Speakers. Preston wanted a monkey. Christopher wanted to split the money and have each of us shop for another member of the family, not ourselves. Then Jenessa brought up a puppy. That is all it took! Aaron and I quickly realized we should have put in place guidelines to this voting. Too late. We thought we could evoke Executive Power and each parent take two votes, but the kids put up a fight. The rules were not set before the voting process began. We could all vote for two things. Of course the puppy got the most votes and split the money and shop for everyone else took second. We did a secret ballot to see which of the two final ideas would win out. As you can see from the pictures, the kids won. Aaron and I voted for split the cash, but clearly were out numbered.

We tried having a dog about 10 years ago, and frankly, it was not a good experience. We didn't do our homework and we had three kids that were 9 and younger. We had no time to devote to the dog and we also picked the most hyper and hardest dog to train. We lasted about 3 months before we sent him to live on a farm. (It really was a farm...in the Midwest.) We decided that this time has to be different. This dog will actually be a part of our family. We want to make it work. We have spent the past week learning about different breeds and there has to be more to it than just picking out a cute dog. For one thing, the dog has to be easy to train or I want no part of it. Who is training this dog? Well....obviously me. As a result, my vote has to count at least 10 times. Once we decided upon a breed, we had to find a dog that would fit our budget. We went to a pound, but they only had about 6 dogs and none that would fit our lifestyle. The kids decided to chip in some of their own money and we started to look for puppies. We found one! It is an Miniature Australian Shepherd. She is about the cutest thing we have ever seen. Plus, she will be easy to train. That makes her even cuter!

We met a nice couple with three kids who live in Federal Way and went to their house to meet the puppy. The mom of the pups is named Snickers and the dad is Oreo. They had 10 girl pups in this litter and named them all after cookies. The name they chose for the puppy we fell in love with was Gingersnap because of the brown eyebrows! She has a sister with similar eyebrows and her name was Gingerbread. Gingersnap won our hearts though. We don't have to keep the name, but it's growing on us. It will help us remember that we got her for Christmas. She is only 4 weeks old right now, so she will stay with her mom and dad for a while longer. She will join our family in about 3 to 4 weeks. It will give us time to do some homework and puppy proof our house. Aaron and I have to admit that we might just like this idea of having a puppy after all.

We Tried to Go!

We were excited to get the call this morning telling us that Sacrament meeting was on today, in spite of the weather. So, we all got ready to head out the door. When we opened the garage door, there was a bit of snow that had drifted up against it. To make sure it would close, I started to shovel it away from the door. I found out that we had freezing rain during the night when I took a step out on the driveway and started to slip. I started to panic a bit wondering how this trip was going to end. Fortunately, I ended up stopping at the bottom of the drive when I hit the snow on the street. We decided that it might be best to not try to make the trip to church. :) Here is a video of my slide. (Sorry for the sidways view)


We ended up having a sort of service at home by watching a church Christmas video.


Oh well...we tried!