Let it snow . . .and snow. . . and snow . . .

Holy cow! I can't remember the last time we had a storm like that at our house. I woke up at 8:30 and it had been snowing awhile. There was already a decent build up. And it just kept snowing! ALL DAY!! Never snowed real hard, it just never stopped. Here is my cute husband out building a fort with our children (who LOVED all the snow by the way). This morning you can't even see a hit of where the fort was. It's buried.
DJ is covered from head to toe! I think he just rolled in it.

Poor doggy. It was way over his head, but he was determined to be outside with everyone else. Lucky Lindsie put his green sweater on him or we might never have found him. See the Merry Christmas sign next to Joey? Can't find it this morning.

Here's another one who rolled in it. He could barely walk. In some places he sunk down above his knees.

This morning I took a ruler out to our back porch. Can you find the ruler? You can see just the tip of it. That's TWELVE INCHES of snow!! Keep in mind that Dean had cleared the back porch at 2:00 and again at 4:00. About 2 inches each time. At that point he gave up on the back porch and just tried to keep the front cleared. We got over 16 inches from one storm. My kids are in heaven. They were really hoping for a snow day.

HOWEVER . . . our school district is unbelievable. When we got to school at 8:40, none of the parking lots were cleared. The drop off area had several stuck cars, so they had to close it off. Everyone was parking in the street, including teachers. Kids were being dropped off in the street. Buses got stuck on the way to school. Even they ended up dropping the kids off in the street. What a mess! Really wish they had called for a late start and given some time for everything to get plowed.

Despite all that, the snow is so much fun! You'd have thought it snowed inside my classroom by the time 25 kids came in with all that snow on their boots. It was just a fun day!

Any dream will do

Here are some shots of my cute little girl in her high school's production of Joseph.Go, go, go Joseph

This was her FAVORITE costume (hahahaha)

Canaanite Woman

Potiphar's girls

Pharoah's girls

How many costume changes can one person have in one play?

No, this is not Lindsie. =)

They had a real camel in their show. He got the biggest cheer. Go figure.

Posing with friends

I can see clearly now. . . .

So I finally got it done. Went to Hoopes Vision last Tuesday and had my eyes fixed through the miracle of LASIK. I was so nervous before I went in I thought I would be sick! But the doctors and nurses there are SOOO nice and just put you right at ease (the valium the offered me didn't hurt either).

I was there about 2 hours, but I think the entire procedure took about 5 minutes total. And at my follow up 18 hours later . . . I had 20/20 vision! WITHOUT contacts or glasses!! It is so amazing.

Of course, after 32 years of contacts and glasses, old habits die hard. I still wake up looking for my glasses, even though everything is crystal clear. I still go into the bathroom looking to take out my contacts at least 3 times before I go to bed every night! But it is great. Kind of a pain right now because I have to put drops in my eyes every hour for the next three month! But it will be well worth it.

And those nice people at Hoopes even gave me a VIDEO of my surgery! Cool huh! If I had seen this video before surgery, I never would have gone through with it. It kinda freaked me out.

So for your Halloween viewing pleasure. . . here is my video!!

From here, they laser correct my cornea and then put the little flap back. This is only a small portion of my video because that is all that would fit for upload. If you are really DYING to see it, come on over!! =]

Sweet Sixteen

Ok. Everyone get out your hankies.

Oh. . . maybe that's just me!

Beauty and the Beast

Oh what a BEAST. Lindsie played in Cyprus' powder puff homecoming football game. Seniors vs Juniors and Sophmores. The Seniors won (I think it's rigged) but Lindsie was out there playing for all she was worth. Here she is lined up. She was a lineman (linewoman), both offense and defense. She only sat out maybe three plays all game.

Doesn't that look like a tough face? I'd run the other way if I was on the other team.

Lindsie, Coach Eddie and BFF Destiny

And now, the transformation into BEAUTY . . .

Doing makeup . . .

And hair . . . (thanks Kimi for being the beautician for the day)

And here is the beauty. Oh my goodness isn't she beautiful?!?! Sniff, sniff. .

Pinning the flower on her date. Well, actually mom had to do the actual pinning. First date jitters I suppose.

Whew!! A wrist corsage. Now I didn't have to keep a close eye on hands that were pinning a flower to her chest! hee hee : )

The most beautiful homecoming couple ever. Out the door they went, and down flow the tears! How did my baby girl get so grown up?? I had to go for ice cream to distract myself! Just wait my sisters, the day is coming sooner than you think!!

I love fall!!

Went camping with Grandma and Grandpa last weekend. We've been looking forward to doing that for a long time! And fall is totally the best time for camping. I love all the color in the canyon in the fall. Here is just one view of all the color.

Trying to get a picture of the leaves and I had a little help. He is such a poser.

Making ice cream with our cousins.

Fishing. For the first time all year, we didn't catch a single fish.

Hmmm. . . Who is she going after with that log.

AAAHHH!!!

Lindsie just came home and told me she has been asked to homecoming next month. AAAHHH!!! It begins. Can I just lock her in the closet? I'm trying to be happy for her - FIRST DATE and all, but I'm just scared to death. : )

Grandpa, if you still want to be her first date, you better get on it.

THEY'RE HOME!!!!!

Well after two long, but also short in some ways, years, Mom and Dad are back from Mongolia. What an emotional and exciting day this has been!

Here are 13 very excited grandchildren making a Welcome Home banner to take to the airport.

This banner says Welcome Home in Mongolian. We think.

Waiting. . . and waiting . . . and waiting. It was only about 30 minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

First glimpse. You can see Dad at the very top of the stairs to the left. Mom is just behind.

Coming down the stairs. Man those were long stairs!

And finally reunited! Lots of hugs and tears of joy. Can't believe they are really here. I keep pinching myself to make sure it is real!

Mom and Dad and their four children.

And all 13 grandchildren. Leave it to Jarod to stick his hand right in front of Lexi's face. Sorry Lex. Jarod lives for the camera!

First thing Dad wanted? A glass of real milk. They haven't had any real milk for two years, just powdered. Good thing Becky and Amy bought three gallons! That should get them through till morning! (And of course . . . an American donut!)

Welcome home! It's great to have you back.

$$$

Ok. So here we go again. This time Jarod has found a way to really make some money.

He's quite the salesman. He sits out there yelling "Lemonade! Get your ice cold lemonade here!" I kid you not. And he is making a killing - he raked in $10.00 in just under 2 hours.

Who needs to do chores and get only 3 dollars a week?

Yellowstone

This year we decided to make our Yellowstone trip low key. Usually we try to "see it all" in one day and end up rushing everywhere. This year we just went to the Old Faithful area and spent the entire day looking around there. One of the things we have always wanteed to see is the Castle Geyser. It only erupts every 14 hours, and we have never been there at the right time. Well, this year the sign said "May erupt between 4;15 and 6:15." It was about 4:00 so we thought, why not? We can wait to see it. So we sat, front row seats. Some of us explored the trails while others sat and saved our seats. For awhile it was kind of fun.

However, at 6:40, we were still waiting! Darn thing didn't erupt. After 2 1/2 hours we all had to go to the bathroom pretty bad, so we gave up and headed back to the visitor center.

We weren't 20 feet down the trail when we heard a shout go up from the crowd. We turned around and sure enough, we could see the water up over the trees! We sat there for 2 1/2 hours and it decides to erupt the minute we leave!

Thank goodness it's a long geyser (30 minutes or so) so some of us ran back and were able to see it.

We lost our front row bench, but we were able to sit here on this log and still have a good view.

It had been a very cloudy afternoon. We thought for sure it was going to downpour any minute as we sat there. But as the geyser was going off, the sun peaked out just enough to give us this little rainbow, off to the right.
Better shot of the rainbow. It was definately worth the wait. Very cool to watch. I have a little video of the geyser, but for some reason I can't get the sound to work. That's the whole point of the video is the cool sounds. If I can get the sounds to work I'll post the video later.

Horseback Riding

This year Lindsie and DJ got to go on a horseback ride. They were pretty excited! Lindsie loves to ride horses, and DJ hasn't ever ridden other than the pony ride.

Here they are getting to know their horses. DJ's horse was named "Chuck Norris." He thought that was awesome. (Not really sure if he even knows who Chuck Norris is). Lindsie rode Opie. (Pretty sure she doesn't know who Opie is either).

Lindsie is ready to roll. She is a natural on a horse. She wants to own her own horse and live in Oregon one day.

DJ was a little more nervous at the beginning, but he soon relaxed and had a great time.

Down the trail they go! They rode for about 1 1/2 hours. They got lucky and had great weather. Later that day we had a huge thunderstorm. If they had chosen the afternoon ride, they wouldn't have gotten to go.

Poor Jarod got left back at the corral. You have to be 8 to ride, and he isn't there yet. But he did get to do a pony ride around the corral. He thought it wasn't cool that his brother and sister got to head down the trail and he didn't, but we convinced him it was ok. He has NEVER been on a horse before.

Having a great time. Now he says he is totally ready to go on an ride on his own next year and not have somebody holding onto the lead rope!

Thanks for the ride!

Vacation

Whew! This has been a busy summer. I think we have camped out this summer more than any other summer. And we have loved every minute of it! Now as I sit here and think about going back to work tomorrow (UGH) and digging into my pile of laundry (8 days x 5 people - you get the idea), I think I will post some pictures for you. I'll probably do this in a couple posts so I can do more pictures. Lindsie was able to do a lot of the driving around for us, which Dean was happy about because he got to sit back and enjoy the scenery for once. Well, sometimes he sat back and enjoyed. Sometimes he sat and yelled and made poor Lindsie nervous! : ) That's a Dad's job, right?

Ok, so we drag our kids 5 hours all the way up to Colter Bay and what do they want to do? Let's see, DJ and Jarod are playing Nintendo DS and Lindsie is over here texting. UGH!! These kids!

Well, we finally did get them out of the trailer and down to the lake. Doesn't take long for them to be completely soaked! I don't know how they could stand it - it was decently cold. But they spend quite a bit of time submerged in Jackson Lake.

They took their "boogey boards" from last years vacation. Who cares if it's not the ocean? Surely we can catch some waves as the speedboats pass us by!

And then of course there is the boat. That's where I spent my time - nice and dry and trolling around the lake. So relaxing! This is actually Jarod and Dean in the boat.

Can't beat that view! I never get tired of looking at it!

To be continued . . .