Birthday Sledding!

Yeah! We were able to go sledding for my dad's and nephew Sam's birthday! The past few years the snow has melted but not this time! We gathered, we sledded, we ate warm food, we laughed and completely enjoyed a family day! We had a great time going off the jumps and making trains with our sleds to go down together. Lots of laughs!

Halloween 2014

We went to the elementary school Halloween carnival the week before Halloween. We ate nachos and hot dogs. KayDee played all the games to get treats. She even surprised herself when she made a basket for the hoop shoot! There was even a haunted hall which Samantha relived over and over again! Just image a snowman (Olaf to be precise) running through the hall, terrified, being chased by a leaf blower! Derrick had a lot of people bump into him, I'm sure you can figure out why. I think he is the squishiest pumpkin ever!

Erickson Reunion

 We went to the Erickson Reunion without Kevin this year since it was during first crop. The kids had an amazing time at the reservoir playing on the beach and boating. KayDee caught small fish or tadpoles with her cousins, Derrick loves rowing that raft and Samantha loved to knee board behind the boat. The kids played and played and played with all the fun stuff the resort offered. They golfed, swam, played games, decorated their reunion shirt and watched movies and ate! We did the team relay race a couple of times and had a grand finalie jumping in the pool as a big group. We are so grateful we get to have this time to spend together and make these memories.

Fun in Vegas

 We were able to go to Las Vegas to visit my sister LeAnn's family. Maryn had her birthday party and a dance concert. The kids have so much fun together and it was fun to visit! We went out to dinner and they sang happy birthday to Maryn and KayDee (her birthday was in a couple days) and got ice cream and balloons.

Easter 2012

 We dyed eggs with Aunt Bree and Dani this year. We colored with crayons first and then dipped them in the dye. The kids love it!

 We went back home to the town Easter Egg hunt and were joined by all the Laub cousins.

 Three cousins stayed the night and were able to play a little longer.

 We had to pack up stuff since we decided we needed to move to the farm where Kevin is working now. We just can't be apart anymore. Travis and Bree helped pack and load and we went to join the rest of the Laub's for the Easter Basket hunt at Kevin's parents.

 We did our own boiled egg hunt on Monday just in the grass next to the house.

The kids counted and sorted the eggs together after and Bree and I were excited to make deviled eggs!

Dandelion Crowns

 I've been busy with little girls lately. When KayDee gets home from school we love to play with Dani outside when her mom is at doctor's appointments.

 They collect dandelions and give them to me and in turn it turns my jeans yellow. I'm not interested in yellowing jeans so I made a crown out of them. KayDee was doing a dandelion wedding march.

Cousin Time

 I was able to babysit for my sister LeAnn while she and her husband went to Hawaii. I only went for a couple nights over the weekend and we had a great time! The girls were happily dressing up and the boys were sword fighting.

We were able to go to the park on bikes, scooters and pulling the wagon. We played baseball as well as we could and Mason had a great hit right to my gut. Man! It's been a while! All I could do is laugh! Don't worry, I recovered quickly. We watched movies, played games and ate! We were happy to have that time with cousins and would love to do it again!

Ice Skating

 My parents took us ice skating at the 7 peaks arena. They had little walkers to help the kids learn how and all three were able to skate without them by the end. Derrick's a little disappointed since there is no picture of him without the walker. He did skate the majority of the time without one.

 Samantha was the first one brave enough to skate by herself. She enjoyed the rest of the time by learning how to go faster and watching other skaters do some tricks. She was the last one off the rink.

 Kevin and I were finally able to hold hands when no child needed our help. We like to skate together.

KayDee was so funny to watch. She would push her walker and then skate fast to catch it in front of her. We convinced her to give her walker to another little kid and she didn't want to leave the rink since she loved skating by herself so much. She did have a couple of hard falls since she virtually had no fear and she ended up with a terrible blister on her ankle but these will not deter her from skating again.
All of us had a great time!

2011 Family Picture

Valley of Fire

  We kept passing the signs that said Valley of Fire along the freeway and kept saying we wanted to go see what it was. We had never met anyone who had been to the Valley of Fire and only had the information that was on the web. Fall break came and it was settled, we packed and left for 2 nights at the Valley of Fire. 

First we had to find a camping spot. We drove around looking for a large tent pad and couldn't find one big enough for our tent. We found 3 walk in camp sites that were bigger and the one in the very back convinced us that we should camp there.

Tarantula

We noticed that many of the park visitors did not have children so being in the back corner would allow our children room to make noise and the amazing rocks to climb on made our kids extremely happy. We enjoyed our camp site for the rest of the day and slept under a FULL moon. The tent did not have the rain fly on so we could see the stars and the moon was so bright it was actually hard to sleep but we didn't see a need to complain since it was sooo BEAUTIFUL!

The next day we went to the visitor center so we would know what our options would be for the day. The chipmunks were entertaining and the kids were already convinced that the rocks were good enough to climb on.

 We hiked White Dome where we ran into a large bus of Italians toward the end of the loop.

This is where we started and took the most pictures since we were so fresh.
The rocks were all different colors and sizes and we were able to crawl through many of them. My favorite picture is the one that looks like waves.

Then we went to Rainbow Vista where we saw 7 big horn sheep (Kevin's favorite).
Mouse Tank was fun since we continued to run into a Swiss couple (David and Andrea) on vacation. We stopped and talked to them and thoroughly enjoyed David's description of people from different countries (one including how loud Italians are and another of how American women smell of coconut sunscreen).
We learned that Mouse Tank is named after an Indian who was a nuisance to the settlers and they nicknamed him mouse since he would steal and bother them and hide in these rocks.

We decided to go to the Lost City Museum in Overton for the afternoon since it was getting HOT.
When we got back to camp we saw that David and Andrea were in the same campground and we invited them for dinner. We made Navajo tacos and enjoyed playing games, Uno and Pass the Pig, and the kids tried to tell some jokes.

1930s Valley of Fire visitor housing

Our last morning we saw the Atlatl Rock and Petroglyphs. The visitor housing was interesting too.
Then we saw the Petrified Logs. It is random to have 3 logs in the middle of sage brush and rocks...
We also saw the Elephant Rock and we ran into David and Andrea again. We parted there as we drove home and they went to Zion.