Fossil Fall

 Today to celebrate Martin Luther King's Birthday we decided the head north of town and hike around Fossil Falls.  It was a beautiful but slightly windy day.  We hiked around for an hour and then had a picnic lunch.  The kids loved crawling through all the formation that a lava flow from long ago left behind.  Water then came through and smoothed the basalt rock formations which causes the rocks to be quite slippery.  None the less it was great entertainment for today.

After eating our lunch we drove up to an overlook of Little Lake.  It ended up being quite the drive, but was a fun view of the valley below.  On the right side is a red cinder cone that caused all of the lava flow before the ice age.  We love getting out an exploring as a family so this was right up our alley.  Thanks Mr. King for having a birthday so we could have family play day.

Accidents Happen

Sorry this post will be a little graphic.  On December 30 of 2011 I was making my family chicken nuggets and oven baked fries for dinner.  I thought, "Oh, cool I will be able to use my new Mandaline slicer to do the job.  I got it all set up so it could cut the potatoes and was ready to go.  I started the first potato and instead of the potato I sliced the side of my thumb.  I was in shock because of the blood.  Justin was in shock because of it also.  Anyway our kids were carted over to the neighbor across the street (the Calls) and we headed to Urgent Care.  Urgent Care didn't think they could deal with it so they sent us to the hospital ER.  When we got there the place was packed so we knew it was going to be a long night.  Five hours later after sitting in the waiting room I was called back.  The doctor tried to sew the part of my thumb back but it was too discolored and thin so they just bandaged me up gave me some pain meds and sent me on my way.  For the next week I had to take the pain meds and the anti-infection pills because it sure did hurt.  It is doing much better now and I really didn't cut off as much as I though.  My thumbnail looks like it could even grow back, yay!

Pretty nasty, eh!  Sorry if this grosses you out.

 I forgot to take a picture of the big bandage that they gave me,  This is day 4 after the accident

You can see my lovely bandage job in this photo.

New Years Hike

On the day after New Years, we decided to go and do a little hiking. We drove to Red Rock Canyon where we hiked around. It was a lot of fun. A great place for the kids to explore and not very far away. I (Shar)even hiked with a bad thumb. On December 30th, while making dinner I cut a part of my thumb off.  We waited for 7 hours at the ER to see if we could get it stitched up, but they were not able to save it..

Christmas

Christmas Morning we are up at 6 am and everyone is excited and ready to see what we got.

Look what Santa brought...

The kids got robes and pillow pets along will Wii games and Legos

Now it is time to open the presents which we hand out and then take turns opening youngest to oldest.

Justin is way excited for his new backpacking backpack

I am just chillin' and enjoying watching everyone open their presents

We had a great Christmas!  After opening presents we had our annual waffels and icecream for breakfast.  It is one of our favorite traditions.  We then got ready for and went to church.  It was a great way to remember the Savior on his birthday.  The rest of the day we played with toys, built Lego Sets, talked to family, and just relaxed and enjoyed each others company.

We also got the kids a new trampoline for the kids. We decided to make it level with the ground thanks to a lot of digging from a couple of great young men. Wow! That was a lot of work, but now we don't have to worry about kids walking off the trampoline and breaking arms or legs or anything else.

Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve we have the tradition of making Egg Rolls, so that is what we did.  They were delicious.  We also like to go for a drive and look at the Christmas Lights, which we did.  After coming home the kids opened the Christmas Eve gift from Grandma Hill.  Yep you guessed it PJ's!  The kids wanted more but we said they had to wait.  After changing into PJ's we all settled down and read the true Christmas Story from the scriptures.then watched "The Santa Clause".

Mackay sporting his new pajamas

Tyler's way cool new PJ's

Our attempt at making a Gingerbread Nativity

We made this the Sunday before Christmas.

Los Angeles Temple Lights

Since we were down in Los Angeles we decided to go and see the temple Christmas lights.  We were so glad that we did.  The lights were beautiful and we love the calm peaceful feeling of walking the grounds.  So grateful that we decided to make this part of our trip even though the traffic was an issue.

Bubba Gump

While in Long Beach we went to Bubba Gump Shrimp.  We weren't really impressed.  We probably wouldn't go again.  The kids meals were pretty good.  Our meals were just okay.

Long Beach

Aquarium

of

the 

Pacific 

Long Beach

California

 On the Thursday before Christmas we thought that we would take a Family Trip down to Long Beach and go to the Aquarium of the Pacific.  The kids loved it.  There were all sorts of aquariums and sea life to see.  The favorite parts about the whole experience was being able to pet star fish, tiger sharks, and bat rays.

 Seeing the shark tank was also very cool!

Justin and the kids also got some nectar to feed these parrots called Larakeets.  These birds were very friendly, but you had to be careful to not pet them or they would try to bite you.

 Tyler loved this.  He said that he had 11 different birds land on him.

Mackay had about 10 visit him.  We stayed in with the birds for quite some time.

We give the aquarium a double thumbs up.

Pumpkin Carving

 In October we have a tradition of carving pumpkins. This is our design for this year:

 Mackay having a good ole' time

 Tyler loves the pumpkin guts

 Mackay's creation

T yler's creation