My Valentine's Gift

This is what my hubby gave me for Valentines.  The note he gave me was very tender and I am very grateful for his great thought into this gift.

The many colors of these roses convey my love to you.

Yellow represents your bright personality.  

Red your charity to others.

Pink your ability to see good in all.

Orange your vibrant spirit.

I am grateful for his love for me and the support he gives me.

He is my best friend and lifts me to try and be a better person.

I am grateful for these sweet moments.

Valentines

As tradition on Valentine's Day we usually have a fun breakfast.  This year we decided to have waffles with homemade strawberry ice cream and fruit.

 The kids really liked it!

 Yum!

 The kids also got a Valentine's gift.  A light for their room and a toothbrush.

 Tyler said the Valentine Fairy had come and I said Why yes she did!

 We send our love to all on this special holiday!

Family Photos

In December we went and had our family pictures taken up by the college here in our town.  Here is what our pictures turned out like:

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.