Cootie Patootie!

Everyday our little Evelyn does lots of things that make us laugh.  Luckily we have a camera and can catch some of them to remember...

 

 

 

 I just have to say...she's totally addicted to Tangled.  I took like 10 pictures with the flash and she didn't even blink.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Christmas for us this year was very different...lovely, but different.  We are use to lots of family and a little craziness (sometimes A LOT!).  Since we were just getting settled here in Montrose and plane tickets were astronomical, we decided to stay and have a quiet Christmas with just the three of us. Here are some of our memories...

Evelyn LOVES it each time we put on music and Christmas music was no different.  She dances every time any tunes are on...my favorite is when she starts to boogie in her highchair.  She moves her feet and wiggles her bottom!

Our Christmas tree and village turned out cute this year...I'm seriously considering upgrading to a large tree and moving the village so we have some where to put presents next year.  

Evelyn did a great job.  She pulled one ornament off  right after we set it up, we told her no, and she never touched it again.  No really...she didn't touch it again.  I think we scared her.  When Rob and Whit came to visit Rob tried to get her to touch the tree at church and she would extend her arm and as soon as she was close enough to touch she'd pull her arm back.  He tried it 4-5 times and couldn't figure out why she wouldn't touch it.  We trained her well...haha!

This is Christmas Eve morning.  We had a nice relaxing morning with Jesse, who had four days off (23rd-26th). After breakfast he went out for his first snowshoeing trip of the season.  Evie couldn't resist his boots when he got back!

 

 

 

Christmas morning was quiet. We got ready, ate our yummy breakfast and went to church before we broke into any presents.  The whole time I was thankful that Evelyn had no clue that Sunday was special and I had plenty of time to look presentable! Evie had a great time once she got the hang of it.

We are grateful for the memories we created this Christmas season and especially for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrated. We hope that your holidays were as memorable as ours and wish you the best in this new year!

One Mean Mommy

Evelyn woke up from a nap the other day and this is what I found.  I thought it was funny enough that I needed to take a video, a picture with the camera, and a picture with my phone so I could text it to Jesse at work.  Needless to say she didn't appreciate it so much, but it makes for a great memory!

Calming down because mommy has come to save her...

Realizing I wasn't taking her out, just poking fun!

I wasn't too mean for too long, here's later in the day...all smiles again!

Christmas Card Adventures

Never a dull moment for us...not even when taking a Christmas card picture.  Jesse wanted to get some with mountains in the background so all of you would be compelled to come see them and us in person.  So we set out that morning for Ouray (pronounced you-ray), which is about 40 minutes south of us.  People around here refer to it as the "Swiss Alps of America" I think it even says that on the sign when you drive into town and when you see them you'll understand why.

We didn't want just any picture with mountains and snow in the background, it had to be the perfect spot so we scouted out the area first.  You would think that would be a quick drive around, but no not for us.  It actually involved driving all the way to Silverton, CO and back, which is 45 minutes past Ouray. We didn't find anything that screamed amazing picture and Evelyn was beyond done, so we headed back to Ouray and about 5 minutes outside of town found a great lookout point.  It was just about the only spot that didn't say "no stopping or standing; avalanche area". 

  

 

This is what it looked over into; it's a waterfall that comes from under the road.  The part Jesse and Evie are standing on juts out into the canyon and has a grated floor so you can see through. It was pretty amazing!

Now the best part.  We don't own a tripod and since all of us needed to be in the picture I came up with a perfect solution.  At the time we still had tons of boxes kicking around the house so we built a tower out of them and placed the camera on top...unfortunately none of those pictures turned out to well and fortunately some really nice people came while we were there and offered to take the picture for us.  It worked out really well and it was nice of them to help! 

This is what we ended up with...

And here is the final product!

Montrose Light Parade

Our first Holiday adventure was the Christmas Lights Parade.  There were lots of neat floats, but here are the ones that made us really want to take a picture.

This is the Horsefly Brewing Company and if you look closely you can see eight keg reindeer and Santa Claus.  Rudolf even had a red nose.

We thought this train was neat because it's was built around a truck as you can see from the back.  The best part was that the person driving couldn't see a thing; there was a man with a walkie talkie walking along side telling him when to brake and turn...you gotta love a small town!

 Here is one of the local propane companies.  They have a hot air balloon basket and burner which shot fire about 20 feet into the air.  It made for a cool show.

This was one of the last floats in the parade and made us laugh like crazy.  The EMT service in town had a Santa CPR dummy on a gurney falling out the back of their ambulance.  Over all we had a fun night.  The best part by far was coming home and getting to spend the next 2 days with my brother Robert and his wife Whitney on their way home from his Air Force Tech training!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we went to Denver. We stayed with our good friends and surrogate family, the Hirads. I worked with Elizabeth when I taught 2nd grade. She helped me survive all of my years there, but was a total lifesaver my first year! We love to spend time with them and are grateful that Denver is only 4 1/2 hours away, especially when we are feeling a little home sick and missing our families.

This is a picture of from my visit last February (we didn't get a new one this time so this works). This is Tony, Elizabeth, and one of their daughters, April. We stayed at their house and had Thanksgiving dinner with the whole Hirad family at Tony's brother Alex's house. Here are a few of our picture memories. 

 

Sharron Hirad (on the right) cooked the entire meal and it was amazing!  All of the traditional Thanksgiving foods with some great Iranian dishes sprinkled throughout. Yum...my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Hats, Hats and More Hats!

Evelyn has had a thing for hats lately and since her hat box is at perfect reaching height she rarely goes without. She puts them all on herself and we've snapped some pretty cute pictures so I thought I'd share.