We had a great snow storm a few days after Christmas.  We received over 2 feet of snow in one day.  Chris’s family was all staying with us and we all had no where to go so we stayed home and enjoyed playing in it.

Not the best hat in all that powder…

Sledding on the hill Jonny built

Completely buried…

Chris spent 4 hours clearing snow that day… We were sure glad to have a snowblower! Our backs ached from just the small areas the snowblower couldn’t get.

We can’t wait for the next “big one”!

We had a great Christmas.  On Christmas Eve Grandma and Grandpa took the kids to a movie and Chuck E Cheese while mom and dad were able to go skiing together.  It was a great ski day… sunny skies and fresh snow.  Then in the evening we went to Aunt Mary’s traditional Christmas Eve party.  We ate dinner, got pajamas from Santa, had a White Elephant gift exchange and ate lots of sugary treats.  Unfortunately Anna had a few too many treats and got sick in her bed at 2:00 am.  It was a very LONG night for mom and dad…

Christmas morning was filled with presents galore!

The girls all got American Girl dolls…

Justin got Legos and a laptop…

Chris got a GoPro camera…

And mom got an awesome new ski jacket…

By the end of all the present opening the kids were sick of opening presents.  I think Santa went a little overboard as usual…

Abby and Anna had their Christmas dance concert a week before Christmas.

Abby was a present in the “Polar Express” part of the show…

She got to jump out of a box! (She was so excited to jump out of a box…)

Anna was an angel (again…) in the Nutcracker portion of the show.

We were able to have Grandma and Grandpa Means come to the show to watch them dance.  They both did a great job and had huge smiles on their face the whole time.

Chris has been in an MBA program for the past year that meets for 4 hours on Friday night and 4 hours on Saturday morning.  We have the finish line in sight… June 18 (Allie’s 9th birthday, also the weekend I will be running the Wasatch Back) will be his last day of school.  On Friday nights the kids and I stay home and play.

First we get all of the Playmobil toys out and dump them all over the family room floor…

Then we make a dinner that Chris really doesn’t like but the kids love.  Tonight was pesto pasta with Parmesan reggiano…

We eat on paper plates of course so mom doesn’t have a lot of dishes to worry about…

Then it is time to have hot apple cider…

While we play dominos…

Then we make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies…

And finish the night with a movie…

Even though dad isn’t here with us on Friday nights we still have fun!

While Chris and I were in Hawaii, the kids stayed in San Diego with Grandma and Grandpa.  Justin and Allie went down two weeks before we got there and were able to spend a lot of time at the beach and the pool.  Then we brought Anna and Abby down right before we flew out to Honolulu.

Bye Mom and Dad, we are in good hands with Grandma!

The kids got to go to Legoland, Sea World, Nickel City, and the movies…

When we got back from Hawaii, we had an afternoon to spend with the kids before we headed back to Utah.  We took them to the beach in La Jolla.

The kids love the beach! We hope next time we do that drive Chris and I stay longer

I surprised Chris with a trip back to Hawaii for his 30th birthday.  We had a great time and did not want to come home.

We stayed at the Moana Surfrider again since we just love the hotel and the location right on Waikiki Beach.

We swam a lot…

Floated on the awesome floaties that Jonny and Jess gave Chris for his birthday…

Watched the dancers and listened to great Hawaiian music all day every day…

Rented an umbrella right on the beach every day where we had table service all day long…

Learned to surf…

There’s Chris and our instructor named “Lumpy”

Rented a Mustang Convertible one day and went for a drive, stopping along the coast for pictures…

Stopped at Kailua Beach, voted one of the ten most beautiful beaches in the world.  I have to agree.  The sand was like baby powder…

Went to Hanuama Bay to snorkel…

Mr. Sea Turtle…These little guys were all over every beach we went to…

Sea slug

Ate way too much good food like nachos delivered right to us on the beach…

PF Changs (twice)…

They gave Chris the “kiddie” chop sticks to use… haha

Ordered California Pizza Kitchen to eat under the umbrella…

Ate fresh crepes filled with bacon and eggs almost every morning…

Sampled some broiled eel… (just kidding but they sell it at Costco there!)

We also enjoyed Cheesecake Factory three times and Dukes Canoe Club twice.  Can you tell we love food? None of those places compared to where we got to eat our last evening thanks to this…

I won a Facebook contest that gave me 2 free nights at the hotel, two massages, and dinner for 2 at the Beachhouse at the Moana.  We will have to go back to use the massages and free nights but we did use the free dinner.  It was heavenly!

They use REAL silverware.  The original silverware that was used when the hotel opened over 100 years ago.

We had maui onion soup and caprese salad for appetizer. Then for the main course we both had a petite waygu beef filet mignon, roasted asparagus with Hollandaise, sauteed hamakua mushrooms and maui onions, and a Bearnaise sauce for the steak.

Then we both had dessert which we almost couldn’t finish since we were so full!

Did I mention the view?

Thank goodness I won that contest… The bill came to $150 for dinner!  If I was rich I would totally pay that though for a wonderful meal right before we had to hop on our red-eye flight home…

So long Oahu!  We will be back very soon! (after all, I have gift certificates that need to be used!)

Justin started at a new school this year.  He is now at the “Intermediate School” which is housed in the former Junior High building.  He goes to school with all of the 5th and 6th graders in the whole county.  Since he had to make a lot of new friends we decided to have a little “Back to School” party for him so he could invite the guys over and have some fun.

The kids showed up and we all had pizza and lots of soda.

Then we started the games with a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood.  I thought it would take them forever to find all of the objects but much to my surprise, the first team was back in 15 minutes.  I should have known that a bunch of kids in the GATE class would figure it out really quickly.

Then it was on to bobbing for donuts.  This was a lot of fun and a big mess!  The boys loved it though and ate a ton of donuts.

Then it was onto balloon races…

Flag football was after that until it got too dark.  Then it was time for CAPTURE THE FLAG.  The boys played capture the flag for a LONG time.  They had a great time! Chris got all of the boys a shirt from work to play in so they were even more camouflaged in the dark.

Then when it got too cold they came inside and we payed a toilet paper mummy race…

Which resulted in a “Stuff toilet paper down someone else’s shirt war”

And then finally, they played Wii until their parents arrived…

Did I mention I did this on a Friday night which meant Chris was at school?  Yup, I thought I was crazy too…

Look Ma, I’m bloggin!

I thought I would post a few pictures from our fun vacation to Lake Powell. We met our good friends the Husteads at the Wahweap Marina at 9:00 Friday morning. That was after we were all up all night packing and driving. Once we got there, we weighed down the boats to the maximum capacity and headed out to look for somewhere to camp. We drove around trying to find the perfect campsite that was sheltered from the wind and was away from the open water. We found an awesome spot that had a houseboat right around the corner so we thought we would look some more. 3 hours later we realized that the original spot was the perfect spot and we went back there. Thankfully no one had set up camp there yet. The moms got dropped off with the “stuff” and the guys headed back to the marina to pick up more of our stuff. It is amazing how much you think you need when you are camping with no water, no toilets, no nothing in the middle of nowhere. We enjoyed every minute of it though and I surprised my self by being able to stand not having any sort of bathrooms or water.

Things we learned:

1. Red ant bites hurt!
2. The best way to kill red ants is to pour gasoline on the sand and burn them.
3. Gasoline burns for a really long time.
4. If you light a lantern at night, every gnat in the whole state will come to check it out.
5. It stinks when gnats touch the lantern and burn.
6. The docks at Dangling Rope Marina half-way up the lake will burn your feet and leave blisters if you don’t wear shoes.
7. The ice cream at the previously mentioned marina was delicious and perfect to cool everyone off.
8. Every boat will break at least one thing when you are 50 lake miles away from help.
9. It is a very good idea to have someone that knows everything about boats camping with you (thanks again Jason!)
10. You won’t have enough time to do everything.
11. You will want to go back the second you leave. That place is amazing.

After we left Lake Powell we decided to drive through Zion National Park to get back to the freeway. We just didn’t realize that it would cost so much to do so. It costs $25 to enter the park. We also didn’t realize that if you pull a boat trailer through the park they charge you an extra $15 because they have to completely shut down the tunnel to allow you to go through one-way. Despite that, it was beautiful. We hope to go back and actually take the tour up Zion canyon. All we did was drive by…. We bought the National Parks Pass after seeing those two charges so look for a lot of traveling in the next year to our national parks!

Here are some pictures:

At Zion… waiting for the rangers to close the tunnel so we can go through
The boys tubing
I love this picture… finding a crack in the sheer walls to back a boat into
Rainbow Bridge… we boated all the way up there to find out the docks were farther away from the bridge than we thought.
The only family pic we took… on the docks at Rainbow Bridge
I’m going to miss this view!

I have been a blog slacker! I don’t really have much news to post though… Abby celebrated her 2nd birthday a few weeks ago and we had a little party for her. Anna is busy with preschool and dance still and loves all of the friends she is making. Alli is busy with dance as we are entering the performing season. Justin has been busy with Scouts and recently passed off his Wolf badge. Now it is on to the Bear den. Chris and I are eagerly awaiting the return of summer so we can get back out on the water. Here are a few pictures from the other day of the girls playing in the warm weather we had this week. Justin was off biking around the neighborhood with friends so I didn’t get him…
Also I wanted to remind anyone who is interested, I am doing spring mini-sessions right now… Check out the details on my photography blog …And, just because I’m happy for the warmer weather, I’ll also include 5 full-res files for any readers of my family blog…

Justin competed in the school spelling bee today and walked away with 3rd place! Not too shabby considering he is in 3rd grade and competed against 4th and 5th graders also. He ended up getting out after the 2nd round after mispelling “diatribe”. Then there were only 2 kids left who took first and second place. Then they called back up the 7 that were left before that to duel it out for 3rd place. After one more round, it was down to him and a fifth grade girl. They spelled back and forth for almost 20 minutes before she missed “achievement”. Justin correctly spelled it and then spelled “lettuce” to win that round. Some other words that I remember he correctly spelled were: safari, excise, hawkeye, femininity, prescription, and exuberate. We have decided that he definitely has a gift for spelling and are glad that he loves it so much!

Some pictures: (Sorry, taken with my cell phone… I forgot the camera!!)
Before the bee… pretty nervous!

Fighting for 3rd place…