Michael the Comedian

Oh how I get a kick out of this adorable little guy. Here's Michael trying to wink.

Carribbean Cruise Part 2
Eastern Carribbean: Princess Cays, Bahamas; St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Grand Turk

Dave and I were fortunate enough to take our second carribbean cruise. We went on our first cruise 3 years ago to the western carribbean(Bahamas, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel, Mexico). Now we were able to go on our second cruise and see some of the islands on the Eastern side of the Carribbean. We went with our good friends Jeremy and Heidi, who we also went on our first cruise with. So it was kind of like a reunion of sorts. Many things were different this time, we have three kids and back then we had two, Jeremy and Heidi had no kids yet, and now they have one. We also have changed a lot and it seems like our lives are now more complex. It seemed harder to leave for a week this time. But it was a great break from reality and the beaches and places we saw were amazing. We had a lot of fun together and made some special memories that I will never forget. I enjoyed watching Dave relax and let loose. He has been working very hard these past couple years and his hard work has allowed us to have this vacation! We made a little game of finding out where the camera man would be on the cruise ship so we could get on the cruise video that they were filming. It's funny because we tried so hard to get in so many shots on the video, but yet we didn't even buy one. I mean the dvd was like 40 bucks. We brought our own video camera and were able to capture moments ourselves for free! But it was fun to see the video once we got back to our rooms and see how much "camera time" we all got. We also had a lot of laughs at one of the cruise ship entertainment guys. His name was Boogie and he was from Romania. He hosted an open mike one night and he was not good because since English wasn't his first language many of the jokes were "lost in translation". At one point he made a joke and only one person laughed and instead of saying "thank you to the one person who got the joke" or something to that effect he would say "thank you individually". I don't know why but we thought that was hilarious. So we had a lot of fun moments both on and off the ship. I would say that my favorite port was St. Thomas. It was beautiful and the island was very tropical with a lot of lush green trees and mountains. The other two islands were smaller and more desert like. One of the highlights of the excursions Dave and I did was to take a beginning scuba diving class in St. Thomas. We both enjoyed that and want to get certified here in Utah. It's so neat to be able to swim around with the fish and see all of the underwater stuff.
So that was our big vacation of 2010. Hopefully it isn't too long before we go on another one like it, but next time we will probably bring the kids. It's too hard to be away from them for so long. And they really missed us by the end of the week. Maybe a two night vacation would be better.
Here's a slideshow of the highlights of the trip.

Welcome Home!!

I barely made my one week deadline to get these pictures posted. At the airport to greet my parents were our family, my brother Chris and his wife Jen and three kids (Sam, Grace, and Cora), and my sister Cheri and her two step kids Zane and Maya. We all made welcome home signs. The signs Grace and Jacob are holding up say "Jeg elster Dig ay" which means "I love you" in Danish. The others say welcome home, we missed you, etc. It was exciting to see my parents again after 18 months apart. They looked great in their "missionary attire" with their name tags in Danish. Now we'll get to see them a lot more because they'll be living here in Utah. They will be living in my uncle's home in Park City while he and his wife are on a mission to Africa. Then my parents will be a home up here. They're going to try to sell their home in California in the next few months. Anyone interested in buying a house in the Bay area? It's the house I grew up in and I'll be sad when it finally sells, but glad to have my parents live close by. So that was the big welcome home day. After the airport we went out to lunch to visit some more. It was a great day.

Today's the Big Day!!

It's been so long since I've posted something on my blog that I almost forgot how. So today is the day that my parents fly home from their mission to Denmark. We'll be leaving in 3 hours to go meet them at the airport. Everyone is so excited to see grandma and grandpa again. It's been fun to video chat with them every Sunday on skype, but it will be so nice to see them again in person, and for them to see and hug Michael for the first time. He will finally understand that grandma and grandpa aren't really stuck inside the computer! They're real. They left two weeks before Michael was born, and while they were gone they also missed the births of two other grandkids, my bro. Jeff's baby Ellen, and my younger bro. Tommy's first child, Kol.
It will be a grand reunion and we're counting down the minutes. I'll be sure to take my camera, and will promise to post them on my blog. I'll give myself a deadline of a week from now just to be sure that I really do post them. ;)

Here's a slide show of our family photo shoot at Union Station in Ogden. My friend Heidi's brother Shane took the pictures, and I love how they turned out. I especially love the ones of the kids. I wanted to wait to post these until after I sent out our Christmas cards so as not to spoil the surprise!

Here comes Santa Claus

We had our ward Christmas party last friday night, and we were lucky enough to have a special visit by Santa Claus. The kids were very excited to see Santa and sit on his lap. I think it's been two years since the kids sat with Santa, and the last time my dad was the mystery Santa. So this is the first non relative Santa the kids have seen. Kera was one of the first kids in line to see santa since she was sitting up front with her friends Kendall and Molly. Then I waited in line with Jacob and Michael. Kera sat on santa's lap twice, since dad didn't have the video camera ready the first time. The kids rattled off their lists for santa, and then when I put Michael on Santa's lap he was okay until he looked up and say that big white beard. Then nothing could console him after that, not even chocolate.
While we waited for santa to arrive, we had a few musical numbers, including some teenage boys from our ward who did a rockband version of Rudolph and Here Comes Santa Claus. Kera was sitting by her friends Molly and Samantha in the bottom picture. The date is obviously wrong on my camera, it's not actually 2004.

It's that time again...
Nothing says welcome to winter like a jaunt to the old sledding hill at the park. And technically it's not even winter yet, but the snow still came. This particular day we got dumped on. The kids and us parents were outside shoveling the driveway earlier, and since we were all in our winter clothes, I decided to take them over to the hill while Michael had his nap. These trusty old sleds were inherited when we bought our house almost 5 years ago, and they have held up for the most part until now. Jacob and Kera had fun sliding down the hill many times, until that is, when Jacob plowed over Kera with his sled. She was bending down to put her boot back on, when Jacob came down the hill and knocked her over. That put an end to our trip. And it was a good thing because it was starting to snow again, and hard. The picture of Jacob and Kera sledding together was pre-collision. Bring on the sleds!!