Christmas Traditions

We love to sent Christmas cards to our distant family and friends.  Just in case this didn't come in the mail, you can enjoy our card here!  

 Eleanor and I have enjoyed going to the Nutcracker together every year since she was about 5.  This year we checked out a different local production of it in Loveland.  It was great - and we were able to sit super-close to the front. 

 Katie has been enjoying all the fun of Christmas - epecially our daily Christmas book tradition and all the music.  Her favorite song of the year is Santa Baby and I just can't get enough of her rendition. 

We hope your Christmas is meaningful and lovely!

Giving Thanks

We headed out to Utah for Thanksgiving break.  Eleanor was out of school all week, so we figured we might as well take the whole week off!  Monday we hit lots of our favorite places: The Distribution Center, Cafe Rio, Orson Gygi and a special backstage tour of the local high school musical. 

You never know when you might need a long-handled tablespoon or this awesome #10 can size of Libby's Pumpkin, which we couldn't resist.  Yum.

Then, things took an unexpected turn. Gavin started having some horrible pain Monday night, so we went to the ER and discovered he needed his Gallbladder out. So, Gav and I spent Tuesday checking out the local hospital cuisine (well, I did) and recovering from gallbladder surgery!  Not what we planned for our vacation.

 It was a blessing to have all our family around for that turn of events.  Gavin got a blessing from his dad, his mom bailed me out with food and support just when I needed it, and we had lots of help with the girls.  Including hair do's - I've never managed to get Katie to hold still long enough for that! What awesome aunts they have.  Thanks Megan and Shannon!

 Luckily, everything went smoothly for Gavin's recovery and he was even up to eating some turkey by Thanksgiving.  We enjoyed being with both of our families and seeing my Grandma Virgin from Idaho. 

 Most of our fun plans for the week got put on the backburner, but we did make it to the brand new Museum of Natural History with the Paynes.  The girls loved all the cool dinosaur skeletons and especially "digging" for dinosaur bones. 

We're getting a little weary of surprises when we travel, so Christmas is at our house this year!

A Very Important Date

We had a great time celebrating Halloween this year!  We decided to redo a theme we first used six year ago and went with Alice and Wonderland.  It was Katie's turn to be little Alice, so Eleanor took on The White Rabbit.  This was the first time we've had complete strangers ask to take our picture and it happened twice!  So, who knows where we're floating around the internet today. :)

Talk about a perfect night for Trick-or-Treating!  It felt like fall in the air, but no jackets required.  There were nice crunchy leaves all around (who would have guessed they were buried in snow last week?).  This was Katie's first year really getting into it, and she did a great job shouting out her "Trick or Treat's" and "Thank You's." That was probably because I told her if she didn't say thank you loud enough, Mom got to eat the candy.  She kept reminding me she said it loud enough, so no candy for me!  They got plenty of treats going up our street, so we came home to hand out candy and watch The Adams Family and The Munsters. 

Just for comparison sake, here is our last go at Alice in 2005! 

 I got to find my own costume for a friend's party this year.  Gavin found this awesome string of pearls, so I went for Audrey Hepburn.  Even tried fake eyelashes for the first time.  It was great fun!



Fwinter in Telluride

We took a little fall getaway trip to Telluride a couple weeks ago.  Thanks to finally having local family (anyone else planning on moving to the state, we promise we don't abuse that too much) we got to go kid-free!  I didn't think we were lucky they were getting their first snow of the season the weekend we were there, but it turned out great.  We got the best of both worlds, fall color and snow! or FWinter as we called it.

One of my favorite shots from Last Dollar Road.

I don't know how they did this, since I spent an hour knocking snow off my aspens.  Theirs just plastered the evergreens and the ground!

Telluride has the coolest public transportation system ever - Gondolas!  Our hotel was up on the mountain, so you could ride these to the top (10,500ft) and then down into the town.  Awesome.

The mountains around Telluride were some of the most beautiful I've ever seen!  It's a little box canyon just surrounded by huge mountain peaks.  This is the view from the end of Main Street.

Proof that we were both actually there.  I always forget to include people when I'm in the zone.

This little aspen grove had every color!  Usually we only get the gold, so I appreciate a splash of red.

Talk about a perfect weekend.  Camera time, hubby time, 5 star hotel at a Groupon price.  Fabulous!

The virgin Virgin Reunion

I guess it's a sign that my family is growing up! Most of my siblings are married and we're spread out in 3 states and 2 countries, so we don't get to see each other that often. This summer was our first Virgin Family Reunion. My sister-in-law hooked us up with this sweet Ranch house in Star Valley, WY.

Eleanor's writing the Bunk House rules: no snoring, keeping people awake, etc.

It was great to see Jessica, Blake and little Charlotte from Australia. They win the prize for the most miles traveled to get there.

Having 4 babies under 1 didn't slow us down much at all! These are mad skills for a new dad, David!

We did a lot of rock-skipping in the creek and here's Matt harvesting the power of the sun!

We went on a lovely hike up to Intermittent Springs, yes with me in my boot!

Katie suckered Grandma into carrying her for awhile. I don't think Grandma minded too much.

Eleanor enjoying the natural air-conditioning from this huge snow pile - in August!

It was great to have a whole week together. Plenty of time for kite-flying, games, lounging on the porch, going swimming, playing ping pong, golfing, and having your cool aunt braid your hair!

Jessica started us on this game where you try to find safety pins in a bucket of rice with your eyes closed. Amazingly hard!

I think my favorite event of the week was the family talent show. I knew we were a creative bunch - but even the little ones brought their summersaults, clapping, and toe-eating skills to show! Add that to some juggling, 100 push-ups in a minute, splits, singing, handsprings, poetry readings and it was a pretty entertaining night!

Megan was prepared to teach us all how to tie-dye. This was actually my first time, and it was really fun!

We had a great time in a lovely spot. The weather was perfect at a steady 76 all week! I sure missed that when we came home to the 90s for another month.

Seems like those years between hanging out with all my brothers and sisters as teenagers, when we really enjoyed each other, and moving on to our own families have gone so quickly. I'm glad we took the time to get together this year. Looking at these pictures makes me miss you all!

Eleanor's Hair-raising Adventure

Last week, my sister and I were driving all the kids up to Star Valley, WY for our family reunion. The husbands were coming the next day. We stopped at Little America to get some ice cream and let the kids play. Eleanor was climbing up the slide and stood up into the bar that goes across the top. She cried for a minute; I checked her out; there was no blood or anything, so we went on our way.

About an hour later (by now we are really in the middle of nowhere Wyoming) she starts to complain that her head hurts. And then, pretty quickly she starts deteriorating. She can't stop crying, is fidgeting around the seat, can't see to find her drink (right next to her), etc. At this point, I start to worry that it's not just a headache from wacking her head. Jenny starts to look up the nearest hospital, which is in Montpelier, ID. So, we do a u-turn and head there as quickly as we can. Every time Eleanor cries out, Jenny's little Evie joins in too, so the noise is just getting louder and louder. Meanwhile, we're trying to get in touch with our parents and all my siblings who are headed up to the reunion as well, but there is no cell-phone reception there.

We were only about 15 minutes from the hospital, which seemed a lot longer. When we got there, I pulled Eleanor out of the car and while walking inside, she couldn't even step normally. I drag her inside and there is not a soul in sight. Imagine it like a scene from the Twilight Zone when you finally find a hospital when you're desperately in need of help, only to find that there is no one there! Finally, someone must have heard her screaming and came to help us. The next few hours were pretty awful. She was acting like she was in horrible pain, and not responding to my voice at all. She kept crying out for me (even though I was right there) and then praying out loud to Heavenly Father and saying "somebody, please help me." Scary stuff! She didn't know her name and couldn't answer any questions. The nurses were trying to find a nice way to ask me if she was normally like this! At this point I called Gavin. He wasn't prepared for that type of call and was beside himself with worry. His powerful prayers and the many others that joined him helped a lot at that stage.

The nurse found out we were LDS and wanted to get a blessing for her. Turns out the Radiologist was a bishop, the x-ray tech a member as well. So, they were able to give her a blessing and then turn around and give her a CT scan. There are some benefits of being in small-town Idaho! She had to be sedated for the CT scan, so she was finally calm for a while. The nurses wrapped up her IV, in case they would need it later. One sweet lady folded up a dollar bill and stuck it inside her bandage, so when she woke up, she'd have a prize for being so brave! When the results came back, they found no bleeing in the brain, so they diagnosed her with a concussion. Seriously? I had seen family members with concussions and it didn't look anything like that, so I hadn't thought of that. We did finally get in touch with all our family, so they'd come in force to the hospital to help.

They didn't know how she would behave when she woke up from the sedation, so I was worried about that. But, after coming to, she did reconize me and knew her own name. She said her head didn't hurt at all anymore. The only thing bothering her was the IV. Whew! She did throw up, which everyone was expecting, because it's classic concussion behavior. She was up to a quick visit from the family, including Katie, who was so relieved to see her doing better.

We got to stay the night in the CCU and "slept" between hourly neurology checks to see if she still knew who she was. Gavin and my brother-in-law left as soon as they could and drove all night to get there. Come 4 in the morning, when she said she was going to tell the nurse a joke the next time she came in, I finally felt like she was ok. In the morning, the doctor checked her out and said she was good to go! He was suprised, and said he had expected to see something bad in the CT scan. So, thanks to so many prayers from our ward, friends, and family, she is miraculously fine! We spent the rest of the week with our family incident-free!

So, that's our saga for the week. It may have left me needing therapy, and definitely added to my plentiful grey hairs, but I've rarely felt so grateful for every little thing. Just hearing Eleanor speak a coherent sentence is a pleasure!

The Best Calling in the Church

Five and a half years ago we spent Valentine's Day with the Stake President and Gavin was called to be the bishop of our new ward. Wow, humbling, scary... this is how he looked that first week. Young and scared! He was 29 at the time and had a whole ward to organize from the ground up.

The years went by and we had many great times serving and being served by our ward. Can't forget great moments like back-to-back wins at the Bishop's Pie-Eating Contest! Sorry honey, but this picture is just too good. :)

Eleanor hoped he would be the bishop long enough to interview her for baptism (she wasn't quite 3 when he was called). That was a great father-daughter experience for them.

And now, 10,000 interviews and many baptisms, weddings, and funerals later, he's been released. On to other things. One thing I think I've learned being a "bishop's wife" is that although we can't control much of what happens, we can control how we respond to it. Like Job; not that being a bishop's wife is like Job's experience. I'm just sayin... It's all in the attitude.

Congrats to Bishop Glover - hang on, it's a wild ride! But we have the BEST WARD EVER!!

To Grandma, With Love

Grandma's been aking for a new picture of the girls, which gives me all the excuse I need to get them in front of my camera. I guess I take so many pictures, I just assume I have plenty of them- but that's not always the case. So, here are today's portraits.

I think Katie's going to have a rough time when Eleanor heads back to school in a couple weeks. They've been pretty inseparable this summer. Playdates, anyone?

Every Summer

We love to visit the Boulder County Fair every summer. I find it funny that my kids have no idea exactly how big these farm animals really are! I guess when you just see them driving by they seem much smaller. Maybe for that reason, the rabbits are usually their favorites.

We usually catch the horse vaulting show at the fair. This little 4 year old girl was amazing! That horse is huge too, 19 hands. Gavin wondered if they have measuring tapes in hands... Hmmm.

This sweet little cow in her princess crown was so adorable! Not sure what that was about, but every girl looks better in pink and crystals, right?

It was fun this year to have my sister's family come with us. Everything is better with friends around. Eleanor and Lilly helped each other be brave enough to go down the giant slide.

Another great year at the fair! Too bad all the walking around happened to aggravate a stress fracture in my foot that I didn't know I had. Now I'm in a boot for the rest of the summer. Ah well. Guess that's why I had to share these memories - they were hard won!