Trip to St. Geoge to Welcome a Niece

In March we took a trip to St. George to visit Stephen and Kim and their new baby girl Teigan. The kids thought staying at a hotel was amazing. When we asked them what their favorite part of the trip was they had to go with the cool hotel. Nothing like sleeping in a bed that hundreds of other people have slept in.

Of course, the camera only came out once during the trip when we took a hike. We didn't even get one picture of the baby. What a bad aunt I am!

The hike was beautiful though. Parker kept talking about how we were going to go "hunting" instead of "hiking." When we explained the difference to him he couldn't stop talking about people killing animals.

Soon-to-be six Gabby and three year old Parker show off their newly learned climbing skills. They obviously learned from their cool uncle Dave! (I do have to take the credit for the awesome camera work.)Parker finished off his day of hiking with a ride in Chris's dune buggy. Seven months later he is still talking about it. For a while every convertible we saw was a dune buggy.

Year to Date Cont. -- Break from the Work for Fun!

It hasn't all been work, work, work. Sometimes we give in and allow our kids a little fun. This past year Gabby and Parker took a few sessions of swimming lessons. They didn't take long to decide they could stick their noses in the water (they have now exceeded my skills!).

They spent a half hour with instruction, and then had free time to play.
Gabby worked through her free time practicing the skills they taught her.
Parker just enjoyed splashing around the water and blowing bubbles. He used his new nose bubble skills in the Primary talent show this year. It was very impressive!
Joshua spent most of his swim lesson time taking naps in the very humid pool area. Owen came with us a few times and hung out. Later on he and Syd took lessons with Gabby and Parker. They all had a great time.

Year to Date 2007 in a Nutshell...Let's Get Started

It has now been three weeks since Randy dumped all of our pictures onto the computer, and it has taken that full three weeks for me to make a new post. This can't be a good sign. I will still try though.

Our hopes are that we will be able to keep our out-of-town family and friends updated on our exciting family! Or maybe they will see some of what we fill our time with and excuse us for being so bad at keeping in touch.

We ended up with over 400 pictures from this last year that we have never done anything with, so we decided to give you a recap. We hope you don't get bored! Here goes:

2007 has been filled with a new remodel job. This time we decided to take on the attic. Our family of five needs more bedrooms, so we took one away on the main floor to build stairs up, and added two more bedrooms upstairs. The project began in February when we hired my two nephews to build the stairs, add four dormers,
and frame in the bedrooms and bathroom.

Following the Cool Crowd!

Randy and I have spent so much time looking through blogs lately, that we have decided we should spend a little time creating one of our own. Time will tell if we can keep up with it. Randy loaded all of the pictures from this last year on our computer today. It appears we don't have a shortage of those, so now we just have to add all of the exciting commentating. Wish us luck!