Christmas

This Christmas we were able to take our whole family and have Christmas with our cousins and families in Utah. We had so much fun and two solid weeks on fun and play with everyone. We wanted our kids to play with all thier cousins that we so rarely get to see and miss so much. Everyone was so kind and welcoming and always available. We thank everyone for thier hospitality and availabilty to play so much while we were there. Our children have some wonderful memories that will tide us over until we are together again. We love and miss you all already!!

Christmas 2007

The one requirement we had while in Utah was to see lots and lots of our cousins. With all the fun activities that were planned, we definately got to see our fun cousins and had such a good time. Thank you everyone for always playing with us!

Two beautiful girls that became fast friends on our trip.

Izabellas favorite thing of the whole trip was Brooksy, Nanas dog. She was such a patient, sweet thing with Izabella. She let Izabella hug and love her all the time. She even let Bella feed her treats and shared them with Izabella without ever complaining. We miss you Brooksy

Something that seems to becoming a tradition is to dye our hair everytime we go to Utah. These boys love doing it and have so much fun together in the blonde club. They were so pleased with themselves and Aunt Renee does such a great job. Thanks Aunt Renee!!!

One unexpected treat we got this Christmas was to get to see our cousin Austin. He was able to come visit us the night before we left and it was such a Christmas surprize. We love you Austin and miss you Andrew. Cousins are the best!!!

Look at these cute boys!! Jake just loves his cousin Austin. They don't get to see eachother very often becuase Austin lives in Texas, so this was such a treat!!

We had a surprise visitor for Christmas Eve, but Izabella wasn't so sure about him.

Much to mom and dad's chagrin, Duncan continued to ask Santa to bring him a rabbit for Christmas even though mom kept wxplaining there was no way to get the rabbit home from Utah if Santa brought it for Christmas.

We had such a fun Christmas Eve party together with our Selph cousins. We took the kids over to a local chruch house and played games and had a pinata and had all sorts of good times together. Thanks to Uncle E and Aunt Melissa for putting together the pinata for us, the kids just loved it!!

Three fat, cute , dirty girls.

These are the two cousins that were both born within a few weeks of Izabella. She doesn't get to see them very often and it is hard to get a picture with all 3 in the same frame. They are busy girls usually running in 3 different directions. We had to contain them in the bathtub to get all 3 in a picture together.

Bella loves to read!!! She is never happier than when someone is reading a story to her, especially if it is a Dora the Explorer story.

Of course it would feel like Christmas without the chaos of a cousins nativity.Lots of work but very fun and worth the work to remember the real reason for the season.

Joseph and Mary thought they were pretty cool with Jesus the teddybear.

Izabella was an angel and thought she was pretty cool.

The Gingerbread decorating contest was fierce competition. But there were lots of winners, expecially in the 70's style,flat roofed with the Grinch on the rooftop category.

Getting ready to trim the tree with Nana!!

Dress-up is always #1 fun at Nanas house.

Nana and Izabella had a lot of fun together. They were fast friends and mom got a few days out to play with the older kids. Thanks Nana!!

Our Fun Family Trip to Washington D.C.

In an effort to satisfy the many naggings, requests and outright threats I have recieved from my fellow bloggers(Corinne). Nothing has really happened since Thanksgiving so the requests to update my blog (Corinne) were going to be quite boring. So I decided to go back a few months and document the fun trip we took to see our friends that moved to Washingtom D.C.. The kids and I had never been there and were so excited to see the sights. It turned out to be a 3-day whirlwind of a trip. I don't know that we physically could have packed in another 5 minutes of activities. The kids were all so good and had a blast being with eachother. Thank you to our dear friends The Rich's, that housed us, entertained us, and fed our bodies and spirits with being together. We love you guys!!!

The kids, especially Ashton, had a blast riding the train into town. The kids thought it was totally cool.

After our train ride into town we walked around the city a little bit and saw some sights that I have up until now only seen on T.V. I was like a kid in a candy store. My mouth wide open while I walked around pointing saying "Look, Look!" to my kids. We got to experience it for the first time together. What a fun place to visit!

On our first day in Washington D.C. we went into town and visited the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Natural History. Here is our group posed outside the Air and Space Museum. Now when I say we visited these museums, I mean we saw maybe 1/100th of what was available to see. But what we saw was incredible. There is so much information inside one of these buildings, it could take weeks to get through just one and learn all there is inside here. But what we did see the kids really enjoyed.

Here we all are at the Museum of Natural History waiting to see a 3-D movie. It was the best 3-D movie I have ever seen. It had Ashton reaching out in front of him to grab things he thought were coming at him. Look at all these cute faces!!

Isn't this a beautiful sight?

After a very full day we ended up at the Washington Monument. This was such a beautiful sight and we got there at dusk with a storm moving in. By the time we left it was raining on us. But it was such a powerful place to see with such an awsome background. What a beautiful place seeing our flags flying all around this momument. I am proud to be an American!! You can see it was too long of a day for one little girl.

Day 2 of our adventure took us to Mount Vernon or George Washingtons home and farm during the "Fall Festival Days". There was so much to do we spent the entire day there. They had to kick us out when the place closed. But here we are at the beginning of the day in the museum proir to entering the grounds in front of a statue of George, Martha and her two children that George raised as his own.

With it being fall festival days they had tons of activities for the kids to do. There was a hayride, pioneer games for the kids, and things that the kids could make and keep. What a fun day!!

Here is George Washington's house also known as Mount Vernon. It includes the home as well as the farm and surrounding lands. An incredible place to visit and would have been amazing to have grown up here.

Because we were there for the "Fall Festival" there was quite a wait to get in and see the house. So while the moms and dads waited in line, the kids played games like duck-duck-goose on the huge lawn in front of the house. It was so cute to see them all playing and having fun together.

This was one of the sweetest treats for me. I got to be with my incredible, wonderful friend Karen. I didn't let her sleep much while we were there. I had to get my quick (3 day) fill to last me a while until we come again.

This is the incedible view that Goerge Washington had out his bedroom window. I could just see him walking along the river banks pondering on important decisions that have had an affect on our country even to today. Or he may have gone fishing off the banks with his step-son or grandsons. It is such an incredible place!

These cute boys had so much fun together. They were running all over the place here at mount vernon. Here they are after seeing the house just taking in the view of the water behind the house. There aren't many places like this anymore.

We got to meet George Washington himself and tell him how much we enjoyed seeing his house and its grounds.

The Selph's Incredible Day at Gettysberg

On Sunday we started our drive home from D.C. but stopped in Gettysburg . This was a planned stop and had books with information about what had happened in this little spot and why it is so significant. On our drive there we read about it and gave some interesting facts and statistics about the area we were going to see so that the kids would understand what we were going to see today. It was a beautiful day and a wonderful, spiritual experience to drive and walk through this spot and try to visualize and get a feel for what really happened in this spot. It left me with a deep graditude for those men and a renewed respect and graditude for our soldiers today.

I don't know if this little hold would have been there two hundred years ago, but it gave my kids an idea of what the soldiers would or could build with the rocks around them to help protect themselves from enemy fire.

We took a walk up this hill to the very top. It was so peaceful and beautiful but we talked about how soldiers were having to hide everywhere to ty to stay alive. The air is almost alive with what happened there more than two hundred years ago.

Next to Duncan on this rock was a perfect hole that had to be a bullet hole.

We sat up on these large boulders, where the northern soldiers hid behind fighting for thier lives and talked about our country and what happened here. We talked about how many men died here in those 3 days and tried to have our children really have a feeling of what the land would have looked like covered with bodies of soldiers fighting a war that has led our country to be a United States of America. I was very overwhelmed with graditude to these men who gave thier lives so long ago. It was a very spiritual experience for our family and I hope an educational and memorable day for our children.

This was the view from the top of the hill where the Northern soldiers were holed up. The view is breathtaking and the undestanding of what happened here is almost overwhelming. What an incredible place.

A battlement that overlooks where a major part of the fighting took place. You look out over the field where the "South" was coming up the hill. From here you can see bullet holes in rocks and huge boulders that show where cannon fire was taken.