2011 in Review

I love to look through my year and see how things played out for us. This year was a little on the crazy side. So many changes, new experiences, decisions, hidden blessings, and trials. It amazes me I stayed a float through some of it. Then I look back and just smile at all the good fun things that happened to us this year. Here are some highlights with picture collages. I hope you can click on the collages to make them bigger, you can on mine. Oh well if not.

JANUARY

*Steve and Katrina come to visit us for a job interview in Reno

*Ollie starts on rice cereal

*Gabe falls asleep EVERYWHERE adjusting to giving up naps

*I got a new sunday school class that had 13 kids

*I sold my massage table

*We had our 6 year anniversary with lunch and some geocaching

*The neighbor boy Elijah is at our house non stop

*Gabe loves playing doctor

*We did some geocaching with friends

FEBRUARY

*Ollie finally gets good at rolling over

*We had some good snow fall

*We did some fun Valentines Day stuff with the kids

*Took some pictures around town with Flat Stanley for my niece's class

*Tried Ollie on some different vegetables

*Month of crazy colds around our house

*Good super bowl fun despite sickness

MARCH

*We let Kolby, one of Adam's young men live with us for a month

*Greta turns 4

*We had the other young men at our house every Wednesday to hang out with Kolby

*Started FHE every first Monday with the Taylor's

*We did some festive St Patty's day stuff

*Ollie always has his tongue out of his mouth

APRIL

*We start enjoying the warm weather with bike rides, geocaching, park trips, and hiking

*We had a nice first Easter for Ollie

*Adam gets 600 geocaches

*Nana, Papa, and Michele come to visit

*Ollie goes back into his own room

*We say good bye to Kolby hoping we helped him somehow

*Started job interview process with Edward Jones (9 step process)

MAY

*Mandy turns 27

*Ollie starts climbing and gets first tooth

*Utah trip for Uncle Cj's wedding, where Gabe was a flower girl

*Got out phone call with the Edward Jones job offer on the drive to Utah

*Let everyone know we were moving to St George, Ut in July

*Gabe turns 3 and we hike and have a party with friends

*Started hanging out with friends we would be moving away from

JUNE

*Gabe goes to Ace's game with Daddy

*We have a visit from our good friends the Tanners

*We pack and pack and pack

*We try to accomplish our "To Do" lists before we have to move. Including mountain bike riding, dentist/doctor visits, hanging out with ym, hanging out as much as possible with friends, shopping at outlets, walking marina, eating sushi, taking pictures of everything, etc...

*Ollie gets his first hair cut, and crawls, with three teeth

JULY

*Adam gets 1000 geocaches

*Take a trip to six flags that goes terribly wrong and our car breaks down costing us a lot of money to get it fixed and back over the hill to Reno

*Hang out with friends and have a good bye party

*We get some help packing the truck

*Say good bye to Sparks/Reno as we drive to St George. The drive took longer than intended, but we made is safe and sound

*Spent the month unpacking

*Discover it's a little warm here midday

*Have an awesome first 4th of July

*We made a Sand Hollow beach trip with cousins

*Discover the carousel and water park. We also explore parks, and play in our blow up pool.

*Katrina and Ainslee visit here for a night on their way up north

*We successfully made homemade jam for the first time

*First visit to temple, and Gabe decides upon seeing it she wants to be married there

*Adam studies and studies for licensing tests

AUGUST

*Gabes imagination amazes me as she pretends to be everyone and everything

*Heidi and her kids and Grandma Kristi swing by on their way to and from California. Abe returns with them

*Adam takes all of his major tests and passes with flying colors

*We get a calling to teach in primary

*We visit puppet show at library, have a movie in the park, and we get a bbque.

*Gabe regressive in her potty training

*Ollie walks

*Billy visits us

*Adam has his first week training in AZ

SEPTEMBER

*Nana and Papa, and Steve and Katrina visit for labor day

*Greta starts to get sick, and we are told it's a sinus infection

*Our car has issues

*It rains a bunch

*Ollie turns one and Laurel, Travis, and Levi come to celebrate (we get to meet Levi)

*We have a fist visit to Zions National Park

OCTOBER

*Adam gets to go biking

*We visit a pumpkin farm

*Adam goes to Vegas to his regional exam

*We carve pumpkins

*Adam has his second week training in AZ

*Michele visits while working with the band

*We have a fun Halloween

NOVEMBER

*Adam is offered Hurricane office, and accepts

*We find out we are expecting

*We get the flu

*Ollie has a seizure

*Feed ducks

*Kami and Brandon and Fam, and Grandpa and Grandma Weiss come down for Dysen's football tournament in Mesquite

*Adam turns 29

*We have Thanksgiving up north

*Greta gets really sick, we find out it's a nose fungus

*Adam is called to YM president

DECEMBER

*We decorate for Christmas, do some holiday shopping, and some baking

*We play in leaves

*We see Santa a few times

*Steve and Katrina come to pick up their puppy

*We see a live nativity performance

*We have a great Christmas with lots of time off

*I get called to Co-Primary Chorister

*Gabe learns to go potty all by herself, no help involved

*We have New Years with Kami and Brandon and their family

I'm sure I missed things, and I know I skipped pictures, but here it is. Good bye 2011, you will be remembered. Hello 2012, we look forward to some nice changes and fun adventures.

It's Nice Having the Day After Off

This was the first year that Adam had the day after Christmas off. SOOOOO NICE! After too many years of working Holidays, and doing a 3am paper route, it was well deserved. We decided to spend the day hiking. It was a lot of fun and we found some geocaches while out and about. We then had lunch with kids, played with toys some more, and just enjoyed our time. We felt bad, cause we let Greta come and do her thing on our hike, and it made her nose start bleeding again. *sigh* I wish I could explain how gross, and hard, and sad it is when it's bleeding. We felt really bad letting her run so much. Usually outings do her good, but I guess we know her limits now. We have instructions from the vet to make her relax. Hard for her, but we do it. We found out she could be on meds for months, and as long as she is improving and not getting worse, we will keep doing it. If the infection spreads or she doesn't improve, then we have to talk other options. So we get a sick medicated dog for a while, to fight this thing. It could go months. Hard when taking her full med dose makes her sick. The vet said she needs to take her full dose again though. So we are back peddling a little, but the vet was happy she was improving so well until the hike. Whoops. Anyway here are some pics from the day.

She was very proud of herself for climbing all over by herself. She started jumping off everything, we started calling her Mountain goat.

Greta sporting her thin look, she actually has fattened up

At least she loved it

Christmas!!!

Christmas Eve Ollie was awake ALL NIGHT! Not exactly how I wanted to spend my holiday, but oh well. Still not sure why he was up. So when Gabe came into our room Sunday morning at 6:30 I wasn't too excited to be up that early. I waited for her to try to wake us up, but that didn't happen. She looked at our clock and saw that it wasn't seven, and remembered Mommy's 7:00 rule, and went back to bed. I was amazed. I kept waiting for her to come back in, but she didn't. So a little after seven when Ollie woke, we had to wake her up. Ha. She was bouncing all over squealing with excitement. It made Ollie excited, cause he could tell something fun was going on. I recorded them coming in, like usual and it was so fun to see their reactions to it all. It's amazing what little things mean so much to kids. She was so excited Santa finished his milk, but confused why he wouldn't eat ALL of the cookie. She wanted to know why our stockings weren't still hanging, and were on the couch instead. When I explained it's cause they were full of goodies and too heavy to hang, I thought she'd burst. Too cute.

We had a few bigger toys for Ollie that we didn't wrap and we ran girt over to them and started playing with them

He LOVED opening stuff

He was SO excited and happy about each new thing, especially ones that made noise

Greta was fascinated by the walking loud dinosaur

Gabe's ponies weren't the first thing that she opened, but we made it the next one. When she opened her first gift she was so disappointed it wasn't ponies and that Santa didn't get her what she wanted. So we figured we better let her open them, or else she wouldn't enjoy anything else.

The coveted Ponies.

Some fun gifts from Nana

Greta still went over to her stocking knowing she'd find herself a bone inside. It's nice, cause it keeps her occupied while we open.

Our old swords are falling apart, so Ollie got some new ones. He was excited, and we paused our present opening for some sword fighting.

Gabe thought it was cool she got even more presents in her stockings

Ollie could have cared less about more presents, he just wanted to eat all the candy

Santa brought nerf guns in our stockings and we spent a good amount of the day in a nerf gun war.

I have to say I LOVE having Sunday Christmas, but not so much the 9:00 am time. That sounds bad, but its my opinion. It's hard to take your time with traditions, and gifts, and breakfast, and then get everyone ready and out the door. I think 11:00 would be ideal. Oh well. Our choir pretty much sang a bunch of songs, with some random narration in between. I was kinda hoping for a short message, or even more speaking, but that's okay. I LOVE having music stuff, but it's hard with older people squeaking out the songs. :) They did have a harp duet of Silent Night that was very cool.

We came home and munched and played and played with new toys. This was the first year that Adam and I didn't get one another anything. It was a very humbling experience for us. One that I hope to never forget. We knew we weren't going to months before, so we tried doing other things that kept the spirit of Christ in our home. I read a chapter from Luke every night (cause there are 24) and I loved it. I saw the idea on Pinterest and thought it'd be nice to do. I would like to read it with Adam every year from now on. Very nice. We had multiple FHE on Christ's birth, and tried to incorporate the scriptures into the month. So even though I didn't get to spoil my husband like I love to do, our kids were spoiled, and we all had a very great Christmas season.

Gabe singing her own version of a Christmas song-I think I figured out how to get some videos to work, not sure why it's all stretched weird. Sorry!

Christmas Eve

With half of our regular holiday stuff boxed up, we found decorating for our Christmas Eve dinner challenging, but we made it work. We had what we have been tending to have the last few years, ham, twice baked potatoes, and some veggies. We had some gandolfos chocolate cake for dessert, cause I was craving it. :)

Ollie chowed down. He ate everything in site

Gabe ate her broccoli and that's about it. Ha. I guess out of it all, that's the one I'd want her to eat the most.

We then whipped out the kid's chairs to try to keep them contained as we read from Luke, and told about Christ's birth.

Daddy being very animated in his story

The kids loved singing the songs, and love to try to have song books to "read" from. Ollie just wanted to keep singing song after song

We then as a family watched "Santa Clause is Coming to Town." It tells how Santa became Santa. I actually have grown to love this show, cause Santa gives and decides to make his giving day on Christmas Eve in celebration on Christ's birth, and in remembrance of the wise men. Nothing like mixing Christ with Santa to teach them both.

Once the kids were off to bed Adam and I kept our tradition of watching "The Nativity," before we got stuff ready. Love that show. We wondered if Gabe would have a hard time sleeping cause she was so excited, but that wasn't a problem. She took being asleep when Santa comes very seriously. We'll take advantage of that while she's young.