Merry Christmas!

The past few days we've been enjoying having the kids at home for their holiday break from school.  We've been doing some sledding, playing, eating and even went to the movies for a little Chipmunk action yesterday.  All, of course, leading up to the big event...today, Christmas day.  The kids were up early, but waited patiently in their rooms as they were told, until we were all awake so we could go down to the living room together.  Thank you so much to all the family, friends and loved ones who helped make this a super special and memorable Christmas for our children.  We are blessed to have such wonderful people surrounding us.  

A little catch up...

Tonight I was thinking about how I need to do a blog post tomorrow about my baby girl's 9th birthday, but then I realized I've already skipped a few other family events.  This post will be an update on some of those things.

The Sunday before Halloween, the kids participated in the children's (Primary) program at our church.  Unfortunately, I was very sick that day and couldn't make it, but Chris took them and he said they did a great job.  Thankfully I was able to see them do their parts during the last practice a couple of days earlier.  Here's a picture of them ready to go to church that morning:

On Halloween we did much of the usual Halloweeny-type activities with the kids.  In the afternoon I went to the school and watched them do their costume parade before they had their class parties.  Chris had to work all day, but when he came home in the evening we took the kids into Pocatello to do some trick-or-treating.  Noah is 11 right now, and I'm wondering how much longer he will be into doing the costume thing, but for now I'm just trying to enjoy the kids being kids.

On November 5th, Chris ran his second 1/2 Marathon race (13.1 miles).  In preparation for that day, he and I did many long runs together and also have been going on lots of long hikes in the mountains, which is an excellent cross-training activity.

Even though he did the race last Saturday, we've still been running together and taking hikes when he's off from work and the kids are in school.  The weather has turned winter-like, so I'm not sure how many more hikes we'll be able to enjoy, unless we invest in some snow shoes!

The day of the Half-Marathon we woke up to cold temperatures and snow, but that didn't seem to dampen the spirits of the runners.  It was a themed race - Super Heroes and Villains.  Chris wore a shirt and hat with a Superman emblem on them, but it was so cold that a lot of the runners had their costumes covered with jackets.  Since I've done several races on my own, this time Chris ran on his own and the kids and I were there to support him.  We also worked an aid station at mile 7 of the race.  It was pretty fun, but the kids got cold and kept wanting to get in the car to warm up instead handing out water to the runners!

Chris did a great job and finished with a time of 2 hours and 20 minutes.  Pretty good considering the weather; he said the roads were very slick in parts.

Family pictures.

It's time once again for annual family photos.  I thought it would be fun to compare our family from last year to this year to see how much change has taken place, since these were photos were captured almost exactly one year apart to the day...

Here we are in October of 2010:

And now in October 2011:

Personally I don't see a whole lot of change, other than the kids' faces look a little more mature.  Of course, they're all a little taller.  I have a feeling my time being taller than my kids is going to be short-lived...I mean, look at Noah!  A few more inches and he will be looking down at me!

As we have done for the past several years as a way to save money, we took these photos ourselves using our own camera and a tripod.  This year we went to a nature preserve in the early evening.  The lighting was pretty good and the colors of the foliage made for a very nice backdrop.  Now the hard part is going to be deciding which one we should use for our Christmas card! :)

Fall family camping trip.

For us, the camping "season" has usually ended by October, but this year we decided to try a fall camping trip. We had heard of a forest service cabin that can be rented out for cheap, so we thought it might be fun to incorporate that into our trip.  The cabin, located in an area called Squirrel Meadows between Ashton and Island Park, Idaho, is rustic and remote, to say the least.  It does not have electricity or running water and is in a meadow surrounded by forest.  We took our camp trailer, more or less as a way of hauling all of our needs such as food, blankets, towels, clothes, camping "stuff", etc.  Inside the cabin were 3 sets of bunk beds, a kitchen table, a wood burning stove and an old wood burning cooking stove.  We were really hoping to capture the fall colors at their peak of change, but when we woke up to rain again on Thursday as we were getting ready to make the 2 hour drive, we realized there was a chance it could be snowing in the mountains.

As we were packing up the car and almost ready to leave, the kids had started to head outside to load up in the car.  Nicolas came running back in the house and yelled: "I just saw a moose running down the road!"  In my mind I was thinking maybe there was a stray cow from a nearby farm or something, but when I went out onto the porch, sure enough there was a bull moose heading down the road right towards our garden.  Chris was able to follow it shortly and take a couple of photos, though they turned out blurry:

After the moose excitement, we finished loading the car and started driving.  It was raining on and off all the way.  When we arrived in Ashton, we stopped at the US Forest Service building to pick up the keys to the cabin, then continued on for another 20 -30 minutes to get there.  By the time we started pulling down the dirt road towards the cabin, the rain had turned to snow.

Chris immediately got to work building a fire in the stove because it was freezing inside the cabin.  I set to work putting clean sheets and sleeping bags on all the beds and unloading the things we needed to have inside.  The kids started running around outside.  One of my worries going into this trip was that this area has a high known grizzly bear population and typically this would have been a time for high bear activity.  Luckily, the snow seemed to help keep the bears away because we didn't see any the entire 3-4 days we were there.  The rest of the day we spent mostly inside the cabin enjoying the ambiance of the snow falling outside, while we were kept warm by the crackling fire.  We went for a short drive and got a few pictures before too much more of the snow fell.

The next morning when we woke up, I went outside and took some photos and video of the crazy amount of snow we had received:

It continued to snow all day.  We had planned to go for a drive to look for wildlife and take photos of the trees and mountains.  We did venture out for one drive, but the roads were pretty messy - bumpy, gravel, backwoods roads, now covered with 6 or more inches of snow.  We ended up just coming back to the cabin where the kids played out in the snow and we had hot chocolate and played games.

The next day was a little better, as far as the weather was concerned.  It was foggy in the morning, but that burned off as the sun started to come up.  After breakfast and some more playing in the snow, we ventured out again, this time driving up towards Yellowstone.  We made the scenic drive to Cave Falls, then came back and enjoyed an evening campfire, complete with s'mores and stories.

It was kind of a bummer that we didn't get to see any wildlife, apart from a couple of red-headed woodpeckers and a rare siting of some kind of Fisher or Pine Martin (we're not sure what it was exactly, kind of looked like a weasel only much bigger).  But we all had a good time and were sad to come home and leave the tranquility of the wilderness behind.  Then again, we were all dirty and ready for warm showers and our own beds!