Cousin Fun

We had some special visitors at our house this week. Chantel, Max and Morgan came for a visit during Morgan's spring break. Wow! It was Party Central at our house for a rockin' seven days! We visited Mystic Aquarium in a monsoon, we also visted the Boston Children's Museum in a monsoon. We dragged five kids for about 800 blocks in NYC (not in a monsoon), and my lovely friend, Kandi very generously offered to watch our kids while Chantel and I went out to lunch. We are all sad and quite bored now that they have gone home. Thanks for a great week, Kansas City cousins!

ps. When I went to take some photos, my camera was not working, so I had to use some creative photography.

Chantel and I at lunch. If you can't tell, she's the one with the bottle and I'm the one with the lipstick.

We waded through a lot of puddles.

The girls loved the American Girl Doll store

This is a photo of the kids climbing the magic carpets at the BCM.

Max, Morgan and Em played non-stop!

Fun at Mystic Aquarium

Winding Trails

February vacation...bonk...bonk..bonk...(See previous post for the source of this bonking noise!) What to do with three children with a week's break from school in sunny February? Lots of sitting around the house, for one thing. The Elwoods did manage one day of winter fun, however. Dennis took the day off from work and we drove to a ski center in Farmington. The big kids and I spent a few hours cross-country skiing the miles of beautiful trails, and Em and Dennis went ice skating on a pond. She pushed around a kid-sized plastic chair for balance and had a blast. We topped the day off with some sledding and a snow ball fight. Fun was had by all, and for just a day, February vacation seemed like a good idea

beautiful scenery
Sis fires one at Cardon's head

Bud gets in a gut shot

The sledding hill was fast!

The 2014 gold medalist in women's figure skating. (Em)

Bud was a natural at x-country.

Yes, Chiara, we're having fun. Smile!

The Sky is Fallling! The Sky is Falling!

Forgive me for my whining but...You know the story of Chicken Little and his barnyard friends? Chicken Little panics when an acorn falls on his head because he's sure the sky is falling, and then all of the other animals join in on the panicked frenzy because they're all sure they're doomed. I think the Chicken Little story is based loosely on a snow day in New England. Tuesday afternoon the meteorologists were predicting a storm of 10-16 inches on Wednesday in Connecticut (the dreaded NorEaster), which of course, caused a panicked frenzy. Grocery stores were cleared of food, gas stations were emptied of fuel, and every school in the state was cancelled before a flake of snow ever fell from the sky. In fact, as you can see from my photos, very few flakes of snow ever fell from the sky. We will now be spending another day in school during the month of June all for 3 inches of snow that fell after 4:00 pm! You'd think after 6 years of this, I'd be able to just go with the flow....but "bonk" bonk" bonk," (that's the sound of my head hitting the wall repeatedly.) It's just one of those things I haven't been able to get over. Sigggghhhhh. Oh well! The kids had a great day of watching tv and eating junk food.

9:30 am
11:00 am.

1:30 pm


3:30 pm




4:15 pm.



11:30 am. Thursday
( a beautiful day!)

My Condolences to All of You Stuck at Home in the Cold!

Yes, I know, we're spoiled but we started something two years ago that we cannot quit--an annual cruise to a warm location with Jim and Jill. It doesn't get much better than that! This year we left from Florida and visited Grand Cayman, Roatan, Honduras, Cozumel, Mexico, and Princess Cays--a private island in the Bahamas. We had a lovely 7 days of eating, sleeping, eating, lounging, eating, snorkeling, eating, zip lining, eating, scuba diving, eating, watching movies on the deck under the stars, and eating! Life was pretty darn good!

Dennis's catch of the day in Cozumel was a lovely balloon hat.
Holding stingrays in Grand Cayman
There is a sand bar a few miles out to sea where the stingrays congregate for free meals.





A sunset off of our balcony

The Elwoods, the Blotters, and our Boise friends, the Franklins and the Sheltons,

who have happened to be on all 3 cruises with us!

We're pretty sure we must have known each other in the pre-existence!

This photo was taken right after we gorged ourselves at the Crown Grille so I'm pretty sure all eight of us are sucking in our guts during the photo shoot!

Trying to get the monkey off my back!

Jill and I went ziplining while the guys went scuba diving, and this monkey really wanted the fruit in my backpack. When Jill tried to get him off, he bit her so I just had to take my backpack off of my shoulders and toss him to the ground! This would be AFTER he wrapped his tail around my neck and stuck the end of it in my mouth! I woke up the next morning and jumped on Dennis's back and started picking at his fleas, so who knows what disease I picked up!

A really hot couple!

(and walking advertisements for the Boston Red Sox!)

The Crown Princess. I still see her in my dreams!

The Elwoods and the Blotters in Cozumel. Notice the sweatshirts!

It was a little chilly that day but the water was still 78 degrees so who can complain?!

Eating...This is what we did for 95% of our cruise!

It's Christmas and It's Christmas Time in the City!

Toys R Us

The Famous FAO Schwartz piano

Rockefeller Center

Carnegie Deli

The family with Elders Bruckner and Farmer. Elder Farmer spent last Christmas at our house, and then got transfered to our ward for 1 week so he spent his 2nd Christmas with us too! Lucky or unlucky for him?!




Secret Santa gifts





Christmas presents from Santa

The Sunday before Christmas

Em at the mall telling Santa all of her wishes.

I have some catching up to do! You'd think I could stay on top of my blog during vacation, but eating chocolate took up waaaay too much of my time to be productive! I'm posting some photos of our Christmas day--it was great. We spent Christmas morning enjoying family time and eating Grandma Margaret's famous pizza pan cinnamon roll and egg nog--that I have had to learn how to make! We then spent the afternoon and evening playing games with the missionaries. A Secret Santa dropped off a whole box of gifts for them to open, and they really enjoyed the gifts. If you're reading this, thanks, Secret Santa!

We've always wanted to see NYC all dressed up for the holidays but life is just too busy in the weeks before Christmas, so we left home early on the 28th and took the train to Grand Central to see the sights. The morning and afternoon weren't too bad--we rode the ferris wheel at Toys R Us and ate the mile high sandwiches at Carnegie Deli. By evening, the crowds were crazy! Rockefeller Center was a mass of humanity. It was nuts! I'm glad we did it, but I'm not going back any time soon!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

We usually always decorate our tree on the 1st Sunday in December and make gingerbread houses on the first Monday, but Dennis ruined our schedule by having to make a trip to England on Sunday evening so our December traditions were moved to Saturday night. It was nice of Mother Nature to cooperate with us and send us a couple inches of snow to put us in the Christmas mood. We had fun making houses with the Victorinos on Saturday and playing in the snow after church on Sunday.

Update: I typed this up but did not get it posted, and since then we've had another snow storm, and.....drum roll....our first snow day! #@*!. So check out our photos of Frostine, the snowgirl we made yesterday afternoon.

This One's For You, Kylie!

If you asked our family what the top five things we missed about living in Cache Valley, watching Aggie basketball would be somewhere in that top five. There's nothing quite like an obnoxious crowd cheering on the Ags in the Spectrum! So when we found out USU would be playing Northeastern in Boston a few weeks ago, we jumped at the chance to watch them again. The Aggie cheering section was small but loud--a few navy-blues in a sea of red (there were quite a few other families there decked out in USU shirts and hats),and we had great seats because the game was played in a hockey arena. The darn Ags had to go and blow a 15 point lead a lose! When the man at the MassPike tollbooth gave Dennis a Utah quarter, we were sure it was our lucky day, however, it was not mean to be! We had to console ourselves with dinner at The Cheesecake Factory in the Prudential Center!