Hershey Park, Christmas, and Maddie's Birthday

Maddie is 6!!! 

It is so hard to believe that are little girl is six years old!! Oh my how the time does fly. She decided she wanted to get her ears pierced,and she did great, she didn't even flinch. In fact she was so thrilled she smiled through it all. We were lucky to be down in Virginia for Christmas with family, that she got to celebrate her birthday with cousins she usually never gets to see. She is our sweet little princess, and is growing and getting so smart. 

Washington D.C. temple........this is our new temple. We are excited, it is so beautiful. We have a 3 1/2 hr. drive, but we are lucky to have family 15 minutes away that will watch the kids so we can go. We took the kids to see the lights and nativity. Maddie asked if we were going to Salt Lake. (We wish). 

Merry Christmas! 

Christmas was very different, but it was good. The kids enjoyed baking cookies for Santa and for some people in our apartment, making gingerbread houses, and seeing Santa. Chan took a little dive on the kitchen chair and cut open his chin. Good thing we know a good nurse who hooked him up with some glue :0). Jackson was hilarious, and wanted to eat all of the wrapping paper. The kids were so excited. It was a whopping 69 degrees Christmas day and absolutely no snow. It felt like we were having a "tropical heat wave" according to Dave. We got to talk to everyone who we would normally see, on the phone. I got to see a cousin in York, PA that I haven't seen in 12 years, and we spent a couple of days in Virginia with Dave's uncle, aunt and cousins. It is really hard to be away from everyone, but we are so blessed to have family close by.It was a great day. 

...Hershey Park...

We took the kids to Chocolate World in Hershey PA with Dave's cousin and her family from Virginia. I have seriously never seen SO MUCH chocolate. In fact you can smell it when you pull into the parking lot. YUM! We learned how chocolate was made, and how many hershey kisses are made every five minutes( 1,300 or something crazy like that) They had Candy Cane Lane, an amusement park open, and they loved riding some rides in 29 degree weather. It was freezing. There are reasons to close such things in 30 or below weather! They had so much fun, it was worth it to not have feeling from the legs down just to see them smile. Thankfully we found our winter stuff. The highlight were Santa's reindeer. Maddie is getting a little too smart, and realized that there is no way they really can fly (stinker).

Ice Storms???

When I first heard the words "ice storm", I thought, hmmm probably some snow-like-hailish type stuff that turns to ice eventually. YEA, I went out to start the car for church yesterday morning and everything outside was completely covered with ice. It took 25 minutes to clean the windows off and it was like scraping off another layer of glass. I thought I was going to break our windshield it was so thick! And good luck trying to open the doors. The cars look like they were covered with that tempered obscure glass on bathroom windows. Yea for us, we have our own personal little snow globe! So needless to say,we were educated, an ice storm is when it rains and is so cold, it pretty much turns anything it touches to pure ice almost instantly. The good news-it melts after about two hours of driving around, so nothing permanent right?? Lesson learned-things can always be worse!  It is FREEZING here!

Welcome to the East Coast...

We are officially east-coasters, well we have a zip code. And there isn't really a whole lot to smile about yet, but each day gets better. As some of you requested here are some pics of the amazing 800 square foot humble abode that we are currently residing in for the time being. It is 2 bedrooms, and Chan and Maddie are having to adjust very quickly to sleeping in the same room. They are going to be adjusting for awhile :0). We are absolutely beside ourselves and overcome with joy at the fact that we now have a dishwasher. We figure we spend approximately 35 minutes less a day doing dishes (YEA!!) We have never owned a dishwasher in the 8 1/2 years we have been married, so this is huge. Chandler is in our empty living room sitting on the only chair in the entire room and watching our (BIG) screen t.v. We actually found our Christmas tree, and crazy enough all of the ornaments. It only took digging through every box in storage to find them in with the Valentines stuff????? But the tree is up and stockings are hung, and two kids are a little happier. Dave and I actually did a good thing before we left Utah. We did all our Christmas shopping for the kids, wrapped it and mailed it to ourselves. So four days after we got here we had presents. We do not have a bed, couch, towels, food, table or chairs but we are ready for Christmas!! The kids fight over who gets to push the code to open the door, and we are so thrilled about having to share a washer and dryer with our entire apartment building (LOL). Maddie started school on Monday, and loves it. In fact she is already planning play dates and has a new friend, crazy enough named Katie!! The kids are learning to play together, basically because that is all they have! This is going to be quite an experience, but we can see positive things happening around us every day, and are looking forward to whatever comes . 

       5 months old....

Our baby is 5 months old!! He is growing at incredible rates of speed. He is such a joy in our lives and is the best baby. He absolutely loves to have his rolls fed, sleeping and smiling, and loathes the binki and wearing socks, he enjoys them however in his mouth. He has just started eating cereal and loves it! You would think that we starve the poor boy for how excited he gets when he sees his bowl. A whopping 16 1/2 pounds, and in the 75% he clearly is doing okay. He is starting to roll and is developing his own little personality.

Christmas Fun.......

The kids are so excited for Christmas. We took them to see Santa, so he knows that they moved (of course). Chan listed about the entire toy store, so he might be a little disappointed Christmas morning. The cookie decorating was hilarious. We could only find a little bag of flour so our stockings look like ginormous candy canes, and our trees turned into hearts, but the kids didn't care and they ate them without chewing first, so it was great. We hope everyone has a Merry Christmas! We love and miss you!!