Merry Christmas!

You know Christmas must have been GOOD if it has taken me a month to get this post out! Actually it was really fun! Ryan worked until about 2:30am Christmas Eve morning, came home picked me up and we drove to Rexburg to carpool with Bryce Liliya and the kids. About 1/2 way to Rexburg at 4 in the morning the car overheats! We are practically in the middle of nowhere and it is 2 degrees outside!! But we managed to fix it quick and never had anymore problems.
Mari, Shad, Bellen, and Ada are really the best nieces and nephew we could ever ask for but I was a little nervous to drive that long in a car with kids, memories. Driving to California with my family growing up, not fun. It was ALL I could think about, fighting over space who is touching who...................... The drive up was awesome! I drove with Liliya and we talked the whole time it was so much fun! And the girls were perfect! We got to Ephrata about 6:00 pm and everyone was there! That is what Christmas is all about. Christmas Eve we did the Nativity program. The kids "acted" it out. Actually they mostly wandered around in their costumes while we read scriptures and sang songs.
John played the guitar while we sang hyms.





Ada as Mary



Belen as and Angel




Some of the Family and the rest of the Nativity





Cute Shad

Sorry this is out of order, but I almost forgot our Christmas tree! We went to Wyoming to cut it down. Bought a tree stand that turned out to be too big for our little tree which ended up falling over one night and instead of putting it back up we just leaned it against the wall! Ghetto!



And a cool picture of our ornament Ryan took.

Back to our Christmas trip. Sorry this post is going to be long, I will try not to take anymore detours!

There were 18 people in one house for Christmas and it was great! Christmas morning the kids were so patient to wait for Ryan and I to get up since we were sleeping on the hid-a-bed in the family room! We didn't sleep in too long! It was so much fun to have the little kids at Christmas, seeing how excited they were about everything! Here is Christmas morning...
Of course we had to have breakfast before we opened presents. I'm not sure if Ada is trying to figure out what Deagan in eating or if she wants some? And the presents before the it all began.


Liliya was the creative genius behind the calendar, it turned out great! As well as the winning emotional gift for Carol.




Bryce Liliya and the kids opening presents, of course there was a little drama.





Shad got Bakugan for Christmas, I think he was excited every time he opened a Bakugan present, even though the one before was bakugan! It was great! He even got a bakugan wii game and was super excited to watch Bryce and Ryan play it for him! Awesome!


Brad got an I Phone. Nice.

They also got a wii!

Ashley got a jumper (Holly seemed to love it!) and Deagan was worn our from all the excitement and presents!






I know I look amazing, but it was early. We got Ea Active for the Wii and Ryan got a sweater...hum... Carol did put the receipt in the sweater.

We played with all our new toys, had a delicious turkey dinner. The boys played football and we enjoyed being together.
Saturday was Melissa's Birthday and Mari asked if we could go iceskating for her birthday, it was Mari's lucky day because we did! Mari and Shad LOVED it! They kept saying it was the best day ever.






We also had fun playing Melissa's dancing game on the Wii. And just so you know Bryce killed everyone!


The kids dancing are adorable, and notice pregnant Michelle going for it as well! Michelle and Ashely are both pregnant and due at the end of March it was fun to see them. Sunday was Bryce's birthday and since we were leaving sunday morning we celebrated Saturday night. Carol made 2 cakes from scratch. A german chocolate and an angel food cake. I am craving the german chocolate cake right now! yummy!! We ate so much good food I am sure I gained at least 5 pounds the short weekend we were there! I am still trying to find the motivation to work it all off, that is what EA active is for right?





Ryan took some family pictures since we were all together. It was a very sunny day though! But we got some pretty good ones!



Sorry so many of us, we don't have very many we haven't taken ourselves.
Here is the whole family!

Even though it was a short trip it was so worth it. The drive was long, but the kids were amazingly good.
I had a little cold before we went up and thought it was getting better, but Saturday after Christmas I started having a hard time breather and it kept getting worse. Finally Ryan told me I needed to go to the doctor. I think I was scaring him. So Monday when we got back I went to the doctor and it turned out I had bronchitis. I felt so bad being around everyone the whole weekend and being sick, but fortunately I don't think anyone else got sick!
These holidays have been some of the best since we have been married. Ryan quit SkyWest before Thanksgiving so we had thanksgiving together with my family. He didn't have a ton of time off for Christmas but he did have Christmas Eve, and Christmas off so we had a nice weekend, then he had New Years off! That was the greatest present of all! New Years day my grandparents take the whole family bowling it is always something we look forward to.

Oh yes and one of our presents was a remote start for our Four Runner and we got it installed yesterday. It is AMAZING. We were kind of nervous it might not work, if we couldn't park close enough, but when we pressed the button and it went green I have to admit I jumped up and down and screamed! I know kind of lame. But it is so exciting!
Sorry about the super long post. That is why I don't do it too often! 3 hours later at 1:30 in the morning I am definitely done.

Thanksgiving and such

I'm glad i'm not the only one who hasn't posted in awhile! Sometimes I feel like there is just not much to say, which is usually true. In the middle of November Ryan quit his job at SkyWest, which has been unfortunately wonderful! Wonderful because I get to have somewhat normal weekends with my husband, and unfortunate because we can no longer go on fun vacations!
Thanksgiving was wonderful! We made pies...7 pies! We didn't intend to make that many it just happened. We baked 2 pumpkin pies, 2 apple pies, peanut butter and chocolate chip pie, and 2 lemon merangue. They were delicious as was dinner which we had at my grandparents house. We even went shopping on Black Friday. We got up nice and early and got to the stores at noon! HA! I'm not THAT crazy! Christmas shopping done! That afternoon we went to my sister-in-laws cabin up in Wyoming. It was a blast even though there was not snow. But we cut down our first real Christmas tree. Which about 4 days ago fell over because it doesn't quite fit in the stand. It is now leaning against the wall... I guess we are fake tree people? It was really fun though! We played games (Pit, so fun!) watched movies, celebrated my dad's birthday at a "fresh" seafood place in Afton Wyoming...it was really goo though. We even saw a parade! My dad brought up a bunch of guns and we did some skeet shooting. It was Ryan's first time and he did amazing! I didn't do so well and prefer target shooting besides the bitter cold and wind it was fun.
Ryan is almost done with school FRIDAY!! I am so excited! Only one more paper and its only 13 pages! Christmas eve we leave for Rexburg then on to Ephrata for Christmas with Ryan's family who will ALL be there. We are so excited. I LOVE the holidays!

Sorry I didn't feel like incorporating pictures throughout this post so here they all are. I am getting very lazy.

Changes

We still haven't been very exciting. Last week we decided that it was time for Ryan to leave SkyWest, a very hard decision, but he works 7 days a week so we can't even use the benefits he is working for and we never get to see each other! So we thought we would stick it out until the next bid and just see if things changed. Well they did he actually got a decent shift TH-Sat from like 6-9:30 and his on call day would be Sunday. So we decided to give it a try a little longer. That was Wednesday. Friday Ryan called me from work to tell me his schedule for the next 2 weeks and he had all closing shifts which he can't work because he has to be at UPS, then on Saturdays he was scheduled for a 6 am shift! That was the last straw for me I told him to quit. We had planned to go on one last trip before he quit, then we decided to stay a little longer so we decided we could wait to go on trip so we changed our plans then Ryan decided to quit and we wanted to get away one last time. Since we only had Sat and Sun we decided to go to Ephrata to see his family and Melissa was singing at Cabaret and we heard she did a really good job. She did a GREAT job! We were all so impressed!





It was fun to be able to go see Melissa sing I'm glad we had the opportunity!

This is just a cool picture Ryan took at Cabaret


So Ryan will go in and turn in his badges this week. It is sad to think we won't be able to go away when we want for free. But I would rather see my husband so I am kind of excited he is quitting too. Mixed feelings.

Work was crazy this morning. One of our doctors went to Mexico to do eye exams for 2 weeks, so we had all sorts of projects to do while he was gone. One of them was to get the carpets cleaned. I was gone Thursday and Friday so I figured they cleaned the carpets then. When I walked in the office this morning I just about turned around and went home. There were fans and cords and stuff ALL over the office! We had a FULL day of patients I didn't know what to do. I got in at 8 and our first patient is at 9 how was I ever going to get everything put back together before patients came? If the company going to come and clean up their stuff?? I was so frustrated that this wasn't done before. Then I wondered what kind of crazy floor cleaning company we used, I have never seen so much stuff. Well it turns out we did get the carpets cleaned on Thursday and on Friday we had a pipe break and flood the whole office!! The funny thing is people will leave me notes for just about any non important matter alive but no one said one thing about this, no note no message on the answering machine...I was in total shock when I walked in! It is kind of funny now in a frustrating way but I was so mad this morning! Needless to say it was a long day. Everything was not quite dry. I guess I am lucky I wasn't there when the actual disaster happened!

Life in the Village

That's what its called where we live. the "village" Our new thing is we stopped drinking pop. AND it was RYAN'S idea!!! One night when he got home at 3:00am he got in bed, we usually talk for 30 seconds, and he said "I have an idea" "...oh..." "I think we should stop drinking pop for 6 months." Then I rolled over to try to look at him. He was serious and we have been. The idea came because someone at work told him they had stopped drinking pop and had lost weight. Both of us have our trouble spots so we decided to give it a try. I have even been going to the gym a few days a week and we both think we are noticing a difference. Yah! Even if its all in our heads, it feels good.
Ryan did really well in his softball game yesterday! I was like a proud mom!! He got a triple and a home run. Even though it didn't go over the fence, the other team had enough errors that he made it all the way home! Way to go! They didn't win but he still played great!
I did make a blog for Ryan's photography class it is http://ryanbegphoto.blogspot.com/ it is really just a lot of pictures but I think it is fun. So check it out if you want. Tuesday we went to Red Butte Gardens to take pictures for his photography class. This assignment was different view points, we did get carried away taking pictures of the pretty plants! It was nice to walk around and enjoy the scenery. Here are a few pics, the rest are on his blog.





Last night at UPS Ryan got hit in the back of the head with a metal disc that came out of a package coming down the belt. He has a pretty good bump, but said he felt fine. I always worry when he gets hurt, but he is going to the Dr. tomorrow.
Last Sunday was a little crazy!! After Sacrament meeting we went to the library to make copies for our nursery class, thought we would try coloring again...and one of the counselors in the Bishopric told us he needed to talk to us "uh oh!" I was right. He asked us to speak, again, the Sunday after conference on one of the Sunday PM talks. The good thing is we got tickets! Then the exec. secretary told us the other counselor needed to talk to us, so we went in and he started extending us a calling...but someone kept knocking at the door, finally he opened it and the other counselor asked who he was talking to and which calling he was extending...turns out he had the wrong couple. Then the counselor who asked us to speak came in and extended us the right calling, activities committed, and told us we would be released from nursery. I was sad. So we went back to nursery and when we came in one of the super cute little girls saw Ryan and threw her hands in the air and yelled "RYAN!!" it was so cute! However we were interrupted again when the counselor pulled us out again to ask us if it was ok if we stayed in the nursery. Of course it is! We love "our" little kids! Crazy huh? Well that is what is going on in the village. Sorry not very many pictures.