Australia!

Well it has taken 13 years but we finally made it back to Australia to visit some of our close friends. We were able to take Dayne and Ali with us which was such a wonderful experience for them. We stayed for 2 weeks and were able to enjoy the day to day life of the laid back lifestyle of the SouthEast coast of Australia.

Kukabera birds that moments later ate Jeff's sandwich out of his hand just as he was taking a bite.

First stop after we got off the airplane. It was 98 degrees and beautiful. We stopped to eat fish and chips which became Dayne's favorite meal.

One of my host families from my year as an exchange student suprised me at dinner. So good to see them.

Ali's favorite thing was the beach. She spent hours mastering the waves.

Three of my good friends. It was so fun to catch up and spend time together. Time may have passed but not our connection. Felt just like we had seen each other.

Dave & Maree let us stay with them and were our tour guides/party planners. So good to spend so much time with them.

This was another one of my host families that I had lived with for 6 months. Aunt Sharon and Uncle Peter. They live on a beautiful farm that Dayne & Ali got to collect eggs from the chooks every morning.

We spent 2 days in Sydney. ( Well 3 since our flight got cancelled and we had to stay an extra day). So fun to show the kids all of the sites.

The view from Maree's porch every evening. WOW couldn't ask for anything better.

Dayne was not so much into the water but loved the soft sand.

Took us about 4 days of looking for wild kangaroos. We finally came across these wallabies. But then when we got the the next town they were everywere.

Where did the time go....

Where did the time go....obviously time got away from me. So this is what has happened in our family during the last few months.

Jeff's mom passed away from cancer on November 12, 2009. It was a very difficult time. Today would have been her birthday. We will always remember her fun and excitement for life.

Ali turned 8 and was baptised.

We got to take the kids to Disneyland. We drove with my parents and had a great week.


Sydney & Brooke turned 5!




We had a Christmas!


We had the opportunity to spend New Years up in Washington with Jeff's Aunt & Uncle. We got to go skiing and have lots of game nights with his cousins, their kids and Jeff's brother Blake.




Our sweet Cori that was 15 was laid to rest. She was our first baby and we will miss her.


Dayne turned 10 and he is now doing Tae Kwon Do. He earned his yellow belt.

For my birthday ( I am not telling what I turned) Jeff and I got to go to Austin Texas and visit our good friends Brian and Dalana. We had a great time with them and are so grateful for the hospitality and the time they took showing us all the secrets of Austin.

October

We loved that Halloween was on a Saturday. We were able to spend the day enjoying the season. First we went to Ali's last soccer game, then went out to lunch. Had fun putting together costumes, carving pumpkins and making our pumkin brownie. The weather was perfect so the kids had a great night at the church trunk r treat and tricker treating around the neighborhood with our good friends.

Went over to the school on Friday and helped with all the parties. Ali and her cousin Marissa had a great day!
Sydney and Brooke were princess's for Halloween at school. They have the greatest teacher and parents that put on a carnival.

She would be a princess's everyday if I would let her :)

The first year that my arm did not hurt from taking out the insides of the pumpkins. They all are finally strong enough to dig it out. YEAH!

Thought the leaves in the backyard were pretty so just had to take a picture.

So the weather has been quite mild this month but just a reminder that we did have a lot of snow the very first weekend of October and I am sure it will come back again soon.

School has started!

Well, our latest adventure this weekend was our first broken bone in our household. Brooke takes the 1st prize. She was playing with Dayne in the backyard and tripped over his leg. She broke 2 bones near her elbow but will only have to wear the cast for about 3 weeks. We had to take her to the emergency room since it was late Saturday night. She was screaming so much they had to give her an IV to provide medicine to calm her down :)

Well my dear sweet Ali started the 2nd grade. She loves her teacher and is really excited about what the new year will bring. For those that haven't heard Ali was diagnosed with a seizure disorder that we discovered about 3 weeks ago. She had been having some small facial seizures for the last few month but at the end of August she had a Grand Mal seizure that gave us a bit of a scare. But after a day of testing in the emergency room, the seizure disorder is something that she will grow out of at about the age of 16 and will not have to worry about it in the future. We are so grateful.

Sydney & Brooke have officially started Preschool. They are so excited to be big girls and go to school. I hope that this year will be one of many advancements and they will begin to find who they are as individuals as they learn new things.

Dayne has started 4th grade this year. He is doing scouts, piano and will start Basketball soon. He is becoming so independant and definalty growing up. We just love his fun personality. Now the only challenge for him is to find the time to do homework and not spend all of his time with all the neighborhood boys.

2 Weeks before school starts

So inspired by other mothers who felt that summer was almost over I sat down with my kids and asked what things they wanted to do before their summer was over. This is the list I got:
1. Have our friends come over for a sleep over - So Thursday night and Friday night Ali and Dayne both had friends over :)
2. Get pizza - Glad they are satisfied with $5 little caesars
3. Go to a movie theatre - Went and saw G-Force
4. Go swimming - Went swimming ever day between our community pool and the Juniper Rec Center
5. Go bowling - Ending up going on the Bowling League appreciation night. They said there was no room and then when I went back to ask what there hours were for the next night they took pity on me since the kids were so upset and made a lane available. YEAH!
6. Make brownies/cookies - Those were gone fast and only one egg ended up on the floor.
7. Go fishing - Grandpa has a pond in his yard and the fish were hungry! Every cast produced a fish and the kids loved throwing them back in.

So I got busy and we accomplished all 7 this week. Now I hope they don't think of another list when they realize there is still a week left.

Outdoor Adventures

We took the kids out to Smith Rock for the first time and had a great time. The only thing we didn't take into account was that it got to 95 degrees by 11am and it was just way too hot! Defiantly an adventure to save for a cooler day.

We went camping again at East Lake. We drove up to Paulina Peak and looked down on the lake.

The is the waterfall at Paulina Lake. This time we walked to the bottom and looked up. It was beautiful.

We got to go down to Medford and I took the kids to the Fish Hatchery. It was also the wrong day it was 105 degrees and we were surrounded by cement. But Dayne still thought it was the best part of the whole trip!

On our way down to Medford we stopped off at Crater Lake. I haven't been there in years, It is just so blue. What a wonderful piece of nature.

So we had a great vacation to Utah at the beginning of the month. We spent a whole day visiting the temples. Jeff & I went through a session at Timpanogos Temple in the morning. Then we were able to take the kids through an open house at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. Finishing off the day at Temple Square in Salt Lake. It was a wonderful day.

Then another day we went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point. This was defiantly the highlight of Dayne's trip.

Then we had lots of swimming time with the cousins.

The best part of the trip was seeing Jeff's Dad and step mom who came up from California. They have never been able to meet Sydney and Brooke so they had a great time getting to know each other.

(Ali had just got hit in the face...so goes the sad face)