The Circus. The Circus. We Love the Circus!

Being the awesome parents that we are we didn't bring the camera. Pictures of our kids riding ponies, jumping in jumpy castles, riding elephants...who wants pics of their kids doing those awesome things anyways? Highly overrated. And all the other cool circus stuff we saw? Who wants pictures of that? The picture of cuteness baby's face when he won a bike...? Alright, so maybe it was everyone else's expression that would have been worth capturing when they read his name. His face pretty much looked like this.

We think it might have had a little more to do with the hot dogs, funnel cakes, and cotton candy that he was stuffing down his face.

Alright, alright. He is Always that happy. And cute. What can we say.

His sister is the benefactor of his good fortune. Poor kid. Each one of his siblings will probably ride his bike before he will. It is a good thing that he is so good natured.

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for a wonderful night at the circus.

Girls...Toilets...Whatever.

Yesterday we were at church, and Cuteness #3 needed to answer nature's call. As I walked with him into the restroom, he said one of the funniest things ever:

"It smells like girls in here [...pause...] I mean toilets."

Um, I wasn't aware that those were two things you could confuse!

The Only Way Out is UP!

Team "Hike the Tower, Puke with Power" (Awesome. We know.)

Event "Trek Up the Tower"

This was our first official race, minus Janice. She's already been able to wear the little timing chip.

Running...walking up what we thought was going to be 47 flights of stairs was nothing we could prepare for. We did the stairs at the gym, but so many people told us that real stairs were different. I was prepared to die, or at least faint. Jay was't worried at all, but I could just picture myself being Chicken Little's dad, face planted in the stairs and struggling to move an inch. Only I wouldn't be saving the world, or showing my child that I listened to what was important to them. I was only going to be killing myself to say that I did it. Which is a way awesome reason, only not one of the choices to choose from when we signed up.

Anyway, all my hype was for nothing. It was awesome, although the air was definitely thinning as we went up. We thought it was 47 flight, so when we got to #39 I was thinking "8 flights to go, I can totally do this." Turns out there are only 40 flights so we were basically done. Although, we kinda felt ripped off because that wasn't really the top, but whatever. We did it, and we weren't even the slowest. Jay stayed by me as I was pacing myself (much slower than I needed to), but now I know what it is like and next year I think we can totally rock it. And by that I don't mean winning, I just mean meeting our own personal goals.

It was just fun. When we were done we got a medal and a towel with all the sponsors on it. Then we went downstairs where the party was going on. They fed us and gave us a bunch of free stuff. YAY for Free Stuff!!! ... that we got rid of a week later. Hmm, except the t-shirt. YAY for Free T-Shirts that we actually keep. Although, when you think of what we spent to enter the race, maybe the T-shirt doesn't sound so free after all, but totally worth it.

This is me puking over the edge of the parking garage...

...okay, so I wasn't puking. I was hacking up a lung because of my cold, but it looked enough like it that we needed to take a picture. Or, at least someone thought so. :)

Definitely going to do it again next year. (The race, not the hacking up a lung/fake puking.)

Who wants to join us?

We LOVED it

Getting up in the early hours of the morning that no one is ever supposed to see. Walking (umm... running) in the bitter wind with sub-zero temperatures FOREVER.

Waiting... Delays... More waiting... Running... Running... More Running... Dying... Barely Making it...

For this:

Umm...SO. WORTH. IT.

We got to San Diego early afternoon on Monday and drove the hour and a half to my sister's house in Orange County. We spent the rest of the day in glorious 70 degree weather.

After dinner and family home evening we played "kick-the-can". The indoor version being "kick the paper towel roll". It was so much fun. I hadn't played it since I was a kid and I had completely forgotten all the rules, which I quickly learned as I broke them. They are an amazing family and I am so glad we were able to spend some time with them. They are one of those families that you just want to hang out with with the hope that some of their awesomeness will happen to rub off.

Our hotel was in La Jolla and it was a beautiful part of town. We were minutes from the San Diego Temple. Which is so beautiful, inside and out. We kept going back just to walk around the grounds... and to take lots of pictures. SO FUN!

Tuesday night we went to meet some friends at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown San Diego. It just so happened that that Tuesday was Mardi Gras. Who knew? Apparently... everybody else. Parking was crazy and we got to see a good portion of downtown, which we loved. After we ate we walked around their outdoor mall that was right there. It was huge, beautiful, amazing weather, and so much fun. Walking back to our car we got to watch drunk people riding on buses and shouting to everyone. It was a fun night! :)

So, the week was A-MAZING! I spent my days running, swimming, laying out, sleeping in, whatever I wanted. Evenings were spent with the two of us doing whatever we wanted while enjoying the fantastic weather. My sister, Elaine, and her girls came down one night and we went to Little Italy together. We walked around and ate a lot of gelato. Which reminded us how much we love the stuff and how much we need to go back to Italy.

It was a great week. Thank you to Jay's parents and my sister, Janice, for watching the cuteness kiddos and making it all possible. We appreciate it SO MUCH!!!

It is true. We LOVED it all and we want to go back soon. We think we could even live there. It was THAT fantabulous.

We know

Valentine's Day was over a week ago, but we just wanted to share the cute Valentine's the kids brought to school. My sister saw this on a blog and I was helping her with the photo of her daughter. I decided to do it with Cuteness #1 and #2, as well. Totally going to do it again next year.

Aren't they cute?

Long Overdue

It has been almost two months and it is high time that we give a shout out to our many wonderful friends that we said good-bye to in Georgia.

YOU ARE ALL AWESOME AND WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!

Words could probably never express the depth of gratitude and love that we feel. Each time we move we are sure that there is no way that we will make friends nearly as amazing as the ones that we just left. And yet, there are always amazing people that actually allow us to invade their life and become great friends. We have been so blessed everywhere that we have lived. This just happens to be the first time we have had a blog to publicize our thanks. May all of our amazing friends across the globe know that we are so grateful for you and we love you all.

We would never be able to count the times that our prayers have been answered by seemingly small and simple acts (or outright HUGE ones) of those around us. We would never be able to count the times that our lives improved because of the service and example of our friends. It is always heart-wrenching to say good-bye to such friends, always hoping that something, sometime will bring us together again. Thanks for the good times, the good memories, and the good food. Georgia holds a place in our heart...thanks to all of you, our amazing friends.

And in other news. It is freezing here and we have snow up to our eyebrows. In our last post we mentioned this Winter Wonderland. Little did we know that it was just getting started. We had a blizzard on Christmas day. This last week we had about 6 inches added to the million that we already had, which makes it fun trying to find a place to put it all. Oh yeah, there isn't a place... because it is full of snow. The kids have not been to school at all this year because of the additional 3 snow days. Don't get us wrong: snow can totally be lots of fun and it is very beautiful. However, when it is -24F and a wind chill of we don't even want to know how cold, well, we spend a lot of time indoors with hot chocolate.

And Crazy Awesome Cuteness #4 turned 3 years old today. Really, where does the time go? And for real, he's really cute.

And we will end with a few more pics. We have the Craziest, Awesomest Family in the world.

Wonderland

This would be the Summer Wonderland that we enjoyed only a month ago in Orlando, FL. We love you Summer Wonderland.

And this would be the Winter Wonderland where we now reside. It is beautiful. The snow is great for this Christmas time. How wonderful that we can be here to enjoy it. The kids had three snow days last week. Even Jay had two and a half days off from work. FUN FUN FUN!!! These were their first Snow Days ever. (Maybe we can't technically say the first. There was that day in Georgia when they got out of school because it was supposed to snow, or be really cold, or something. It ended up being 60 degrees, but everyone had a great day out of school regardless. So, no school, but no snow, either.) Anyway, they had a blast. We all did.

We are really enjoying living so close to family. We can't say enough how wonderful it is. We absolutely love it. It isn't just a vacation where we feel like we need to cram a year's worth of fun into one short week (especially because we never would succeed.)

Many of you may be wondering how we are adapting with the weather here. Did you know that the Winter Wonderland, as beautiful as it is, is FREEZING!!! Like for real FREEZING! Just want to make sure that no one misunderstood. We thought it would take a lot longer to acclimate, though. When it is 22 degrees out and you hear yourself saying, "Wow, it's a nice day." It just makes you wonder how you got to that point in less than a month. Oh, that would be the sub-zero temperatures that we had yesterday. You know, where you get frost bite on your face because it was exposed for the 5 seconds that you are outside. Yep, it is amazing how quickly 22 degrees feels like a nice day.

How far away are our Spring and Summer Wonderlands?