The long, long, journey!

We are finally home from our tour of the United States. Unfortunately, we have very few pictures to show for it. We do a very poor job of taking pictures of our family. Highlights of our trip are as follows:

1. Wayne and Tami's - Wayne's blueberry pancakes and awesome sermon of course.

2. Grandpa's - Cornish game hens, of course.

3. The Schluter's - dog attack and news of them moving to Nepal. Oh, and finally getting to Texas!

4. Grandmother and Grandaddy's - jumping on hay bails, Christmas, playing hide and seek in the dark with Cam's newly acquired night vision goggles, visiting cemetaries (Tony is on a geneology kick.)

5. Grandma and Emery's - fishing, of course (looks like Aub is the only one catching anything), the nature center, seeing cousins (aunt and uncle too), more Christmas, mom getting deathly ill.

6. Phillips - Learning to ride horses, however, shopping with the girls in Wal-Mart was the absolute highlight (see picture below). Staying up until 3 AM against my will playing Rook was NOT one of the highlights :-).

7. Fayetteville - eating dinner and leaving to bring Lee and the girls home with us.

8. Enjoying all the love of all the family and friends God has blessed us with.

9. Back home to "God's country" for a quick ski trip before Daddy had to go back to work.

Now it's back to the old grindstone diving into school, Bible studies, and activities. We missed home alot but realize we are blessed to have so many we love so far off as well.

Family pictures

We FINALLY, after 6 years, have a family picture all together. We took an afternoon and went out to do it. I think they turned out OK, I think.

And the kids....

Thanksgiving was great. We had several people over who also don't have any family in town....they shared in the cooking so that was nice. Overall, we had a great time....stayed up late playing "spoons." It got pretty hairy after all the kids got knocked out of the game (not literally.)

We got most of what was on our list accomplished and it was all suprisingly NOT boring. We had a great time just being together as a family (for those of you who don't know us well, that is somewhat of a rarety around here.)

Back to the grindstone for another couple of weeks and then we are off on our tour of the South! I did break it to the kids, however, that if they wanted to get any "extra" skiing in this winter they were going to have to work on school through our trip. They agreed...we'll see. We are all very excited to see everyone...it's been such a long time.

Tony is HOME!

Well, we finally have our husband and Daddy home for an entire week! We are all very excited, however, he is at the Dr. right now to get a sinus infection dealt with. For those of you who are not aware...my husband cannot simply get a cold...it has to hit him like a ton of bricks...literally.
Hopefully he will recover to make room for fun.

Things to accomplish this week:
1. Get family and individual portraits made (some of you have been requesting this for years.)
2. Use free bowling passes we have had in our possession for the past year.
3. Catch up on routine Dr and dentist appts (very exciting!)
4. Christmas crafting and shopping (if you have requests, please make them known now.)
5. Finish Cam's "Wolf Trail" so he can become a "bear" by his 9th birthday.
6. Take a week off of school (except for our awesome science class, of course.)
7. Climb Mt. Naomi before it is too covered in snow......(in my dreams)

Man, we lead a pretty boring life......

Wrestling

The boys are almost done with wrestling so I thought I'd better get some pics up here before the whole thing is over. I will not include the ones we have where they are being pinned to the ground repeatedly and mercilessly :-). They are actually doing fairly well, I think, for this being their first year. They are having fun (which is the whole point, right?) and both say they want to do it next year.

Here are the boys gearing up for their match...man, are they ever pumped up! Eye of the tiger, man!

Caleb waiting to get matched up with another first grader who weighs 39 pounds...not an easy task, let me tell you.

Cameron is holding his own. It amazes me how these boys can completely bend both of his arms in opposite directions and he will smile the whole time. But if his big sister so much as pinches him he is limping for an hour...go figure.

Caleb is the one on top. He is a feisty little guy! He got his fingers completely bent back in practice yesterday, it hurt pretty bad, I could tell...he is one tough little dude.


Other news:

We winterized the camper today and are retiring it until next Spring.

We are all exhausted from raking leaves at a friend's house today...we still don't have any leaves of our own to rake :-(.

Final plans are being decided tonight (hopefully) for Christmas vacation, so some of you may be getting calls to clear up your schedules :-).

Car broke down again...not looking good for the home team.

That's all for now. Cam wants my next post to be about his Boy Scouts.

Moab

Ruth was from Moab. I see why it was such a sacrifice for her to leave. :-) We had a great time exploring the arches, canyons...so much more to see. We broke down on the way home so got to stay for 2 more days than planned! Fun, fun, fun.

Here are some pics as promised:

Holly carrying her monster backpack to take a shower in the campground "by myself!"

Here we are at the trailhead of Corona and Bowtie arches.

The little ones running on the trail...doesn't show the digger Holly took immediately afterward.

There were tons of little caves and crevices for the kids to explore. They were not quite so confident as they are in the picture when the time came to get down from this steep cave! There was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

That little blue speck is Camo.

By the Colorado River...next time we're rafting down it!

Can you see us? We are under there. It makes you feel very small...

Tony under Bowtie Arch.
You can't tell at all from pictures but this view from under Corona Arch was absolutely breathtaking! Oh, the kids are cute too.
We'll be good, Daddy, we promise!

Time to go =-(

All in all, we had a great time! Utah is such a land of beauty!

By the way...bummer about BO getting elected president....

Wrestling, Moab, and the Passover.....?

I signed the boys up for wrestling and they had their first match last Saturday...how cute! We forgot the camera so we don't have any pictures, we'll get some next week. They both won some and lost some. They were both so determined. Cameron was hilarious because he just smiled the entire time, there's nothing like being pinned to the ground by a kid with a smile on his face. They both loved it and can't wait to go back. This goes until mid December.

Cameron is officially a Wolf now and has the patches on his little Cub Scout shirt to prove it. :-)

We are all excited about our little family trip to Moab this weekend. I will definitely post pictures to encourage visitors....it is truly a magical place.

On Sunday night I did an interesting activity with my ladies bible class. We are to the part in Mark where Jesus is eating the Passover with His disciples. So we thought it would be a good idea to reenact the Passover. I did a TON of research and doing it really brought so much more meaning to the Lord's Supper for me. God set up the symbolism so perfectly THOUSANDS OF YEARS before Jesus would die and fulfill all of the OT. If anyone wants proof the Bible is true, just take a few years and REALLY study the document itself. It is amazing to me the longer I study it to see the unfolding of the beautiful plan of salvation that God set in motion before the creation of the world.

Tragedy :-)

There seems to be much concern over the fact that Aub was missing from the previous picture I posted. Well, I am sorry to say that she has had a relapse and permanently lost her memory. She no longer wants anything to do with our family and has chosen other arrangements for her living situation. Of course I am kidding....I think it's funny you all even noticed she was gone, much less were concerned. I love you all so much :-)
She was gone with her dad doing some work for a family in the church here. She is very much alive and well.