Merry Christmas

We headed to Idaho to celebrate Christmas. We were going to be there for a week and were so excited to see everyone. We were very blessed and everything went as planned. We had no delays even though the weather wasn't the best. Thanks to Monica for picking us up at the airportand driving us to Pocatello. My mom picked us up there. We did a little christmas shopping and have decided we will never do that again. There were more people in WalMart than on the day after Thanksgiving.

We spent Christmas Eve at Aunt Shellie's house. She made prime rib and baked potatoes. It was delicious!! The climax of course was the nativity scene that the grandkids performed. This was the first time we had done that. It was precious! Mary whipped up all these costumes and they all looked so cute. Of course the best part was when Shaylon got her dad, Sam, to be the donkey. She rode in on him while Grandpa Clark read the story from the scriptures. Porter was a wiseman and was not very patient and cooperative. He had had enough. We did a $5 gift exchange and he definitely perked up when he saw that his present was a ball.

Christmas morning was great. Porter was the center of attention as he opened all the gifts. It took him a minute to get a hang of opening presents, but by the end he was willing to open every single one of them under the tree. Porter got a Woody doll from Toy Story, his favorite disney movie and a few other toys from that movie too. He loved it and was soon saying "woody." Which we were so surprised at, given he can only say 5 other words.

We had fun having all the cousins over every day. Porter loved having play mates there all the time. We did spend a lot of time lounging around and loved it.

Thanks to Olivia we got a temple time set up where Terry and I, Liz and Ruffin, Olivia and my mom went to a session. The cool thing about it was that we went when my grandpa was working. It was special to be in the temple with him he thought so too and it made me so happy when he came up to us and said, "this was a special experience for me." We all went out to eat at Craigo's after and that was delicious.
We went up to the cabin by warm river and spent a night. It was so cool. I loved it. We had fun playing games, talking and eating. Definitely an experience that people pay good money for and we got to enjoy it for free. We felt so high class in that nice cabin. Thanks to Sam and Mary and Jed and Amanda!!

We headed down to Utah to spend the night with Marthea and Jeff and their boys the night before our plane left. It was good to see them. Porter had fun playing with those two little twins. It definitely made a difference in our trip having already done one of the legs of the trip the day before. We sure had fun and 7 days went way way to fast.

I had to leave the Wii comments till last because I wanted to add a video of the best Wii performance in history by my mom and dad. Santa bought a wii for Christmas for the family to enjoy and boy did we enjoy it. I don't think it was ever turned off the whole time we were there visiting. We sure had fun figuring out how to play it while laughing at each other. We are definitely out of the loop when it comes to video games and it took quite a few tries to even get the basics down. Our favorite of course was the boxing and as you can see below we sure had fun. This video is priceless as you watch my dad with great skill execute punches and my mom laugh as she just moves her arms back and forth. Well, skill was not the key factor here because as you can see my mom wins. It was so funny!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Can't wait for more fun next year!

The First Snow!!

It is now beginnning to look a lot like Christmas around here in Indiana. We had our first snow fall and I forget how beautiful it is to look out and have everything covered in white. It was wonderful!! Porter was tentative at first wondering what snow was and didn't really want to touch it, but quickly warmed up to the idea that you could pick up that fluffy white stuff and eat it. I wish we would have had time to go sledding. I am sure he would have loved it. Anyway, I am very excited for Christmas now.

I am way behind on my blog and have to give an update on our fun fall adventures. Here is a random sampler of the past few weeks.

We took our annual trip to a local state park to see the beautiful fall leaves. This park has many look out towers that allow you to see the fall colored trees.

We have broken down and become those parents that put their kid on a leash. Just kidding we were playing with a dog leash. It was funny to see Porter try to get away.

We really did have fun carving pumpkins this year. We didn't carve them until the day before Halloween, but that didn't stop us from keeping them out on our porch until Thanksgiving. White trash I know. We had to enjoy them though. Porter didn't like to stick his hand down into the pumpkin, but once the pumpkin guts were out he had no problem getting them everywhere.

This is what the average picture that I try to take of Porter looks like these days. He is definitely past the stage of posing for me to take the perfect picture. The second he sees the camera he wants to see it to, so by the time I get the button pushed and my slow camera take the picture this is the close up head shot that has been taken. I do so wish for a new camera for Christmas. Hint, Hint Terry :)!