A few Last Colorado Pics

So this is the end of my Colorado blogging, and it makes me only about a month behind still. But at least I got it done, right? These are just some random pictures that don't really fit with the other posts. Below is Jaxon playing cowboy with grandpa Jerry.
This is Jake and his dad after going hunting. They finally got one on the last day of the hunting season. They had gone out for 3 freezing cold mornings in a row before they got it. We now have a very full deep freezer that should last us for the rest of the year.

This is a shot of Jaxon gnawing on a rib when we went out to eat one night. Jake is glad that we have been blessed with 3 very carnivorous children. If we go out to eat and I ask the girls what they want to eat they usually ask for steak or bacon. Jaxon would probably eat more steak if he had more teeth.

This is Jaxon in a snow cave that Jake and Jerald made in front of the house.

Jake kept trying to "snowboard" while being pulled behind the 4-wheeler. It was pretty funny. He got pretty good by the end, but had many hilarious wipe-outs first.

A visit to the Farm

While Jake and his dad went out for another day of ice fishing we went with Kenna to visit her family's farm. We always love to go visit them when we are in Colorado. The girls especially enjoy seeing all of the animals and there are usually babies of some sort that they can hold.
Below is Amelie and Lyla on one of the horses. The girls struggled at first with riding the horse. They kept sliding to one side until Kenna showed them how to move their hips with the movement of the horse as they rode. It was funny because after they got the hang of it they were over-exaggerating the hip movements as they rode. Amelie, of course was an old pro and the girls felt better riding with her than trying to do it by themselves.
We also got to go see and feed the goats. I didn't take enough pictures of that.

We put Jaxon on top of the horse for a brief moment just to snap a picture. He didn't cry or anything, but he looked pretty freaked out.

Here's Mckayla and Lyla on the horse together. They kept asking for more turns after they had the hang of it.

The first thing we did was to drive out to one of the herds of cattle in the pasture. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous about standing in the middle of 200 cattle and 10 or so horses. The horses all came to the front of the herd and stood in a circle around us which was kindof weird. There was a point where something spooked them and all of the animals started running like a mini-stampede. It freaked me out because I am not used to being around a lot of animals like that. We left the pasture after that because the girls were pretty scared too. It was cool, just intimidating.

We had a lot of fun on the farm. It always makes me feel like the time for pets might be coming because my kids are so shy around animals and don't really know how to act. We certainly don't get very much practice with that at home.

Ice Fishing

Jake wanted to take us all ice fishing, because that is something that he always did every winter. I have only been fishing a couple of times in my whole life, so ice fishing was a new experience for me. I think the kids are still a little too young though. Soon after we got the girls all set up they were asking when they'd get to see the fish. Plus, it was a pretty cold day, so after about an hour they were ready to get warm again. Plus, I had to take Jaxon to go sit in the car after 30 minutes or so. He had a hard time walking on the ice, and he slipped into a puddle and got all wet. I had to get him to the car to get all of his wet clothes off so he wouldn't get too cold. Lyla's pole actually did catch a fish though. She was so proud to say that "she" caught a fish. Even though Jake had just propped her pole up and she had gone to the car to warm up.

Here is Lyla showing off her fish, though Jake had a hard time getting her to touch it long enough to hold it for a picture.

This is a shot of our little fishing site in the middle of the lake.

Up close to our fishing site, with Amelie fishing like a pro.

Here's the girls fishing in their little holes.

This is Jake and his dad making holes for us to fish in. Everyone who was out there that day had oggers with them. Ours was a gas-powered ogger, but some were walking out there with hand-crank oggers. I couldn't believe how hard it was to get a hole in the ice with this thing, I can't imagine doing it by hand.

Though we didn't catch much the first day, the girls had a lot of fun and it was a good experience for them. Jake and his dad went back the next morning and found a much better spot that was further away. They ended up maxing out the limit! We still have 9 good-size trout in the freezer that I need to fix up for dinner sometime.

Fun in the Snow in Colorado

One of the things the girls were most excited about before our Christmas trip was that we were going to get to see snow. They were not disappointed, because there was no shortage of snow in Colorado. It snowed a couple of times while we were there, plus there was a couple of feet of snow on the ground already. We had to buy snow clothes when we got there because we couldn't find any here in arizona. They don't really sell heavy coats or anything like that. So we went to Walmart on our first day and bought snow boots and snow pants and a big coat for Jaxon. It was kindof annoying to buy all of these things that I knew the kids would only get to use one time. We got the cheapest stuff we could find, and the kids really did make good use of them. The girls at least were outside in the snow everyday that we were there at least once.

This is me sledding down a hill, aren't you impressed that I could fit onto that little disk sled at 6 months prego?

This is the girls and Jake sledding. Jake sure has a much higher tolerance of cold than I do. He was so excited to be out in the cold and to be somewhere where it was winter. He really is a cold weather person, but we just always have happened to live in warm climates.

This is Lyla and her Uncle Jerald on the 4-wheeler. They had fun being pulled around on sleds and getting to "drive" the 4-wheeler through the snow.

This is Mckayla, Amelie, and Lyla just about to take off on a sled together. They are almost too big to fit together on sleds anymore.

Here is Jaxon in his snow garb. He wasn't too impressed with the snow. It was so hard for him to walk in all of his snow clothes that it wasn't too much fun for him. He rarely lasted more than 20-30 minutes.

Family Pictures

We had the opportunity to take a lot of pictures of everyone while we were there, so here are so shots of Jake's family:

Above is Jake's older brother Jerald, his wife Jackie and their two cute kids Roman and Roxie. Funny note: Our friend Daryl is staying at our house right now and the girls keep calling him Daryld or Jaryl. They just can't seem to get those two names apart.

This is our attempt at a picture with all of the little kids together. I took several and this one is the closest we came to one turning out good.

This is Jake's dad and stepmom Kenna with their two kids Amelie and Jace.

This is Jake with all of his siblings from his dad. His mom also has a cute little boy named Markie that is Jake's half-brother.

This is Jake's sister Nineah and her boyfriend Jose and their two cute boys Lil' Jose and Nathaniel.

Christmas in Colorado

We left for Colorado on the 23rd and got there at some about 4am on the 24th. We first went to Pueblo to see all of Jake's extended family. The drive up was long, but clear except for a few icy spots. We were very grateful for that. It was so nice to see Jake's grandparents and his aunts, uncles and cousins. It had been a long time since we had been up there, and some of his younger cousins were so grown up that we hardly recognized them! Christmas morning was crazy because there were a lot of people at the house. I am used to having small, private Christmas mornings, and relaxing, lazy Christmas days. But there were so many people going in and out of the house on Christmas, and there were so many people opening presents that it was nuts! The girls had a good time, and so did Jaxon. Jaxon, of course, is still at the age where he would open one toy and want to go off and play with that and not open anything else. We let the girls open a lot of his presents. Jake's dad met us in Pueblo on Christmas for dinner and we stayed for a few days after. Then we all headed to Del Norte for the remainder of the vacation. We had a second Christmas celebration in Del Norte with Jake's sister and her family where we had a big meal and exchanged gifts with each other. It was fun.

This is Jaxon playing with a little toy car from his Auntie Neah. He loves cars and now has quite the collection to play with. They are always all over the house so he always has one or two nearby to grab.

The girls got mermaid barbies from their aunt and the love them. The barbies have become the favorite thing to play with in the tub and the car. Very exciting.

This is all of the girls together from Jake's side. Roxy is on the far left, she is so cute and shy and she is Jerald's daughter. Then Amelie is Jake's half-sister and she is 10 days younger than the girls. The three of them had a great time all week together.

This is all of the girls at the Christmas dinner in Pueblo.

This is a shot of a bunch of Jake's family members at the Christmas dinner. There were so many, and they were soming and going all day. I regret not having the camera out more to take more pictures, but this was a pretty good shot of the table.

Meeting Will

Before leaving for Colorado we got to have my sister Hannah and her fiance Will come down for a day. It was nice to finally meet him and to get to know him for a little bit. We took them to Tombstone and just hung out together. Below is the girls playing on a bull at the OK corral.
This is Hannah and Will and the girls. What we didn't realize when they came was that there is a WAY shorter way to get to Tombstone than the way that we went. Sorry Hannah and Will! So now we know the way short way to get there for the next time that people come out here and want to go to Tombstone. We had a lot of fun for the short while that they were here and we are so excited to see them get married in less than a month!! Congrats!

Funny story: Hannah is notorious for getting pulled over and getting lots of tickets. I don't know how she still has a license because she is just a cop magnet. Jake got pulled over on the way to Tombstone and we kept saying it was because Hannah the cop magnet was in the car that he got pulled over. Because the last time Jake was pulled over was when we were staying in Utah and Jake had come to visit me from Iraq and Hannah was also in the car at that time. It was several years ago. Kindof funny.

The Traditional Santa Picture

We did take the kids to the mall to sit on santa's lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. The girls were so excited to see santa they could hardly wait. This is really the first year that they have been really into Santa Claus and all of that. It was a lot of fun. Any guesses what they asked santa for this year? Shoes and a book. Both of them. We had actually gone to the mall to buy shoes, and I had them pick out shoes for each other. They had really outgrown their shoes, and the tennis shoes were in terrible shape. We probably shouldn't have waited as long for new shoes as we did, but they ended up getting them before Christmas anyways because I didn't want to pack the old shoes in our bags for Colorado.

School Christmas Parties

On the last day of school before Christmas vacation both girls had Christmas parties and Jaxon and I tagged along to help out for the day. I really like that we get lots of opportunities to go be with the girls at school to help out. I enjoy meeting their school friends and getting to know their teachers. Mckayla's class played lots of games and then had a gift exchange. I thought it was genious to have everyone bring books for the gift exchange because there were no tears over someone getting a better toy or anything, plus it is all mutual gender and educational. Below is Mckayla opening her present with a stick-on candycane tattoo on her forehead that took days to come off.
Lyla's class made gingerbread houses which was really fun, but also a bit complicated even though we only used graham crackers for the houses. Below is Lyla showing off her gingerbread house and Jaxon in the Background.

This is the group that I did houses with. They were pretty creative with the candy, but unfortunately I couldn't always get the candy to stick in the ways that they wanted it to. It was a lot of fun.

Full House

So I am going to be playing some catching up on blogging. We went to Colorado for Christmas and came home bringing Jake's younger brother Jono with us. Then we got a call from some friends of ours, Daryl and Jen Orcelletto, that they were coming into town and also needed a place to crash for a few weeks. We have been pretty busy and I haven't had much time to myself for blogging. I still need to put up all of our Christmas pictures and other things for this month. So be prepared for some serial posting for the next couple of days. I have at least gotten all of the pictures onto the computer now so I have no excuse for not writing about them.