2011 Family Pictures

Back in November we had our family pictures taken again, since we haven't done it since July 2009, and Kylee is quite a bit larger than she was at 18 months old! Usually the JC Penney website lets you save them in a large enough format that they can be shared on our blog...but this time I can't figure out how to do it, and they are all tiny! Here are some of the ones we liked best.

2011 has been a good year for our family. Andy finished his chemo in May, we built our first home in August, and in September we found out that agaist the odds, we are expecting baby #2 (a boy) in June 2012. Also, Andy has been accepted to several nursing programs that start at various times throughout 2012, so we just need to pick where we want to go, and he'll get started on that! After the nursing program, he'll work for a year or two and then go get his Masters degree to become an anesthesist. It's so nice to be able to look back and see that the last 2 1/2 years of cancer treatments really were just a short part of our life, and now we can move on to bigger and better things!

Letter to Santa

This week Kylee decided she needed to write a letter to Santa. Otherwise, he won't know what she wants for Christmas! So she told me what she wanted to say, and I told her how to spell it all. I'm supposed to take it to my work, because Santa has a mailbox there. (And actually, our mailroom actually does have a North Pole post office stamper, so I'm pretty sure Santa is going to write her back and mail it to our house next week). She needs to work on her "S", and I'm not sure why the F turned out backwards...but overall, she didn't do too bad!

Christmas Tree

The other day Kylee helped me put up our Christmas tree. She was so excited to put on all our decorations.
She then agonized for quite awhile about where we could put our stocking, so Santa would find them. We don't have a fireplace, so she wasn't sure how he would get in. We finally decided to hang them off the counter in the kitchen. That way Santa can see them if he comes in our front door.

Thanksgiving - Devil's Head

For Thanksgiving this year, we went out to Denver to visit my sister Connie and her husband Sugi. Andy's friend Stuart lives out there as well, so he joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. That Saturday, we decided to go for a hike at a place called Devil's Head. It was...fun. We had a few clues that should have warned us we weren't prepared, such as: 1) the road was closed 1/2 mile before the trailhead because there was snow, 2) the *few* other people we passed, who were coming DOWN (we started somewhat late in the afternoon), were wearing coats, boots, hats, gloves, scarves...etc. But, be that as it was, we decided to hike it anyway. Notice the light jackets, tennis shoes, and lack of gloves or hats or any other warm apparel. However, I do love the look of love and trust on Kylee's face as she began the hike with Dad.
As we hiked, (most of the way in snow), we hit a few slick spots, but for the most part, it wasn't too bad. We alternated holding Kylee's right hand, then left hand, so her fingers wouldn't get too cold. Eventually we stole Connie's earmuffs (she came slightly prepared), and put them on Kylee.

Doesn't Sugi look thrilled? He had actually left his coat in the car (10 miles down the road...we went up to the top in Stuart's jeep), because he was too hot. Oops.

There were some spots that were not too snowy, but as you can see, the sun was going down before we got to the top. But, we'd made it that far, we had to keep going.

At the very end, you had to hike up 145 stairs to a forrest service fire look-out tower. Kylee had hiked most of the way up the trail before Andy started carrying her because she was too slow, and then she was a trooper enough to hike up all 145 stairs with me.

The view from the tower was really pretty. You could see for miles in every direction. However, it was COLD. The wind was blowing, the sun was going down, and it was the end of November at 10,000 feet elevation. Go figure!

At the top, poor Kylee decided she was done. She'd hiked for over an hour in the snow in her ankle socks, and her poor purple fingers "didn't want to bend". Andy carried her almost the whole way down, and I carried her when he got tired. It was really slippery though, so it was a little scary. She put her arms inside her coat to try to get her fingers warm.

Connie and I at the top.

By the time we got down, it was dark. Kylee was convinced we were going to get lost, and it was so cold, the water in the waterbottles Sugi was carrying was starting to freeze as he walked. Luckily, Stuart's jeep comes equipped with remote control start...so he had the heater already blasting when we got back to the car. When poor Kylee warmed up a little she said to me, "Mommy! I got lots of snow in my shoes and now my feet are wet! Isn't that silly?" I'm thinking this might be chalked up on one of my "worst mom ever" moments. Stuart's jeep said it was 23 degrees outside. We're hoping that was a smidge inaccurate...but add that to the frozen water, and it's probably not far off. It was certainly an adventure!!

The first snow of 2011

Right after Halloween, it snowed for the first time this year. As soon as Kylee got home from school, she wanted to go play in it, so I got her all dressed up in her winter stuff, and off she went.
She made a couple of snow angels in the yard, and also had fun throwing snowballs at dad.

She stomped all over the yard, leaving tracks. That night it snowed more and buried them all again.

I watched her play from the comfort of my rocking chair in the living room. She occasionally came up to check that I was still there, and throw a snowball at the window. When she got plenty cold, she came inside.

The Coolest Jack-o-Laterns Ever!!...Again

For the second year in a row, Andy decided he needed to make some cool jack-o-laterns. Kylee got to pick out what she wanted, and here is the result. Aren't they cool???

Halloween

Kylee has been looking forward to going to my office for Halloween since...last year? She remembers trick-or-treating, and eating lunch, and playing the "fishing game". She's been excited about it for weeks! I found her a snow white costume on KSL, and she wore it everyday between when we got it, and Halloween. The night before, we put her to bed early, knowing she had to get up super early to go to my office. She woke up at midnight and came in our room..."Mommy? Is it time to go to your office yet?" then again at 3am..."Mommy? Is it time yet?" Finally I got up at 4:45, and around 5:05 she came running in, super excited with her costume ready.
My department had decided to be a gypsy camp, and we actually ended up winning...though I didn't get a picture of our decorations. Here's Snow White and the 6 gypsies.

When we were trick-or-treating in the Art Department, they had this Hansel and Gretel backdrop to take a picture of the kids. Kylee was a little scared....but at least she stood there!

Vacation

The week after Moab, my sister Connie came to visit for a week. I took the week off from work because I had a lot of vacation hours, and I needed to use some. Unfortunately, I ended up having Strep and a sinus infection, and I ended up sick for half the week! However, before I got really sick, we managed to go on a hike up Rock Canyon in Provo.
I like this picture of Kylee in front of the colorful leaves.

We only hiked up to the bridge, and then we turned around and went back. It was weird that there wasn't any water. I remember there being a river last time I went up there.

Here's Kylee, Aunt Tiffy and Crazy M climbing on the rocks.

24 Hours of Moab

The 2nd weekend of October, we went down to Moab for Andy's annual 24-Hours of Moab mountain bike race. It was REALLY COLD, but luckily, Kylee didn't seem to mind. She slept just fine in the tent (I brought her a lot of blankets), and she spent her days digging in the sand.
When we were waiting for Andy to come in off a lap, she was writing our names in the sand with a rock. This is upside, down, but if you look close, you can see that it says "Terra". Her shoe is covering up the T.

I'm glad she had fun, with no other kids there to play with!

Here's Andy's brother Richie going out for the 1st lap. He got a really good time! This year, they were all faster than they usually are.

Here's Andy's brother Pat going out for Lap #2. Pat was determined to get under a 1:20 lap time, and he barely missed on his first lap. The next morning, when he went out for his 3rd lap, he went super fast and pulled a 1:16. That's the fastest time their team has ever done, so now Andy is motivated to get in better shape next year...though we're not sure where Pat pulled this one out of. He claims it's his 29'er bike...The Moab Rocket. Maybe there's some truth to that....

Andy did Lap #3. I found these green socks by accident at Shopko about a month before the race, and I had to buy them. They go perfect with the jerseys the boys have had for several years. Next year we'll have to get some for John, as well.

John went 4th. I pretty much only took pictures of them leaving and coming back from their first laps, because it was just too cold to keep it up every time!

The Grotto

Last week Andy wanted to go Mountain Biking in Payson Canyon, so I looked up a trail to take Kylee hiking on while he was out. We found this one called "The Grotto." It said it was .3 miles each way, and we should expect to spend 45 minutes round trip, including looking at the waterfall. We figured that was perfect, since Andy wanted to ride for an hour. We got there and started walking...and 10 minutes later, we were there. Apparently Kylee is not as slow of a walker as whoever made up the website imagined. We played, then walked all the way back down (taking every scenic route we came across, and stopping to throw leaves in the river), then walked all the way back up, played some more, then walked 1/2 way back down, at which point Kylee realized she left her water bottle up there, so we walked back up, then walked back down...and we ran into Andy almost at the bottom. The moral of the story is: The Grotto Trail might take 45 mintues round trip if you hop on one foot, backwards...blindfolded...but it's a pretty trail, and a pretty little waterfall.

Kylee liked that they had 4-5 of these log bridges that she got to cross.

At this spot, there were three log bridges in a row (you can see the other two behind her). This is where she tried to throw leaves in the river. When I say "tried" I mean: I think ONE of the dozens of leaves she threw finally actually landed IN the water. The rest landed on rocks, or by the side of the water, or on her shoe. She's either the worse aim EVER, or those were some really stubborn leaves that had no intention of getting wet.

This is one of the scenic routes. There kept being little trails that would branch off, go up the mountain a little bit, then come back down onto the main trail a few hundred feet past where they branched off. Kylee called it the "forrest way" and we took turns. One of us would go the "forrest way" while the other one had to stay on the main trail, and then at the next one, we would switch. It hogged up like 5 additional minutes of our hiking time.

Painting with Shaving Cream

Last week at Kylee's school they learned how to paint with shaving cream (they were learning about Primary Colors), and she really wanted to teach Andy and I how to do it. We kept telling her we could do it on Saturday. Saturday morning, first thing when she woke up, she said, "Okay! It's Saturday! Let's go buy some shaving cream!" I asked her what else we need and she said, "Primary Colors." I should've guessed. We went to the store and got some shaving cream, and she carried it around all day until finally we were ready. We made some beautiful pictures, and a HUGE mess!

Writing Letters

At Kylee's school, they've been working on writing their letters. I decided we should start working on it more at home, too. This week we worked on uppercase and lowercase "A". Now she can write her whole name (I love that in "Ann" one N is backwards and one is right). And how about that sideways "S"?
Now that she knows how to write the letter A, she can write daddy's name. She was pretty excited. She says she wants to work on "Q" next, because "that one's tricky, Mom."