Take a Hike. Or Two.

I was looking through my photos from our trip to Utah and realized that I never posted these pictures from the hiking we did with Marty's family.  There were two separate hikes we did, both on the same day.  That's how it goes with Marty's family!  I'm always exhausted by the end of the day!

So the first hike was in Snow Canyon.  There's this cool little slot that I'm sure people pass over all the time because it looks like nothing, but it has petroglyphs from ancient inhabitants of the area.  It's pretty narrow, as you can see from the picture.  We're practically touching both walls of the slot.

On the way back to the car, Damian got his first try at hiking.  In the past we've always just carried him, but he was restless, so Grandpa Dave helped him along.



Here's all of us hikers.  Isn't it beautiful?  And this is in December!

After this first hike, we jumped in the car and drove to our next hike, to see some more petroglyphs just outside of Ivins.  This was a longer hike, and Damian decided to snooze through most of it.  But this looks super comfy, right?

So if you've been wondering what petroglyphs look like, your curiosity is about to be satisfied.  I forgot to take a picture of my favorite one, which looked unmistakeably like an alien. I think aliens used to visit the Indians back in the day, which would explain the spaceship in this picture.



Later in the day, we went to Olive Garden for dinner, where Damian threw the tantrum of a lifetime, and then fell asleep in my arms.  I guess we wore him out!  Only Marty's family could fit enough fun into one day to make my toddler zonk out in the middle of a restaurant at 7:30 in the evening!  But we definitely loved it!

The Potty Chair

Damian has recently become fascinated by the toilet.  When he started asking us to let him sit on the toilent, pulling his pants and diaper off as he insisted, we decided to get him a potty chair.  He still has no idea what he's supposed to do when he sits on the potty chair, but he sure loves sitting there.  Every hour on the hour (or at least it seems that frequent), he asks, "Poo-poo?"  So here is a picture of where we've been spending the majority of our time lately. 

Hopefully it won't be long before he figures out what the potty chair is really for, because I'm getting tired of spending my days in the bathroom for no good reason.  But it sure is cute!  :-)

Three Christmases - One Short of Filmdom

This year we were able to spend two weeks in Utah during the holidays.  We spent one week in St. George with Marty's family, and one week with my family.  We had real Christmas with Marty's family, then we had a second Christmas with my family.  Since we didn't want to pack up the stuff we got for Damian, we left it all here at home and had a third Christmas just yesterday.  Here are some of the highlights from the festivities.

On Christmas Eve at the McFaddens, we did a live nativity, and Damian was assigned to be a shepherd boy.  That lasted for all of five seconds, and those five seconds weren't even during the nativity.  But he was adorable!

I think his favorite part was riding the sheep.  Ride 'em cowboy!  Or sheepboy, I guess.

For Christmas with the Reynolds, I wanted to pretend like it was really Christmas, and I got upset when everyone just started coming downstairs like it was any other day.  I made all the kids go back upstairs at least for the photo op.  As for our strange pose, watch the SNL video called "Surprise Party."  We were "just so freakin' excited!"

I especially like Marty's face.  Don't you? 

And as is cliche, Damian's favorite toy that morning was a box.  I think he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.  :-)

Our third and final Christmas was here at home, and we actually didn't take very many pictures because somebody (me) didn't take the pictures from the trip off the camera, so we kinda ran out of space on the memory card.  Oh well.  It was actually really nice to have a quiet Christmas all to ourselves.  Here's a little video, right before the camera died. 



I will relieve you of your suspense.  It was a saw to go with his new workbench.  And by new I mean old because we got all his gifts from DI and we only spent maybe $20 total.  We were very proud of ourselves because we like to give gifts and it's hard to keep it cheap.  And it was $20 well spent because he LOVES his tools and workbench.

Even with three Christmases, it seems like the season was too short.  We had so much fun with our Christmases, and it was such a blessing to spend this special time with family for the first time in three years.  There is no better place to be when we celebrate the birth of Christ, the one who made it possible for us to be with our families forever.

New Favorite Movie

"I didn't want to do this but you leave me no choice. Here comes the smolder..."