Thursday, December 31, 2015

Lovell Part 2

12/30/15 - Tallon got this giant thing for Christmas.  I'm not really sure what it is or what it is called, but they call it a giant potato chip.  It took 4 people to take it apart to be able to move it downstairs.  It is a miracle to me that Santa and his wife got it put together all by themselves on Christmas Eve.


Tasha took a video of her and Sydnee playing on it.  These are still shots from the video.


12/31/15 - News Years Eve morning Jake, Teri and I took some of the kids to the track so Natasha could do some speedwork.  They had all stayed up really late and were exhausted, but Natasha powered through the cold and finished her workout.  In the afternoon we spent a couple hours at the pool.  Ashlee is a lifeguard there, so she didn't get to get in and play until Gerry got there and could lifeguard for a while too.  Teri came up with the idea that it would be fun to have the kids jump off the diving board and catch a ball.  She was right.  They had a blast.  It started out as a competition, but I don't think anyone really kept score (other than maybe Thurston who was really concerned about losing to Justee…  He could catch it almost every time, but would lost it when he hit the water, and they were supposed to keep hold of it the whole time.  I tried it once off the high dive but that was enough water up the nose for me.

These photos are still shots taken from video I took with our phones.


After the pool, we went to mom and dad's house and Jennifer and Rob were there with their kids to play games until midnight.  We had dinner and ate pie.


The 4 girls did each other's hair for about 4 hours -- between them that is a lot of thick hair.  The younger girls watched a movie out on the covered porch area, while the boys ran around and tried to bother everyone.  Dad and Kyle lazed in the living room and the rest of the adults worked on puzzles or played games in the family room








When the girls finally had their hair finished it was time for a photo.  We try to get one everytime the four of them are together, and try to keep them in the same order.  The lighting was terrible, I wish we had another time to take a picture during the day.


After the photos were finished the long awaited (by Thurston) game of Monopoly was finally started. All the girls wanted to play, so there wasn't room for me -- darn :)  Jake taught them a lesson on how to play and have no mercy on cute curly haired girls.



Pictures Natasha took in Lovell



We spent New Years day playing basketball for a few hours at the high school gym.  We played a lot of full court 3 on 2  as well as some other drills and then scrimmaged for a while.  Me, Jake, Ashlee and Rob were on a team vs.  Teri, Justin, Gerry and Kyle.  Our team won.  The kids scrimmaged too -- pretty sure whatever team Sydney was on won.  She is quite a good little player.  We spent the afternoon packing and left early on the 2nd to drive home.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Lovell Visit part 1

We drove to Lovell on December 26th.  It is a long drive so not much more to say than that we stopped and tried to buy the kids snow boots somewhere in Montana.  We only found some for Tamsyn and Thurston.

On the 28th we went ice fishing with my mom and dad.  They had already been up a few times and had had great luck, so we were hoping for the same.  It started a bit slow, but by the end of the day there were lots of bites and kids pulling up fish by themselves.

We drove to Sunshine Reservoir outside of Meeteetse, Wyoming.  It is the same place we went  a couple years back.








Does anyone else smell fish just by looking at this picture?
My mom taught me how to fillet the fish and we filleted all of them (well she works 4 times as fast as me, but I did a few).  We ate fish several times.  SO DELICIOUS!! and my dad also brought some to a friend who like to smoke fish.  We tasted the smoked fish and I couldn't even finish the bite I took.  yuck

I took this evidence that dad sometimes is the one to lose Hearts out of the garbage after he wadded it up and threw it away.



On the 29th we drove up the Bighorns in search of a place to test out Tamsyn's new sled.  We didn't find the most ideal spot, but it ended up being a lot of fun.




















The kids got a little out of control and went off the path -- they fell down a drop off and I screamed because I knew there were really big rocks below.  Luckily they were fine.  Yikes!






We sent my dad this puzzle for his birthday or Father's day (I can't remember which) -- he and mom had started when we arrived and we helped finish it.


12/29/15
Mom tries to practice guitar every evening.  She has improved so much in the few years that she has played.  We had fun singing old folk songs and a few Eagles and Beatles songs with her.




12/30/15



Mom taught Natasha, Allie and Sydney how to make bread.





Tamsyn worked on the second puzzle we had started while they baked, then it was her turn to cook with grandma.

Jake and Kyle took Thurston and Tallon outside to shoot their BBguns.  I didn't brave the cold to go take any pictures.


Tamsyn's turn!
Grandma's Peanut Brittle is the best there is.