Amazing Winter

This has been one of the best winters we've seen here in NJ.  People always look at us weird when we say we love the snow and want more....they think we are insane.  I admit, snow here is not the same as other places because there is no where to put it.  The houses are so close together and most people don't have garages and they park on the street.  So their cars get buried when the plows come by and the snow just piles up.  But we love it anyway.  Plus they cancel school (for even a few inches of snow which is so funny).  The kids had a blast today playing in the 15+ inches we got last night.  Luckily our landlord has a snowblower and comes to help us dig out quickly.  Bring on the snow!!!!



The kids could have stayed out there all day





I could actually sit on top of the fence just by standing on all the snow.




The hard workers




The other day after dropping Christopher off at school
 Jacob pulled a glass of milk off the table all over himself. 
 He was quite surprised when he got all wet.



Loves

1.  I love how my kids can fall asleep anywhere.  If they are tired they will just go lay down and go to sleep.  I was just talking to Annie and she just walked over to the couch, layed down and went to sleep.

 2.  I love my little Jacob bug (as I do all my children of course).  But sometimes he gets ignored on the blog so I'm just showing off how cute he is.



This one just cracks me up!!




 3.  I love (obsessed might be a better word for it) laminating and velcro.  I'll laminate anything I can get my hands on and then stick velcro to it so it will stick to something else.  It's strange..I know.  Here are my latest L/V projects.  Memorize the prophet and apostles.  (I know, I made the mistake of not putting Pres. Monson in the middle...oops).  The kids already knew about 4 or 5 of the 15 most influential men on earth, but this is helping them learn the others.  It's amazing how fast they pick it up.  If they don't know it I just have to say, "Dallin H.....?" and they will yell out, "OAKS!!"  It's fun.
The second is paper dolls for Annie.  She loves paper dolls and I found these online that I actually had when I was little so I made them up for her.  I love how classic and modest they are.

Christmas 2010 - The Long Drive

For those of you who don't know we drove to Utah for Christmas...yes, we drove.  Why didn't we fly you ask?  Good question.  I think the answer is a good one. ;)  We were also visiting Arizona (Jeff's parents are serving a mission there) and Denver, so to fly to all those places and rent cars along the way would have been very expensive (BTW, driving turned out to be very expensive also, but oh well).  Plus, if you know us, we're always up for an good ole' car adventure. 

We took hundreds of pictures along the way so I'll only bother you with a few collages.  We did have a great time though.  It was so wonderful to see grandma and grandpa as missionaries and see their life on the Navajo Reservation.  I loved it and would love to serve a mission there some day.  Because we drove we were only able to spend a few days in each destination which was kind of hard.  We were in Arizona for a day and then in Utah for 5 days, which isn't really enough time to really see all the family, but we had such a good time anyway.  We did Christmas at my sister's house and it was a blast.  She is quite the hostess.  The kids loved seeing grandma, aunts, uncles and cousins and didn't really want to leave.  Then we drove to Denver....something may come of this but I'll wait until things are final to say more.  We loved it there also.  Then the long drive home. 

Honestly, the kids did amazingly well despite...6,000+ miles traveled, going through 13 states (some twice), 9 nights in hotels, all of them having colds, and me with pink eye (yes, me...not the kids).  I think the fact that we stopped whenever we saw the Krispy Kreme "hot donuts" sign helped. :)

ARIZONA - Grandma and Grandpa on the Rez.

 THE DRIVE - I didn't take a lot of "driving" pictures, but we did stop at our cousins house in Kentucky on the way which was a highlight.  The kids love Aunt Karen, Uncle Red (actually it's Rhett), Sage, Henry and Wilford.  We also found a store called  "Sutherlands" where we stopped and bought some matching hats.

UTAH - Christmas fun

Utah - Sutherland cousins