Catching Up!

I've been helping my sister-in-law make her blog into a book, and doing it made me realize that I need to keep up on my blog better! It's such an awesome family journal! I need to quit worrying about what other people will find interesting (or what they already know) and just post stuff that I want to remember!

Anyway, I'm about 10 posts behind, so I'm going to stuff them all into one and get caught up.

Ahem:

Josh had his first pinewood derby! We were really happy that Jason was able to help him make his car, and his was the fastest out of the Wolves!

Jess lost both front teeth on the same day!

This year we had one giant birthday party for the four big kids. They each invited a friend and we had pizza and went swimming!

We got a new indoor playground in our little town! Very exciting since there's so little fun stuff to take the kids to do. Kind of expensive, but Mondays are discount days, which works out perfect on school holidays!

Then, Halloween!
We had some sickies (one of them pictured here, and one of them ME) but most of us still got to go trick-or-treating.

Nat was the sickie who didn't get to go, she was puking on halloween! Luckily her one-year-old cousin donated his candy to her, that made her very happy. Nat won the costume contest at our ward party!

I didn't get a pic of Jess! I don't know why! So here's some Jessie-style Karate instead.

I got to host Thanksgiving again! This year Jason's family came to our house. There were about 30 of us! I like thanksgiving food, it's pretty hard to mess it up.

And now we arrive at Christmas. Our Christmas was absolutely fabulous! So many people did so many wonderful things for us.

The day after Christmas we drove to Flagstaff to join the rest of my family. Jason was such a trooper to take that trip. We got to stay a whole week, and it was so fun! The best parts were:
1. Going sledding with most of my sibs at 10 at night, being pulled on the sled behind Eric's van.
2. Shopping with Jason the one day he felt good enough to go out, then going to Olllliiiivvve Garrrddddennnnnn.
3. New Year's Eve. Best day ever! We had a 50's BASH for brother-in-law Jeff's birthday, complete with dressing up in poodle skirts, pinatas, and hamburgers and shakes. Then after the kids were in bed we had so much fun, eating an insane amount of hors d'oeuvres and doing lots of TOASTING, which should definitely be a new family tradition.

Which brings us to the present! We're all back at school and doing great! I like most of my classes this semester (most. geology=boring!) and the kids jumped right back into the school groove. Jason is seeing a neurologist now in the hope of figuring out some of his nerve pain. He's been doing a little better lately, able to get out once in a while.

Okay, I think that's it for now!

Animals

Okay I have some catching up to do. I don't think I ever posted about Jessie's dream come true! She is a huge horse-lover, and for her birthday we gave her a riding lesson. I had it all set up for a couple weeks later, but as it turned out the horse she was going to ride was injured a couple days before the lesson. I promised Jess I'd find her a horse to ride SOMEWHERE, but it was not easy! Everyone I could find who taught lessons wanted the kid to have their own horse. So then I decided to call our neighbor who is a rancher to see if he knew someone who might have a horse my little girl could ride, and he said she could ride one of his! So a couple weeks later we met him out at his property and met Darcy the horse.Natalie came with us too, she's not as horse-crazy as Jess, but she does love them. She's actually the one who got Jess interested. It was a fun day!

So then the other animal. This is Brandy.Brandy is our new dog! We got her in September, and she's a one-year-old Vizsla. And we LOVE her!
So here's the story of Brandy. Jason has always loved dogs, and we've been planning to get one ever since we got married, but we never had the yard for it. Then when Jason started having so much more pain and stopped being able to work, he started talking about how nice it would be to have a dog to keep him company. Then we saw a TV show about different dog breeds and it talked about Vizslas. How they are great indoor dogs because they don't shed much or smell stinky, and they're happy to follow you around and snuggle with you all day.
So a while after that we happened to check the petfinder website, and the Cedar Animal Rescue had a vizsla! We called right away and went out to see her. The lady at the rescue center showed us some other dogs as well, and we actually ended up picking a different dog, a very calm Jack Russel named Roxi. She didn't work out though, she was so sheddy and so shy, she wouldn't even go near Jason and she just cowered in the corner all day. So we took her back after just a couple days and "exchanged" her for our orignal choice, Brandy! (yes, she came with the name.)
As soon as we got her home we knew she was the dog for us. She ran around happily sniffing everything, but not barking or jumping on us, and as soon as she spotted Jason in his bed, she hopped up and snuggled up to him. It was like she knew exactly what she was here for. We can't believe what a perfect dog she is. She's not too big or too small, she really doesn't shed or smell much, she almost never barks, and she LOVES US so much! She spends most of her time on the bed with Jason, and he gets so much comfort and fun from her. He loves having her to keep him company on the long nights when he can't sleep, and the long days when we're all busy with life and he's stuck in bed. She's such blessing for him, we're so happy that Heavenly Father led us to her.