Snow Family courtesy of the Fowlers

We answered our door one snowy day to find nobody there---but we DID have a whole snow family across the end of our driveway.  Our neighbors, the Fowlers, were seen leaving the scene :)  Fun!

Beautiful Seattle Skyline and Seattle snow!

  From Devin on his mission:  "we GOT SNOW! about 6 inches or so on sunday.  We had church and well in the morning it was snowing pretty hard so we werent sure if we were even going to have church... but i will tell you what... i have never seen our chapel so filled up before in this ward... everyone showed up late but they were still there...  church only got cancelled for the last ward to meet that meets at 1 though... and that was after sacrament meeting... then well we couldnt really go anywhere because of the snow cause it was everywhere so we stayed in for a bit then we went and walked around for a little while and actually had to park our car at the bottom of the hill to where we live because there was so much snow.. so that was definitely fun... walking back"

Beautiful Seattle Skyline 1/13/12

Snow in Seattle!!

Visit to Sister Ridley

We got a call that our favorite Sister Ridley from Elder Ellis' mission would be here in UT visiting her daughter. We decided we better make a drive up to the Salt Lake area to meet her for the first time. She has taken such great care of Elder Ellis and even though they aren't in the same area anymore, she makes sure and checks up on him. When we first got there and she opened the door...she said...wow..Elder Ellis...and pointed at Garrin. I guess she thinks they look alike or something. LOL. She was delightful to visit with and we spent several hours at her daughter's home visiting. I can see why she and Elder Ellis get along so well....they have the SAME sense of humor!

Stefanie, Garrin, Kaylee, Jaycee, Sister Ridley

We realized that she and Jaycee were about the same heighth...so had to take a picture of just the two of them....how cute!

Since we were so close by and had never seen the "UP" house from the Disney movie...we decided we better drive by and see it. How fun is THAT??? I loved the house!

We had lunch for Kaylee's birthday at Wendy's before heading home. It was a fun Saturday to do something a little different than our normal "cleaning" Saturdays!

80's Dance

Sadie and Kaylee before going to an 80's dance at the High School.

Kaylee is 17!!

Kaylee turns 17!!!  Her friends decorated her car---even writing on the paint--eek!  Shows how dirty a black car is in January in Utah!  Happy Birthday Kaylee!

OUCH

Kaylee had her first track practise today and decided she missed hurdles and wanted to try for the first time this season.....oops....guess you should not try hurdles on the first day after being off almost a whole year. OUCH. She is hoping for a cool scar...just like Devin always wanted. Funny girl!

Christmas 2011

And the Stockings were hung......

Here are the girls and Koda...ready to run up the stairs like we do EVERY year!

Jaycee and her BYU Cougar Pillowpet

Kaylee and her ipod

Shawnee trying to figure out her printer

AND...the highlight of the day...we got to SKYPE with Devin! This is the first time since he has been on his mission that we've been able to skype..so it was really fun. His computer connection was pretty bad so we didn't get a clear image of him...kind of fuzzy...and we dropped several times...but all in all....very fun! Garrin set up his laptop and hooked it to our big screen...so he was life size. So much fun! We got to talk for a bit over an hour...so we were about 20 min late to church by the time he called. We are looking forward to Mother's Day to talk again!

Here's the big set up---because his camera was messed up...we only saw him 1/2 screen.

Here we are on the couch talking to Devin!

Poor Koda! Jaycee decided to put her pillow pet ON Koda. He could barely walk...that thing is just as big as he is!

All in all a fun and relaxing Christmas Day!

Christmas Bowling!

We did our annual family bowling party tonight. We used to do it Christmas Eve...but found that they closed early now and we have other traditions that we do on Christmas Eve so we changed it to the week of Christmas. It's always lots of fun.

Jaycee, Kaylee, Garrin

Jaycee

Kaylee

Stefanie and Jaycee

Shawnee

Party week

It seemed the week would never end with parties all over the place. Tuesday night was my work party with just the girls..so that was fun. We always play the dollar game and I never win...and then we do the stealing presents game. So this year I got a fuzzy blanket and m&ms and hersey's kisses. :D Nobody stole it from me...so I got lucky.

Wednesday night was our annual Ellis siblings dinner at Chuck-a-rama. We ended up taking Jaycee because Kaylee was working and she didn't want to be home alone. Randy and chris came. Kim & Tammy & Coby came down, and Lanett & Barry & Dawson, and Spencer & Shelly and girls. We had to go by a viewing for a girl at work whose Dad had died. And then high tailed it over to the dinner. They said closed on the door due to plumbing problems...but Kim and Randy were already inside. We tried knocking on the door but nobody would open it for us. Finally we called Randy and asked him to come open the door for us. LOL. we got in ok...but had to do the same for Spencer and Lanett's family. It was fun...kind of short as Kim had to get back up to Logan that night....but always good to see them all.

Then Friday after work I had another work party---this one with all the people in PT. We went bowling and I was almost beating everyone on my team until the last frame and this guy pulled ahead of me by 4 points. Not happy :D Anyway--that was fun...but lots and lots of parties this week. I don't think I cooked dinner once this week.

Tonight (Monday) we went to Temple Square to see the lights. They were so beautiful and we're glad Shawnee was home from college to go with us!

Shawnee, Garrin, Kaylee, Jaycee

Jaycee, Shawnee, Garrin, Kaylee

The reflection ponds

Stefanie and Garrin

The whole family: Jaycee, Shawnee, Garrin, Stefanie, Kaylee

Jaycee, Stefanie, Kaylee, Garrin

The Salt Lake City Temple with all the lights lit up

Yes...that fire truck is in front of OUR house

So....yes...that Fire Truck is in front of OUR house...and yes...those are firemen standing in front of my door.......

Jaycee called me after school and I told her that I was going to call her back in a minute because I was leaving in 20 min when she said..."but mom...it smells funny in the house and is kind of smoky." So I talked to her for a minute and then Kaylee. Kaylee said it was no big deal...but I wasn't convinced. I asked Kaylee to call dad and have him come home and check and she said..we did and dad can't come home right now. I said umm...I think he better come anyway. LOL.

I hung up and went into my boss and asked her if I could leave 20 min early as there was a problem with my house. She let me and I ran home calling Garrin to tell him to hurry and get home. He had just gotten home and was feeling the walls for heat and checked all the outlets in the house. I talked to him all the way home and he couldn't figure out why it was smoky and smelled funny. When I walked in the door...I said...are you crazy? We need to call the fire dept. It smelled horrible and was smoky. So......

I called the non-emergency police number and asked if there was a non -emergency fire dept number. She gave it to me and I called since I didn't want to call 911..but wanted someone to come check it out. We had just had a couple of Bountiful alive because of a miracle. They had carbon monoxide poisoning and actually woke up and crawled to the front door...took them like 30-40 minutes because they were so sick and groggy. A lady that usually runs decided to take a different route that day and found them lying by their front door...and it was still dark outside. Anyway---I was thinking about that and that we wanted to be safe.. So I call the non emergency fire dept and I tell the lady that I just wanted to see if anyone could just come by and check because I was concerned. She asked if we were feeling sick and i said no...and then she asked us to evacuate the house.

Well...jaycee and kaylee had gone to the library..so they weren't home. I looked around the house and thought eeeeek....it's a bit messy in here. I took 1 minute and threw some things in the closet in my craft room. Yep...I did! I knew those firemen were going to go through my house and I would be SOOO embarassed for them to see my messy craft room! :D

I grabbed my coat and Koda and Garrin and I went outside to wait. Well within a minute or so...I start to hear sirens. I said to Garrin...surely that's not for us...welll I HOPE it's not for us. After another minute...it was very clear that it was INDEED for us. It was getting louder and closer. I laughed and said how embarrassing!!! Well...it was about to get worse because not only 2 HUGE fire trucks drive up and at least 8-10 guys jump out...but then 4 police cars AND 2 ambulances drive up. HA....how is that for a non-emergency call???!! I later told Dad that if I had called 9-1-1 that we would have had 4 fire trucks 8 police cars and 4 ambulances. lol.

Anyway---they came in the house and left us outside and looked over the whole house. They came back out and got a hatchet...which I"ll admit made me nervous LOL. After a long time...maybe 20 min...they told us that it was the furnace motor. It had slowly given out...and had stopped turning...but it was spewing smoke and making a bad gas/electrical smell. Well...I had texted AND called Kaylee just to tell her so they didn't come home and freak...and because she was at the library...her phone was on vibrate....she didn't get the message. So...about this time...she pulls around the corner and Jaycee bursts into tears and jumps out of the car. Poor thing...we really scared her!

Anyway---she was able to calm down though and they finally all left. What a scene we caused!!! A quick call to the guy that installed our radiant heat at the shop and 3 hours later and $550 later...our furnace was back up and running. I felt so blessed to have warmth that night in the house.

I only worked 2 days this week as Shane came to visit. He was only here on Friday and Saturday and I wanted to be able to visit with him more..so I took Friday off :) I went out by noon-ish and spent the rest of the day and Garrin brought Kaylee and Jaycee out by 7 that night when he was off work

We got up Saturday and hurried to do a few loads of laundry and vaccuum before running out on Saturday to stay all day. It's really nice when you have some great neighbors that will run over and let Koda out after 7 hours so that you can stay and be with familiy :) Kristin and Bailey have saved us several times.

So...Teresa, Brett and Shane and I have been talking for months that we want to do something fun for our parent's 50th anniversary. They have always been there for us and just been awesome parents. So...we decided to take them on a trip. We've been discussing where and when as their 50th is on Aug 29th this next year. We finally decided on a WHERE, and got the house secured where we would stay....but kept it a secret from everyone. Friday night since Shane was here...we decided to tell them.

But we couldn't just TELL them...we wanted to make it fun. So...we figured out a plan. We wrapped FIFTY boxes and some of them were nested inside others and empty...lots of empty boxes....they had to unwrap them starting at #1 and in order. It was really pretty funny to watch them unwrap so many empty boxes and scratch their heads. In other boxes we placed the words ....Pack your bags...Your kids have decided to celebrate 50 wonderful years by taking you to (then lots more empty boxes) then pictures of the place we are staying...then Puerto Rico! There was one word in each box....and they had to do them one at a time...it took well over 30 minutes...probably close to 45. After they opened Pack your bags my dad said...I knew it!! They are taking us to the old folks home, aren't you? Is this an intervention?! lol. Funny dad!

Here they are after unpacking all 50 boxes! Can't wait for April!!!