Christmas Vacation part 1

We started our Christmas Vacation with the kids Christmas program at school.  Each of them sang songs with their classes, Laexin played in the 6th grade band (he's playing the saxophone), then both Loa (Away in the Manger - she had the whole thing memorized and used no music) & Laexin (Carol of the Bells) played piano solos --they all did awesome!

 Love these crazies so much!

Thanksgiving

I'm terrible at remembering to take pictures, so I didn't take one picture. ugh.  We went to Vernal for Thanksgiving.  Ramey, Trev and the kids were there from New Mexico. We spent Thanksgiving day with Ramey's extended family, had a fun weekend playing and hanging out and on Saturday Taite got baptized in Vernal.  It was fun to have them baptize him there and so we could all be there.  We were happy to head for home after the baptism, but grateful to spend the weekend together.

BBall Begins

Laexin played on a B-Ball league in Preston along with all the boys who play on his all-star team, it's a great warm up to his regular season.  He had a fun time and we love watching him play.

 I had to snap a picture this day that we showed up to the games and all of his coaches were wearing matching shirts :)

 This is a great group of boys --I'm excited to see the day they all play together in High School!

Fair Convention

I recently got asked to join the Caribou County Fair Board and LeGrand and I got the last minute chance to attend Fair Convention in Billings Montana.  So he and I got a fun weekend away.  It was an interesting convention, but we enjoyed ourselves and learned alot.  It was a long 7hr trip to Billings, which we thoroughly enjoyed :)

 LeGrand had to get a picture with our new friend Marty--he had some pretty amazing outfits, ha ha

 Right when we walked into convention we sat down by Charley Jenkins--he happens to have grown up in Roosevelt and knows the Hoopes clan well, so we had lots in common to chat about.  We spent the weekend hanging out.  I entered a giveaway in his room, he was giving away this guitar and I WON!!!   I found out that Tammy and Geno Lucero are living in Billings now so I got in contact with them and we went to their place and had breakfast the last morning we were there, it was SO GREAT to catch up and reminisce - such great people that hold a special place in my heart.  I have lots of great memories of them!

Halloween 2018

We went to the Soda 'Pumpkin Hunt' --the kids love running to pick out their pumpkins!

 Laexin was all about the biggest one he could get his hands on this year --everyone else got one about their size :)

 And then of course, we carved them...or, LeGrand and I carved them ha ha!

 This year they weren't into letting me pick a 'theme' for our Halloween costumes they each chose what they wanted.  Indiana Jones, An Arctic Fox, Aurora & a Blue Racer Car :)  We had a fun evening of trick or treating and visiting our favorite Halloween house - the Andersons in Thatcher.

North Logan Pumpkin Walk & school carnival

The weekend before Halloween we went to the North Logan Pumpkin walk, it's always fun to see all the cute things they create out of pumpkins.

We also had a blast at the Grace Elementary Halloween Carnival.  I had to help with all of the food so LeGrand ran around casing the kids all night -they had a blast!  And of course love any reason to put their Halloween costumes on.

Queen Bee Market

I've been pretty thrilled about the way my little business has been growing.  It's been a fun little 'outlet' for me. I decided to try doing a show or two a year so I started with my firs show, Queen Bee Market in Vegas.  Luckily Jen was able to come along and help me out, and thank heavens she was there!  We had a great time, and she was the best helper!  I met my goal, made lots of new contacts and new maker friends --it was exhausting and rewarding!

Pretty excited to get to chat with Heidi Swapp for a bit --it helped that Jen had an 'in' ;)

We celebrated with a seafood buffet --mostly for me-- didn't think to take pictures until we hit the desserts, ha ha.

MAUI

We've been planning and scheming for months with a huge surprise for the kids, a trip to Maui!  They had no clue!  We were able to score an awesome deal on plane tickets and it just so happened to land over Potato harvest so we decided it was the perfect opportunity.  We invited Mom and Dad to come along.  It was quite the challenge to get everything prepared, bags packed and all ready to go without anyone knowing what was going on.  But it was sure fun to wake them up early and have them quickly get dressed and tell them we had a surprise and that they weren't going to school that day!  We had an awesome time!  I'll be making a separate book for the trip so I won't go into details about it here.

Labor Day Camping

Labor Day weekend we had plans to meet up with the Dillons for camping at Deer Creek reservoir and Swiss Days in Midway.  Our weekend got a little interrupted as we learned the week before that Dee Belcher passed away.  He had gotten liver cancer and it took him quickly.  So we got to Deer Creek Friday evening after stopping to check out Swiss Days.  And Saturday we left the older kids with the Dillons and took the younger ones with us to Dee's Funeral and a luncheon with the Family.

The funeral was really nice and it was good to be there to support and visit with Brad and Candace.  It all came so quickly it's hard to believe he is gone.  Dee was a ray of sunshine.  He and Michelle were so great to take in LeGrand and let him live with them after his mission.  We are so grateful for the memories we have of Dee.

Sunday we hung out at camp while the boys went fishing.  We walked down to the reservoir and let the kids throw rocks in the water, ate yummy food and enjoyed relaxing and visiting.  Monday we got up and cleaned up camp and headed for home.  It was a fun weekend of memories and the kids loved their first 'official' camping trip!