MERRY CHRISTMAS

Since you aren't seeing this till after Christmas...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Instead of writing a letter about this past year, we thought we'd give you a little look-back here on the blog. That way, you can just see the pictures and skip the words. :)

Check out these posts to see what we've been up to:

January/February

March/April

May

June

July

August/September

The News!

October

November

Again, we hope you had a Merry Christmas, and that you will keep the Christmas Spirit in your hearts and families all year long. With so much crazy stuff happening in our world right now, we could all use that Spirit in our homes every day. 

We love you all! Thanks for being such wonderful parts of our little family!

August and September

In August, we went to Bryce Canyon and ran the Bryce Canyon Rim Run 5 Miles.  Liza ran about 1/2 of it, and was so excited at the end that she just took off and got quite a bit ahead of us. She stopped at the next aid station, got a drink and waited for us.  She then told us how she got so thirsty and had to wait for us. She now reminds us all the time about the time she ran so far without us and we had to catch up. She really is growing up.  

The State Fair with the cousins was a highlight in September.
They even rode the little ponys and loved it.
  

Before it started to get cold, we took another trip up to Kannaraville Falls. The girls hadn't been there, and it had been a while for us too. We had fun, although it was a little cold coming back down the canyon as the sun was going down.

Another hike at Cascade Falls on our annual trip to see the leaves change. As you can tell it was really cold so we didn't get many pictures of the leave changing. We were early for some of the places on the mountain and late for others.  Oh well, we still had a fun hike and enjoyed the cooooool mountain air.

On one of our trips to Grandma's house I took the day off early and we went to Jones Hole. We had a great time with cousins and Grandma and Grandpa. The girls all hiked a lot of the way, over a mile down and a mile back. Troopers!
  

November

We started off November with some fun for the whole family, except Mom. She didn't get to run the race for reasons included in a previous post (ahem, baby).  The Butch Cassidy 5K/10K has become a tradition for us. This is our 3rd year running it, and we hope to keep it up.  It is so pretty and there are activities for the kids at the end. Yeah, they love it too. This year, they even got their own numbers! 

We went to Nana's for a wonderful Thanksgiving, and then Great Grandpa let us cut a Christmas tree from his yard.  

Isn't it a beaut'?

 Between all the Christmas prep, the girls and I got to go out hiking a bit. We found a new favorite hike, Shinobe Kibe. It was about 300' vertical and a little over a mile. I was so proud both girls did it without my help on the way up! Going down they needed a little help, but they did so good. Awesome hikers - even in their dresses. :)

And of course Christmas deliveries sure are fun.  

We hope that you all have had a great year too, and that your Christmas includes all you had hoped for.  We hope the light of Christ shines in your life and his love gives you hope and joy this Christmas time and in the new year to come.  

Averetts

October Adventure

In October, we saw 23 of the 29 Utah counties and parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho.  Yeah, we were on the road a lot.  We took pictures of lots of parts of our trip, but most of them were in Canyonlands National Park where we met up with cousins and did some hiking and 4-wheeling.  It was cold and rained on us very hard a couple of times, but we still had some good fun.  

 Devils Kitchen

 Entrance to our campsite

 The Grabens

 Nice road, huh?

 Confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. Can you guess which is which?  All the rain did that.  

 It warmed up enough to play around, but not enough to wade in the water - although it was tempting.

 Ask our kids about the "Creep farm" and you will get a story! The corn maze in Bluebell had a haunted section that had a talking skeleton that told a story about the farm and how it got haunted. They now talk about "the Creek Farm" all the time.  

 Bear Lake was next for the family reunion. Super fun! We went geocaching, played, and played and played with cousins, and managed to stay out of the cold lake this year. The girls had so much fun. Then we got to go to Jefferson's talk before his mission.  

To top it all off for the month, on Halloween we went to our friends pumpkin carving party and I just had to include this picture of the girls eating the black frosting on the cupcakes. As an added bonus, for days to come they enjoyed the blue residual of eating the frosting.  Um, yeah. Black frosting makes blue poop.

Cool Christmas Ideas

Hey kids!

Head over to this blog if you want some seriously cool gift ideas and giveaways.

Bring the Kids

Enjoy the holidays!

Boo!

An Indian, a ballerina and a skeleton with a pumpkin head.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Uintas 2012

I contemplated not putting these pictures in a post because there is no possible way for them to do justice to the beauty of this trip.  Here they are anyways, I just could not leave them out.  

Back at the end of the July, we let the girls go to Nana Camp early and we went to big kids camp.  We met up with Jeremy, Becca, Dave and John and went backpacking to Granddaddy Basin in the High Uintas. We picked a lake off the beaten path and really only saw the scouts one time in the 3 days we were there. We had our own little lake and got pieces of everything - sun, rain, hiking, time in camp - it was all great!  We hiked all through the basin and saw lots of lakes and traveled lots of trail 

(and lots of not-trail).  

 Marsell Lake

 Governer Dern Lake

 On the trail

Our beautiful campsite

Summer Highlights 1

Some of our Summer Highlights that should probably have been posted back in August. Oh well.

 Mom ran the RAGNAR!

 With some help of course.

 Austin went through the Temple,

 and then went to Pine Creek with us for kind of a grand finale before leaving on his mission to India.

Yeah, that is Angela jumping off the rocks after the repelling in Pine Creek was done.  It was fun and we had a great time with our friends.  

Hawaii

Even though work was quite busy the end of May, we found some time off and took an 8-day vacation.    Nana and Grandpa had a place for us to stay on the Big Island so we could not resist.  We had thought about going alone, but we knew the girls would have fun at the beach. After agonizing over when the best time to buy the tickets was, and then missing that time, but still buying, off we went. 

 Yes, there was much dancing and playing.  This I think is half yoga, half dancing.  

 Getting sprayed by the big waves and watching the crabs run around on the rocks.

 Hiking to Akaka Falls.

 There were interesting trees and fruit all over the island, such a contrast of vegetation.

 Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. No, we didn't see lava and we were pretty disappointed about that. 

 Hiking through the Jungle to a lava tube.

 Playing with Uncle Jeff was a highlight of the trip for sure.  

 Black sand beach and a turtle, double fun!

 On the North side of the Island we hiked down to the beach from the top of the cliffs.  

 Happiness is playing in the sand.  

 The Kona Temple

 Shave Ice of course.

 Waiting for the sunset and the "green flash" some people were there with a parrot. The girls got to talk with it, and take pictures.  

 Overall the girls did pretty good with the flying part. They did stay awake the whole red-eye flight over, which was not good, but we made it.  

We tried to mail these home, but didn't make it and tried to carry them on. That doesn't work, just so you know. They have unidentified liquid in the middle of them, so no coconuts for us.  So sad.

Note:  After going to the Big Island, we went to Oahu to see friends, we didn't get many pictures of this part of our trip, but the girls had sooo much fun visiting friends, they ask to go back to see thier friends all the time.  Thanks for the hospitality and for hanging out with us Kevin and Mel and Chris and Allison! Hopefully we can come back to see you soon.