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.