Last Sunset 2009

We get beautiful sunsets over the mountains. Goodbye 2009!

Rescued Again!

I had just finished making dinner and we sat down to eat and heard a loud pop . . . pop . . . pop outside, followed by losing power. After further investigation, the power line outside our house was on fire. Kind of exciting! Luckily, dinner was done cooking and we got to eat by candlelight-very romantic! (Actually, we didn't have any candles, so we settled for a flashlight.) Well, I hadn't gotten to the laundry yet, intending to do it as soon as we finished dinner. But those plans were foiled by our power outage. It wouldn't have been a big deal, except Mike needed this load done for work the next day. I would have just gone the old-fashioned route and washed them all by hand, except that the sewer pump is run by electricity so if you use too much water-it backs up into the yard. (Not so pleasant.) And I wasn't sure how long we would be without power. So Kimballs to the rescue AGAIN! I ran over to their house and Teresa and I played card games while we waited for the laundry to finish. THANK YOU!

The garage opener is also run by power, and is kind of a pain to re-set so I decided to take the bike instead.

Mike found it comical watching me try to ride away balancing the laundry basket on the handlebars. It looks easier than it really was! :) I had visions of dumping the basket of clean clothes on my way home. Luckily we made it-and everything was still clean! I guess I shouldn't wait to do laundry until we are out of clothes, eh?!

Science Exhibit

Can you find the "tiny and very hungry caterpillar"?
(Hint: it is on the left of the leaf just below the hole.)
We captured a few and measured them almost every day. The smallest one was 4mm when we started. It was truly amazing how much they would eat and how quickly they grew!

This picture was a little too much for Mike (there are at least 8 caterpillars crawling on her). He thinks caterpillars are gross so I guess it's a good thing I stay home with the girls. (At least for this science project.)

These are medium size caterpillars.

I thought I had a better picture of this stage-sorry. After about two weeks, the caterpillar turns kind of greenish and starts looking for a place to attach. Then in hangs in a J shape for about 24hrs before shedding its skin and going into its chrysalis. A process we've witnessed a few times. It is truly amazing to watch! And happens all in about 3 minutes.

Educating the neighbor kids.

The day before the chrysalis hatches, it turns clear so you can see the wings. My camera doesn't really do close-ups. I was trying to be able to see the wings, but the camera didn't really cooperate. Then just a few hours before it hatches it looks very black.

We happened to catch this one at the exact right time. We knew it was going to be soon and would check it every 15 mins or so and caught it just in time. If you look closely, you can see the chrysalis has cracked open on the right side.

Sorry about the sideways video-I don't know how to change it and don't want to take the time to figure it out.

3-4 minutes after hatching- the girls thought it was just going to be a small butterfly. :)

6-7 minutes after hatching (this was a different one, but I for some reason didn't get the other one at this phase as the wings are pulling down, getting more straight and drying.)

It's a BOY!
We learned (thank you, google!) that boy butterflies have two dots on the lower wings and the girl ones don't. My girls enjoy knowing this fact and like to classify any butterfly that holds still long enough to tell.

Rescue Mission Successful!
This chrysalis got knocked off the wall and we were worried it wouldn't survive. After a little bit of research, I made my best attempt to rescue it by tying it back up and it worked. The girls were so excited the morning we saw that it had hatched.


It has been fun to see the girls' excitement watching the butterflies. (And I must admit-I enjoy it too. So fascinating!) In many of these pictures, they are still in their jammies because they would go outside to check the night's happenings as soon as they got up.

Bryn calls the caterpillars "calolo" and butterflies "buh-lie". Whenever we talk about either one she holds out her hands and says "hold doh". But then she never actually wants to hold it when we try. Silly girl!

Cute Kenna and a GIRL butterfly

Not the Same Without You!

I know it isn't Christmas anymore (and hasn't been for awhile!) but Mike made this video before Christmas and I wanted to put it on here when it really was Christmas. That didn't happen, but it's better late than never! It made me cry-we miss you all! Even now that it isn't Christmas anymore!

PS-I tried to figure out how to make the video fit right in the blog window, but after spending too much time getting no where, my solution is to have you click on the video and it will take you to watch it on youtube. If anyone knows how to fix it, I'd love the input!

To the Beach!

We didn't get our wish of going to the beach on Christmas Day (I know everyone feels bad for us), but settled for the day after Christmas. It was a bit windy, but we'll take it!

Whitney and Kenna LOVE their little sister!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas was definitely different this year. In the ten Christmases we've been married, we've only ever spent this and one other at home and though it was fun, it seemed somewhat lonely (to me) without all the fun/craziness/chaos of cousins and family. I do love the magic and excitement that accompanies children and Christmas!

But we got to start a few new traditions of our own this year. One of which comes from Mike's family. Instead of putting names on the presents, we numbered them. When it was time to open them, all the presents were put in the middle and the kids took turns choosing a present. If it was theirs, Mom or Dad would say, "Ding ding ding" and they got to open the present. But if they guessed wrong, the answer was, "Dooooot!" and it was the next child's turn to guess. We had a lot of fun with it.

We didn't go to the beach on Christmas Eve, even though it was absolutely GORGEOUS and perfect beach weather in hopes we could go on Christmas Day. (And washing all the sand out two days in a row is entirely too much work!) But then it rained all day so we didn't go. :( But it gave us the chance to just stay home and enjoy each other. The past few years we have gotten a new game for Christmas. This years' pick was Life. After we opened presents and skyped with Grandma Johanson and Grandma and Grandpa Jones and let them watch us open our presents from them, we got Brynlee down for a nap and played our new game. Mike and I decided to be daring and skip college, we learned that was a big mistake! Kenna was a doctor raking in the money, until she lost her job and became a mechanic. In the end, Whitney smoked us all. Most of you know that I am not overly patient when it comes to long games, but we had a lot of fun laughing and talking as we played. So maybe it was a good thing that we had to skip out on the beach!

A Little Too Last Minute

So, this isn't Brynlee's first Christmas, but I never got around to making a stocking for her last year. I am embarrassed to say that Kenna still doesn't have her name on her stocking! The sewing machine was out all Christmas Season in hopes that I would make Bryn's stocking, but it didn't happen until Christmas Eve night about 10 o'clock. It's a good thing Santa didn't come early! So now I have two stockings without names, but at least Santa had something to fill.

Dear Santa . . .

New jammies on Christmas Eve (but they were sweating in them!) For some reason cold weather jammies are still sold here (ones with feet and everything) and warm weather ones are no where to be found in the winter. So we had to improvise and make them warm weather jammies. I ended up cutting the sleeves off because they were too hot.

We set out the carrots for the reindeer and pumpkin bars and milk for Santa and Brynlee thought she needed a drink. "Santa won't mind if I borrow just a little of his milk!" It was too cute to not take a picture.

Nativity Puppet Show

Aunt Melinda made these awesome puppets of the nativity for us for Christmas a few years ago and it has become a tradition to act out the story as we read from Luke 2. Sometimes the girls get a little silly, but has been a lot of fun every year. Thank you, Aunt Melinda!

Christmas Eve Dinner

This family was from our Idaho Falls ward. They were here visiting for Christmas so we invited them over for dinner. Teresa does her Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners the night before so there isn't so much work on the day itself and I thought we would give it a try. I think this will be an adopted tradition. I did enjoy having Christmas Day to eat leftovers and just relax. And it was fun to catch up with old friends. Jeni was Kenna's nursery leader when Kenna was not such a fan of nursery. Thanks for sharing a special day with us!

T is for Tired!

I'm not sure who was putting who to sleep. After our visitors' center trip Mike took his turn for nap time. I went in to check on them and found it very fitting that they stopped on the "T is for Tired" page.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was gorgeous and sunny (and even hot)! But since we wanted to go to the beach on Christmas Day, we decided to do some other things instead. (MISTAKE) We went up to the visitors' center and saw the Christmas Tree display. Every stake on the island decorated a tree and they were beautiful!

"Jesus" was among the first few words that Brynlee learned. It is very sweet-she almost whispers His name. When she saw this Christus, she pointed up and said "Jesus!" She was very fascinated with it. I love it that she knows Him! And probably remembers Him better than we do!

She just so stinkin' cute! And I just love her piggie tails!

Our stake's tree.

On our way home we stopped by the Kimballs to say hi. Teresa loves to cook and loves aprons. She was baking away sporting her Santa apron! So cute!

Christmas Dresses

In a perfect world I would have made matching dresses, but that didn't happen. Plan 2, make matching skirts. Plan 3, BUY matching dresses at the swap meet. They love them! Our little Hawaiian Princesses!

Santa Clause is Coming to Town

I forgot to post our pictures of meeting Santa and since it isn't Christmas on here yet, I'm still safe, right?

The first time Bryn met Santa she wasn't sure how she felt about it.

(Santas are tan 'round these parts!)

"I guess he's not so bad if Whitney and Kenna are here."

Then Santa came to our ward Christmas party.

Brynlee was sure how she felt about it this time - "Get me outta here!"

Count Your Many Blessings!

We were due for a town trip and I debated taking it on Monday alone with just Bryn. In the end, we decided to all go on Saturday instead for which I am VERY grateful! Two miles from Costco we got a flat tire going 60 mph on the highway. We were able to move safely off the road, and changed the tire. Unfortunately, our spare was flat before we got there, but we limped along and were able to get there. As soon as we were off the road, I started counting my blessings that I wasn't alone with Bryn. After Mike got the tire changed, we said a prayer of gratitude that we were safe and that we had come that day instead of Monday.

I would have been ok. A prerequisite to getting my drivers' license was I had to be able to change a tire. But I was so grateful I didn't have to do it with Bryn screaming in her carseat. I was ever so grateful that I my awesome husband was with me and I hadn't been alone. We were truly inspired to go on Saturday.