Rawlins: Hilary's 20-Year High School Reunion

 Yes, the title is correct - 20 YEARS!! Crazy!! The girls and I headed to Rawlins the beginning of August so I could attend my reunion. I was a little disappointed at the small turnout, but it was really nice to see those who came!

Funny thing about this picture: Lee saw it posted on facebook and called to ask if I'd had a good time at the reunion. He was worried that things didn't go so well because I was on the fringes of the picture instead of front and center like he's used to seeing me at social events. :)

When I arrived at the dinner wearing purple, everyone started laughing. Good thing I'm not a self-conscious sort! :) Turns out all the other girls there were also wearing purple! We decided to take a picture of the "purple girls." After the picture yet one other girl showed up in purple. What are the chances? Quite funny! :)

 The reunion was my first time seeing Janaka Vanderkoi since graduation! I hadn't seen Mike Russell in a long time, either. Lots of fun to catch up!

This saddle is on display outside the library in Rawlins. My kids love to climb on it. I keep looking for the "please don't climb on the saddle" sign, but so far no sign. Brynne is much taller than the last time I took a picture of her on the saddle, though.

 The week after the reunion was the Carbon County Fair in Rawlins. We found out one of the banks in town provided free BBQ dinner a night we were there, so we chose that night to check out the fair.

 The girls were delighted to see Smokey the Bear... (I don't know the other kids in the picture, but I should have asked if they had any more mouth-sized blue stickers!)

...but they were even more excited to see Miss Wyoming, Lexie Madden! Morgan refused to go home until we found her and got her autograph. :) Miss Wyoming was SO nice to the girls and was great about moving to where we could get a good picture.

 One really great thing about Rawlins is that the public swimming pool is free! They had open swimming from 1-3 every afternoon and from 7-9 every night. I figured we'd go swimming once or twice while we were there, but the girls had different ideas - they ended up swimming almost every day, and some days went for both afternoon AND night!

I managed to snap some pretty good shots of the girls going off the diving board. Brynne got really good at jumping in...

 ...and Morgan figured out how to do a front flip! How do you like the in-action picture?

 They are planning to build a brand new high school and swimming pool in Rawlins soon (and tear down the old ones!), so I thought I better take a few pictures around the pool while I was there. It was interesting to see this group of three banners; I remember when there was just one banner and it wasn't very full! (Can you find my name?)

Some kids say "Grandpa, will you read me a story?" but my kid says

"Grandpa, can I play on the computer with you?"

Christmas in Wyoming 2011

Knowing that Lee would have to work, I took the girls to my parents' house in Wyoming for Christmas. My sister Lindsey joined us along with our youngest sister, Ashley, and her family.

One of the first items of business was making Christmas cookies with Grandpa Ross. Grandpa has amazing patience for things like cookie cutters being put in the middle of the dough instead of in a way to maximize the number of cookies that can be cut each time, or flour getting everywhere, or some of the dough accidentally making it into a kid's mouth (actually, Grandpa has been known to feed them dough on purpose!). See that cute boy having fun with Grandpa in the picture below? Yeah, well that's my super cute and super helpful nephew Marshall!

At one point on Christmas Eve I looked over and noticed lots of people dressed in green shirts. Those people included my mom, my sister Ashley, Ashley's daughter Elise, and Melissa. I easily talked the adult figures into holding the little figures for a picture:

Ashley's husband, Derek, got to be Joseph in our Christmas Story reenactment and Brynne got to be Mary. I'm pretty sure this is exactly how it was last year, too. Since donkeys are the closest thing to horses in the Christmas Story, Morgan chose to be the donkey both years and let Mary (i.e. Brynne) ride to Bethlehem on her back. The biggest change to our family's reenactment this year was Melissa's playing the Baby Jesus.

Above is a picture of Brynne with a Santa gift on Christmas morning. Below is Melissa checking out her gifts from Santa.

 

 I was able to exchange some things to get matching shirts for Melissa and Elise. We had lots of fun taking pictures of the two of them together.

 

Morgan got curlers from Aunt Lindsey for Christmas. She and the cat, Dina, curled up on the couch to watch a movie and ended up falling asleep. :)

I was the lucky one! I got to hold both cute girls -- Elise and Melissa!

Cousin Marshall even got some snuggle time with Melissa. He is so cute with how much he loves Elise and Melissa and wanted them to be by him a lot. :)

Morgan and Brynne were very excited to get some games from Santa. Brynne decided to "pose" (i.e. pull a fat lip) for the picture. Morgan was too engrossed in her game to realize I was taking a picture. :) And for those who are wondering, the crutches weren't needed by anyone; turns out they are lots of fun to play with (at least until Grandpa finally manages to get them and hide them under the house). :)

Christmas in Wyoming

Since Lee was at work during Christmas, the girls and I headed to Wyoming to my parents' house. My sister Lindsey was there too, along with my sister Ashley and her family.

Grandpa Ross was really great to help the girls make sugar cookies. They also iced and decorated most of them. Brynne also decorated the gingerbread house mostly all by herself (I helped put the icing on it). Here is Brynne showing off all the goodies:

We have a family tradition of having pizza for dinner on Christmas Eve. We used to order out, but we have recently begun making our own pizzas instead. This year, my Dad and I did a lot of the pizza making. We ran out of cheese, so my Dad pulled some frozen cheese out of the freezer. As I sprinkled the frozen cheese on the canadian bacon and pineapple pizza, I kept joking about how the cheese looked like rice.

I put the pizza into the oven to cook, but the "cheese" wasn't melting. I said, "I'm not taking this pizza out until the cheese quits looking like rice." Eventually I got worried about the crust being too dark so I took it out. As you probably figured out, it turned out the "cheese" really was rice! In case you're wondering, the pizza was actually really good. :)

My older sister, Alyson, and I both attended BYU. Our three younger siblings all attended the University of Wyoming. We often get some good-natured rivalries going within the family. It's nice to know that in the end, we'll all get along just fine! (my sister Ashley and me)

Has anyone ever wondered what happens when you give girls make up for Christmas and then send them up to bed? They come back downstairs a little while later looking like this:

Don't worry, I'll be sure to give make up application lessons before they turn 12!! :)

A Trip to the Zoo

I was trying to decide the best way to write about our summer adventures, and I decided to separate it into several different blogs. I figure it will be easier for people to sift through that way too. Our really long trip to/from Seattle was only a two week ordeal, but we were gone from home for five weeks, so it was really nice to get home. I had TONS of fun, but now I get to relax a bit (well, after I get my huge "to-do" list completed anyway...).

I really should have written this blog when I was at my mom's last month, but I didn't think of it. Before heading to Wyoming, we stopped at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City where we met up with my sister and her family. Then we stayed one night with her and went to the Ogden Tree House Museum the next day before actually driving to Rawlins. Now all of that seems so long ago, but here's a few cute pictures anyway. The first one is of Morgan with some of the giraffes.

And here are my girls with an elephant.
And finally, here's Brynne with a white alligator. Aren't you so glad I was here to identify all the animals for you! :)
Once we got to Rawlins, we were able to do some relaxing. The one adventure we did have was going on a one-night camp out to Martin's Cove with my parent's ward from church. It was really, really, really windy that night but the girls and I opted to sleep in the tent anyway. Thankfully the girls slept okay, but I hardly slept at all with the flapping of the tent walls. I kept waiting to blow away. The next morning I woke up to discover a tent that had actually started to come unstaked. There were three people in it and it was half blown over. I still can't figure out how they all stayed asleep in there... Anyway, I'm bummed we forgot a camera, but it was a fun time.

We were there for about three weeks before the real adventure began...

P.S. You'll have to click on "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page to see the rest of the posts about our vacation. :)

Daddy's Airplane

Over the weekend, the girls and I drove to Rawlins to see Lee. While there Lee took us to see the airplane he flies. In true Wyoming fashion, it was super cold and VERY windy. Lee let us climb in the airplane, which is something the girls used to love to do. This is a picture of Morgan and Brynne sitting in the cockpit of the airplane. I wish you could tell from the picture how windy and cold it was. You can see that the blanket that is normally wrapped around the engine is instead flapping around. While we were in the airplane trying to stay warm (above), Lee was working to secure the engine blankets. The whole back of this airplane is one huge long tube where they store UPS packages for flights. The only seats in the plane are the two in the cockpit and one extra just behind. It's kinda cool.
Here's a little closer shot of Lee and the girls by the plane. We affectionately refer to it as "Daddy's plane". Although it actually belongs to Key Lime Air, it sits in Rawlins and Lee is basically the only one to fly it, so we call it his. For the small price of only $20/person, we'll let you sit in the cockpit and take a picture! :)
In other news, we stopped at Lee's sister Ruth's house, and stayed with her one night. Brynne slept on the top bunk of a bunkbed. I, knowing that she tends to turn sideways in her sleep, prayed that Brynne would turn the direction that her feet would be hanging off the bed so that she wouldn't fall out. When I woke up in the morning, I saw my prayer had been answered:
I've been blessed with two kids who both love to snuggle. Brynne was kind enough to share the love with Aunt Ruth: