Merry Christmas to them: (plus many other gifts that aren't pictured)

Merry Christmas to me:

I haven't been able to play with it as much as I would like, but so far it is great- plus my soon-to-be brother-in-law gave/is letting me use (I'm unsure which) his 1.8 lens- all these lighting options are just so exciting!

Christmas Eve day my mom and I went to an American Crafts wherehouse sale. Giddy. That is what I was as I loaded the car with ribbon (a steal) and scrapbooking paper (a bigger steal). We couldn't stop giggling. This pic only shows a bit- we both ended up with 400 rolls of ribbon and 35 lbs. of paper.

Merry Christmas and Happy 2009!

Life is good

All is right in the world for Cam:

1. Snow

2. Snowboard

3. Ramp

4. Trying jumps

Sole Survivor

The remaining mandarin at 4:00 Friday from the bag I purchased at noon on Wednesday. I love it that my kids love them, but seriously- how do you keep up with that?

The camera- on vacation

I didn't want to carry "the big camera" everyday in Disneyland. So I decided to limit myself to the beach and the day we were in the park on Elle's birthday. Here are some favorites (the sunset scenes are for my photo class homework):

Disneyland? Weren't you just there?

So when we were planning our November, we saw that we would be in St. George the weekend before Thanksgiving. And since Scott had taken Thanksgiving week off, we thought we would make a vacation out of it. So- why not drive to Disneyland? We would be half-way there already. We know, we know, we just went in the spring, but oh well. So we ended up going to St. George for 2 days (golf tournament), Disneyland for 3 days, and Mesquite for Thanksgiving. What a trip! Highlights:

Elle is 2!

We celebrated Elle's birthday three times. Once at Disneyland (the actual birthday), once at Grandma and Grandpa's in Mesquite (on Thanksgiving), and once at Grandma and Grandpa's in Murray. It was an on-going party:

Halloween- the candy on the cake

Well, I finally found a moment to catch up on the blogging that I've missed, go figure that it took a time change and an extra hour for me to do it. This year Halloween was as fun as ever- the boys decided that they wanted us all to be a family of Ninjas. Lucky for us I found their sizes of Ninja costumes (yes, even Elle) at Savers. However, no adult version. Susan found Scott's karate uniform from when he was 12- so that took care of my costume. But we never got out and found a costume for Scott. So when we were thinking about a costume party with our friends, we weren't sure what to do. There is always a little pressure to be funny- good thing Todd and Breanna had a 6 foot dalmation costume and a Cruella DeVille that we borrowed. We won the prize for guy on the tightest leash.

But on Halloween night, we had a family of Ninjas trick or treating with dad dressed as dad (in the picture, Elle is saying "waaaa". That is what we told her Ninjas say). He stayed at the house after Elle was done and manned the firepit-while the boys and I ran around the neighborhood- a few times. It was such a nice night, we couldn't resist.

But we are paying the price for having all that candy in the house. Elle (and Cam to some extent) has a one track mind when she knows there is candy around. Last night she loaded up her dinner plate with candy and was seriously disappointed when Scott and I wouldn't let her have it. She shouts at us for a "treat" and cries when she doesn't get one. We are already ready to throw it out to get our little unobsessed girl back. In the picture with all the kids, they had made a fort and were trading candy. We walked in to find Elle with a sucker in each hand, eating both.

Flag Football

I didn't really want to, but when it isn't tackle, and all his friends are playing, how do you say "No"? So we are into flag football now, the next in the line of successive sports that just seem to back up to one another. Davis is having a lot of fun. In one game he scored an extra point (from a pass no less) and a touchdown. I am just hoping that this doesn't evolve into a love of tackle football. I am not so sure I am up for the commitment... or the bodily harm to my son.

UEA- off to grandmother's house we go

So with the kids out of school for a few days, we decided to head to Mesquite to visit grandma and grandpa. We did all the usual fun things in Mesquite: caught lizards, took a ride on the four-wheeler, went swimming, went to the crab leg buffet (Davis loves the crab legs- it makes us laugh to watch him), and even took a side trip to Vegas to see the aquarium. I kept thinking about how the kids would grow up with memories of going there- grandma and grandpa's house is a destination.

Weekend with family

Conference weekend: my favorite to spend time with family, eat, and of course listen to all the uplifting talks. It was a great weekend, Steve and Jana came down and blessed their newest addition, Lily. We started off the Halloween celebrations with pumpkins and Gardner Village.

Going on a trip is fun- It's even better when it is FREE!

We went to Cancun September 15-19th as the grand prize from our 24-hour race back in May. You can read all about the race in my blog entry from June http://our-charmed-life.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-win-trip-for-4-to-cancun.html . Before we left we were so worried about what the weather would be like while we were there. Hurricane Ike had just passed through the gulf and the forecast was for rain almost everyday. It turned out we didn't need stormpulse.com. It only rained one day- so we decided to go into the jungle that day and snorkel through some underground caves. While we were riding through the jungle in an open air "buggy" and getting soaked, we realized how fun it was to be on vacation with the Strausses. Even though it was raining, we all were having a great time and laughing. The rest of the week was perfect- we had sun and clear skies to snorkel, see some ruins, hang out at our resort, and visit Isle Mujeres. There were so many highlights that it is hard to choose what our favorite part was. We definitely loved being together with no kids to worry about. By the 5th day we missed them and were ready to go home or at least have them shipped to us so we could all play on the beach together. A big thanks to grandma Susan, grandpa Ron, aunt Kim, and Kylie. We didn't worry because we knew they were so well taken care of and probably having as much fun as we were. I think I know why people call vacations like this a "second honeymoon". . . Because usually our vacation pictures have mostly kids in them. This time all of our pictures are just of the two of us. They remind me of the pictures from our honeymoon.

Photography class

I have a love love relationship with the photography class that I am taking. I am feeling so inspired. I am actually dreaming about new photos I can take, but they never turn out on the camera as good as they are in my head. Here are some of my first trys:

"Shoe project"- you take a shot of the persons

face, then their shoes. I had to do one of Cam

and his Heely's because he loves them so much.