On the Farm

We went to a little farm. The kids got to see and even pet some horses! They saw ducks all huddled in a corner (they looked SO cold), walked on top of a frozen pond, and played in a lot of very cold snow!




Coming out of the barn where the ducks were:


Here they all are 'walking on water'...the frozen pond! I was freaking out!!


Poor Andrew is frozen solid!


Then, they pulled out the big guns: A Four-wheeler!! Everyone took lots of rides! :)

Our official driver, Derek, with all of my family except me (you can see Drew in the video...he's squished in between Josh and Devin):


Devin takes his turn driving with Andrew on his lap:


A little romantic picture in front of Mt. Timpanogos:


Homeward bound:


The kids really enjoyed themselves and then enjoyed the hot chocolate and ramen noodles after returning to grandma's house. :)

A Date to the Temple

What a nice morning! Devin and I went to the temple in American Fork, UT with Robyn and Eric. It was so nice to be in the temple again! What a happy, peaceful place!



And again, a big huge thank you to Grandma and Mellie for watching a lot of crazy little kiddies...

A Big Big Truck!

While in Salt Lake, we got to see Uncle Quentin's Big, Big Truck! I still can't believe he drives that thing! It's SO HUGE!!! I can barely drive my parents' van! Ha!

Everyone in front of the big cab:


Josh driving:


Josh with an unhappy passenger:


Andrew driving:


Thanks, Uncle Quentin, for showing us your truck! :)

Temple Square

In Salt Lake City, Utah, there is a giant LDS Temple. Every year at Christmas time, they decorate it to the nines with massive amounts of Christmas lights on almost every tree, and lots of beautiful nativity scenes all over. It's so beautiful! So, we drove the kids up there for another fun outing!

We got to ride a 'train'. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of it, but here we are waiting for it:



Here is the reflecting pool with a nativity scene in the middle of it:


(Devin took this picture! He did a great job, didn't he? Almost professional! Ha!)

Another family picture:



It was a nice time. The kids really liked it for about 15 minutes. It got cold, and we wouldn't let them run, so they lost interest fairly quickly. That was sad. But it was pretty while it lasted! I think we were so preoccupied with keeping the kids in order and trying to stay warm that we sort of forgot to take pictures of everything all lit up. Oh dear. But, here's an idea of what it looks like:



It is beautiful, and worth even a quick visit! :)

Dinosaur Museum

Yet another museum excursion of fun for all! The kids enjoyed seeing all the bones and things. Josh drew massive amounts of pictures. Andrew told us all that everything was 'scary'. They had so much fun! :)

All the kids surrounding the poor dinosaurs head:


Josh with a dino:


Another dino with Josh in the background...what a grin! :)


Twirling Girlies:


Look! Andrew thought it was all so cool! :)

A DATE!

For Christmas, Devin's parents gave us a 'date package'...gift card to Macaroni Grill and tickets to see a movie together! So, we went, and Oh, My Goodness! I have never been to Macaroni Grill, but that was a fantastic restaurant! SO YUMMY!! And it was so fun to just sit and enjoy our meal without telling the kids to sit still, eat their food, stop bugging their brother/sister, be happy, don't take food from other people, don't throw your food on the ground....etc., etc., etc. Very relaxing to be able to sit and chat and taste your food! :)

Then we went and saw 'Bedtime Stories'. It's a new Disney movie with Adam Sandler. Normally, I don't like Adam Sandler, as he can get pretty crude, but this was very funny! I recommend this movie! :) We enjoyed that, too...without having to chase the kids up and down the aisles and making them sit still! :) Don't get me wrong, I love my kids, and I enjoy doing fun things with/for them, but it is nice to just enjoy being alone together once in awhile! :) That's why dates are important. We all become sane again! :)

And, while we were gone, the kids had fun, too! :) They made gingerbread houses!!! Look how happy they are! (Or is it the fact that they can eat all that sugar??)





Thanks Grandma and Melodie!!!

Girl's Day Out

We had such a fun time with all the girls! Sadly, I don't have pictures, because while we were on our girls' day out, the guys were watching the kids...they planned to go sledding, so I sent them with my camera to take pictures for the blog, but the guys forgot (yes, I suppose they're not so focused on taking pics for the blog...), so I didn't get pictures of the girls or of the kids. I lose. Oh well.

We went out and went shopping together at Khols. They had some great sales! All Christmas stuff was 75% off...put funnily enough, I only got a super cute hopscotch rug that was normally $35 and on sale for $9.99.

We then went to eat. We ate at the food court of the mall. It's been such a long time since I've been able to eat in a food court! Ha! We ate at a place called IceBurg. I had a yummy burger, and there were some super yummy fries with this fantastic fry sauce (makes me still want to eat at Big Juds....) It took the guy SO long to get us our food, though! Sheesh!!!! The guy cooking the food was super speedy, but there was only one guy working in the front--and he had to take the orders, make the shakes and hand out the food. For some reason, handing out the food was the last of his priorities, so our food just sat up on the shelf waiting for like 15 minutes while he SLOWLY took some orders and made a few shakes for people that were AFTER us!! It was rather irritating, and while the food was pretty good, because of the nasty service (and I've heard this is their trademark) I won't go back. HOPE SOMEONE FROM THAT COMPANY READS THIS AND TAKES SOME ACTION!!!!

We went to see Twilight after lunch! How fun! It was fun to all go together...and bunch of book fans watching the movie. None of us are really sure how we feel about it...there were some scenes and aspects that we all liked and disliked. It's hard because I really want to like the movie, since I really liked the books.... But, well, that's how the cookie crumbles, I guess!

It was a fun time for just the girls to unwind and be girls together! :) And if any of my sisters-in-law have pictures up, I may have to steal them and post them here, too! :)

The Bean Museum

I have to admit that when I hear the name 'Bean Museum', I think of a museum dedicated solely to legumes. However, this is not the case. 'Bean' happens to be the last name of the person of whom this museum building is named after. There were no beans involved. Instead, it was LOTS of 'stuffed' animals...and the kids LOVED it!!! Here are some pics of our fun:

Claire and Andrew with a hippo head! :)


Josh and Drew by Africa! :) Appropriate, eh?


This big butterfly is made from lots and lots of little butterflies! Very cool!!


Josh used this excursion as a school project. So, he drew pictures and wrote about the animals he saw so he could share it with his class when we get back to Cameroon.



Josh with his peacock drawing:

Christmas Day

Here are some fun photos from our Christmas morning:

Opening presents:


Some happy family photos around the tree:



Claire and Mierae dressed up as princesses! They're so pretty!


Josh opening his stickers (I think he was in the middle of a cough at the time...)


And from our yummy Christmas dinner!!The kids all ate first, as we had to eat in shifts due to the large number of people in the family now:




How fun!! :)

We celebrated Christmas with the Edwards family on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, it was kind of a last minute switch, as we were planning to do it after the New Year. Oh well. Sorry everyone! Hope it was ok. The kids loved it... They're still asking when they're going to open more presents...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas Eve Hendriksen Party

We went to a big family party on Christmas Eve in Salt Lake. Devin went camera happy as the kids presented a little skit of the Christmas Story:




Claire was so excited to be Mary! And her cousin Julia was so excited to be Joseph! Ha! what fun! :)

They had a gift exchange for all the little kids. Here they are sitting in some semblance of order and opening their fun new things!






We even got to eat! Yea! Lots of yummy food!! :)



It was fun to see everyone!

A Visit From Santa

The kids got a very special visitor today!


Josh said he wanted a baseball and a football. What??

Claire refused to sit with Santa alone!

Claire said she wanted a doll. Later on, though, she changed her mind and wanted a Barbie and freaked out because I told her Santa wasn't coming back to take more orders. :)


Andrew just wanted to drive his cars on Santa's shoulder! :)

My sister sitting by the very festive fireplace all decorated with stockings... :)


The funniest thing, though, was as soon as 'Santa' came through the door, Andrew said, "Papa!" Oh, man! He blew his cover! :) It was fun, though! :)

Our Anniversary

We had such a wonderful anniversary!! Wow! It was just so much fun! Unfortunately, through the whole time I kept thinking to myself how sad it was that I had forgotten the camera. Sadly, as we were checking out of the hotel after all our fun activities, I realized that I had had the camera the whole entire time with us in the diaper bag! (yes, I brought the diaper bag with us on our anniversary overnighter...force of habit. Sorry.) Oh well. It was still fun, and for most of the things we did, there are links somewhere to go see...

So, first of all, we drove down to Idaho Falls for dinner. We went to Outback Steakhouse. I've never been there before. Of course, they say they're Australian, but Daniel (my recently returned home from Australia brother) says that it's really not very authentic. But, it was tasty nonetheless. We shared a giant steak, and I couldn't even eat the whole thing! Wow! It's so strange to be eating so much meat...

Anyway, after that, we went and checked into our hotel. We stayed at a place called Destinations Inn in Idaho Falls. WOW!! What a cool place! It's technically a bed and breakfast, and by far the coolest place I have ever stayed in my entire life!! Since I didn't get to take any pictures, I HIGHLY recommend going to the link I put in and checking it out! It was a theme B&B. Each and every room was decorated for a different city in the world. Athens, Rome, Paris... We stayed in the New York room. It was so cool! The statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park...Times Square has a huge projector screen that comes down in front of it and you can watch a movie on the big screen while sitting on the bed (which is a HUGE circle on a 'broadway stage'), there's a huge jacuzzi tub with a fire hydrant at the head of it... It was so cool! They had a huge bottle of sparkling apple cider and cheesecake sitting in the room waiting for us when we got there...and they delivered breakfast to us: A giant warm cinnamon roll, yogurt over granola with fresh berries on top, lots of juice and hot cocoa... It was so wonderful!! :)

After we had checked into our hotel, we went to a Kurt Bestor concert. My mom had tickets from work (hope no one from Melaluca is reading this...) and she gave them to us so we could have something fun and different to do. So, we went. The first hour of the concert, however, was kind of a pep rally for work! Ha!! Lots of speeches about how they're doing well and everyone is working hard... devin and I both took much needed naps! :) So, that was good. We almost left, too, but I wanted to stay at least for one song so we could say that we enjoyed it... :) Well, we ended up staying for all the music. Once it started, we had a ball! It was a fun concert and I enjoyed it! We got to hear Jenny Oaks Baker, too, and that was fantastic! :)

After the concert, we went in search of an 'anniversary' type movie to watch on our big screen. So, we got Mr. Bean's Holiday (ha ha ha) and Just Like Heaven. Then we enjoyed our hotel room o' fun and the weirdness of having a whole night without the kids around. :)

The next day, we spent Christmas shopping for the kids and getting a few things that Devin needed that he hadn't brought with him. It was just so much fun, and so relaxing! A very fun anniversary! :)

A Little Blizzard

Here are some pics of a little blizzard that kept getting worse and worse! It was so fun to watch! The camera, of course, doesn't do it justice, but you get the idea...





Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!!!! :))