Thursday, February 6, 2014

January Part 3

To continue on with the picture a day for January!

January 26th:

Today I spent a lot of time cleaning.  I cleaned the chicken coop (that's where Nathan got the stuff on his head].  I started the cleaning process of Christopher's car, which was super messy which is understandable since we were in the car for so long with two little kids!  Christopher also made shields for the boys to go with their swords.



January 27th:

We said goodbye to my cousin Stephanie.  She came down to LA to watch our animals for us while we were gone, which was so very nice of her!


January 28th:

We got home and our carpet smelled like pee, yuck!  We decided to get the carpets cleaned and have them use their special pee odor elimination stuff.  The boys enjoyed having the carpet cleaners here.  We also were playing with the parachute with them and I was trying to get a picture of the static from Anderson's hair, but I wasn't doing a great job catching it!


January 29th:

We had frozen yogurt because the boys were both behaving well and we had a gift card to go there.  Plus, it has been nice and warm where we live!


January 30th:

The boys and I went out with some friends for dinner.  The kids were acting goofy!


January 31st:

The boys and I went to the library.  The boys LOVE playing on the computer, which is no surprise!  After the computers we spent a lot of time reading many books!  It is also Chinese New Year (the year of the Horse], so I decided that it would be fun to go out for Chinese for dinner.






Happy New Year!  February is up next!

-Heather

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Colorado Trip

So, this is an extension to January's photo a day, but I figured that I would go into more details on our Colorado trip that we took.

Since Christopher is looking for new employment we decided that right now would be the best time to move. Colorado has been high on our lists, but I've never been there and before we decide to move there I wanted to check out the place.  We decided to take a road-trip there and check it out.

January 17th:

We started off our journey in the morning and were in four states: CA, NV, AZ, & UT.  We ended our trip in Beaver, UT.  The boys did awesome, like usual!

Taking a break from the car

We stopped in a little town called Beaver for our first night.  We decided to go have dinner at a diner.  When we got there they gave us some water and I commented on how this water tasted really good.  Well, as we were waiting for our food I decided to Google Beaver and found out that  "In 2006, Beaver won a contest for best rural water taste in the United States.[5] In 2010, Beaver took top honors in world for best tasting water."   Their water is really good and I think that I must be a water connoisseur!  The boys were also BEYOND thrilled to be staying in a motel.

Across the street from the diner was a liquor store.  It was closed and therefore Christopher was not able to see if they had shirts of their store :]!



January 18th:

We continued on the long haul of our road-trip from Beaver, UT to Longmont, CO.  It was a L-O-N-G drive!  The boys did great and we also relented and let them watch movies in the car.  They're usually good about being movie free, but we all needed a mindless break!  

The drive on I-70 has to be one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on!  The scenery is so gorgeous and breathtaking.  I'm glad that we did this road-trip so that I was able to enjoy this beauty!  So much open land with nothing, but mountains!

These pictures don't do any justice to what you see with your naked eye.



January 19th:

Christopher got hooked up with a realtor and he showed us some houses in the areas that we were looking at moving too.  An interesting thing about Colorado is that every house has a basement.  Being from California this is a new concept.  One of the towns that we really liked was Erie, CO.  It is a relatively "new" town with lots of new construction and an influx of people moving there so everything is just being built up.  It isn't too far from Boulder, if Christopher got a job there.  Their park and recreation center were beyond amazing!  Colorado also has lots of open space for biking, running, & hiking, which was really nice!

Here is a view of the rec center and the library

The beautiful mountains in the background!

The boys only cared about the snow and wanted to play here forever!

The rec center had a crazy indoor pool area.  It's hard to see from the glare, but it was very cool!




We also visited the Red Rock Amphitheater on the way to Christopher's cousin Beth Ann's house.  I got vertigo a little bit being that high and looking down :].  So beautiful again!



January 20th:

We went to Boulder on this day.  Christopher had some people that he was going to meet with that could hopefully hook him up with a job or get him some other contacts.  The boys and I went to Golden & Broomfield, CO to check out those towns to see if we liked them.

Nathan was enjoying being a horse at Beth Ann's house

January 21st:

We got together with Dave the Realtor again so that he could show us some more houses in other neighborhoods.  We LOVED Dave and if we move in an area he serves we will definitely be using him!  Before we left the boys played in some snow at Beth Ann's house. That evening we headed up to Fort Collins and stayed with my friends Melissa, Anthony, and their three kids.



January 22nd:

The boys were beyond excited to be playing with kids their own age and with lots of toys.  We also really enjoyed Melissa and Anthony's company.  That evening we went and visited my friend Heidi, who I haven't seen since elementary school, and her family.  We stopped at her husband's office.  He founded Begin Again Toys and they were setting up their displays getting ready for the big Toy Show Expo in New York.  It was pretty cool!  We then went and had a beer at the O'Dell's Brewery.




January 23rd:

We said goodbye to Fort Collins and headed back to Boulder for some more meetings that Christopher had.  It had snowed the night before and everything was covered with a few inches of snow and it looked very beautiful!  We also decided to divide our driving up into three days so that we didn't have two days that were super long.  We ended up leaving Boulder in the afternoon and drove to Grand Junction, CO.



January 24th:

We drove from Grand Junction, CO to Jean, NV.  We were going to drive to Vegas, but everything was a little expensive and The Gold Strike in Jean was cheap and got us a little closer to home.  The hotel was okay, but the casino was the saddest casino we have ever been to!

Another funny story is that when we went to our first motel the boys pulled open all of the drawers and they saw the bible.  They thought that it was some book that was left there and were curious about it.  Every time we went to another motel they would pull the drawers open and exclaim, "There's the magic book!  Look the book is here too!"  It cracked us up how they thought this book was magically appearing at all of the places we stayed at!


January 25th:

We got home and were happy to be back and out of the car!  The trip was a good one overall and I think that Christopher is sold on moving there.  I'm really appreciating Southern California, the greenery, trees, and the nice weather so we will see what the future holds!

Oh, I also forgot to take a picture this day :(!

Sunday, February 2, 2014

January 2014 Part 1

I decided that I would try and capture a picture of at least one of us each day of the year.  Here is our January!

January 1st:

Having dinner with the family at my mom's house and talking about what was the best part of each of our days!

Stephanie, Nathan, Aunt Judy, my mom, Patrick, Grandma Hope, Anderson, me, and Christopher taking the picture.
January 2nd:

Saying Goodbye is hard to do.

Aunt Judy, my mom, Anderson, Nathan, Patrick, & Grandma Hope

The long journey home.



January 3rd:

King Nathan and a fun day at a new indoor playground we tried out.



January 4th:

Tying Rambo up and a one year old's birthday party with three pinatas!



January 5th:

Building a pirate ship.


January 6th:

Homemade smoothies.



January 7th:

Back at the indoor playground.



January 8th:

It was warm enough to be in swimsuits and playing with the water.



January 9th:

Volunteered at a food bank.


January 10th:

Playing Pengoloo, a new favorite at our house.



January 11th:

One of my two book club groups.


January 12th:

I accidentally shaved Christopher's hair a bit short in the back, so he had to shave the rest of it.


It was also Gracie's 7th Birthday!



January 13th:

Seeing a space shuttle in person was beyond amazing!


January 14th:

Enjoying In-N-Out with a special treat of a milkshake!


January 15th:

Getting lots of hugs


January 16th:

Making pizza with Anderson


I will post the rest of January tomorrow!