Christmas

December was a crazy busy month for us.  We didn't even get Christmas cards sent out!  I was planning the ward Christmas party for the first week of December and then teaching preschool for the next two weeks before Christmas.  I didn't even have time to take any pictures, let alone post those pictures to the blog.  Oh well.  We did have a great Christmas visiting family in Utah, though.  Here's a few pictures to recap the season.

We opened presents together as a family before we left for Utah.  Paige and Lucas were pretty excited!

Lucas's favorite present was probably this Chewbacca angry bird stuffed animal.

He also really liked his Jake Legos.

He was really getting into the present opening and was tearing into the wrapping paper like a crazy man.  It was pretty funny.  Paige got pretty good at opening presents too.

We made the drive out to Utah in one day, 10.5 hours including stops.  It was our best time yet!  Both Lucas and Paige did REALLY well.  Lucas has been having a hard time with electronics and TV lately, so we did the drive with no electronics.  I was really worried about it, but he was totally fine and he was the best behaved he has ever been on a trip.

The first thing Lucas did when we got to Utah was make a snowball.  It was night time so that's all we had time for but first thing the next morning he dragged us all outside to make a snowman.

We went out and played in the snow every chance we got.  Lucas was in heaven.

Here's Paige in all of Lucas's old winter stuff from when he was a baby.

She thought the snow was pretty fun.

We played with Ava, PJ, and Rose.

They had a snowball fight.

And built more snowmen.

All of these kids are not normally from cold places, so none of them had proper snow attire.  It was actually kinda nice because this made it so they couldn't stay out for more than 15 minutes at a time, so the parents didn't have to stay out for that long.  The snow is pretty but it sure is cold!

We had a little get together with my parents, Sarah, Nate, Olivia, Joseph, and Uncle Mark on Christmas Eve morning.  We had omelets, cinnamon rolls, and hot chocolate, and opened Christmas presents.  Lucas and Paige are wearing matching Christmas jammies.

I love Paige's face in this picture.  She is super excited about her new quilt.

And here's Paige practicing on my sister's fitness pole.  She looked like she knew what she was doing.

On Christmas Eve evening we got together with all of Ryan's family for dinner.  We had these awesome crackers to pull and get goodies out of.

Our kids were the first up on Christmas morning, and every other morning.  Here's Lucas playing with his Angry Birds Star Wars Death Star game.  He was SO excited to finally get it.

One of the days we were in Utah we went to the Natural History Museum up by the University of Utah.  It was really a cool museum and we had a fun time while we were there.  The favorite part for the kids was this Earthquake exhibit with a seismometer in the ground to record the magnitude of the kids jumping on it.

Here's an action shot of Lucas.

He got pretty good at it.  Paige liked jumping on it too, even though her feet never really left the ground.

And of course no museum would be complete without a water table for kids to play in sand and water and get super messy.

We also went to see the lights at Temple Square and out to dinner after at Crown Burger, the George family tradition.  We came right after the museum and forgot to bring all our hats and gloves and stuff with us, so we were a little chilly, but it was still beautiful.

The drive back home to California went almost as smoothly as the drive out to Utah.  The kids were a little more restless since it had only been a week since they'd been cooped up in the car, but we made it back in one piece.

Since we were so busy earlier in the month of December we hadn't had time to make our gingerbread house, so we made it the day after we got back.  Lucas loved eating all the candy while we were decorating it.

We had a pretty great Christmas week spending time with so many of our family and friends.  We hope you had a great Christmas too!

Anniversary Trip to Mexico

I'm finally getting around to posting pictures from our Mexico trip.  In case you were completely unaware of us even going to Mexico, Ryan and I went to Puerto Vallarta for our anniversary this year.  My parents came and stayed at our house and watched Lucas and Paige and we were baby free the whole trip!  We had such a good time!  The first day we were there we went on a boat ride out to Marieta Islands.  The islands are a national park and they have a lot of cool bird species and stuff to look at.  We got to go snorkeling and kayaking while we were there.  There was this really cool beach but you had to snorkel through a cave to get to it so we didn't get to take our camera, but here we are on the boat.

We went to the grocery store and got juice and pastries, so we had a yummy breakfast on our balcony every morning.  It was such a pretty view, and so relaxing listening to the waves.

On our actual anniversary we went zip-lining.  This was really cool, we had a blast.

Here we are racing.  I'm on the left and Ryan's on the right.  Ryan won, but only cause he's heavier than me, I didn't try to slow myself down once on any of these.  They even had to weigh me down on the last really long one to make sure I would make it the whole way.  Apparently I need to eat more before we try zip-lining again.

We also did some repelling.

And some off road racing.

That night we went to this dinner show on a really pretty beach.  The show was pretty cool and the dinner was delicious.  The view was beautiful, I wish it had been lighter outside so we could appreciate it more.  We were at a private table for two right next to the ocean.  Too bad you can't really tell.

We did manage to get a bit of a picture of what our view looked like.

The next day we took a tour of the city.  They had a lot of cool statues along the boardwalk.

And we stopped and saw the cathedral.

And we drove up the coast a bit to see some sights.

There was this cool area with pools and small waterfalls flowing over smooth stones.  It reminded me a lot of Johnson's Shut-ins in Missouri.

After all the exploring and adventures we'd had, we decided to spend some time relaxing in the hotel pool.

 

And watch the sun set.

We had an awesome view of the sunset from our room every night too.

The last day we were there, we got massages in the hotel spa and then we got to swim in the pools and hot tubs they had.  And we got to drink yummy dragon fruit juice.

We also got breakfast at the beach side cafe.  I got used to relaxing meals with incredible views.

There was an open bar on a lot of the tours we did.  I always ordered virgin pina coladas.  The people were always super confused when we specified without alcohol.  They thought we were nuts!  The last day we got some drinks while we were waiting for our taxi back to the hotel.  I got one last pina colada.  I might have to start making these at home.

Also while waiting for our taxi we saw this iguana climbing up the side of our hotel.  You can't really tell from the picture but it was huge!  It was at least 4 feet long.  Not that I'm really scared of lizards, but that thing is just climbing up the side right underneath someone's balcony.  What if you were sitting on your balcony and than thing just came up to visit?  I'm glad I saw this on the last day we were there. 

It was so nice to get away, but it was nice to get home to our babies again.  We sure did miss those little guys.