New York, New York

Mike surprised us all with a trip to New York after Thanksgiving.  The day we flew in, we rented a car and drove to Palmyra, New York to see some church history. We stayed in a hotel and then the next morning we spent the whole day seeing the sights. We went to the Smith family homestead and walked through the sacred grove.

 

 

It was fun trying to guess where the first vision might have took place in those woods. The sister missionary that took us on our tour was so in tune with the spirit. She told us some cool stories about the Smith Family. She also said things that were just for our family and touched us very deeply.

 We saw where the gold plates were hidden by Joseph Smith under the bricks of the fireplace. Here is a picture of Calvin by the fireplace. When Calvin touched the bricks on the fireplace, he said, "I can't believe I have touched where Joseph Smith has touched."

 We were in the same room where angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith. It was definitely a testimony building experience and you could feel the spirit so strong.

We visited Hill Cumorah and the visitor center right below the hill. We went to the Palmyra temple and walked around the temple grounds. We drove around the town and saw the old churches. It was such a wonderful experience and I am so glad we took the time to visit this sacred place.

 

 

 

We drove back to Manhattan that night. We stayed in an apartment a couple blocks from Times Square. This is the entrance to our apartment.

 The city was so busy because of the holiday season. We saw the tree in Rockerfeller center.

 We visited the Museum of Natural History.

 

 

 My favorite time was walking through central park and exploring. The kids loved climbing on all the big rocks and we were all in awe of this beautiful city.

 

 

 

The girls and I saw Mary Poppins on Broadway one night. It was so incredible! We were on the balcony and at the end of the play Mary Poppins grabbed her umbrella and flew above the audience. She passed right by us on the balcony before she went straight up to the ceiling. She was so close,we felt like we could reach out and touch her.

 

We saw the Manhattan Temple, It was so cool to see it in the middle of a city surrounded by sky scrapers.

 The door handles inside this temple are made to look like the Statue of Liberty's torch.

We ate at several different restaurants and cafes that all cost way too much money. The pizza was the best!

 

 

 

 

 

 The girls felt so cool to be in the big city. They loved all the cool doors and details of the buildings.

 

 

 One night we went to Mcdonalds to get hot cocoa and we got harassed by a drunk guy. The kids did really well ignoring him and trying not to freak out. Someone called security and they escorted him out quickly.

On our way to the airport we stopped in Jersey City and went to a park on the bay to see the Statue of Liberty. The shore was blocked off due to damage from hurricane Sandy, so we couldn't get very close.  We walked through this memorial for the 9/11 victims from New Jersey.  The 2 pillars represent the two towers and all the names of the people who died were on the walls. Directly across the bay is Manhatten and the pillars line up exactly where the two towers used to be.

The day we left, it was 60 degrees and beautiful blue skies.

 

 

 

We had the best time! We have the coolest family in the world. My kids are so fun to be with and they always make us laugh. Mike and I loved watching them experience something new.

                                                                            - Andrea

C.H.S. cheer goes to State

The C.H.S. cheer squad has traditionally not competed at all. Well this year they got a new coach and she wants the girls to be able to get cheer scholarships to pay for college. So for them to qualify for those scholarships, they need to do at least one competition a year. After 2 weeks of practicing and learning the routine, they competed at Skyline High School. We didn't know what to expect.
The squad did an amazing job and won 2nd in their category. (2A non-tumbling coed)

 

 

They also qualified for state, which happened to be the next weekend. It was so much fun to see all the hard work pay off.



The next weekend they won 4th in state. They looked so good! What a great experience for Mckenzie. She goes up so high in the basket toss and she loves every minute of it. This picture was taken by a reporter, he took it right as she was getting thrown up. I love the look on her face.

 

 

loss of teeth

 

 

 

 

 

 

Max lost 3 teeth in the last few days. He got 4 dollars from the tooth fairy. Max said when his friend Josiah finds out, his mind will be blown.

He is growing up so fast and starting to look like a big kid. I love my max!

FUN. Concert 2013

The Fun Concert

We had an AWESOME oppurtunity to go to the fun. concert this past week!! It was so cool!!


UPDATE: Just so you know, this was NOT a triple date with the boys in the pictures. These are some of Kayla and Mckenzie's friends who just happened to be there, so we sat with them.  They were alot of fun! (This is for mom ward so I don't hear about it later)

 

 

Max, Kevin and Nick took off their shirts...

So much fun!! (PUN INTENDED ;D)

Photo Pandemonium - November 2012

This is Lexie. My mom is kinda making me take up this blog for her, updating it "regularly" and making her look good.

That's gonna last.

Anyway, this past November we had the privilege, I guess you could call it, to have family pictures taken again. Luckily, we had the amazing Kjrsten Madsen take the photos, so they turned out amazing no matter how rotten we were all feeling.

Needless to say, we were all a bit on edge. I mean, it's family pictures. These are going to be hung around the house for years. That gives us some high expectations - we want to look good, smile good, have the right outfit, all that stuff.

Here's how the day ended up going:

We all slowly woke up, dragging ourselves from bed with rather negative additudes towards the day's events. It didn't feel like a "picture day". It felt like a normal Saturday, and it was even raining.

Maybe that's what threw us off the most.

I think we had all been counting on it being partly sunny, maybe even cloudly, but none of us had wanted it to rain. We would get muddy and our hair would get all lanky. Who wants that to happen?

So, we all piled into the car rather grumpily (some of us wearing different outfits than originally planned) and drove to downtown Seattle.

We had thought that maybe it wouldn't be raining at our destination, but with our luck, of course we were wrong. We arrived at the studio and, surprise surprise, the roads were wet, and there was even mud evident in some places.

Of course, we didn't want all of our pictures to be in the studio, so, naturally, we went outside, to Gasworks, for some more inspirational pictures, maybe with the Space Needle set abstractly in the background.

But we weren't getting what we wanted without a little bit of a setback.

The only umbrellas we had just happened to be, in my mom's definition, "not good for family photoshoots". Okay, maybe she didn't say that, but she probably wanted to. One of them almost worked, it was a black and white umbrella, nice and simple. The other one was completely identical, except that instead of black and white, it was green and white - nothing worse than that, right?

We worked with what we had, and they didn't turn out as horrific as we thought they might. In fact, we looked pretty good.

I forgot to mention, Kjrsten got some really good pictures of us running up this huge hill we're standing on.

 

After that, we climbed another hill...

 

I'm proud of my family. We climbed two hills and avoided slipping in the wet and muddy grass on the way down. That is an accomplishment.

After the hills, we were cold and wanted to wrap up the nature portion of our photoshoot. We looked around a little longer, and then decided to go back to the car. Once we got back to the studio, we took individual photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, this was quite the day.

 

:D

 

~Lexie(: