Snow Day!

 
Living in Ohio allows us to experience Snow Days. I get a phone call about 5:30 in the morning saying school has been delayed for 2 hours. About 8:00 I get another phone call saying school is closed for the day. We had two snow days last week. Darrin and I decided to venture out in the "heavy storm" and go for a walk to the park across the street to see the Christmas lights. We had a whole 2 inches of snow on the ground (it was freezing cold though)!!
Snow days are wonderful when you are a teacher!

Gingerbread Houses!

Every year my mom makes hundreds of gingerbread houses (well maybe not hundreds but she makes a lot). We always have families over to decorate them. This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions so I thought I would give it a try and start it out here in Ohio. I made 7 houses and they all stayed standing! :)

We had families over two different nights to decorate. We had a great time with our friends. We feel so blessed to have such great friends out here. It sure makes it a lot easier to be away from family.

Our gingerbread house this year has a dog named Clifford and a dog house with a food and water dish. Darrin also added a porch over our front door, we have an igloo in the back and Santa's face on the side.

$1.93 for gas?!?!

Yes, we paid $1.93 for gas today.

Squirrel

Living out here in Ohio allows us to experience new things almost every day. One thing that we don't have back in Utah are white squirrels. We have white squirrels here in Ohio but we have had a hard time getting a picture of them. They are fast little creatures. We usually see them at the park across from our apartment or running across the power lines. The other day I opened our blinds and there was a white squirrel sitting on the garbage outside. I grabbed my camera and I was able to get a few pictures of this little guy.

Christmas Spirit!

I love to decorate for Christmas. I love the feeling and the coziness of the Christmas season. After a little persuasion, Darrin let me put the Christmas tree up last week (before Thanksgiving) and I finally finished decorating our little apartment today.

Thanksgiving

We were invited to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt Jaimee and her family. We drove down to Kentucky on Wednesday and left Thursday night. Kelsey welcomed us with her "Thanksgiving Leis" that she had made just for us. After the kids had gone to bed, we enjoyed a game of  "Settlers of Catan" with Jaimee and Blaine (Darrin won). We had a great time with the whole family. It rained all day on Thursday so we stayed inside and played games with the kids and watched some movies. Blaine took us on a ride down River Road to downtown Louisville. It is a pretty town and we enjoyed seeing the Ohio River. The kids made cute name tags for each of us. We had a yummy dinner on Jaimee's fancy china (it was the first time she had ever used it!), and we enjoyed going around the table telling what we were thankful for that started each letter of the alphabet.


We are so grateful to have family near by to spend the holidays with. Thank you Jaimee and Blaine for letting us come down! We love you!

Nauvoo!!

  

This last week we were able to join some of my family in Nauvoo. My aunt and uncle and their family were out there and my grandparents came from Utah. Darrin had fall break and I took a few days off of work for this very neat and fun experience! This was Darrin's first time to Nauvoo. He was excited to go. We enjoyed listening about the brick making, the blacksmith, the gun shop, and all the other Pioneer stories. We also enjoyed the walked down the "Trail of Hope" to the Mississippi River. We loved the time spent with family and making memories, the dinner at the fabulous 'Ogo's', swimming in the pool, and watching the Rendezvous put on by Missionary Couples. 

 The highlight our our trip was probably being able to do a session at the Nauvoo Temple. It was so neat to be able to go inside that Temple. The Spirit was strong there. We were so grateful that we were able to join family for this trip! It was an experience we will not forget. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa and Jaimee and Blaine for letting us come!!

We also enjoyed visiting Carthage Jail and remembering what our Prophet Joseph Smith went through so that we could have the Gospel in our lives today.

We also got to see Sister Myers-she is a relative of Darrin. She was at the post office the day we took a tour of it. It was fun to see her for a few minutes!