The Break

You are now experiencing the end of my break from blogging in a blog about what happened during that break. 

If you would like to experience this more fully, scroll all the way to the bottom of this post and read from the down up. Or, you can just go with the option of following the picture uploader that obviously also has a break and read about our last month, out of order!

----

Now we are just trucking along and hanging out. Billy started school and is going to build a shed in our back jungle yard and that's about it! Thanks for enduring the backward break blog, hopefully it was still enjoyable!

Since then we traveled down to Monroe for Viana's baptism and Emery's blessing--crazy that Viana is old enough to get baptized! She did great! And crazy that CJ now has our whole family, 5 kids! Emery's blessing was also great. 

That orange spot at the point of the mountain where it looks like that contrail begins is where we hiked to. Pretty dang high!

The small summit you can see poking out in the second layer of the bottom right hand corner of this picture is Angel's Landing, the legendary hike of Zion's (you can see my hike of it here to remember how intense it was) and I thought it was like the highest thing in the world when I hiked it last year and yet we were towering over it! We were pretty high. I was pretty scared. 

But it was good cus in the morning we got up and hiked to the highest point in Zions and were the first to make it there in 2014 (though we had some contenders hot on our trail) (not really, we killed them. But they were friendly). It was a gorgeous hike and a crazy view and we had so much fun.

Billy was super pumped when he managed to start a fire with the flint and steel and little cotton tinders that the Lindes gave us for Christmas. Thanks, Lindes! 

We set up camp and then, I'm only a little ashamed to admit it since I slept through most of it, but watched Avengers in our tent with the hope of staying up until midnight. (obviously didn't work). In fact, I woke up right as the end credits came on and asked Billy what time it was and we laughed our heads off when it was 12:02! Haha we totally missed the new year countdown. 

For New Year's we took a trip to Zion's. Has anyone in this family even ever been there? Well, you should go! It was fantastic.

Ok, fast forward again, we went to Colorado Springs after Christmas for a few days and that was also very fun. Upon arriving we were pleased to see that the Peak was very clear and had hardly any snow and immediately went to drive to the top (I have been to the summit every year since like 7 years ago, and I was thinking that this year would be the first I would not make it up! Close call, making it up on the 29th!) Once we got up there, it started snowing like crazy, and we took a quick look around and a few pictures (all while squealing with joy and showing Billy every rock and cloud that holds such fond memories) before the ranger kicked us off. Dad drove like a champ. 

Also, backtrack, the day before Christmas we still hadn't give the Carters their presents so we took a little trip down there but didn't arrive until like 11 at night and so just set up camp in the front yard! When the Carters woke up in the morning first CJ was surprised and then we worked out a scheme where CJ told us when everyone woke up, we rang the doorbell then jumped back in the tent and they found a joyous surprise on their lawn! It was so great, we just heard Ram open the door and go..."that is crazy!" It was so much fun to go and finally meet Emery, who is precious and huge!

and Christmas was so fun and good. Billy spoiled me silly and I just wrapped up some dirt bike parts for him that he'd already bought for himself and made him that sweet poster (which says I got him a subscription to his dirt bike magazine) but it was still great. 

I had a Christmas miracle and found my wallet in a place where I had looked a thousand times before. 

I took some time this break to finally clean out our Relief Society closet! I wish I had remembered to take a before picture, because it was just a disaster, but here it is now! We had enough paper goods to supply every ward for every activity from now till kindgom come and tons of gratuitous craft supplies (seriously, who keeps the old plastic cups they used to hold paint water in for one activity in the '70s?) and more tablecloths than every stake in zion could ever hope to use. It was very great.

We were pretty happy with it!

We didn't put enough effort into getting a real tree, so we used what we had and enjoyed a tropical Christmas

For whatever reason we didn't even put up a single decoration until right before Christmas. So here is what we came up with three days before.

We started the month of December off with my Morinda work party. Though this picture is hideous for more than just the reason that we are wearing ugly sweaters, it is one of our favorites. The party was crazy. It was in none other than Costco. It was pretty fun, they had little games at which you could win money and then you had to spend whatever you won that night. Not too shabby. We got a huge bag of chicken and a lifetime supply of soap. Nice.  

Good job for deciding to scroll down to start, it will make more sense this way. Ready?