Some Before's, In-Between's, and After's

Hair

Before

After


In-Between

One night I held Ellia's hand and she lifted up her leg HIGH! Now every time we hold one hand she has to stand on one foot and lift the other really high!

Patio

Before (this is actually not the best before, we took out a railing and a few plants)

In-between
After

A brand new toy for Ellia, who is not a huge fan of having wet sand on her hands!

or her shoes

Superhero Birthday party

The birthday boy and girl

Garage

Before


After

At the first of February we bought another car. It is a 2005 Ford Escape.

Pergola (Arbor)

This is an in-between project shot. The middle post has been pressure washed **NOTE TO ALL** if you have a lot of old looking wood in your yard, try pressure washing before restaining etc. We thought the gray was just old dry wood, but it was just caked on crap.

Here's a little before and after on one post.


Just being silly

At least this is the drawer I designated for her to play with!

All kinds of faces!

When Ellia is playing in her room and I go to check on her a lot of times I find her 'reading.' This time was especially cute because she was reading to her baby just like we read to her...on our laps!

Our one year California Anniversary!

A lot has happened since we've been here, and we have been loving it! Watching Ellia grow, working on our house and lawn, and entertaining visitors, have kept us busy!

Our most recent outdoor project, filling in the holes!

Digging - a favorite pasttime of you know who!

Trees are in! Luckily the tree guy said the small ones would catch up quickly!

Oops, I left Ellia to eat oatmeal by herself. She must have gotten fed up with the spoon and just started trying to shovel it in with her hands!

Man do I ever watch her? JK. She can actually squeeze her hand in the tiny space the child locks leave, and this time she got a hold of a pencil.

Is that an innocent face or what?

Playing "flip the toy" with daddy, it produced some great laughs....for all of us!

My parents came out and we went to Morro Bay, this is a small aquarium, and one of the seals, a harbor seal maybe...I can't remember, and when I incorrectly identified one of the seals I was curtly corrected by the locals!

Feeding a different kind of seal

Ellia loved the tanks of fish, she would run from one to another pointing and vocalizing! We can't wait to take her to the zoo, she LOVES animals - even big dogs!

Just north of Morro Bay at this time of year the ELEPHANT seals are beached so we went to see them...it was very impressive. These are the males showing quite a display

A fight for the women!

There is a walkway built right out over the beach so you are able to get very close.This big bull is laying on a baby, the mother is just to the right and boy did she put up a fit until the bull moved.

On our way to the coast we visited the sites where Jeremy chose to drill some wells.

The black well is another one he chose, it was so close to the green one, they had to completely move it while drilling for the new one

The orange stake is the next spot jeremy has chosen for them to drill

This is a spot just off the road where the oil is so close to the surface it oozes out. It is called a tar seep, and the tar just bubbles up and flows out

my mom playing in the tar

On their last night here we went to Buck Owens Crystal Palace for dinner and a show. Here is my dad, mom and little brother zak listening to Buddy Allen Owens and the Buckaroos

Ellia was quite the dancer which was fun to watch, but made eating difficult

Christmas Vacation Part Duex

Taking advantage of the new snow....cross country skiing at Dutch Hollow. The snow was so deep and there were no tracks so we each took turns breaking the trail. Me, my dad, Jeremy and my brother in law Jed.

We all had our moments, but it was quite a treat to see all the boys fall down in front of me. Jed was the first which made it even better (its always nice to have one more thing to tease him about) Jeremy went to help him and fell, and my dad turned back to see what was going on and HE fell!

View of Midway Valley from our sledding hill.

"Psst, Ellia, I'm not so sure we were supposed to eat yet" Jace and Ellia

Dancing to Mama Mia

New sassy coat

Jumping her new horse!

Ugly sweater party before

after

Derek & Chelsea

If the picture were 3D you could see that this sweater has things like wrapped presents hanging off it!

Ryan & Sara

Jeff

Geoff and Aleena

Alex & Becky

Jared & Heather. He had a real sweater from Savers but when Heather washed it, it turned out Ellia size! So he came as a vaquero with stockings pinned to his shirt!

Jazz game later that night

Jer, Gunner and Addie duck hunting at Utah Lake....ah, we just don't see those beautiful skies where we are now...

View of Timp

Jer, Travis and Gunner with their prizes

How we spent our New Years! We generally go to Jared's cabin at Bear Lake and we generally have something to talk about afterwards, last year it was Jared puking, the year before it was the water getting shut off, this year while we were playing an intense board game the table broke right in half! At least we had a good view of the lake from where we were sitting!

Happy 2009!

Watch out, Jared's gotta gun! We shot off guns...so redneck I know, and watched some fireworks down below us as we welcomed in the new year. Imagine my scare when the first gun went off and I jumped to celebrate only to hit my head on the lamp I was standing under!

Snowshoeing
What a nice message God sent on the first day of the new year!



Liz, Travis, Jer, me, Greg and Mallary

Jared wouldn't share the banana cream pie he asked a little old lady in Paris Idaho to make for his birthday, so Heather had to buy one from Marie Calendar's for us to share!

Among other things we played a new game called Cosmic Keep Away, and the traditional ping pong around the world, it was a bit more comfortable playing in the cabin than previous times when we played in people's garages in the middle of winter!