The time has come!

Almost four years ago when we decided to move to McCook, NE our mind set was always when we get back Wyoming. We were far away from family, there weren't very many people we knew that were our age and had kids, espicially in church. In fact, the people closest to us in age were the missionaries in our Branch, and we couldn't exactly hang out with them! We had it in our minds, at that time, that we would be here for 3-5 years, get some experience, and then try to move back closer to our families. As time went on, we bought a house, made some great friends, and have really come to love Nebraska, and McCook. As a result, our tone changed from "when" we move back to Wyoming, to "if" we ever move back to Wyoming.

About a month ago Christian was approached by a company out of Greybull, Wyoming for an agronomy job. After much prayer, fasting, and pondering, we (well Christian) accepted the job and so we are on our way to moving back closer to our families! Christian's first day will be March 14. It has become a fast and furious move...like when we move, we will have had just three weeks to put our house on the market and pack up our house! We will be renting at first, in Lovell until our house sells.

I never thought in my wildest dreams that making a decision to move back home closer to our families would be a hard decision, not that it was hard to make, but it's been emotionally hard. We truely love Nebraska and are having a hard time leaving our friends...sure wish we could take them with us! We have been so blessed to have such great friends here and great friends for our boys. We will miss the playgroups, storytime, boating adventures and game nights that we have enjoyed while we were here. We have had great help the last couple of weeks with many offeres from great friends to watch our kids so we could clean and pack. Thanks to all of you for your support and help!

We are really excited for the opportunity we have been given and know it's the right/best thing for our family. It will be fun to be around so much family and be able to raise our boys with them around! We are looking forward to our next adventure in the Big Horn Basin!

Valentine's Day 2011

We celebrated Valentine's Day three different times this year. First, we attended a Valentine's Day party with our playgroup, hosted by our friends, the Laringtons. The kids each made their own Valentine boxes and Valentine's for each of the kids before the party. Carson wanted to make a robot, and Travis...well, I made him a fire truck box. The kids enjoyed playing with each other, enjoyed a "hearty" lunch, and got some fun Valentine's too!

Next we celebrated on the actual Valentine's day. I'm not the biggest fan of this holiday, so we didn't do anything too special. My boys got me a gift certificate for a pedicure that I'm really excited to use. The boys got to share some special sweets for their gifts.

Carson had a party at school a couple days after. He did a great job getting all his Valentine's ready for his classmates. They passed out their Valentine's, had treats and then got to play some games...it made for a fun day at preschool!

The boys making their Valentine boxes

The finished products: a green robot and a red firetruck

Carson passing out his Valentine's

An older sibling of a playgroup friend gave out awards to each of the kids' boxes. Carson was most original and Travis won an award for the best made by mom!

Lunch time!

These were what the kids had for lunch. I just thought they were a cute idea!

Hawaii, part 2

The last part of our trip was great. On Sunday, we flew to Oahu early that morning. Once we arrived, we grabbed some breakfast and were trying to decided exactly what we wanted to do when my mom threw us an envelope and said here were some things from the car rental people suggested we do while we were there. My sister opened up the envelope and out fell six tickets to the NFL Pro Bowl!! Boy were we surprised!! The game didn't start until 2 so we had a few hours to kill before so we made our way to Pearl Harbor. We spent a couple of hours touring the museums that they have set up, watching a moving and then rode a boat out to the sight where they have a memorial built over the USS Arizona. It was quite a humbling experience to walk over the top of that sunken ship. I can't even imagine the horror that the people felt that day! After we finished our tour of the ship, we made our way to the ALoha Stadium for the game. After driving around for quite some time and not finding a parking space, my dad and Christian dropped us off so we could go get sat down and they went to find a place to park (which ended up being close to where we were at Pearl Harbor...guess we should have stuck with our original instincts and just parked there). As we started to walk in, it began to sprinkle, and by the time we sat down, it was raining pretty good. So after about a half an hour of rain, I went and bought some ponchoes for everyone. And, as luck would have it, we wore them for about 15 minutes and it stopped raining! The rest of the game was perfect! We even managed to see a few famous people like Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Chris Leban, a UFC fighter. We had to leave before the game was over so that we could make sure to make it back to the airport in time to catch our flight back to Hawaii (it was the last one of the day).

Pro Bowl Tickets!!
Pearl Harbor

Pro Bowl Time!

Drizzling...

A little harder now...we had to put on our sweatshirts...

Poncho time and Rain!

Waiting for the game to start.

Goo Goo Dolls sang at half time and some American Idol guy sang the National Anthem (can't remember his name...all I know is that my sister was excited!)

Our delicious pizza for lunch! Papa Johns was a fave when we lived in Laramie and we were excited to see some at the game!

When went to eat at Panda Express after the game. Don't be fooled by the pictures...the food was amazing!!

It had been a long day by the time we got to the air port to catch our plane back to our resort and when we get tired we get a little silly!

Monday, we decided to go back to the beach to boogey board some more. The waves were tons better this time, making for some good rides into the beach! After a day at the beach, we went and played in some of the pools that had slides. We acted like we were about 5....and it was FUN!AFter we had had as much as we could handle on the slides, we took a shower and enjoyed dinner at Roy's (where I ate soy beans for the first time) with my brother and his little family.

We didn't know there was a gun show at the beach that day either! BONUS!!

Ah, the slides! We had a little more fun than we should have on them, but hey...we were on vacation!

Crocodile eyes!

we decided we would try going under the waterfall...it kind of hurt.

Wednesday, our last day there, we decided to stick to the resort and just played in the lagoon again. We rented kayaks and had races...I wasn't in a winning kayak once! :( After we were done with our fun at the lagoon, we went back to get ready and back our stuff up. When we were all ready, we did a little shopping and had dinner in Kona (where the airport is) at Bubba Gump's. We flew out late (like almost 10:00) Wednesday night and arrived back to freezing Montana about 11:00 Thursday. When we had loaded all our luggage, we dropped my brother off at my mom and dad's house and then made our way to Lovell to see our boys. We ended up spending the rest of the weekend in Lovell and traveled all the way home Sunday.

We were laughing because we were totally posed and ready to get our picture taken by the sign at the volcano and this old dude came and stood like two feet away from us totally clueless that we were going to take a picture...

Must have been a kodak moment!

The sunset the last night we were there.

The family learning how to do the hula!

Before the hula
My grandma and sister got a little island lovin' from the hula guys!!
Our last day!

Butts and I racing Christian and Jason in the kayaks....we lost!

Christian's giant sno cone!

It was a great trip and really missed Hawaii when we got back to the negative degree weather of Wyoming! We would have loved to have the boys there with us to play at the beach...maybe next time!