Christmas Eve

Every year on Christmas Eve my family does the nativity. I usually get to be Mary and this time I had a real Joseph! Our cat was baby Jesus for a while but then decided she didn't want to participate anymore so I just had a pillow to show to the wise men. Rory decided to start a new fashion in Bethlehem and wear an outrageously colored beach towel for his turban. We had a great Christmas and hope everyone else did too!

Sledding!

Dad getting ready for a ride down the hill on his taboggan. He's had this since he was a kid and my grandpa fixed it up and brought it from Texas. It's great to ride on! Nice and padded.

Adam, Sam, and Rory riding on dad's old toboggan

Ammon made a jump half way down the sledding hill and Rory was trying hit it but he missed and fell in the hole next to the jump.

Me about to run into a bunch of weeds.

Ammon going off the jump he made.

Kat being so happy to be out sledding.

It's Starting to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It's snowing so much outside right now we can hardly see across the street. It's amazing. Luckily we have a lot of food and a propane heater so if we get snowed in and the power goes out we'll be ok. At least for a little bit. We finally caved in today and bought one more space heater. The sheet of ice on the inside of the bathroom window was the last straw. Haha.

Christmas Tree Hunting

After traveling all day to get home from Thanksgiving at Vale, OR we hopped into another car and headed for the mountains. While being pummelled with snowballs we searched and searched for our tree. We finally found it and dragged over the chainsaw. Rory cut her down, strapped her to the top of Sheila and we went home. Look how manly he is with his chainsaw and camo coat.

Dad and Rory loading our magnificent tree onto Sheila. We had to cut off a lot to fit it into our apartment.

Here's the finished product! (sort of.... we haven't found a suitable tree topper) But I love it! And even more so with the lights on. It does make our living room a lot smaller. But it's worth it!

Edjumacation

We're learning how to be wildlife biologists! For our methods class we went out and tried to find radio collars with this antenna. We looked really funny standing by the side of the road waving this huge thing around. The girl in the picture is Alisha. She's lots of fun.

Good morning Rexburg!

Here's another of my less than perfect pictures of something beautiful. This is the view from our living room window. Love it!

Back when...

I dressed like an eighties child after and before it was cool!

Halloween!

Oh yeah! The eighties are back!!!! This year for Halloween Rory and I went to the Halloween Concert (which was awesome!) and then went to my parents house and played games and watched the traditional Arsenic and Old Lace. It was lots of fun. There was this kid roaming the neighborhood with a hockey mask on and he kept staring at us through the windows. Weird...

I've got some pretty cute cousins (and siblings). I think my favorite was the bumble bee. She would sting people.

Look how cute! Mom made those costumes in under a week! And the boys grew facial hair in only a day! Amazing.

Ack! So scary! I loved mom and dad's costume this year!!!! Dad superglued aluminum to his neck. Haha.

Straw Maze!!!

Instead of doing homework on Friday night Rory and I went with a bunch of people to the straw maze north of town. Here we are being super excited to go. It was loads of fun! The maze was supposed to be haunted but we only got jumped at by one guy (which was plenty). But we didn't need too much help with the scaring. We did a good enough job of scaring ourselves. The maze itself was really cool because we actually got lost in it. It took us a while to figure out how to get out of there. So much better than the corn maze in Rigby!

I guess Kat and Ammon weren't as scared to go in as Jessie and William.

Kat and Rory in the maze. And I accidentally blinded the two guys behind them too. Hope they made it out ok. The maze was so cool!

Brrrr!

Rory and I forgot to call the gas guys before the coldness started. Needless to say we were chilly for a few days. But eventually Mr. Gas Man came and now we're much happier. Yay for heat!

Goodbye to Pete

Awww... Pete's going to Brazil on October 22. He's so old! His farewell is on October 19 for all those interested. He'd love to have all the support he can get.

I was tagged!

Heidi tagged me in this game where you have to take the fourth picture from your fourth picture file and post it on your blog. Luckily this picture is a decent picture. Heidi came up to Rexburg as a suprise a few semesters ago and this is us being happy to see each other again. And Rory's hand. I tag Jerusha and Sara!

Our Day in Yellowstone

Mom and Dad took Ian, Adam, Rory, and I to Yellowstone on Saturday. It was lots of fun! We saw some bison and lots of elk and heard a rumor of a bear. There was also quite a variety of tourist species.

Well... the fumes were pretty noxious.

I thought these coke machines were pretty funny. Look how natural they are!

Mom and Dad are so happy to have such a great day at Yellowstone!

What a happy family. I think it might actually be impossible for our family to take a normal picture. But that's ok, it's just who we are.

Hahaha. This is my most favorite picture that I took all day. Ian looked so cute in his coon skin hat but right as I took the picture he made this ridiculous face. I laugh every time I look at this picture.

Adam wanted me to take this picture of him. Maybe he wanted to show his thoughtful side...

Dad being creative. I'm really not creative so I have to resort to showing how other people are being creative.

Our Kitchen

I took a couple pictures of our little ghetto apartment because people have been wanting to see them. This is our teeny tiny kitchen. We also have a stove and a refrigerator that aren't pictured. Oh! And a pantry! I'm pretty excited about that. The hallway you can see on the right goes back to our "study" and bathroom and bedroom. To the left is the living room.

Living Room

Here's our living room. I love having the piano! We've added a wedding picture on the wall beside the piano since I took this picture.

The Bathroom

We have a pirate bathroom. It's pretty fun.

Moving

This picture is a little out of order but I wanted you to see Rory's amazing packing job. We only had to throw one thing on top of the four runner. Needless to say it was a tight squeeze.

School!

Well, we're in our second week of school now and still alive. That's a good sign. Rory loves Genetics (har har) and I love Chemistry. We are so happy to do homework every night. Ok, maybe not sooooo happy but moderately satisfied. Other than school we go to demolition derbies, hang out with our newly married friends, and practice the piano. Yay!

The End

Wow! Summer is over. It went by pretty fast for us. We had a great time in Burns. We learned a lot and met a lot of really neat people. This is a picture of the crew we worked with all summer. Back row left to right: Rory, Jeremy, Carol, Georjanna (she's our fake boss). Front row: Me and Josie.

We also got to see Sara and Jake on Monday!!!! It was super fun! We sat in chairs at Crate and Barrel and ate lunch at P.F. Changs. We wish we could have spent more time with them.

The Lava River Cave

We went to Salem for our three day weekend and on the way there we stopped at the Lava River Cave. It's a huge lava tube and we wanted to explore. It was really neat! The tube was huge! It had a sandy bottom too, which was weird. Sometime in the 1930's some exuberant explorers decided to dig the tube out further so in addition to the huge tube we walked through we also got to crawl through a tiny tube with a bunch of other people. At the end it smelled like pee. Great. It really was fun though! We recommend it if you're ever over by Salem.

This little guy was running around the mouth of the cave and came right up to use when Rory started chattering at him. He probably thought he was going to get fed.

We love the headlamps Nathan gave us!!

Rory going into the cave.

Yay! We made it out alive with only slightly dirty knees.

Silver Falls

On the way to Salem we also stopped and walked to Silver Falls. It was gorgeous. And muggy! We're not used to humidity out here in Burns.

O'Connors in a hole!

Taking a rest from our oh so strenuous hike to the waterfall.

We're so used to dirt that rocks are a treat! We have lots of fun with them.