Valentine's Day

 Happy Valentine's Day!  I was crafty this year and went to a craft group with ladies from my ward where I made these cute Love blocks.  David took me to the Sanrio store where I picked out this card organizer and glass.  I love what they say on them!  I got David the little monkey.  We also went out to eat for dinner.

Oregon visit

I went to Oregon in January to visit my family for a belated Christmas celebration and to see my new niece Zari for the first time.  It was a good visit.  Crystal and Brian and the four kids came down to my parents house and stayed the night one of the nights.  Between them, me, my parents, and the 3 sister missionaries staying with my parents, we definitely had a full house that night!  Here are some pictures I took (mostly of Zari):

Teela in her "new" coat

Taking the dogs for a walk

Snow

It snowed here one day in the fist week of January.  Here are some pictures I took before I left for work of our backyard and of Chomps after she had gone outside.  It had all melted by the afternoon though.

Christmas 2010

For Christmas this year we stayed in Las Vegas and it was just the two of us.  We weren't going to have a tree, but then I randomly saw this little $5 tree at a grocery store and decided to get it.  We didn't really have any gifts to exchange, so we just slept in Christmas morning and then had german pancakes for breakfast.  My sister Jennifer called from her mission in Hawaii, and we were able to have everyone in the family on the same phone conversation, which was nice.  We went to see the lights at the cactus garden, which has turned into a tradition.  I didn't feel like cooking and we didn't want to wait in a huge buffet line, so we ended up getting chinese take-out for dinner and then we watched Christmas Vacation.

Chomps and our little $5 tree

Chomps' Christmas bandanna

cactus garden lights

Mount Charleston

We drove up to Mount Charleston in October when Dadoo and Mandy were visiting us.  We brought Chomps too and she loved it.  I was missing fall leaves, so it was nice to see some.  We also saw a deer when we were doing a little hiking-Chomps didn't even notice it though!  We were trying to find a trail that leads to a small waterfall, but didn't have a map or the best directions, so we didn't find it.  We still saw some pretty areas though.  Here are some of the pictures I took:

                                       

David Steve's Europe

Welcome to my first blog post. Melody might follow this up (soon?) with a muti-part post. Until then, here is my recap covering the number of days we spent in each place and what impressed me the most and/or least.

London: 4 days, Tower Hill was “brilliant“, filled with fun history and stories, Melody had to tear me away from that place, hiking the 530 steps to the top of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral on the other hand was a test of will that I think almost crippled our ability to walk with 13 more days to go. Wish we had had another couple of days in London.

Paris: 4 days, the locals were much more helpful than advertised, Versailles was lessened with an unfortunate debut of modern Japanese art that was scattered in different rooms in the palace, amazing views of the city from atop the Arc de Triomphe (Arch of Triumph) and Eiffel tower highlighted our visit, the city could work on improving its smell (seriously).

Venice: 2 days, this place was easily the most fun of all the cities we stayed at, I already miss the gelato and simply wandering around there was better than most of the paid attractions I’ve been to.

Florence: 2 days, we were totally “museumed out” by this point, I must admit that seeing Michelango’s David made the stop worth it though and I am by no means normally impressed by statues, but it really is that good and in a sense overwhelming.

Rome: 3 days, I’ve always wanted to see the Colosseum and the ancient Roman ruins so this was a fulfilled dream, the sights in Rome were my favorite by far and a nice change of pace after seeing so much art in London, Paris and Florence.

Names

I saw this link on a friend's blog and thought it was hilarious...thought I'd share:

http://jessica-jensen.blogspot.com/2010/04/names-2009.html

Chompers turns 1

Our puppy turned 1 on Thursday.  We got her some peanut butter doggie ice cream that she absolutely loved and a new toy that she's already ripped some holes in.  Happy birthday Chomps!