Winter Break 2013

We spent an entire week at the cabin over winter break. We went skiing 4 days and ice skating one day. The kids are getting much better at skiing. Pennington is going on Bear Chair now and Piper is doing better without the backpack. We ran into Pennington's best bud Henry King at the ice rink. Those boys loved skating together. Below are some pictures of our trip.

BSU Holiday Concert

A boy in Piper's close Ethan's parents had extra tickets to the BSU holiday concert. We went together as a family to watch the choir, band and orchestra play. I really enjoyed the Nutcracker music.  The BSU marching band played as well which was really cool since it was the same day Coach Pete took the job at UW. It was awesome to see how much everyone still loves the Bronco even without Coach Pete.

First Snow at the New House

Below are some pictures of the kids playing in the snow at the new house.

Picture of Maggie and River

The kids got the Crist family holiday card in the mail and Pennington decided to create the card himself. Below is a picture of Penningtons's drawing of the picture on the card. I was pretty impressed.

Thanksgiving 2013

We had Thanksgiving at our new place. Below is a picture of Pennington, Papa and G.G. eating dinner.

Boise State Basketball

Pennington with his favorite buddy Buster.

New Rooms

Well we moved into the new house today. Kids are sleeping in there beds for the first time. Thanks to both of our families with helping us move.

Bronco Football Games

You know it. We go or watch on TV every Bronco football game. We have still been able to get the kids in for free so they have been to a lot of games.

Pennington Work

When the children are really proud of there work at school they save it to show there parents. Below is some work Pennington did. It is a puzzle of the US that he put together all by himself.

Lakewood Halloween

We have an awesome private park by our house and the neighborhood gets together to put on a Halloween party in the park. Even though we haven't moved into our house yet we still joined in on the fun. Here are some pictures below.

Remodel with the Kids

In order to make the remodel work Johnny or I would put the kids to bed each night at my parents house and then work on the new house from 9 to midnight every night for about 6 weeks. It was crazy but so worth it. We learned that we can pretty much to anything if you put your mind to it. We tried to involve the kids when we could. Below are some pictures of Pennington helping out.

New House

In August we started looking for a new house and after looking at a few place and putting an offer in on another house we decided to purchase our home on Chickory.

It's in a great neighborhood, close to downtown, close to family and right where we wanted to be.

The only draw back was it is a 1970's house that needed a lot of updating. Below are the before pictures.

Please note we have updated the house since then. It looks much better now.

Piper Hair Cut

Piper got her hair cut at Monkey Dooz in Eagle. She got to:
1. Sit in a cool pink Jeep
2. Watch a show
3. Get her hair curled
4. Get sparkles in her hair
5. Have her picture taken and put into a frame.
6. Get a certificate with a piece of her hair on it.

Below is a picture of her getting her hair washed.  I will post a picture of the frame and certificate later.

Really Old Car

One afternoon a really old model T drove by our house and the gentleman in the car asked if the kids wanted a ride. I let them take a spin. I was told by the gentleman that this car costs around $3M and there are only 3 left in the world still running. Not 100% sure how accruate that is but it was still really cool for the kids.

Vacation 2013 - Day 9 and 10

Day 9 was the beginning of our long drive home. We started the morning off going to the Asian district to get Grandma some special Asian food. We then headed from Seattle back to Emigrant Spring State Park outside of Pendleton, Oregon. This was the same park we stayed at on our first night.

This time we stayed in Cabin 6 which was bigger, had a stove and a refrigerator.

Day 10 we drove from Emigrant Spring State Park back to Boise. The trip was a blast and I know the kids will continue to talk about it for months, even years, to come.

Below is one picture from days 9/10 of our trip, cabin 6 where we spent our last night.

Vacation 2013 - Day 8

On day 8 of our vacation we headed to the Seattle Center to go use the last 2 tickets in our Seattle Passes. We went up the Space Needle for a second time and then to the Experience Music Project ("EMP"). If you ask the kids they loved the Space Needle. They were "on top of the world". At the EMP our family participated in a rock concert under the name Rock and Roll. Pennington played the drum, Johnny played the guitar, I played the bass and Piper was on vocals. We even have a poster of our band.

Before leaving the Seattle Center we met up with my life long friend Lindsey Graff.

In the afternoon we got ready for the big game. We decided to take a bus down to the game since there wouldn't be a lot of parking available by the stadium. Two and a half hours later we finally got on a bus to head down to the game. By the time we got to the stadium everyone was heading into the game 2 hours early to see the new stadium so we weren't able to tailgate with anyone.

On a good note we were able to get our whole family into the game with only 2 tickets. On a bad note our $98 tickets were 6 rows from the top. Pennington and I wore UW shirts and Piper and Johnny wore BSU shirts. 

Below are a few pictures from day 8 of our trip.

 

Vacation 2013 - Day 7

On day 7 we spend most of the day driving up to Bellevue, Washington from Tillamook, Oregon. We stopped at a mall to grab a bit to eat and Johnny thought it would be a great idea to let the kids do one of those trampoline jumping things. I was not a fan of the idea but the kids loved it.

After checking into our hotel in Bellevue we headed to Gasworks Park for a picnic with a few my sorority sisters (Stacy, Julia, and Katie). Below are some pictures of day 7.