Returning with honor

Elder Sheldon Vaterlaus returned from the Washington DC North mission.

 

It was touching to watch his little cousins, Colby and Ryan , be the first to run up and give him a hug.

 

Aunt Julie is very proud of this nephew.

 

 

Cousins.

 

We were all very proud of his two years of faithful service to the Lord.

A President's Day Getaway

We wanted to escape somewhere warm since Dave and I both had President's Day off. 

 

 We hiked around Zion National Park the first day.

Can you spot the deer?

Scott drove us over there.  It was so fun to hang out with him.  He and Dave have a good time whenever they are together.

We brought our bikes and Scott showed us the trails along the Virgin River.

Our last day we took a little tour of the St George Tabernacle. 

It was a great feeling to stand at the pulpit where every modern day prophet, with the exception of Joseph Smith, has spoken from.

 

 

 

It was a very quick trip.  But very much worth the drive.

The Boat Show

I'm not sure how many years we've been going to the boat show with the Bauer's. But chalk it up to one more year.

 

 

 

 

 

Steph and I brushed up on our wake surfing skills.

 

The boat show is a bright spot in an otherwise very dull February. 

Super Bowl Party

We had a low key Super Bowl party down our basement.  We were mostly cheering for the Broncos, with the exception of Roo and Megan who wanted Seattle to win. 

 

Cody frosted the brownies in true Denver fashion.

 

 

It was also Groundhog day, so I put Teddy Grahams in pudding to look like a groundhog emerging.

 

 

Brigham enjoyed his snacks.

 

 

 

Olivia wore the shirt Cody used to wear as a child.

 

We had some games to guess the score at each quarter.  Andrew and Megan came away the big winners that night but we all had fun being together.

January

So . .  Because of a computer crash, it has been nearly three month since I have been able to blog.  Also, that fact that I work 40 hours a week, has contributed to this delay in getting my family's photo history updated.

 

New Year's Eve we had the Stowers and Mason fams over to ring in 2014.  The kids gathered on the front porch to throw "pop its" and shout "Happy New Year".

We played some games, ate snacks and the kids piled on Alex until he finally got up and moved to another spot. 

The Ogden/Hof German festival has been a tradition for several years now.  Alex joined us to watch polka dancing and to eat weinerschnitzel, spetzel, kolrabi, and strudel.  Ja.

We celebrated our two January birthdays - Megan and Brigham.

What a joy this one year old has been in our lives.  Love him.

Since Lily is in the Chinese immersion program at her school she was able to participate in the Chinese New Year program at Weber State.  She is doing so well at learning Mandarin, speaking half of each school day with a native Chinese teacher.

 

 

Her class sang some songs in Mandarin at the program there.

The dragons kind of freak me out a little.

Also in January we went to a Jazz game.

Thank you, OC Tanner for providing these tickets.  Glad we didn't have to pay for them.

 

 

It was so fun to sit so close to the action.