Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours - 2015

Merry Christmas!!!

After spending much of the year in Pennsylvania fixing up our home and enjoying our great friends and the green trees we moved back to Utah.  The cross country drive was long and hard, but it is great to be back with our family.  We will miss our Pennsylvania friends a lot.  In PA we enjoyed being a part of the BYU Alumni chapter and generally sporting our BYU spirit every where we went.  We enjoyed seeing many Pennsylvania sights.  We loved camping as a family, seeing exotic animals, using chalk, and being crafty.  We traveled to CA for a Hatch family reunion in the summer.  After moving back to Utah we have loved seeing all of the family that we have missed.

Charlie 4.5 yrs

Charlie began learning the viola from Charles.  He loves to learn and is becoming better at reading and math.  He keeps growing taller and stronger.  He loves to help Grandpa Larry shovel snow.

Henry 3 yrs

Henry never stops talking and loves to use his imagination to come up with some fantastic stories and ideas.  He loves wrestling with Charlie and the boys have a lot of fun together being boys.

Elizabeth 1.5 yrs

Elizabeth goal for the year was to grow her hair long enough that it could be done into cute girly hairdos.  Lizzy thoroughly loves having her hair done every morning.  She is loving her pink glasses that she got which have fixed her lazy eye.  She is very girly and loves to show off her cute outfits and hair to Daddy every morning.

Charles 35 yrs

Charles enjoyed teaching his coworkers about guns and taking them out shooting.  He took Annette on their first real honeymoon to Jamaica where they had a fabulous time without their children.  He works hard and is a great husband and father.

Annette 25.9 yrs

Annette went to NYC with friends.  She did her first triathlon in Philly and wants to do another.  She has dedicated a significant amount of time to family history this year and it doesn't look like she will stop any time soon.  She also keeps herself busy with crafty things to help the family.

Idaho for Thanksgiving

We went up to Idaho for Thanksgiving to visit Annette's sister and her family.

We had a lot of fun doing hair.

The boys enjoyed being together and laughing over the silliest things.

We played with some Playmobil toys.

And the Austin girls piled on Annette's lap.

The turkey was smoked and was absolutely delicious!

Sterling and Elizabeth had lots of fun together.

Eliza tried to get to know Uncle David, but it didn't really work.

We loved hanging with Aunt Colleen.

And Grandpa Larry.

Charles played Disney Princess Old Maid with Amaya and Noelle.

Lizzy loved trying on the Black Friday jewelry.

The snow on our way home was beautiful!

The Big 3 for Henry

It's November again and Henry is one year older and wiser, too.  He is such a fun and happy boy who we love so much.  

He has such a cute smile that makes his eyes so squinty.

He is such a happy boy!

He loves to do fun, cute things.

He keeps us laughing with his cute antics.

He loves being with his siblings.

And he loves going out and doing fun things.

For Henry's birthday he had a fun chocolate truck cake.  He loved it.  Eventually we are going to have to put a little more effort into their cakes.

We went to the Living Planet Aquarium for his birthday and we all loved it.

Henry is such an amazing kid who we love so much!

We moved to Utah!

Here is the map of our journey.

Here is one of our last beautiful sights before heading out on our cross country journey.

Here we are heading out Tuesday afternoon! 

Charles wanted to weigh the trailer and so we did so.  It was a bit heavier than expected and so we consequently never drove above 50 mph.

We saw some great alternate destinations along our way.

We drove west across PA, hit the north tip of West Virginia, and then went through Ohio.  We did not get pictures of every states' sign because it was to dark for some of them.

Worst roads ever.  Smooth before and smooth after, but I thought we were going to blow a tire in this state.

I really wanted to hit Paris, but Charles was sure they didn't have an Eiffel tower at this Paris. 

We spent an extra day resting at Charles' cousin, Debi's house in Missouri.  Nothing like resting from all that sitting we had been doing.

Hills like this were awful and we tried hard to avoid them. 

Charlie was the first to spot the Kansas City Missouri Temple.

Nebraska has these crazy little oasises all over the place.  They also have 4G along I-80 in this state.

Henry was so tired after driving one day that walk from the truck to the hotel was just so exhausting.

There was a large section of road that was bumpy.  Going 45 mph plus the trailer hitting the bumps and rocking the truck even more was lots of fun for the kids.

https://youtu.be/7Xiw34Fcl4k

They loved putting Berenstain Bear stickers on their stuffed dogs.

They were all generally quite happy.

There were some drivers that did not appreciate us driving 50 mph, especially when the road went to one lane for road construction.  We got a few angry honks from cars and semi trucks.

 We didn't think that we would be passing Hershey on our way to UT, especially not in Nebraska. 

We were so excited to see 80 mph even if we couldn't go that fast.

I have been growing this pineapple plant for about half a year and Charles was sweet enough to deal with having it up front with us on our drive.

We finally arrived in Utah on Sunday, two days later than we had planned.  We were so excited to be home.  Our first week after arriving was spent sick.  I guess that's what we get for taking the kids into at least four gas station bathrooms a day for 6 days.  We we're bound to pick up a few germs.

After getting to Utah it was fun to look over our blog post of driving out to PA two and a half years prior.  The kids sure have grown.  And that trip was much shorter.