Ne-eeext: Galloway/Lanford/Lauckhart visit

At the beginning of October Jack's family came out for a visit. We had his grandma, mom, dad, sister, brother-in-love and our niece all hanging out for a week! It was great! We did lots of fun things like, go to the balloon fiesta museum (since the actual balloon fiesta was rained out), take the scenic route to Santa Fe from Albuquerque, hang out around the house and play with Kylee, go for hikes right out our back door, check out the Santa Fe Plaza, sight see along the drive up to the ski hill, hike up to the top of one of the ski lifts, play in the snow, eat lots of yummy food (both at home and out and about), play some games, do some crafts, learn how to sew, cancel credit cards due to a scare that a wallet was stolen, take lots of sunset pictures and just have fun spending time with each other. We were so thankful they took the time to come visit and it was wonderful to get to see Kylee as she is growing up so fast! This will be a long picture post since pictures are worth a thousand words! Enjoy...



Uncle Jack with sweet Kylee



Love that grin

Smile!

On the way to the ski hill...the Aspens were gorgeous.

In the parking lot of the ski hill...g-ma 91 years old and lovin' life!!

Tee-hee-hee...I'm ready for my hike!

Umm...I'm not sure if I'm in this thing quite right...

Kylee the Astronaut! Heyyyy let me out! :) She actually enjoyed it.

The "youngin's" ready to hike up the ski hill! It was cold!

Then it started to snow.

Kylee was zonked by the end of the hike.

just because she's so cute.

finished products from our craft project

view from behind the condo

fun playing dice...gramma rolled 6 one's in one roll! That's 8,000 pts!

Jennie taught me how to use my new sewing machine! Yay!

After canceling all her cards...the headlamp helped her find her "stolen" wallet in the dark sleeping room which Kylee had tossed into the suitcase...

Gramma cooked a few meals for everyone while she was here

and again...just because she's cute :)

Because Alinna said so...

This will be the beginning of a string of posts of updates on what we've been up to over the last few months...

To start off with...Labor Day...we had a good time back in September celebrating Labor Day with some friends from our church. As you may have seen in previous posts, there is a great spot for some cliff jumping not too far from Santa Fe/Los Alamos. There were a number of our friends from our church who were interested in trying it out so we loaded up the cars on that chilly morning and headed to Abiquiu Lake.  We stopped early for breakfast burritos on the way at a local stop and then hit the cliffs. Our friends, the Weavers, brought their dog, Brandy, for a swim and she was the first one in the water...unfortunately she didn't check out smart ways of getting out of the water before leaping and swam back and forth and back and forth searching for a way out...so Jack was the first on who jumped in to save Brandy :) It was a fun day of jumping, swimming, lounging and chit-chatting. We are so thankful for our church family and enjoy the fact that most of them are adventurers at heart! After fun time at Abiquiu Lake we headed back to Los Alamos for a cookout and cornhole with some friends. It was a great way to spend Labor Day weekend!

The whole gang after a fun day at the lake.

We had all 8 of us jump at the same time...it was awesome. The video is on Facebook

Jack had to jump in to save Brandy. Thankfully after the first time she figured out a much better way of getting out.

and just because i found this hilarious...

Pinochle

Fun times with Mom and Dad in NM! Dad's face is due to the fact that Jack just dumped a lousy hand on him :)...he was a good sport though.

Coming soon....

To a blog near you...an update! I promise :)

Kylee meet Mr. Lime

Last night we went to Jinja, a yummy Asian restaurant near our place. We all enjoyed our food and little Kylee enjoyed her very first lime! Check it out:

She sure is cute!

Our cute niece and her cool mama!

Fall Wreath DIY

Jack and I have been entertaining our 6 family members who are visiting from the east and west coast. It's been fun catching up with everyone and spending time with our little niece. While here I figured it'd be fun to spend one night working on a craft as a family. Having seen these on Pinterest and also seeing my good friend Alinna make one I figured we'd try our hand at making fall yarn wreaths. After dropping Grandma off at the beauty salon to get her hair done we were off to Hobby Lobby to pick up our supplies. Most had no idea I was going to spring this DIY on them but they were all good sports and that night, after the baby was down for the count we spread out on the extended kitchen table to do our craft. Julie got us all in the spirit by having us take a couple of minutes to write down our favorite things about Fall, Winter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc...while working on our wreaths we discussed a few of our favorite things. We worked as family units to create our wreaths and all pitched in to help Grandma with hers. Then Julie decided everyone had to make one piece of decoration to go on each couples' wreath. It turned out great! Pom-poms from Jennie and Gary were placed on the wreaths, flowers from Julie and me were placed on wreaths and they all turned out fun and festive. Check them out below:

Jennie opted for ribbon in place of yarn. Turned out beautifully.

Grandma getting started...she worked for a while then got a little bit of help :)

Jennie and Gary putting embellishments on their wreath.

Jack and me working diligently on our wreath.

Julie and Jon getting creative. Loved their patch-work idea.

Jennie and Gary's final product!!

Jack's and my finished product!!

Julie and Jon's finished product!!

Grandma hadn't quite finished hers yet, she wants to take hers home to do more on it. I may also add more flowers to mine, maybe below the pom-poms from J&G just to had a little more visual interest. All in all it was a great craft and we spent an enjoyable evening together making our wreaths!

Not Me Monday...

Today is Monday...time for Not Me Monday!

Saturday, I did not finally look into the addicting website Pinterest when I knew I should be cleaning for Jack's family to come into town on Tuesday...then while not browsing this addictive amazing website I did not stumble across an October photo challenge that struck my fancy. Never, I would totally be more focused and deliberate when planning for 6 family members to come visit! Then later that day, while the hubs and I were out running errands I did not try to capture photo challenge #1, while waiting on hubs to run into the bank, on my new phone (which I totally know how to work really well and never make mistakes while using it) and then inadvertently upload this picture to Facebook...never! I would never take a self photo and throw it up on Facebook for all the "world" to see because I completely know which buttons do what on my new phone, pshhh. Then once I got home I did not rush to my computer hoping that no one had really "noticed" the picture in hopes that I could delete it off without being "caught"...only to find 2 comments and one "like" on there already....and then I did not just go with it and leave the picture up on Facebook for a good laugh. Because I'm totally like those high schoolers who love putting up long arm pictures of themselves from their phones (ugh)...oh well. You win some, you lose some!

What have you NOT been up to lately??

October Photo Challenge

Source: theprojectgirl.com via Becky on Pinterest

This is a photo challenge I found on Pinterest....will be working to do this and post my pics on here, probably weekly but possibly more often as I have time to do it. If you'd like to join, let me know in the comments with a link to your blog so I can follow along and check out your pics!!

Photo #1: Self-portrait.

Dear Jack....

Source: smg.photobucket.com via Becky on Pinterest