A review of 2007-- Picture overload!

We started out the year at a BYU basketball game. :)

This is our St Patrick's Day hike.

Yes, there was still snow in the canyon.

Easter morning.

In April Devin and Emily and their kids got to visit. Here are Josh and Claire with Ethan and Julia. Andrew was around too, but we didn't get any pictures with him.

Later in April we went to Florida! We started out in Orlando and we went to Disneyworld-- Magic Kingdom.

Then we went to Jacksonville and stayed at Derek's parents' house. The beach was a little chilly at night, but was great the next day.


At the beach in Jacksonville.

In June we had more cousins visit-- Tamara and David came to town with their kids. This is Julia, Rebekah, and Amie at the Ogden Treehouse museum.

And here is Sanja, Julia, Ethan, Amie, and Rebekah at the Treehouse Museum.

Julia's preschool graduation.

Here are Ethan and Julia at the Orem Night parade with Hunter and Kaycee, we go every year with them.

In June we also went to Zion National Park. We went on some fun hikes and had a great time. Here's Derek and Julia in the river.

This was on our hike up to the Emerald Pools.

This is the Upper Emerald Pool at Zion, the hike to get here was a bit difficult, and it was SO hot (around 106), so when we finally made it here it was amazing. You can barely see Derek and the kids in the water right in front of the huge boulder.


And this is on our way back down.

Julia was a little tired by the end, but she was a trooper, she did made it all the way up and most of the way down by herself. Our hikes were over 4 miles and much of it on steep, rocky dirt trails that were difficult to climb.




In July we had the Hill reunion. This is Grandma Hill with Julia, Heather, and Mary.


This is also the Hill reunion on our way down the mountain after a little hike.

And one of the kid tables the next day at the reunion.

This is the Pioneer Day carnival in Cedar Hills that we attended with some friends at the end of July. This is Kendra, Julia, Talia, Amanda, Kyle, and Ethan. The kids were in line for a bounce house ride.

And doing sparklers at their house that night, before the real fireworks started.

And Melodie (Rosie's sister) came home from her mission at the end of July too. We were so excited!!

In August we went to Payson Lakes. Ethan tried to do a little fishing, but didn't have much luck.

Julia enjoyed her new canoe.

Here we are at an Orem Owlz game in August. This was the first real baseball game the kids had attended, and they had a great time.

Julia even got a hug from the mascott.

The kids were both in soccer this year, and it starts back up again in the Spring. It keeps us pretty busy since Derek coaches Ethan's team, but they both love it.

Robyn and Eric came to town in September, so Ethan and Julia got to play with more cousins! Here are Ethan and Mierae watching Julia's soccer game.

We went to visit Grandpa at the bakery too, this is Mierae, Grandma (my mom), Julia, Jolie, and Robyn at the bakery.

And a family picture after our barbeque in the canyon.


I started the blog in October, so most of the pictures from the rest of the year are already on here, but here are a few from December that I didn't post.

Our friends came over to the watch the BYU football game, and the kids had a great time. This was right before Christmas.

We made sugar cookies while they were here too.

We also went to Jungle Jim's, which is right by Derek's office in Murray. They have tons of fun stuff for the kids-- a small roller coaster, bumper cars, a carousel, rockets they can fly in, swings that spin them around, etc. We love to go there in the winter when it's too cold to do a lot of outdoor activities.

This is Derek and Ethan in the roller coaster.

And Ethan and Julia in the spinning cars.




Julia on the carousel.


Here's the kids right after church on the Sunday before Christmas.

Hope you all have a happy New Year!!!

Christmas

We had a great Christmas this year! The kids didn't get up until 8:00, yay! My family made it over to our house by 8:45, though the kids didn't wait for them to arrive before they started opening gifts.


This is right after they woke up, before they had opened anything.

They wanted to open the big box first, from Grandpa Buzz and Grandma Susan, they've been dying to know what was in there ever since Derek brought it home last month.

Quentin, Sharisse, and Charlotte.

My Dad and Mom, Dad just got back from work at 8:00, and then had to wake everyone up to come over.

Julia, Melodie, Kristen, and me.

Here's Julia "swimming" in the wrapping paper at Grandma's house.

We had some fresh snow from the storm last night, so after we were done opening gifts at both houses we went sledding. This is Derek and Julia.

Here's Ethan and Julia.

And here's Julia sledding.

And Ethan sledding .

Derek sledding.

We had lots of fun!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve this year has proven to be an exciting and unpredictable time!

Tonight we made our trek to the annual Hendriksen Christmas party in Salt Lake. Unfortunately the weather didn't want to cooperate with us. We ended up in a blizzard and had awful conditions nearly the whole way up. The snow was coming down so fast that the plows couldn't keep up, which made for scary driving conditions! We went around 30mph the entire way up, on the freeway, and it took us much longer than we had anticipated. We were lucky and made it there safely, but my parents and sisters were not so lucky. They hit a slippery patch of road, mostly due to the amount of slush on the road I think, and this resulted in their car skidding across four lanes of traffic and hitting the cement barricade on the opposite side of the road. Their car spun all the way around and hit the barricade again before it stopped. We are so grateful that everyone is OK!! Somehow, even though there were many cars on the road, no one hit them as they slid across the entire freeway. Mom's car is not in great shape right now though, it has quite a bit of damage. I hope they will be able to get it fixed quickly, at not a huge expense to them. Mom and Melodie had bumped their heads and everyone was very shaken up, but they all seem to be fine luckily!

We did enjoy the Christmas party, though the accident kind of put a damper on things.

Here we are having our Christmas Eve dinner. (Actually everyone had finished except for Julia.)

This is the kids' gift exchange. Ethan and Julia both really liked their gifts.

Here they're holding their new toys.

In their matching Christmas pajamas before we left to go home.

Here's the plate of cookies and milk they left for Santa, and carrots for the reindeer. Ethan's note in the picture says "Dear Santa, These carrots are for your reindeer. Love, Ethan" How cute is that?!

They are very excited for Christmas tomorrow, and haven't been able to fall asleep. Hopefully Santa can come soon! :)

Christmas program

I thought I'd post some video from the kids' Christmas program at school. Julia is in the middle in a red shirt here, but half the time she was hidden behind someone's hat. Hopefully you can see her!

Ethan is on the top row here, he's wearing a red sweater.

The kids both did great! I went early and got a seat in the front row to make sure I could see them-- there are usually tons of parents there and the entire gym fills up. They both had a great time in their class Christmas parties too, and now they're out on Christmas vacation until January.

P.S. Did everyone hear that Charlotte (my sister) is officially engaged?! She got her ring a few days ago and they're planning on getting married in March or April. :)

And back to the cold!

We really enjoyed the warm weather in Costa Rica! And we came back to this:




Oh well, the kids like it! They had lots of fun having a snowball fight, and they want to build a snowfort and a snowman-- I'm sure that will happen soon.

Costa Rica!

Well we're back from our trip to Costa Rica. It was great! I had forgotten what it's like to travel without kids, it was so weird not to have to keep finding things for them to do. Our flights were actually very relaxing, I couldn't believe it!

Derek worked from the Costa Rica office our first two days. I took a taxi to a mall the first day, it was supposed to be the biggest shopping mall in Costa Rica. I didn't actually buy much there, most of what I saw were things that I could find in the US, and it was more expensive. Derek had assured me that most people there speak English because they teach it in the schools. Well I didn't hear anyone speaking English at all in the mall. Both times I tried to buy something they had to go find someone who spoke English to help me. It was fine though, everything worked out. The second day he was able to work from the hotel for half the day, and I went with him to the office after lunch and read a book while I waited.
Here are just a few of the pictures that we took, I included a link to view all of our pictures if you so desire, but there are a lot!

Our first day of real vacation we rented a car and headed for La Fortuna, which is the town right by the Arenal Volcano. One the way we stopped at a place called La Paz Waterfall Gardens which had so much to see, and was just beautiful. This picture was at La Paz. Costa Rica is so green! There were a lot of these giant leaves growing everywhere on the hills.

This is also at La Paz Waterfall Gardens. It was beautiful, there were four or five large waterfalls right after each other, it was amazing.

After we left La Paz we drove to La Fortuna. This picture is of the Arenal Volcano, which is an active volcano. It was pretty cloudy when we were there, but we did get to see some lava coming from the volcano at night.

This is what we had for breakfast nearly every day: pineapple (you can buy fresh pineapple everywhere in Costa Rica!), watermelon, toast, pinto gallo (rice and black beans), and eggs. We were spoiled!

This is a fruit stand and one of the grocery stores in La Fortuna, near the Arenal Volcano. There are so many fruit stands on the side of the road everywhere!

The next day we left La Fortuna and headed for the beach, specifically to a small town called Samara. This picture was one place we stopped on the way, you can see the view of the Arenal Lake in the background.

We saw so many tiny houses (much smaller than this one) with Christmas trees on their porch. We wondered if they didn't have room for them inside.

We arrived at Samara in time to see the sunset at Samara beach. It was gorgeous!

We had just come back from the beach and decided to relax in the hammocks at our hotel.

Samara beach was not too crowded, and it was gorgeous and sunny every day that we were there.

This is the Samara Treehouse Hotel where we stayed our first night in Samara. It is right on the beach and had such a fun and relaxing atmosphere.

This is the view from our window in the Treehouse Hotel, when the tide was in it was very close to the water.

Another view from our window, there are iguanas all over the place!

This is at the Carillo Beach Club restaurant, what a view! Carillo is a beautiful beach just a few miles from Samara. I was nervous driving up the steep dirt road to get to this place, but the view was worth it!

We got to go horseback riding on the beach! We rode for about an hour up to one end of the beach and back, ending around the time the sun was setting. We stayed in Samara until Wednesday morning, December 5th, and then we headed back to San Jose. We flew out Thursday morning and got home that night close to 10pm. Thanks so much to my family, especially my Mom and Melodie for taking care of the kids while we were gone!


This was on our way back to San Jose. There are some pretty crazy drivers in Costa Rica!! The driver of this truck went around a bend too quickly and his truck ended up sidways in a ditch!

In San Jose we would be stopped at a light and people kept trying to pass on the right, we saw one person get his truck all scratched up because he tried to do this and got stuck. And you can't rely on any road being paved or in good repair. We were so lucky that Derek's business associate lent us his GPS to use while we were there, most of the time there are no signs to tell you when to turn and we would have gotten lost so many times!


You can see all of our pictures here:
http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=186063270/a=5840740/t_=5840740