Catching up... Rafting and Piano Lessons

Rafting the Royal Gorge...before

As you can tell by my last post, it has been 2 months since I last blogged. We have moved into our new house and things are getting slowly put together. When I feel it is picture worthy/ready, I will post pictures.

So over the Holiday weekend we took an amazing rafting trip with our dinner group. We have 6 couples that usually go, but we missed our friends, the Kovachs, because she is 7 months pregnant. The other 5 couples all came and we had a great time. We were able to go down to Canon City, CO and take a trip down the Royal Gorge. Because it is so early in the season and there is so much runoff, the water was extremely high and fast. Our guide is the brother-in-law of one of our dinner group members. He didn't charge us hardly anything. He was experienced and straight forward. I think he scared a few members of the group. There were two choices, either the Gorge which is mostly class 5 (the hardest) or Big Horn which has only 1-2 class 5s. We decided to be brave and go down in the first group down the Gorge. I have to say, when you get on the raft and your guide starts saying things like, "this one even scares me," or "I'm not going to lie, this one isn't my favorite." It doesn't really instill confidence. Needless to say during the first class 5 literally 10 minutes into the trip, 3 of us were tossed off. The two others were rescued immediately, where as I was forced down under the boat and down river. I have never been so cold in my life. The temperature was about 60 degrees and breezy outside and the water was a bout 50 degrees. Luckily I made it out of the water, a little bruised and beat up, but it was an adventure. Once I gathered myself, we were right at it again. There were not breaks. These rapids were one right after the other. I will admit I thought to myself, can I just hike out? do I have to go the next 8 miles down the river? I was brave and kept paddling my way down.

after

Pretty soon we come to the BOAT EATER Rapid. This is when our guide says this one scares him. GREAT, so fun! Of course, Aaron goes off in the worst possible place, we were lucky he got right back on. Our guide said the last boat that flipped there, the entire group had to be given CPR and rescued by rope from the sides of the river. SCARY, glad he didn't tell us that before we went through it. Aaron was pretty beat up, but nothing we couldn't handle. We had a great time, we are sore and I think I have whiplash today, but so fun!!!

after

The next group decided to take it a little easier and go down the Big Horn Sheep. The came back with not fall outs and had a great time too.

Thank you to all of our friends for a fun day, I still can feel the freezing cold water...brrrrr!

PIANO LESSONS

Well, since I have moved into my new house I can finally start teaching more piano lessons at home. I have been teaching about 8 kids for the last year, from home, but now I finally have more time and want to take on more students. I am really trying to get my name out there and get more students. I teach all ages starting at 3 1/2 and will teach up to any age. I love to teach. I really enjoy piano and seeing the growth that happens when someone practices and they pass of songs and seeing them accomplish so much. SO FUN!! Well, if you are here in the area and are looking for a piano teacher or know of anyone else who is, let me know or let them know. I teach out of my house, but I also will come to your house and teach if that is your preference.

Piano Recital in December

Finally, updated the blog. I have much more to update on, but I will save that for later.

It's Official!

Hello everyone, well it is finally official. We have got our house. We are going to be closing on April 22nd and we can't wait. It has taken almost 2 months to find out if we got it, but it was worth the wait. I don't have any pictures right now, but the people move out on Tuesday and we will go by on Thursday and get a few pictures of our new empty house. It will be about 2.5x the space we have now. Needless to say, there will be many empty rooms. We will be moving into the Thornton ward to a neighborhood on 136th and Holly. I will keep you updated. YAY!!!

Mountain weekend

A few weeks ago we went to Breckenridge for the weekend. We went with some our friends the Kovach family, Cory and Tiffany and their kids, and Blake & Sara and family. It was so much fun. We always have such a great time there, and Aydan always cries when we leave. He screams, "I want to live in the Mountain house, I don't want to go home!" We of course would all of love to live in the mountain house. We had lots of fun playing in the snow and hanging out together. The kids were great. We had 11 kids and no fighting or arguing. It was a miracle. Definitely a good group to travel with. Here are a few pictures of the kids sledding.Ruby Kovach pulling Aydan up the hill. Aydan has no problems with a girl doing all of the work.Ruby and Cory - They are adorable. She is pointing to all of the boys who stalled on the sled.Aydan zooming down the hill, he almost ran right into me.Aydan was racing Tiffany and Ruby down the hill.Now he is having Tiffany pull him up the hill. He is lazy, always hitcing a ride.

On the House Hunt

Many of you already know we are looking to buy a house. We have been looking for about six months and this week we think we found the right house. This was a really hard task. I am pretty picky about where I want to live. Specific boundaries/wards. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of the people in my ward, but we are ready to find a more active ward. The house also has to meet many specifications. Had to have a big kitchen with a pantry. A room to teach piano lessons in. A basement with potential for room to grow. A backyard big enough for my kids and dog. A master bedroom with a 5-piece master bath. Be in school district 12. Have a fire place. And it had to be in my target area. So we have finally found this home. We made and offer last week and they have accepted and now we are waiting for the bank to approve the short sale. I don't know why they call it a short sale, because really it takes forever, meaning it should be called a long sale. It is a great house. It has almost everything we were looking for minus a fireplace and out of the school district. Things we can fix. It has 3 bedrooms and a loft, and my favorite - upstairs laundry room. A huge basement and views of Denver and the Mountains. We are so excited. We are just waiting now to see if it all works out and if it does, we will be moving in late April. YAY!!! We will keep you updated!

VERY LATE PICTURES!! BUT SO CUTE!

Granny and Asher Christmas Morning

Waking Aydan Christmas Morning!

Traci Getting Engaged

Aydan And Asher opening stockings!

Traci said "Yep!"

My mom and Asher

Mac Kissing Asher

Aydan and Great Grandpa Jim

Granny and Papa relaxing with the boys!

Our semi-decent Family picture!

Christmas Sunday by the tree

The boys before church

My adorable parents!

My Dad with Asher, I think Asher looks most like my dad!

Asher's first bath with Aydan!

Aydan performing at preschool

Never too early for Aydan's first Harley! Thanks grandpa Larry!

My mom and Aydan Christmas Sunday!

Aunt Laura and Asher in a Santa Hat!

Asher's auntie Amy! - He adores her

Asher's First Christmas Presents!

Sorry for all of the late pictures, but I had to post them. Soon I will get to what is going on with us now!

Late Christmas Update!

I can't believe it is already January. This last month has just flown by so fast. We had a great Christmas with both of our families. We just split our time between the families and make sure get all of the fun in. Aydan was the sheep in the Christmas story at my grandma's house. He was perfect. CRAZY! He thought sheep were supposed to jump and bark... he must have thought he was a dog. It was his first year to participate and he was adorable. Asher was happy to just have wrapping paper to play with.

Christmas Day was great. We started with presents at my moms and then Aaron and I got to fool Traci and surprise her with Collin there to propose. I picked him up from the airport and she was completely clueless, even when he walked in, she didn't notice for a few minutes. We got some great pictures of her looking like a nerd, trying to figure out why were taking so many pictures of her. What an awesome Christmas present to her. She will be getting married March 14th. After the excitement with my parents, we ventured to Aaron's moms. She made a great Brunch and then we opened presents with his family. Aydan had so much fun opening presents at each house we went to. This Christmas we stayed with Aaron's family and jsut got to hang out for the day, it was so nice to relax. We watched Wall-e, which Aydan loved and we ended up buying the next week. Asher thoroughly enjoyed his first Christmas. We loved the Holidays but are grateful they are over. We get to have Aaron back. His work schedule was so crazy and now we get to see him. YAY!

We had a great New Year's Eve with our friends. We had a really fun idea of doing a progressive dinner, restaurant style. So, each couple got assigned a course and then they had to pick a restaurant. It was so fun, we went to 3 different restaurants and had so much fun trying new places. I love hanging out with friends. It was a great time.

Aydan was so happy to go back to school after the long Christmas vacation, he also started up swimming lessons again. It has been so much fun to watch him learn new things and make new friends.

I don't have time to sort through pictures today but I will post lots of pictures tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!

It has been a while since I have had time to blog. It really has been so chaotic with all of the holiday things going on. Well, to start, we had a great Thanksgiving. When we do holidays, we end up always eating two meals. It is so hard. We literally went to Anne's house at noon, ate at 2:15 and had to be at my grandma's by 4. It was lots of fun but too much food. What is nice, we get to pick what we like at each house and eat it. So really I get the best foods out of Thanksgiving. We have been so blessed this year and we had to much to be thankful for. Asher is now 7 months and he has been so much fun to have in our home. Aaron was promoted at work and we are just blessed to be a family.
We got a chance to put our tree up and Aydan really enjoyed putting ornaments up and helping. It was so fun to see his excitement. He asks every day if it will be Christmas and then proceeds to tell me why each day should be Christmas. He thought you only put up the tree for Christmas, he thought if it snowed it mean it was Christmas, and if we don't go to school for a few days it must be Christmas. I hope this Christmas lives up to his big expectations. We aren't really into talking about Santa, so all he knows about santa he learns from TV. There are so many fun Christmas programs going on with church and I just love to participate in music. I went to my mom's enrichment last week and it was wonderful. A few women shared favorite stories and then my sister sang, I played the piano, and Jeanie sang and played guiter. It was so fun, and a great start to the Christmas season.

I for some reason get a little down at the holidays. I think sometimes it is because I miss Lilia so much and I think of what she would be doing if she was here. I find myself lost in thought some days, thinking about the "what might have beens". I just miss her and the holidays remind me of how thankful I am for her, but they also bring up the feelings of loss and sadness of not having her with me. This season I have decided I am just going to try to do as much service as possible to get myself lost in the season. I am doing a secret santa, gifting Christmas so those in need, and you may find me doing the twelve days of Christmas. I just love secret acts of service.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and we will let you know how ours goes. Merry Christmas!