Christmas in Idaho

As we made our drive from Oklahoma to Idaho, the scene out the window started getting pretty in Utah. Part of why we love this area of the country is the landscape...and of course, SNOW!!

Monkeys on a road trip!

The sign says it all!!

The boys visited Santa (yes, Trevor STILL believes!!).

Even thought we didn't have our furniture delivered, we started to make our new house a home by getting the tree up and decorated (thankfully Joshua had the foresight to bring all of our Christmas stuff out on one of his previous trips!).

Adorable monkeys in front of the tree Christmas Eve

EVERY year, Daddy reads The Night Before Christmas before bed...

Stockings and Santa gift on Christmas morning!

We took a drive and found some snow to play in on Christmas afternoon. Snowball fight!!!

Brothers coming up with strategy to attack Daddy.

Snowy hilltop Christmas picture with my love!!

friends and performances

Now THIS is the kind of meal we enjoy...with a full table of friends and family! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Joshua's cousin and new wife, and with our neighbors. And of course everything Joshua cooked us was YUMMY!

Trevor was in Jump Rope Club at his school and they did their semester end performance right before we left for Idaho.

This is a video of part of it, Trevor is in the front center...

We had a cookie decorating party at one of Joshua's coworker's home (really, they are just great friends!). I've never actually done this before and can I say...it's FUN! I will be making this something we do as a family and hopefully with new friends next year! Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Curvy!!

Emilee's first holiday performance for choir this year was at our local mall. Here's a great picture with Emilee and her dear friend, Anna and Anna's aide.

And here's part of a song they sang. Emilee is very close to center, and she's playing the rain stick (a big honor!).

And this is Em with her choir teacher at the formal Christmas performance. This wonderful teacher will be deeply missed and I'm so grateful to her for the two years she's spent working with Emilee.

Emilee's choir singing Carole of the Bells...

Goodbye for now

We made a trip to Texas in November to get in one last visit with our dear friends, Gabby and Charlie, and their boys, Mason and Ethan.

We actually all got into ONE picture for a group pose at the Children's Aquarium (and this is quite a feat with nine people, including two VERY fast moving 18 month old toddlers!)

Carter's favorite part of the trip was petting the stingrays. Yup, it's the dead of freezing winter at an outside exhibit, and Carter has his shirt off because he's SOAKED from leaning too far forward into the tank haha!

Spending some time in the hotel lobby hanging out and playing...


Hope we see you guys all soon!!!

fun at the lake park

We headed outside to get some nice shots for our Christmas card...


I was so happy to get an AWESOME shot of each of the monkeys. You know how some days you can only get a great shot of one or another, but not all? Well I scored this time! Emilee is gorgeous...Carter is hilariously adorable...and Trevor just looks super handsome!!

Then of course we needed some fun shots of feeding the ducks and climbing trees!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas, everyone! Sorry for the delay in update, but we've been BUSY! The quick news is we DID get our stuff and we've been unpacking and trying to get half settled so we can enjoy Christmas tomorrow. We wish everyone the best holiday, filled with all of the Hope of the Season...and I'll be back soon to catch up on the MANY posts I want to share!

Love, Joshua~Karen~Emilee~Trevor & Carter

Someone just has to be making this stuff up...

So I have another installment of "Nothing Goes According to Plan For Our Family...EVER". But I do have to say something else first. Please continue to stay tuned for all of those missing posts from November and December I promised you last week. I did NOT get to work on them as our family blissfully *cough* sailed along the 1400+ miles that it is from OK to ID because my computer decided to flip out and not recognize any camera SD cards I put in the slot. Soooo that little (big) project will have to wait until I get my USB cable from the movers and I can attempt to extract my pics and movies that way. Oh, the movers...funny I should mention that...

Ok hang on though. I should update. We are HERE! We made it to Boise on Monday night. It was a L.O.N.G. drive lasting FOUR "just a tad too long" days. But Joshua and I, the three monkeys, the dog and the hermit crabs (along with toooo many suitcases) pulled into our new hometown and headed straight for our house. Our wonderful realtor met us there with Welcome Home gift basket in hand and adorable "Idaho" key chains swinging from the house keys. We got to show the monkeys around their new digs and seeing their excited faces made us feel alot better after the rough day we all had saying goodbye to dear friends on Friday.

We snuggled into a hotel and spent Tuesday running a few Home Depot-ish errands, killing time waiting for our furniture delivery which was to be Wednesday or Thursday. We were supposed to hear an update from our truck driver Tuesday, but he didn't return Joshua's call so Joshua called the company directly this morning and was met with this brief message, "Well, the driver has quit and we sorta don't know where he or the truck or the trailer with your stuff is. We'll let you know something when we know something."

Seriously!!! What secret magnetic chip do we have that just attracts this stuff to us?! I think people have started to doubt our stories, because at this point, I would doubt my stories if I wasn't living them lol!

So we have been left for the better part of today, wondering where our stuff was and if we'd ever get it. Trevor being our technical and methodical monkey, wanted to know exactly what that meant per our moving contract. "Well, son, if our stuff is truly lost, the moving company cuts us a $50,000 check and we start over." Trev just sorta wandered away pondering that and I attempted to push THAT amusing scenario out of my mind.

And if I hadn't lost my internet access this afternoon, that would have been the end of today's update for you. But luckily, a bit more time elapsed before I was able to get back online and hit "publish"...so here's some relief from the cliffhanger.

This afternoon, Joshua got another call. They are pretty sure they've found our stuff, and they are working on coordinating a new driver to get to our stuff and get our stuff to us. This still leaves several days of us WAITING in this hotel, but at least it appears our stuff is not GONE. Now let's just pray that it gets here before Christmas Eve as I have some VERY important cargo that needs to go under the tree in the back of that semi.

Headed home...

Quick update...

Today we start our 1400 mile drive to Boise. Our belongings all left on the moving truck on Wednesday and will be delivered in the middle of next week. We've been in a hotel since Tuesday (doing the school day routine from a hotel has been interesting!) and check out today. Thursday and today have been cleaning, painting etc of the house to make it look as nice as possible for the new buyers (please Lord, send those people our way soon!). After the big monkeys finish their school day we are outta here!

Also today, our fingers are crossed that we will hear that our new carpet in our new house has FINALLY been installed. (Our home is basically new as it was a builder's model home, but the carpet was in terrible shape and our awesome realtor negotiated a great deal for us to get the carpet replaced CHEAP!) Ooooh I'm so excited to have fresh, new, beautiful carpet!!

It's been a long week of tough goodbyes and I'm ready to start this new chapter in our lives and maybe, possibly even enjoy a tad of this Christmas Season because unfortunately it's been totally overshadowed by all the moving chaos.

I have lots of updates to give on activities and such from the last few weeks. I'm going to try to work on several new blog posts while we are driving.

We got to take a quick trip to California last month while the big monkeys had a four day weekend. We packed A LOT into our two and a half days there and my parents were even able to meet up with us! We enjoyed the 8am quiet and beautiful weather at Santa Monica Pier. We took a walk down the pier and the kids got to play in the sand and on the swings.





Then for the educational portion of our trip, we visited the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. The highlights were the life sized replica of the Oval Office…


And most importantly, Air Force One. It was just awe inspiring to see this gigantic airplane perched on three seemingly small pillars, three stories up in the air.


We got to have dinner with a cousin of Joshua’s that he hadn’t seen in DECADES. What a wonderful family!

And then for the icing on the cake…DISNEYLAND!

It was Carter’s first trip and Em and Trev’s third. First things first…autopia!!




And because in a three year old’s mind, Disneyland is where Buzz Lightyear lives, we helped Buzz defeat the evil Zurg…



Everyone but me (someone has to take the picture, right?!) on the bow of the Pirate Ship…another “must do”!


We were also able to ride the submarine, Dumbo, It’s a Small World, the carousel, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. Because the lines were awesome, for a quickie one-day visit, we were able to hit a BUNCH!

A family picture in front of Pumpkin Mickey!


A pose with JoJo and PaPa at the hotel...


And a very worn out littlest monkey waiting for the plane to take him home…

It worked!!

Happy Halloween from all of us! Halloween in weird-o Oklahoma was celbrated on October 30th, because aparently you can't trick or treat on a Sunday (don't get me started)...so I've got all of our Halloween pics to share up and ready!

We had a great family weekend! We carved pumpkins...

And for the first time ever, roasted the seeds. I want to share the recipe because it was EASY and sooooo YUMMY! Melt 1 T butter in a bowl and then add 1 T olive oil, 1/2 t garlic salt, 1/2 t seasoned salt and two shakes of worcheshire sauce. Mix and then add 1 c of cleaned pumpkin seeds. Pour out in one layer on a cookie sheet and roast at 300 degrees for 45 mins, stirring every 15 mins.

Trevor's pumpkin...

Emilee's pumpkin...

Carter's pumpkin...

A cowgirl, construction worker and fireman all ready to go...

Friends all dressed up...

Trick or treating our awesome neighbor's...

Our front door decorations...


And so for the explanation of my post's title. Carter, in true "Carter fashion" cracked us up house after house this year. Each time he came back to Joshua and I standing on the sidewalk after going to someone's door, he exclaimed "IT WORKED!!!!" He was aparently amazed that each and every time he went to a door and said "trick or treat" that someone gave him a piece of candy. It was hilarious and we are going to remember "it worked!" for a LONG time!!