Mimi

Colby, Mimi, and Dalton

On January 30th, Shane's mom, Janice, unexpectedly passed away. She was 63. She had just been keeping our boys for 3 of the days while we were gone on our ski trip. We picked up the boys around 11:45 on Wednesday night and then just about 36 or 37 hours later she was gone. We believe she must have had a massive heart attack or maybe a stroke. It is still, even a week and a half later, hard to believe she is gone. She loved her family dearly and always made it a point to try to get together as much as possible. I'm so thankful for the influence she had on Shane to help mold him into the man he has become today including love of family, friends, and most of all a love for Jesus. She took such pride and joy in her grandkids. I'm so sad that my boys won't get to grow up knowing her more. It's hard to believe that Shane and his brother have now lost both parents in 11 months. Janice was so loved and will be greatly missed. Our family has been so encouraged over this past week and a half by so many expressions of sympathy, food, and prayers. God's grace has truly sustained us.

Whistler Ski Trip

Shane coming down

Up around the peak above the treeline

Me

This piece of mountain is called Black Tusk.

Wow, it's been a while since I've sat down to catch up on blogging. I guess I just haven't felt like doing it lately. A lot has been going on so I'll try to keep this in chronological order.

Our trip to Whistler/Blackcomb Mountain Resort was awesome! We went January 24th-28th. Whistler is about 2 hours north of Vancouver, British Colombia, and it was quite a long trip out there. It was pretty much an all day trip to get out there especially since we didn't have a direct flight into Vancouver. The drive up to Whistler is gorgeous. You take a road called the Sea to Sky Highway that has mountains on one side of the road and water on the other sometimes with mountains coming up out of the water. So beautiful! The skiing was great too! That mountain was SOOO HUGE!! We've been skiing in Utah and Colorado before but this place was just much bigger than anywhere I've ever skied. It only took a few runs down the mountain and your legs would just be burning because of how long the runs were. Whisler/Blackcomb has two large mountains that you can ski when you pay for your lift ticket so there were more runs than we could possibly do in the amount of time we were there. They have a new huge gondola that opened this past December that connects the 2 mountains at the upper portions of each mountain so you could just go back and forth between each mountain more easily. The resort was experiencing unusually low amounts of snow for the season so far, but the skiing conditions were still much better than I expected since it had been 3 weeks since it had last snowed. Fortunately, on our last day we were there, it snowed about 3 inches which helped out the conditions a lot.

This is where we stayed. We were just steps away from the gondola. Loved that!

This was from the fire and ice show. The skiers or boarders would come down and then jump through the ring of fire and do tricks. If you look closely you can see someone coming through the ring of fire. I never got any really great pictures of this. We nearly froze to death this night while watching and waiting for the show.

Pajama Day/Spirit Week

Yesterday, Colby's little preschool class had Pajama Day. The kids and teachers always look forward to this day. The kids had been doing bear crafts during the week and reading bear books. On Pajama Day, the kids were able to dress up in their pajamas and bring their favorite stuffed bear. Colby's bear is named Big Bear. Original, I know. He has a smaller bear that he aptly named Little Bear. Colby had a fun time and I was just glad I didn't have to dress him that morning. They should have Pajama Day more often.

Dalton had a fun week at school as well. His school had spirit week this week and some of the days were Western Day, Sports Day, and Tacky Day. Thursday was Tacky Day, as pictured below. Don't you just love it when you pick your kids up from school and you absolutely HAVE to go to the grocery store and your kids are dressed all crazy like this. It's like you feel like you just want to explain to every person you see in the grocery store why your child looks the way he looks.

Two Down

Well, Big D (Dalton) lost another tooth. That's 2 teeth in less than a month. Details are a little sketchy about exactly how it came out, but apparently he was playing inside the gym at school when one of his classmates pushed him off of a scooter or something, and he fell and hit his mouth, knocking out his tooth. His tooth was a little loose to begin with but not loose enough to even attempt pulling it. I figured he'd have a couple more weeks before it would be loose enough to pull. Anyway, he was a big boy about it. No tears or anything. One of Dalton's teachers brought Dalton to Shane's class to show him what had happened because Dalton was really excited about it. Big Boy!

So Thankful

I've been meaning to write about this back around Thanksgiving, but I just never got around to it. I just wanted to brag on God for a little bit. God has been so good to us. He has overwhelmingly blessed our family. Just looking back over the past few years, it is amazing what He has done for us. When I was pregnant with Dalton, we decided I would stay home with him instead of working. That was a big chunk of income we wouldn't have, but we had saved and the housing market was still going strong and we believed God would continue to provide for us. HE did!! A little while after having Dalton, Shane decided that he wanted to get back into teaching and began taking classes to get his Master's degree. Then we had Colby. Finances began getting a little sticky with more bills with Shane's college and two kids, but we continued to believe God would provide for us. And HE Did!! Then, about this time last year, we were really stressing about what to do financially. As Shane would say, this boat wasn't sinking, but it had a slow leak in it. The appraisal business was really starting to slow down and it looked as if I would have to go back to work although we really were hoping I'd be able to stay home with the kids at least another year. Shane was almost finished with his degree and was trusting God to be able to teach full time because he wanted to get out of the appraisal business. It really looked like there would be no way financially for Shane to be able to teach and still allow me to stay home with the kids. I just couldn't see how we could cut Shane's salary once again and survive on a teacher's salary. We were trying to trust God for this, but I know I wasn't really believing He'd come through on this. But HE Did!!! God came through for us when things were starting to look dim. Now Shane is teaching full time and is really enjoying it. He's much happier and is less stressed out than he used to be. I'm still home with the kids and may even stay home another year. God has been so gracious and kind to us. We are so undeserving of all that He's given us. Such grace. He has blessed us more than we could have imagined.

Camping Out

Some of the gifts we received this year included a tent and some camping accessories. We are wanting to begin going on little camping trips with the boys in the future. So, of course we had to try it out and have a little camp-out in the backyard. The boys were begging to do this and were too excited about it. We played an exciting game of Chutes and Ladders and then went to sleep. It was pretty chilly out there, but the boys never complained about it. I think they loved the "adventure" of it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!! (a little late)

Well, it's been a while since I've updated the blog. It seems like so much has happened during Christmas that I've felt like I've gotten way behind in writing on the blog, so instead of writing a lot about what all we did, I'm just going to post a few pictures and maybe a few comments about them. We had such a wonderful Christmas this year though. It was so great to have Shane home during the past 2 weeks. It just seemed like Christmas was more relaxing this year. Also, the boys are at such a fun age now, they just loved everything about Christmas it seemed. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year's (all 2 or 3 of you that read this). :)

Dalton was excited about getting a new bike!

Colby and his dinosaurs

The carnage of our living room in the aftermath of Christmas