The Gardner Family

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The smile on your face

These pictures turned out so amazing! Wow! Thanks to our good friend Sanae. (She also did our Christmas picture at the top of the blog) If any of you live in this area we HIGHLY recommend her. ;) http://www.sanaejames.com/

Sunday, January 4, 2009

It's out with the old and in with the new!

If any of you know what movie the title of this blog comes from then you know what movies we watched on our travels all across Wyoming. ;)

2009 is here and life starts up again in about 12 hours so I'd better get going on our Christmas blog. I will miss the days of pjs all day, playing cards, Daddy home from work, the girls home from school, sitting in front of the bowl games, playing the couch game, playing high school basketball again, taking a couple of days to recover from that and having nothing really to do but be with family and have a good time.

Our Christmas festivities started with a new tradition that I am very excited about! Matt decided this year that he wanted to do the real deal prime rib like they used to do at the restaurant--ribs and all. It was amazing! We had his brother's family over for dinner and a Christmas program that the girls put on. We also watched last year's nativity that we had done with cousins that now live in Texas. We missed them so much this year! After the cousins went home we opened pjs and got to bed pretty early.

Maybe we got to bed too early because at 5:00 two of them were all ready to go. After sending them back to bed we did get a couple more hours of sleep and then the chaos began. As one brother-in-law put it--does it look like Wal-Mart just puked in your house? It sure did, but it was fun!!

Yes, we are the mean parents that are laughing hysterically at our child being terrified of a robot. Will she hate us for this later?

The snow was coming down really good Christmas day! It was so beautiful and it made it a perfect Christmas--unfortunately we were wanting to travel in it. At one point I thought how nice it might be to be snowed in and just enjoy the White Christmas, but then homesickness struck and we got packed up and outta there. We drove just to Matt's parents place in Kemmerer to stay the night with them, play cards and enjoy a good Christmas meal. The next day we took off for Laramie where we got to see all of my family. We haven't all been together since last SUMMER so it was fun to throw a surprise birthday party for my sister and enjoy that time together. The cousins all had a blast playing the wii....and you gotta love the eye roll! We spent a few days in Laramie and then we went on to Cheyenne where we were able to see a lot of Matt's family! Again, the cousins had a blast and we ate a lot of really good food! (well some of us ate more than others--the flu hit a lot of people during these few days) After Cheyenne we went back to Kemmerer for a few hours to watch the Sugar Bowl on the "big screen" and then we headed home. We hit some pretty nasty weather on the way home and debated staying one more night away, but we missed home way too much! It was good to get back and clean up the Wal-mart pukage that we had left behind on Christmas day!

Taylor had quite the snaggle tooth at the start of this trip but at breakfast one morning she finally popped that thing out with her tongue. She has the cutest little toothless grin!

And here it is everyone!! Were you wondering why I had the Notre Dame/Laramie fight song on my playlist? I have saved the "best" for last. Actually, I saved it for last thinking that it really is only my family that reads through every word of my blogs. Maybe they will be the only ones that see what a "has been" I really am. This was really a ton of fun!! Last year we scrimmaged the high school team--well, I had just had a baby, so I just ran up and down the court a few times. This year they wanted to do an all out official game--refs, radio, newspaper, sponsors, the works. I even have a picture from my brother's camera phone of me being interviewed on the radio by my dad who does the color for the high school football and basketball games. It was so much fun and I had the best cheering section ever! No one else had 4 kids of their own cheering them on, let alone parents, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews! In the video you can even see my 2 points in our 4 point win over the varsity. (I'm taking the ball out at the beginning of the video--Matt was an awesome "soccer mom" video taping, taking pictures and juggling the girls)

All in all it was a wonderful Christmas vacation! We were so blessed to have been able to travel safely and be with so much family during this time. Now it is a new year and time to set goals for the coming year (one of those being to be in better shape for next year's alumni game). We look forward to the exciting year to come and wish you all the best!