Las Vegas visit

Since I was going to Las Vegas for a family reunion, I decided to make a big trip of it. So I stayed there for 2 weeks to spend time with my family. Mitchell was able to come up for 4 or 5 days as well (yay!) Highlights of my visit
-B-Dubs w/ my sister Ashley and out girls.
-Good food!
-New haircut!
-Preparing for the reunion
-the reunion!
-Going for a walk with my mom, Ashley, and our girls.
-Playing games with Mitchell's brother, Roy.
-Picnic in the living room and frosting cookies with the little girls.
-Shopping with Mom.
-Spending quality time with Mom and Dad.
-Lied Discovery Museum
-ASHLEY HAD HER BABY, TRINITY! She wasn't due for 2 weeks, and I was bummed because I was just barely going to miss meeting her baby. I was due to leave in a couple of days, when she called me one day to cancel our plans because her water broke and she was at the hospital! Trinity Rose Koch was born and she was so cute and tiny and beautiful and healthy! I was so excited to get to go to the hospital and meet her!
-Finally got to see my good friend, David Velasquez (we were music-stand partners in Orchestra together in Middle School & High School for 7 years!
-"Girls Day." I invited my best friends, Jessica & Danielle over, we all hung out (with my sister Candice and my Mom)and ate junk food and chatted. We went shopping and then at night, headed over to my sister Ashley's house and made cookies and talked more and admired and held and loved little Trinity.

While my hair has already grown out a lot since I got my haircut in Las Vegas, it was (and is) still a big and WELCOME change for me.


Eventide and Braylee playing:






This was before Memory learned how to crawl. She LOVED this thing and would just zip around my parents house like a little pro.


Lied Discovery Museum:





Bubbles with Aunt Jess






A little airplane-big hit!


A giant kaleidoscope-you put the colored shapes on the circle one side and look through the other side while someone spins the clear disc.


Hurricane tube




Though you can't tell by the pictures, Memory, my sister Kait, and I were there as well....

Decorating (and eating) Halloween cookies at my parents house:




Memory being a cute little chunky baby (top-with my Mom, bottom-with my sister Ashley):



The little girls and their "Papa"


Visiting Ashley & Trinity in the hospital:




Visits from my good friend David and best friend Jessica




We had an AMAZING time!

Christmas

Christmas was pretty busy this year! We spent Christmas in Spokane with Mitchell's family. We went the Wednesday before to Spokane and stayed with Mitchell's sister and her family until Christmas. It's tradition in Mitchell's family to open their Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. Mitchell is the youngest of ten. So when they were kids, thei parents would take the kids to their cousins on Christmas eve, where they would play and hang out for a few hours and then when they came home their presents would all be out and ready to be opened. And then after they opened, the kids were allowed to stay up as late as they wanted (Mitchell recalls being up until 3 a.m. and some years) while their parents would just go to bed early. So following that tradition, we all went to Mitchell's parent's home on Christmas Eve where we opened up our presents. I got some jewelry, a winter jacket, and a book. Mitchell got a Toshiba Thrive. Eventide and Memory got a butt load of toys from us, from her Nana & Papa, and from Mitchell's family. Eventide's favorite thing was a train table with trains and tracks which she still plays with for several hours every day! On Christmas day, we had a big Christmas Lunch/Dinner and spent the day playing and enjoying each other company.

Joy School

Eventide just started preschool and she LOVES it! the preschool program is called Joy School. A woman in our ward bought the curriculum online and got together some mothers who were interested. Every week, one of the mothers of the children take a turn teaching. I taught last week and loved it! Eventide gets along great with the other children and it's been SO good for her to have that regular and consistent social interaction with other children her age.

McMurtrey Family Reunion

My grandparents had their 60th wedding anniversary in October and it coincided with the year they do reunions (every other year) so they combined them. My parents hosted the McMurtrey family reunion and it was a blast! It was the first time my parents hosted it and the first time it was in Las Vegas. Most of the family was able to make it. My parents did a great job. They ordered a bounce house for the day for the kids, we had a fish pond game going on, various craft activities, an ice cream machine, a slushee machine (my Uncle Ron rents them out), and a LOT of good food. And they arranged to have a photographer (http://chelsearobbinsphotography.blogspot.com/)to take pictures of the family. My dad pretty much did most of the cooking and worked really hard on it all. The food was DELICIOUS. It was SO nice to spend time with Gramma & Grampa,and to see all my cousins, some I hadn't seen in 6 or so years! (and for an extra bonus, I got to meet my sister's boyfriend).

Halloween

I realize I'm super behind on my blogging...which is normal. I'm slowly catching up. We didn't do much for Halloween. Every year, Eastern Washington University has a trick-or-treating Halloween event where kids can go trick-or-treating at all the different buildings on campus, and it ends with a little Halloween fair/party where they can play games and get treats for free. We did that this year with some of Eventide's cousins, and decided to skip our ward's Trunk-or-Treat on account of Eventide having enough candy and being super tired. This year, Eventide was a chef and Memory was a Strawberry.

(Pictures to be added soon!)