Our First Visitors!

After a wonderful week in West Virginia, we moved the party to our house in Florida with Sara, Abbie, Kaden, and Sadie joining us. Abbie and I were lucky to be on the same flight and since it was nonstop we offered to take 'a traveling infant on lap' named Sadie. We don't know how moms do it by themselves and with more than one kid! We were like a zoo in the airport hauling car seats and strollers and children...ok just one child, but really it was a good thing that the adult to child ratio was 2:1 haha. It all turned out fine and Sadie did great on the flight and was very nice to her aunties :)

Our first full day, of course, was spent at the beach! The weather was perfect...lotsa sun, but not too hot.

Kaden spent much of his time shuttling buckets of water from the ocean to fill up his sand pool. SO FUN!

After Sadie's nap on the shores of the Atlantic she was rearing to go...little dare devil loved getting pummeled by the waves and would laugh and squeal every time a wave got her.

Our one bedroom duplex was converted into a spacious two bedroom unit thanks to Uncle George and his mad fort building skills. This was Sadie and Kaden's 'bedroom' decked out with Christmas lights even!

Think this crew could get 'er off the ground?

Pilot in training :)

Day Two we got to explore what Uncle George has been up to this year...HELICOPTERS!! It was fun for both kids and adults to explore all the features of a Schweizer 300CBi. Sadie and Kaden got to control the joystick aka cyclic :) And Sara and Abbie even got to go fly with George!

We were blessed to see lots of different creatures not found in the deserts of Utah. In the picture above Abbie was explaining to Kaden and Sadie why it probably wasn't a good idea to take Mr. Crab (in bucket) home with us. We stopped by a 'ditch' where we saw an alligator. He was very interested in us and swam right over to greet us. I think Mr. Alligator would have liked to have a little taste of Kaden. We also saw dolphins swimming in the bay and lots and lots of birds...I need to learn how to identify them! And when Abbie and I were biking along the beach one day we saw hundreds of Portuguese Man o' War that had been washed up on the shore. There were so many of them it was hard to avoid running over them, and each time we did they would pop like balloons...so weird!

While Abbie and Sara the 'crazies' from AK and UT were swimming in the freezing water...

George and I were snuggling Kaden and Sadie trying to keep them warm :) It's all about perspective I suppose!

Obviously the beach took up most of our time, but we did sneak in a few bike rides, walks, hot-tubbing, and some miniature golfing!

This mini golf course was awesome. We went at night and it was POURING rain. The people thought we were crazy to want to go so they only charged us $2! We had the whole course to ourselves and it was so much fun!

It was so much fun to have kids in our home to liven things up a bit!

It was definitely too short of a visit, but we crammed in a lot of fun and we're so happy we got to share Florida with some of our family! Is anyone else convinced they should come visit us in Florida yet? Come on down!!!

N1548Papa

Merry Christmas to all! We hope everyone had a wonderful week celebrating the birth of our Savior with your family and friends. We love this time of year!! Like it said in one of our Christmas cards, "warm Christmas is weird when you come from the cold..." Although on Christmas morning it POURED down rain just long enough to make it seem kinda cold and we could pretend it was snowing :) Of course after just an hour it cleared up and the sun came out and it was a pleasant 70F so we can't complain!

We had a non-traditional 2 footer evergreen this year...harvested in the wild forests of Florida. Obviously when picking out our tree, we didn't plan in advance about hanging ornaments...nothing would stay on those needles, not even lights! So we sprinkled Bougainvillea leaves all over and placed a few pine cones around and called it good :) We didn't plan on waking up early, but a call from George's Pops at 7 am woke us, and after a pleasant chat with him we decided we should probably open presents!

For some reason the knowledge of a lite brite slipped by the Lewis family. Alethea and George created this lite brite as a backdrop for our tree, nicely done! Does everyone else know what a lite brite is?

By far the best Christmas present this year was my first heli ride with my dear hub-a-lub pilot! He really is amazing!! I felt completely comfortable with him in command...he knew what was up with all the instruments and it was a very smooth ride. Ohhh it was SO fun to fly! No wonder he loves it...getting to do that everyday, I'm jealous! The radio would totally stress me out, but George has the perfect voice and has all the calls down and understands all the jibber jabber that comes across. On our ride we flew over the Port Saint John River and got to see some alligators out sunning. Then we headed out to the Atlantic and flew along the coast. At one point we flew over a 1000' radio tower which was awesome because it gave me some perspective to how high we actually were. I'm so proud of him for all his hard work and studying. Oh, and N1548Papa was our chopper's tail number.

You can't get a pic of him looking at the camera while flying because he's always having to scan or check out the instruments...such a good pilot :)

On Christmas day we ate lunch at some friend's house...it was quite the spread! They were so generous to invite us over since we are far away from family. Then we had Borge, one of George's classmates, over for dinner. He is from Norway and away from family this year. We had a great visit and it was fun to learn about Norway...they say God Jul for Merry Christmas...it kind of sounded like good year.

And yet again a Christmas goes by without me sending out cards...one of these years I tell ya! Just know that we love you and wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

West Virginia, Mountain Mama

In the beginning of December Chris, Abbie, Sara, Kaden, Sadie, and I all got to go out to visit my parents in West Virginia where they are serving a mission. They live in the 'hollers' of a rural town where the roads are very narrow, steep, and windy. We had a wonderful visit and throughout the week we enjoyed many walks and got to meet some of the people that the padre's are teaching. A few of us caught the bug, but fortunately it wasn't too bad...nothing to keep us from having a great time. I'm behind on updating my blog, so I'll just post photos with captions.

Kaden & Sadie swinging at the park...after we left West Virginia got 14" of snow!

Sadie, our fashionista! She was very excited about the swimming suit mom packed, although she couldn't actually use it until Florida.

We also found out that Sadie is a pyro. She LOVED the fireworks and being able to hold her own sparkler was probably the best present ever! Kaden was right there with her, although he was a little more cautious of the burning flames.

This was a very fun evening to get to see Mom taking fiddle lessons from one of the locals, Jake Krack.

Give Chris a fishing pole and he's a happy man! We spent a couple hours letting the fish tease us at Fork Lake.

We read and read and read! Grandma found some gems that the kids just loved.

What could be better than ice cream in the nude? I should clarify...that 'bowling ball' is actually an ice cream maker!

A very cute Mom, Ab, & Sara

The gang in front of our home-made Christmas tree...I thought it turned out very well for just using stuff we had on hand at the house. We even made a wreath to match! Since we weren't there over Christmas and it's SO fun to open presents, we tried to open one present each night...dreamland for the kids.

It was a fabulous trip! Thank you mom and dad, I hope we weren't too distracting :)

Bates Babies

Three of my sisters-in-law had babies this year. They are all SOOO adorable and I can't wait to meet them!

Jody & Alison had Calan Richard Bates on July 16th, weighing in at 6 lbs 1 oz.

"I'sss this Big" :)

Calan - 4 months now

Rodney & Sammy had Owen Bradley Bates on November 1st, weighing in at 6 lbs 4 oz.

Look at that head of hair, SO cute!

David & Colleen had Heidi Lauren Bates on November 24th weighing in at 7 lbs 9 oz.

I love this photo...sisters are the best!

They all came a couple weeks early and none of them broke 8 lbs, so there might be a chance I won't have a big baby after all! I could handle a 6 lb-er I think. And this is NOT an announcement or anything, I'm just sayin' early and light-weight is how I'd want it to go.

Thanksgiving Festivities

We spent a wonderful week in Cedar City to celebrate Thanksgiving. I am so grateful that ALL of my siblings were able to come play, although we did miss the padres there to keep us under control. Fortunately we get to visit them in December, woo WOO!

Our Thanksgiving festivities were full of hide and go seek, capture the flag, volleyball, massive face stuffing, hikes/walks, sushi, Mr. Bug, karaoke, dance parties in the dark with both a strobe light AND black light (yes we had to have the dance party in the dark, b/c Lewises just don't have that rhythm...well maybe Alethea and Steph do...), story time each night, dart gun wars, rock climbing at Pocket Rocks, cow branding/vaccinating/de-horning, chocolate chip cookie variations every day, and decorating for Christmas. Quite the jumble of F-U-N!

For Thanksgiving dinner everyone pitched in and had one or two assignments so it didn't seem like too much work to put together a yummy feast consisting of: broiled turkey (click on it to go to our recipe blog for directions for a juicier, faster-cooking turkey), Alaskan cranberries, stuffed mushrooms, sage stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, browned turkey gravy, whole wheat rolls, roasted sweet potatoes, steamed kale, sparkling cranberry-pomegranate-ginger ale, and pumpkin cake.

It's a good thing pictures are worth thousands of words...it saved me a lot of typing tonight. Enjoy!

Action shot of Capture the Flag

Proof that Steph got Mac!

Kaden aka Flag Capturer

Cow branding - this group of 40 cows were wild and frisky! Two cows jumped over the 5 1/2' fence! Abbie and Shawn both got kicked. And here in the pic Abbie was trying to calm down the wildest of the bunch, poor cow was 'having a cow' the whole time.

Sadie's cuteness is too much! Alethea you are pretty cute too :)

David and Kaden hiking at Three Peaks

Beautiful Cactus

Sara, tough-girl-mom, hauling around Sadie, sleep fighter.

Kyson & Kaden the little elves that helped decorate.

Mr. Bug!

Dance party in the dark. See Chris I didn't get you, sheesh!

Cedar Breaks why do you have to be so ugly?

Steph taught us how to make sushi. I want it to be a family tradition every time we get together. SO yummy!

David or Mac?? climbing at Pocket Rocks.

Kaden turned 4 somewhere in the mix of it all! And Chris and Alethea got way older too...Happy Birthday!!

Sisters and the one and only niece! (Mamasita we needed you in this!!)

My dad used to tell us stories about "Petey and Bobby" when we were growing up and I LOVED listening to him, so we tried to have story time every night for the kidlets. This is the perfect topic to end this post...it's 2 am and I'm going to bed. Good night!

Cankles Continued

I forgot to add the wonderful "Get Well" card that I was given during the cankle injury:

Here is what my loving siblings said:

"Better you than me. -Chris"

"Dear Liz, Our last chase was an epic exit of your athleticism. I feel you used my laughter against me in an unethical way and if you wouldn't have made such ridiculous maneuvers than none of this would have happened. Your battle wound is a poor description of what it looked like in the end, but I will always remember the image of this disaster. Still Love You, Alethea"

"Dear Liz, This is an impish attempt at commandeering attention...and don't think I'm unaware of the impending business. (He then drew a picture of himself picking his nose) Just joking. Bounce back quick. We would've had em. Love, Mac"

"Have you ever read the 'Girl Who Cried Wolf''? Lizi...I still love you. Ab"

"Knew it was the ankle from 100 yards away ♥ Dave"

"I will nurse you back to full ankle health unless you become too demanding and then you are on your own! Steph"

"You still have one left! This is great news - Be positive, bounce back, never down, it's uncomfortable :) Sara"