THE STAPLETON FAMILY

Anniversary Adventure

For our nine year anniversary Dan and I rented dry suits and hiked Zion Narrows. The water temperature was about 36 degrees, but the suits actually worked and we were plenty warm, and dry. Usually the Narrows is packed with hikers, but since it was January and cold, we didn't see another person the entire day.

Where we ate lunch.

The water got pretty deep and in some places swift, so needless to say we were really tired. I slept 10 hours after the hike. A big thanks to Nancy for use of her house and mom for watching the boys.

Tangled

We took the boys to the matinee of Tangled today. We ordered a large popcorn and Dan and I probably ate a 1/4 of it and Brad and Seth pounded down the other 3/4- they love popcorn! Seth got super excited during parts and was jumping up and down. As an adult I really liked it. When we came home they wanted to build Repunzel's tower.

And, We're Pooped

All of this partying with friends and family for Christmas has us pooped. The boys fell asleep on the drive home, after I brought them inside they promptly fell back asleep on the floor for another hour while I cleaned up the disaster they had left that morning.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was lots of fun. We started at home where Santa had filled the stockings and left a lego train set and then headed to the Stapletons for breakfast and gifts, then went to Ogilvies and repeated the fun. My mom had surprised us by compiling and editing our old home movies onto DVD, so we watched a bunch of those after lunch.

The boys made us calendars in their preschool class.

Sophie was super excited about her littlest pet shop.

Aunt Allie made all the nieces and nephews animals out of felt.

In keeping with Dan's choice of an alternate reality, his parents gave him all four seasons of Man vs Wild. He didn't get any Bear Grylls clothes this year, but only because he owns almost all of them already.

This is probably only funny to me, but for every year for the past 30 or so, there is a Christmas picture of my dad holding a dress shirt. We really need to spice things up and give him cologne or something. :)

These trucks make lots of noise, so naturally they were the boys favorite, and our least favorite, gift.

Christmas Eve

We had Christmas Eve festivities at our house this year and were able to have both sides of our family there. This is the Stapleton side. We had 16 adults and 5 kids over for a prime rib, with tofu turkey option, dinner.

Kids bingo.

Dan's Aunt Mary came from California.

Dan cheated during Bingo and kept his "bingo" quiet for 40 minutes so that he could hold out for this headband/neckwarmer, ear warmer, thing. He spent the rest of the night trying to look like a short haired Andre Agassi.

We had our first ever nativity and as you can see we have no dolls in our house and Brad had no idea how to care for our baby Jesus cabbage patch doll.

Christmas Season Festivities

I love that they wanted to wear their Halloween shirt while decorating the Christmas tree. I finally had to hide the orange and black one.

We went to Temple Square to look at the lights. We figured they got turned on at dark, nope, 5:30. Luckily, the boys were pretty interested in the scripture videos in the visitor center.

Seth kept putting gum drops in his mouth and telling us that he was just "feeling" them.

This is the snow fort Dan built with the boys.

Brad is wearing Dan's old wool hat- note to self, don't wash wool in the machine.

Weekend in St. George

We spent the weekend in St. George and stayed at Aunt Nancy's home. It was such a fun and relaxing trip. We went to Snow Canyon which had a short slot canyon and sand dunes, which were Brad's favorite part of the trip.

We also went to Zion National Park and we hiked to Upper Emerald Springs, a three mile round trip hike. The boys did all but about a 1/2 mile by themselves. They were so proud of themselves and did such a good job. This is the boys "cleaning the trail" by throwing leaves over the side.