Sorry it has been sooooo long since I have posted. We have been crazy busy. Our Thanksgiving was great. We spent it with both of our families and we're so grateful for all our blessings. For those of you who don't know Kelly and I decided to go to Mexico to see mom and dad. We decided to take a whole 10 days. We left on the 4th of December and went as far as Las Vegas. I have never been to Las Vegas so I wanted to stop and stay. It was also the first weekend of the National Finals Rodeo, so we wanted to join in some of the festivities. We knew quite a few people down there so we met up with some of them and hung out. We spent two nights at the Stratosphere.
It was nice, we went to the top and took some pictures.
No we didn't ride the rides, but we watched and they look scary. We did however ride the roller coaster at New York New York.
It was fun, I haven't been on a roller coaster in years. Also we went to the shark reef in Mandalay Bay. It was pretty cool. I am just going to put up a bunch of pictures. Some of them didn't turn out so well.
This shark has a funny nose,
and this one has a broken fin.
We did take some time to go to Cowboy Christmas. Durig the rodeo they always have the convention center set up with shopping. Anything cowboy you can think of is there. This is me sitting in a $350K living quarters horse trailer.
Other than that we gambled a lot (no we are not winners), ate, and took in the sites. From there it was on to Phoenix where we stayed the night with Kelly's cousin. When we crossed Hoover Dam we stopped for a quick picture.
While in Phoenix we stopped by Estrella Park. When Kelly was a child his family came down to Arizona every winter for 6 months and ran this arena.
He has quite a few memories here and I have heard several stories, so it was fun to go and see. After that we made the journey to Mexico. We arrived Monday afternoon and stayed till Saturday morning. Fortunately we missed the very cold weather in Idaho. They were in the negatives. Unfortunately Mexico was having a little cold front too. It was in the upper 50's at night and in the low 70's during the day. It really wasn't too bad except it was breezy, so it wasn't quite warm enough to get in the water. That didn't matter though we really enjoyed visiting with mom and dad and having some relax time.
There are great seashells on the beaches.
We had a blast picking all the cool ones up. We went fishing one day. We only caught 1 tuna, but then we did some bottom fishing and caught sea bass.
After the fishing they took us to this neat area and made us fish tacos. It was a great area for snorkeling and the water was so clear. We got in the water for a couple of minutes but then got out because it was kind of cool.
There is a stingray in this picture.
We weren't in the water very long but something stung me. In the course of the next couple of days I developed an extremely itchy rash. It was like a whole bunch of little blisters on my arms and a little on my legs.
It is much better now though. One day we kayaked out to a secluded beach. It was fun and we found some cool shells.
That is pretty much it for our trip, other than the four hours we sat at the border waiting in line. It was ridiculous and so frustrating. All in all it was a great trip, we had tons of fun. On a side note mom said it has been 80 and beautiful since we left, oh well. Now we are busy getting ready for Christmas and all the festivities.
Lola loved the Christmas tree and the presents, except she kept trying to eat the paper off of them.
On Christmas eve Cali, Travis, Gideon, Skye, and Ryan came over for a little get together.
We skyped mom and dad, and watched mom open some of her birthday presents.
After that we went to carol the Crystal family at their Christmas eve party. Christmas day was great. We spent time with family, ate a lot, and played on the wii. Kelly got me a wii fit and I got him a couple of different games, so when the family came over we had a lot of fun. We were blessed with tons of other great gifts from friends and family and would like to say thanks to all of you. We spent the rest of the weekend ice fishing and relaxing.
For New Year's Eve we just spent it with some friends, sorry Cali we didn't come watch you run, but we are very proud of you. We hope you all had a great holiday and wish you the best for the coming year.
