A Visit to Santa

Every year Santa Claus makes a visit to the carousel in Rexburg.  My kids love going and sitting on his lap.  This year the girls opted out of going.  I thinking they are getting a little big for Santa.  Matt, the boys and I had a great time.

Aiden, Brock, and Collin

Collin

Aiden

Brock

First Snowstorm

My kids love when it finally snows and they love big amounts of snow.  Matt always gets the 4 wheeler out and pushes all of the snow into a big huge hill in the front yard.  I love it because it means lots of hours outside, sledding and enjoying the snow.  It has been fun this year for the boys, because they have decided that sledding is really fun.  As for me, I am already tired of the snow and am ready for it to melt.  I have a feeling it might be a long winter.

Thanksgiving

This year it was the year to stay in Rexburg and spend Thanksgiving with the Ricks Family.  My sister and her family were able to come up and spend the weekend with us.  We had a yummy dinner with lots of cousin fun.

I was able to hit the Black Friday sales with my sister, niece, brother-in-law and my dad.  As always we had a great time and got almost everything that we wanted.

50 years

This last weekend we had the opportunity to go down to Utah and celebrate with Matt's parents their 50th Anniversary.  Between all of the siblings I must say that we put on a pretty good party.  At the request of Matt's parents the adults all went and did a temple session at the Bountiful Temple.

Then we had a nice dinner and a little program.  Then we ended the night with dancing.  I think that was everyone's favorite part.  The DJ was awesome and everyone was dancing and singing.  We had a lot of fun.  I married into a wonderful family and am so glad to be a part of the Nielson clan.  My in laws are the best and it was a great day celebrating with them.

Halloween

The kids were so excited for Halloween this year.  We did a group theme of superheroes.  I thought they looked super cute.  Between the trunk or treat at the church, the Halloween parties at school and the door to door trick or treating my kids made a pretty big haul this year.  Even with the cold weather and the rain, they were real troopers and stuck with it.

Brock was Captain America

Collin was Green Lantern

Aiden was Iron Man

Kayla and Paige were Batman and Robin

Yellowstone

Over the kids harvest break we had planned to go up to Yellowstone and stay in the condo and drive in the park for a couple of days.  It was sad when the night before we were to leave, the government shut down, which also shut down the parks.  We decided to go anyways and just find something else to do.  Matt's parents had also come up to go with us, so that was fun to spend time with them.

On our way to Yellowstone we drove over to Earthquake lake.  I had never been there and it was really neat.  It was freezing cold and super windy, so we didn't get out to much.  The girls and Matt did a little hike up to look out over the top.  

When we got to Yellowstone we were able to walk around the shops and then we took the kids to the Grizzly Discovery Center.  That was the definite highlight.  Although we didn't get into the park they were still able to animals.  We went both days and the second day Kayla, Aiden and Collin were able to feed the bears.  They thought that was pretty cool.  We spent every night swimming and just enjoying our relaxing vacation.  We had a lot of fun.

Journey to the Temple

This last weekend the kids and I were able to attend our Primary Journey to the Temple Activity.  All summer we have given the kids assignments to work on to help them learn more about  the temples.  Each time they completed an activity they got to put a sticker on the map to help us get to the temple.  They had so much fun doing this and then we got to have our activity at the temple.  They were able to go inside in the waiting room area and walk into the baptismal font area.  They loved it and it was a neat experience for them to have.

Here is a fun picture of me and the kids at the activity.