Category Archives: Holidays

Posts about celebrating holidays with our family and those we love. Who doesn’t love a good holiday celebration?

Happy (late) Halloween!

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Josh and I were Waldo and Wenda for Halloween, from the Where’s Waldo? books. We made/assembled our costumes, and I think they turned out really well:

My work had a Halloween/food drive/flu shot party that we went to, and it was a lot of fun. People liked our costumes, and we got some funny comments like, “Don’t lose each other, you might not find each other again!” My favorite was one lady who said to Josh, “Now, I don’t see your cane and your cup, so I must have to go and find it…” I had totally forgotten about having to search for Waldo’s cane and cup! Anyone else remember that?

Anyway, the holiday was way fun, but making our shirts involved my first experience with Rit dye, and…well, let’s just say it might be my last. ;-) I tried to follow instructions from a friend and what Josh and I found online, but maybe we didn’t do things quite right because after we washed our shirts after Halloween they looked like this:

(On the plus side, it’s a pretty cute pink jammy shirt though, right?) Ruining the shirts aside, we now also have 3 purple dish cloths (instead of blue ones), 2 salmon-colored towels (instead of gold ones), two now-pink white undershirts (thank goodness we wore cheap ones), a pink ironing board cover, and a pile of pink rags. I promise I’m not as dumb as I sound…it’s just that some Rit dye ended up some places I wasn’t expecting. Oh, adventures in laundry. Sometimes I feel like I’m still finding traces of the stubborn dye around the house…so, yes, I’ll probably stay away from scarlet Rit dye from now on. ;-)

4th of July Weekend, Part 2

Holidays, Vacations, , ,

So ready to hear about Part 2 of our vacation over the 4th of July? (See Part 1 first.) Part 2 actually consisted mostly of driving. After celebrating the family reunion in Show Low, we woke up the next day and drove and drove and drove towards our destination of Roswell, New Mexico, where our hotel was. We were all very excited to visit Roswell, the town of legendary UFO fame, because it just so happens that the weekend we were there was same weekend as the international UFO festival. Wow.

Brenn, Shelby, Jennie, and Cole had spent most of the weekend writing “we come in peace” and “aliens welcome” on the side of the van and planning out alien costumes to mingle with the alien fanatics. And we watched Contact the night before to prepare for any alien encounters (we were going to watch Signs, but Paige’s mom doesn’t like scary movies. And it turns out that Contact, which is good but not quite as gripping, put everyone but us to sleep.) But we were really glad we watched Contact, because when we were driving the next day, guess what we just happened to drive by? Yep, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, featured on the movie as a tool to hear extra-terrestrial signals. (Wouldn’t it be cool if everything had a name as fitting as the VLA?)

We got to stop, take pictures, and walk around, and it was pretty cool.

When we did roll into Roswell that night, it turned out most of the alien festivities were over, but we did enjoy seeing tons of alien and UFO paraphernalia throughout the town. All the siblings bought UFO t-shirts the next morning on our way out.

So after another day of travel, we arrived back at Dallas and said goodbye to the Ellsworths. All in all, a way fun (though pretty quirky) family vacation.

The Enemy

4th of July Weekend, Part 1

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Wow, we’re kind of behind in our blogging…that’s thanks to our transient lifestyle (we moved from that little hotel room into a three-bedroom, three-bath house with a pool to housesit for a very nice family on vacation) and thanks to a busy and fantastic week that Paige spent in Utah for a work conference.

Anyway, almost a month ago now we got to spend a great time with Paige’s family over the Fourth of July. For Part 1 of our adventure, on Friday we flew from the Dallas airport to Albuquerque, where we met up with my family, who were driving on their way from their Colorado road trip in the big white van (affectionately called the Barge). They picked us up and we drove late into the night to Show Low, Arizona, where many years ago Edmund Lovell Ellsworth, a pioneer who crossed the plains, settled with his family. Now the Ellsworth family has a huge family reunion every ten years, and this was the year.

So after sleeping in on Saturday, we spent the day seeing cousins and aunts and uncles and meeting more distant relatives. We played some fun outdoor games with the younger cousins and played a great game of ultimate frisbee with the older cousins and Uncle Keen and Aunt Sunny.

Sadly, we didn’t get to watch fireworks at the end of the day because we were all so wiped out! After the barbecue, we headed back to the hotel, sunburned and tired, and ate watermelon and watched Contact in preparation for Part 2 of the vacation, so stay tuned!

And enjoy some pictures!

Colorado Fun

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For Memorial Day weekend, we were looking forward to having the Lymans visit. We were going to hike the Y and visit family and have fun – but sometimes plans change. When Josh’s family found out they couldn’t make it last minute, we found the next best (or probably better) thing: go to them! So we had an awesome weekend in Colorado.

We drove the Rav out (thank you, thank you, thank you, family, for letting us use it!) on Friday night and flew back Monday night. Highlights of the trip?

Friday: Driving, pretty mountain scenery, crashing in a hotel

Saturday: Driving some more, seeing the Lyman family, biking along the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs together, yummy sack lunches, eating ice cream, driving even more, relaxing at home, watching The Village

Sunday: Church with the Lymans, spending time together, playing Scrabble, Heather’s delicious dinner and Dale’s delicious grilled kabobs

Monday: a wonderful Memorial Day family home evening lesson, playing Mario with Chris, introducing Luke to Portal, being introduced to NCIS, shopping with Heather and the boys, eating at Boston’s (one of Josh’s former employers and favorite restaurants), flying home and sitting next to a very nice man and his happy, friendly nine-month-old daughter who we got to play with

Below are some pictures from our adventure biking in Glenwood Springs. Hope you enjoy! And thanks family, for such a wonderful weekend! We loved it!