Thanksgiving in Chi-Town

The Hartsock's headed to CHICAGO for Thanksgiving this year. Noah had a tournament there so everyone decided that was the place to be. Ben and Lindsy live there and they were the most amazing host's!! It was a tight squeeze with everyone there, but we loved every minute of it. We watched 2 BYU games, ate Chicago deep dish pizza, hung out down-town, had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, went to the museum and enjoying time with family. Thanks again for letting us stay with you Ben and Linds. It was a blast and a Thanksgiving we will never forget.

Willis Tower (formerly know as Sears Tower)

Girodanos it's a good thing you are thousands of miles away or we would have a situation.

Love, love, love this pizza!

Holidays on State Street

Ice skating in Millennium Park

The Bean at Millennium Park

Ben, Linds, Carter, Avery & Emilia

Downtown at the lighting of the Christmas tree

The next few pictures are at the Museum of Science and Industry. This museum is incredible. I went there the last time I was in Chicago and was there for like 3 hours. This time we were there about the same amount of time and saw totally new and different things. I love this museum!!

Nate and Avery

This is an actual submarine from WWII. They actually built this part of the museum around the submarine. It was awesome to see this part of the museum and pretty touching.

Wow!! What an amazing tree

Thanksgiving Day.......

Linds and Leslie working hard

Working on the 80 rolls I made

Carter and Jo

This is the most amazing turkey I've ever seen. Lindsy did an

amazing job on the whole meal but the turkey was off the charts!!

The Fam after Noah's game

Carter and Nate

Melis, Emilia, Nate and Avery

Jabari Parker. Coach K says he's the next Kobe. Top high school player right now. Check him out on youtube. He is amazing. BYU is recruiting him along with every other D1 school in the nation. Guess we will wait and see where he goes....

What a suprise!!

Life since volleyball stared in August has been stressful to say the least! I have a young team and we have had to work through a lot of kinks. I think about volleyball a whole lot and I talk about it a lot as well. Nate listened for the first few weeks but as the season has gone on he listens less and less. So I had to turn to someone who cared and knew what I was talking about- my sister Trish. She has felt my pain, worry, excitement, anger, and frustrations of being a coach. She knows well what I've been going through having coached for 12 years herself. Well the other day I was sitting in the gym at a junior high volleyball game keeping score and my amazing sister shows up right in front of the scores table with 2 of her kids Jessie and Devin. SUPRISE!! SUPRISE!! I was completely shocked. They drove 9 hours to come visit us. She knew I needed some professional help with my team and she made the trip up to do it. We won both of our games while she was here and she helped me out immensely. They came on Thursday and stayed until Sunday. It was homecoming week so Friday was just a fun day at school and Jessie and Devin got to hang out with the kids at school. We visited Devils Tower on Saturday and went to the football game and then to our volleyball game. Thank you for the visit. It was so fun. I have the best sister in the world!!

Summer in the Sun

What a great summer we had!! It was all about sun and fun!! I think that I was so busy playing that I just didn't have any time to blog. We got a great start to our summer by going to LAKE POWELL. We went with the Chatterton Family, my parents and cousin Jaclyn. We rented a houseboat and spent our days eating, boating, tubing, wakeboarding, knee boarding, laughing, playing games, tanning, fishing, and swimming. It was the best vacation I've been on in awhile. Thanks for the invite Trish and Chris. We had a blast!! There are many picture to follow; lets remember I didn't post anything all summer.

Carson playing in the sand

The view from our houseboat

Nate spent most of his time fishing

Nate's first tubbing experience. Let's just say he was terrifyed!

Rainbow Bridge

Houseboat

Me and Trish

Nate gettting ready for his first wakeboarding experience

Our last night on the Lake

After we left Lake Powell we spent a few days in Utah with Nates brothers and then headed to Idaho where we lived for most of the summer. My parents we so gracious to let us stay with them for the summer. We had a great time in Idaho with family.

Melis and Kels

Nate working away doing cement at the Hawks home

Date Night with Trish and Chris: Blue Hashi and the Bronco=AMAZING!

Our next vacation took us to Oklahoma to see the Hartsock's. We flew with Noah and Kendalyn. Lindsy, Ben and the kids came from Chicago. They also brought Nate's cousin Zach along with them. Dan came from Stillwater and Jake and Jo were already there. The only brother that wasn't able to make it was Jeremiah; whose wife Allison was getting ready to have a baby. (We missed them). It was over 100 degrees the whole time we were there so we spent most of our time in the pool.

The first night that we were there we headed to the kiddy park with the kiddies... and then to the Vaclaw's for some amazing fireworks. Happy 4th of July!!

Avery and Emilia riding the horses

Carter is pretty thrilled about this boat ride (he wasn't feeling well)
I thought this picture was hilarious of Nate trying to crawl into the back seat of the car
Nate playing with Emilia

Me and Lindsy
The whole fam at Mazzios

Noah, Leslie, and Nate and the OK City Temple

Loving the pool in the backyard

Back to Idaho........

Riding the four wheeler with Marley and Londyn
Kimmi and I decided to run the 10K 24th of July Freedom Run. It was my first race and I didn't reallly train for it. I'm pretty sure that I will train next time. I did end up winning the grand prize from the raffle and got a $100 gift certificate for new running shoes. I was super excited!!!
Aspen, Nan and J.D. 24th of July parade

Hanging with the nieces at the parade
Marley and Londyn loading up on candy

In August my entire family was togther for the first time in years. One of the days we went boating with everyone and had an amazing time. We also had a family reunion with all of my mom's family.

Wow did we laugh hard. My abs were so sore the next day from laughing. It was a blast.

We were sad when our summer had to come to an end and we had to come home to Wyoming, but so grateful for family and jobs that allow us to spend the summers with them. Now we are back to teaching and regular life, so maybe I will be better about blogging, but no gurantees.