BYU Volleyball

 

 

 We always have fun going to the BYU Volleyball game.  My good friend Tara's husband is the coach so she is great to get us seats right down in front with her.  The girls play so good together.  I made Tabitha at least watch one quarter and then we didn't see much of her and Stella.  They always run into Cosmo running around but I only hear about it afterwards so I don't get a photo.

Snow Queen Elsa

Layni is turning 3 next month and having a Frozen party.  I though it would be fun to take some pictures in her Elsa dress for her invitation.  She loves dressing up and wears a dress up most of the time.  We told her we were leaving her dress at home while we played in snow.  She was happy when we pulled it out before taking these pictures.  She is such a cutie, we sure do love her!!

Snowshoeing

My Mom and Layni came up today since she was off work and the girls were out of school.  We played around at the house all morning, Layni is in heaven with all the girls stuff.  Gabrielle has a project at school where she is merging 3 animals and has to dress up like that animal, so my Mom spent the morning crocheting a lizard hat for her.  We went to Wasatch Mt. State Park to do some snowshoeing in the afternoon.  Brandon got me new snowshoes for Christmas, it was fun to try them out.  I found these adorable shoes for the girls this summer.  We all had fun playing in the snow.

Lost tooth

Tabitha lost her first tooth today and she was beyond excited!!  Brandon wiggles her teeth every few days and they have not been loose.  She came to me today and wanted me to look in her mouth.  What I noticed first is the tooth coming in behind and then I wiggled the baby tooth and it was super loose!  She wiggled it for the next several hours and finally she let me pull it out.

NFC Chapionships

I came home early from work this morning not feeling good. I spent the rest of the day in bed.  Emily came up to watch the NFC championship game between the Seahawks and the Packers.  I dozed on and off in bed during the game and thought that it was pretty quiet out it the living room.   I checked the score and the seahawks were down.  I turned the TV on to watch the last quarter and the last two minutes of the game were pretty intense and then overtime for the win!  Brandon was so excited, he came in and booked an airline ticket for the game!  He will go down and stay with his best friend Brandon Carr.  I came out of my room to snapped this photo after the game, not sure where Tabitha was.

Sledding

 

 

We have had a great winter this year weather wise.  We need the moisture but we have been loving the warmer temps.  We had a huge storm Monday and the girls really wanted to go sledding.  We have a small hill just up the road we took the girls to today along with out friends kids.  The kids had a great time.  We used Brandon's ice fishing sled along with two tubes from the White's.

Rain Forest tour

 

The reason we were in Panama was Brandon had some work meetings with the insurance company that his company uses for their buses.  We flew out a few days before to enjoy time by ourselves.  Today we met up with the group and went on an organized tour of the rain forest.  We went up a gondola ride to a overlook that you could see the canal.  We saw a Toucan, Iguana and some other rodent type animal running around the ground.  The view was pretty at the top.  We had lunch and then took a boat road out on the canal.  That was cool being out there among the large boats.  We went to several areas where the guide would coax monkeys out for us to view.  We saw Howler Monkeys and Capuchin,  There was another type of Monkey but our guide could not get it to come out of the trees.  The Capuchin at one point jumped on our boat for a quick second to grab the banana the guide had.   It was a fun day!

Panama Canal

We took a tour of the panama canal today.  It was very interesting.  Boats have to wait up to at least 24 hours before entering the canal.  The last two pictures were taken from our hotel room balcony and you can see boats lined up.   It can cost $50,000-500,000 depending the on the size of the boat.  It takes about 8 hours to get through once entering the locks.  The locks systems was introduced by the US but the French had the idea of the canal but ran out of money to build and so many workers were getting sick.  The water way the boats travel through Panama are two man made lakes whose water come solely from the rain.  They just celebrated 100 years of operation in 2014.  They are working on another entry lock that should be done in a year, you can see in the first picture the dirt hill in the background where they are working.  We then walked around old town, some of which is fixed up really nice and other buildings are completely run down but they are slowly working on it.  There was a great view of the downtown Panama City, which most of the high rises are residential.

Snorkel

Our hotel is on the Pacific side of Panama.  I had read that the snorkeling is better on the Caribbean side.  The company picked us up at our hotel in the morning and drove us about an hour and a half right through Panama to the other side.  It was fun to see more of the country.  Driving through a small town we drove passed to sister missionaries walking down the road.  We had fun snorkeling, seeing some good fish, but wished there were more.  The water was very choppy and I got a little seasick out snorkeling.  We enjoyed a yummy lunch and then drove over to the town of Portobelo.  We walked around buying some jewelry from one of the stands set up.  We found a fort that dates back to the 17th century that was built to protect them from pirates.  This area was very popular for transatlantic trading.