Great Wolf Lodge

Since Mark had work off and Kimball was still out of school the first week of January, we decided to head down to Charlotte to visit our friends the Burgons and then spend a couple of days at the Great Wolf Lodge. We'd heard about the awesome indoor waterpark at the Lodge, and it turned out to be the perfect little family vacation spot. Our kids never got tired of the slides and the water toys and the wave pool--especially Kimball who's already begging to go back. 

We stayed in one of the Kids Camp rooms, so our kiddos had bunk beds with all sorts of fun critters painted on the walls.

We made it down to the lobby just in time for pajama story time.

The kids loved all the animals and cabin decorations everywhere.

Don't get wet in there!

Here are a couple of videos from the Lottsa Water Dump Zone...

We're all still singing the little jingle from the Great Wolf Lodge website: "Take me to the Lodge--Great Wolf Lodge. Owwwooooo!" Very fun family trip.

10 years!

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, Mark took me on a get away to Asheville, NC. Asheville is a charming little city in the mountains, about 3 1/2 hours away from where we live. It's famous for having America's largest home, the Biltmore Estate, built by George Vanderbilt in the 1890's. Mark and I stayed at the Biltmore Inn, on the Biltmore property, and pretended we were rich and fancy for a couple of days. We ate out at some fun, highly recommended local restaurants around town, and all of them turned out to have amazing food. Asheville has a really artsy, hippie, natural flare, so the food tasted fresh and different. And I'd forgotten how fun it is to eat out without having to worry about whether our kids were behaving. :) We were only gone for about 36 hours, but we packed in a lot of good memories...

Breakfast at the Sunny Point Cafe

Heading off to tour the Biltmore

Of course we had to get a classic "take-it-yourself" photo

Look at the sky, the house, all surrounded by gorgeous mountain scenery... the Biltmore is awesome.

Thanks to our friends the Kuettels for tending the kids for us so we could go. It was so nice to get away and talk and laugh and just be the two of us for a couple of days. We've had some grand adventures in our first 10 years of marriage--here's to many more!

Holidays 2011

Merry Christmas!

We had a great Christmas at home here in North Carolina. It was strangely warm outside, but we still drank hot chocolate and snuggled in blankets and wore Christmas pjs just because that's what we're supposed to do at Christmastime. We read lots of Christmas books and acted out the nativity and had some great moments talking about the birth and life of our Savior. We had fun parties with friends and played games as a little family and missed our big families in Utah a lot. 

Kimball did an awesome job learning Christmas songs on the piano, and he loved to play them as duets with me and Mark. 

Liza asked Santa for a boy baby doll, and she has taken very good care of her new little guy. At first she named him Martin (I think because we had recently read "Shoemaker Martin") but then she changed his name to Sammy Duke Hansen. She's a funny girl. 

Grant boy was super cute with his new dump truck on Christmas morning. He took big loads of all his presents and trains and candy and delivered them all around the house. 

Liza picked out this amazing set of 24 glitter eye shadows and gave it to me for Christmas. As soon as I opened it she said, "And you can share it with me Mom!" 

Grant was awake in his bed Christmas night since he'd had a long nap earlier. Mark went and got him and let him come play with his toys for a minute. It was a fun moment for me to watch Mark and Grant roll the fire truck back and forth and talk about what a fun Christmas we'd had.

Kimball got Beyblades for Christmas, and he's had a lot of fun playing with them. He also got 2 new wii games, and I can hardly get him and Mark to go to bed at night because they don't want to turn off NBA Jam. It's nice having Kimball home from school and letting him just play and be a carefree kid. I love this time of year for lots of reasons--having my family home playing together is one of my favorites.

And now it's 2012, a fresh start. I'm really excited to go into this new year feeling healthy and hopeful and happy. The past year was a tough one for me in lots of ways, but I feel grateful for what we learned and for how it brought us closer together. Hooray for the New Year with all its new opportunities and adventures waiting.