Christmas!

 This year the entire Christmas Season has been CRAZY!!!! We have been so busy. In November we built a gingerbread house and donated it to the Gingerbread forest at the Grand America Hotel.  Wade and I volunteered and came up with the idea but we got a lot of help from everybody at the bakery to pull it off.  It turned out awesome!

It's based on the family windmill that is located in Durnam Germany. We used some old pictures and found some new pictures on the internet to help us get it right.  The windmill belonged to the Backers when they were the bakers for the royal family of Ostfriesland... I think that is how you spell it. The house is a house in the background of one of the pictures.  Though not necisarrily the house the Backers lived in or the bakery.

The windmill blades actually rotate and broke the most often. This is actually the second set of windmill blades that made it to the Grand America.  The first fell off and broke into a billion pieces.

Everything for that was visible on the house had to be edible.  The house and windmill were made from gingerbread the windows were from candy Santa, the Horse, the snowman and all of the other animals were made of Marzipan, the pond was candy as well. THe trees are made of Icing the path is little chocolate rocks the roof is cereal.  There are even kids in the house peeking out the door to see what Santa left in their shoes (In Germany they leave their shoes out on the porch for Santa to fill.  It's a family tradition in both of our families to get oranges in our socks or shoes so that is the gift we are using.  The horse is trying to steal the carrot from the snowman's nose. We had a lot of fun making this and even ended up winning the contest between the gingerbread houses (I didn't believe there was a contest even though Wade kept telling me there was.)

Other than that we have been working like crazy getting ready for Christmas both at home and at work.  We spent Christmas morning at my Dad's house.  This is my Nephew Tucker and Grandpa Schaugaard getting warm by the fire and waiting to get started.

Santa brought Tucker some chocolate Goldfish in his sock.  He was quite happy to be eating those.  He was funny because he couldn't let go of whatever he had opened last to open his next present so he kept doing it one handed. 

He had to get all the blocks out.

I made my brother Gary a new pillow case for his big pillow.  If you know Gary you know how important this is.  I made Tucker a minny version of both pillow and pillow case so they could be twins.  I think Gary was far more interested in both gifts than Tucker was.

We had a lot of fun for Christmas and saw lots of people.  But after the week of work we had we were so tired!  I took this of Button this is how I felt.

She had just finished shredding the magazine that she is laying on and just flopped down on top of it and took a nap.  Too much Christmas Fun for her.
And on Christmas I arrived at 35 Weeks pregnant.  This baby gets bigger every day.

We are getting so excited to have this little one get here! 

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a great New Year!!!

It's a.....

So for those of you who don't know Wade and I are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the newest member of our family on January 31 2011. 

Back in June we had a bit of a scare but it all turned out just fine and we got the opportunity to have an early Ultrasound.
This is what it looked like then...

Baby 9 weeks

This is now...

A Little Shy...

Cute nose

Baby

We also now know that Wade was right all along.... It is a Girl.

Wiggly and not into having her picture taken.

PANGUITCH

Time for the yearly update of the Panguitch adventures. This will be short due to the fact that I should be sleeping and I didn't take very many pictures. ;)
I only have evidence of a few events...

Caves

My Sister-in-law Megan, My nephew Tucker and Wade exploring Mammoth Caves.

April and Jen (my Cousins) and April's son Jake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Escaping from caves

My turn first

 

 

 

Then Wade's

Family MINUTE TO WIN IT

Wade and my Uncle Shay trying to shake 5 golf balls out of cereal boxes tied to their bums.

Yes that is 2 golf balls balanced on top of each other Good job Megs

The Parade

The beauty of this one is that Wade took it and we had 50 family members that were there that could have taken it for us.

Sadly that is it for the camping adventure....

It's funny because when we got home I was so frustrated with my hair I did something drastic.  It was so hard to take care of when I was camping...

When I got home it went from this...

To

This

Sorry Dad ;)

I cut my hair off like this just before my mission accept it was about 3 inches shorter.  My mom was supposed to send it in to Locks of Love but never did.  I did some checking and found out that she had stored it properly and they would still take it.  That ponytail cut off 5 years ago is 13 inches long the one I cut off last week is 14 inches long.... 27 inches of hair is headed off to give a child some hair.... No greater cause.

They are the same color now that the new one is dry.

It's about time...

Wade and I have had an eventful seven months!!!  Even though I haven't been blogging about it regularly.

I know this is a big step into the past but I told Megan in December I would post this super cute Nativity scene that she gave me for Christmas.  It's so cute and I love it!!!!

On to the New Year in January Wade and I took a quick trip to Sunny Arizona.  We went to Tucson Arizona and had so much fun!!!

I had no idea that these Saguaros are so huge!  I've only seen them in Road Runner and Wiley Coyote cartoons.  Since Road Runners are only about 12 inches tall I think the cactus are Slightly miss represented in those cartoons.   See this is Wade next to a not really big Saguaro.

 

This is me in the Saguaro National Park.  I was completely fascinated by the skeletons of these guys.  The cactus right next to/behind me is a dead skeleton of a Saguaro.  When they die they fall a part and have these stick and twig skelitons that are just crazy looking. The other ones are all quite old. These things live 100 years before they even get their first arm.  There is one that died and isn't there anymore, but we saw pictures, it was more than 40 feet tall and had 52 arms,  and was probably more than 300 years old.  We went hunting for the current "big one" but never found it.  But these puppies are huge even if you don't find the biggest one!

One day while we were there we drove a couple hours south down to Tombstone Arizona... The town too tough to die!  Tombstone is where Wyatt Earp had the famous shootout at the OK corral.  We saw a shootout show and walked through a hundred shops...There were scorpions every where in this town... not living ones, ones you take home as souvenirs... as a matter of fact the whole state had this problem.  In a gas station in Flagstaff and in Tombstone I saw the most horrible thing I've ever seen! A stuffed animal in the shape of a scorpion! WHO THINKS THAT IS CUTE?!?!!? Scorpions are horrible grose crawly things that kill people!!! Why would you make stuffed one???? How does that make any sense?
We also went to the Bird Cage Saloon.  It is supposedly haunted and the crazy thing was is that you could see litterally10's of bullet holes in the walls just standing in the entrance way.  It was a fun town and it was cool to see what was there to see and how they have preserved this old mining town.  I regret a little that we didn't see a few more things while we were there.  We should have spent more time in Tombstone. 

Now if you look at a map you'll notice that Tombstone is a mere 30 miles from the Mexico Border.  So we had the fun opportunity of going through...

Border Patrol and yes we were stopped by border patrol on our way back to Tucson.  That was an adventure!!  But no big deal they let us go quickly.... It might have been the Pink Subaru that got us through?...

When we decided to go to Tucson we decided to look up restaurants that had been on food network on

our favorite shows like Man vs. Food and Diners Drive in's and Dives and tried some of those restaurants.  I don't have any pictures of these events and sadly we missed the cardiac arrest burger in Chandler AZ (Southern part of Phoenix)... but we aggree that of the restaurants that we made it to the Sonoran Hot dog was our favorite!  It was a hot dog wrapped in bacon and then covered in pinto beans, salsa, onions, SOOO Yummy!

We went to church in Tuscan too and I just want to say we can all take a page out of the books of these people!  I have visited plenty of wards in my life but I have never been so welcomed in a ward as I was in this one. They introduced themselves and talked to us and helped us with our classes and were completely genuine in their interest in us.  They were awesome!

So after a few days in the sun in the south we decided we should head for home.  We made a few stops on the way home... we picked an off the beaten path to come home by... we went to Snowflake AZ to go to the temple and spent the night in Holbrook on the actual Rout 66.  We stayed in a Wigwam.....  

Yes this was our hotel room at the Wigwam Motel.  I swear these are what the Kozy Kones are based on in the movie Cars.  the room was round and was complete with a small bathroom.  It was much colder here than it was in Tucson but it was still fun and worth visiting. 

We went looking for breakfast after this and found our all time favorite restaurant ever.  Jo and Aggies Cafe Just down the street on the old Rout 66.  It was started in 1943 and is still run by the 3rd generation of the same family.  It was so good!

After that we went through the Petrified Forest and up through the reservation to Monticello where we spent a few days with my Grandparents.  We had a wonderful time spending a couple days with them.

Then we headed for home but we made one last stop in....

 

Arches National Park In January! It was so cool to see the arches covered in snow. We only stayed for a few hours but it was the nicest time I ever spent in Arches nice and cool!

It was a fantastic trip and we had so much fun!!!!

Since we got home we have been working on our living room.  This is a picture of our new couch in our new living room. We painted and sanded the floor down and really Wade did most of it because I was always studding and not helping as much but it is beautiful and I love it.