Merry Christmas!

We hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas! Here are some pictures from all of the festivities we attended! It felt like we were opening presents all day and eating in between! :)

Here are the girls dressed up for Christmas Eve church:


Santa found us at our new house! He brought Gabi & Maya matching personalized reading chairs with a special book for each. They really like the chairs so far!

We ate breakfast at Joe's grandparents' house on Christmas morning:

Marco doing a headstand during gift opening:

After opening presents at Don & Phyllis's house, we ventured down to Dave & Joyce's house for even more presents!!

A new hairbow from Great-Grandma Fern:

Greer & Marco with his new penguin pillow pet:

Gabi received a huge dollhouse from Grammy & Papa! She was super excited about it and after Joe spent 3 hours putting it together during her nap time, she loves it even more than expected!

Papa Dave sharing some whoppers:

We had Christmas dinner at Amanda & Greer's house in the afternoon. Here are all of the cousins by the tree! This was a hard picture to get!

The dinner was outstanding and the company even better! All of the kids had a great time as well.

It was fun to be surrounded by family! They have made us feel very welcome in our new home and we have loved every minute of being here so far. We went for a long walk today and saw lots of wildlife, including a bald eagle, lots of antelope, deer, a huge jackrabbit, and a hawk. Beautiful place.

Merry Christmas to all! Joe, Tara, Gabi, & Maya

Christmas Eve Snowshoeing & Sledding

Season's Greetings! We took the girls up to Pole Creek this morning to go snowshoeing. Maya got to ride in the backpack and Gabi hiked with us and rode on our runner sled when she got tired. Gabi especially loved riding the sled down the hills!

Gabi chasing Jackson through the trees!

Jackson loved our snowshoe adventure as well! Joe and I loved that we only saw one other family out skiing. If this had been Colorado on a day as nice as this, we would have been one of 100 families on the trail! It was a beautiful day in "God's Country."

We are getting settled in. I will write about our move soon at www.wyomingishome.blogspot.com very soon. So far so good! The girls are getting excited for Santa to come tonight and of course all of the present opening that will commence shortly. :)

Have a very Merry Christmas!!
Love,
Joe, Tara, Gabi, & Maya

Thanksgiving

Hello Everyone! We hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We made the long journey to Iowa for the week, but it was a great time and well worth the trip! We picked up my Grandma Dot in Lincoln and took her with us. The girls had so much fun playing with Grammy Mary and Papa Gary! They fed us well and it was nice to just relax and hang out with the family. Here are some pictures from our stay.

Grandma Dot made turkeys and pilgrim hats out of candy and cookies. Gabi thought they were pretty cool!


We had an organic, pasturized goose from Grant Family Farms instead of the usual thanksgiving turkey. It was very festive, but didn't taste that great. It was fun to try something new anyways. Joe is always the bird carver in the family. :) My mom made all kinds of tasty other things to go with our Thanksgiving goose!


Papa Gary bought tickets for us to go see Disney On Ice. The girls LOVED it! Our seats were outstanding and Gabi was glued to the skaters the entire time. She kept flashing me smiles of excitement! Her favorite was Tinkerbell. The rest of us enjoyed it as well!

Pumba has been a long time favorite character of mine and he was the best costume of the night! It brought back lots of memories from middle/high school of my best friend, Susie, and I and our love of the Lion King.


We celebrated Christmas while we were there since we won't be seeing my family for Christmas this year. Of course we had to get the 4 generations picture! My mom bought the girls these matching outfits...aren't they cute!? Before we opened presents, we went to Mass where the girls were waving at and trying to get Papa Gary's attention while he was playing guitar and singing. It was pretty funny!

My mom bought the girls pillowpets, only these are pillowpets on steroids...they're HUGE! Maya thought her bumblebee was so fun! She hauls that thing around with her everywhere. Gabi received a ladybug. They are very cute and now take up half of the girls' beds while they sleep at night.

Maya LOVES books and has a great time reading to herself...out loud. It is quite comical and I need to figure out how to put videos from my new camera on this blog so you can see for yourself. She is such a silly one...wonder where she gets it...?

Thanks Mom and Dad for hosting us...we had a great time! My dad is having knee replacement surgery on December 7th, so please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. I'm sure all will go well and he'll be back to skiing black diamonds in no time! ;-)

In other news, we are busy getting ready for the big move...less than three weeks away now. Joe raked the leaves for probably the last time, so we had to get some pictures of the girls "helping" him out. We will definitely miss our big maple tree.

Our house is "under contract," but we're trying not to get our hopes up yet. We have had a contract fall through before, so I guess nothing is for certain until they sign on the bottom line at the closing on 12/29. We are getting excited for our move, but are very nervous and overwhelmed with everything, especially saying good-bye to everyone. In addition to the moving to-do list, we have our Christmas parties and our Going Away party to look forward to in the next couple of weeks. They will be fun, but kinda sad as well.

Thanks for checking in on us!

Until next time...
Joe, Tara, Gabi, & Maya

Thankful

We hope you all have a safe and joyful Thanksgiving. We are so very thankful for all of our friends and family that make life so beautiful.

Joe, Tara, Gabi, & Maya

Halloween!

Hope you all had a fun Halloween! Ours was spent in Buffalo during a very long weekend trip with our first big U-Haul load (third load overall) of stuff. Joe was also able to get a good idea of office space available, we met with the surveyor and loan banker, and checked out our temporary digs. Best of all, we spent lots of time with family! Gabi and Maya had great fun with their cousins and Grammy & Papa.

Here are the pumpkins the kids (actually the adults) carved.


Joe's cousin, Natalie, had a Halloween party before the trick-or-treating got underway. The kids were all very excited to be in their costumes and go get CANDY!

Gabi was a ladybug:

Maya was a bumblebee:

The whole clan:


Off they go!


Gio and Gabi had lots of quality play time! So excited for when we will live closer and this can happen more often! We took Gio and Gabi to the Buffalo vs. Lander play-off football game and they had so much fun singing, listening to the band, eating popcorn, and watching "Auntie Manda" make everyone feel better!! Maya and Marco had fun too! :)

Lots of love,

Joe, Tara, Gabi & Maya

Fabulous Fall Festivities

On Saturday, we stopped by Rocky Mountain Pumpkin Patch to pick out some pumpkins on our way to the Wyoming Homecoming football game. We had a wonderful day!
Joe, Tara, Gabi, & Maya

On a Walk...

For some reason, I haven't taken very many pictures the last couple of weeks. I need to get back in the habit! Joe took these photos of Maya with his phone on one of our many walks/tricycle rides by the high school. On the weekends and evenings, there are miles of sidewalks for Gabi to ride her tricycle as fast as she can! We even spend some time playing on the turf football field.

Not much is new -- we've just been trucking along. Gabi has started preschool and LOVES it. They made applesauce the other day and she was proud that she already knew how (we made a whole batch the weekend before to can). She goes to school Tuesday and Thursday from 8:30-12:30 and has done suprisingly well. She also started swimming lessons two nights a week and she REALLY likes that! Gabi had her 3 year old check-up (the last time she went to the doctor was for her 2 year old check-up so she has stayed healthy!) She was 40.5 inches tall (99%ile) and weighed 34.2lbs (80th %ile). She pretty much talks and sings nonstop. A lot of people don't believe me when I say this, because she won't talk much at all around people she doesn't know well.

Maya is doing great as well. She has gotten into the habit of using expressions instead of words. I've heard her say lots of words, but she usually chooses not to talk. She knows how to say yes, but instead she will just nod her head "yes" instead of actually saying it. It is a little frustrating, but Gabi is more than happy to talk for her. :) Maya is one happy little girl and just a snuggle bug!

Hopefully I will have more pictures soon! Take care! Tara