Twelve Days of Christmas

Cliff and I wanted to do something fun and different for our girls and their families this year, so we planned and prepared a 12 days of Christmas for them. We delivered all the gifts in a Christmas storage tub and they began their 12 days on Dec. 9th. They will finish on Dec. 20th and we will have our Christmas FHE Candlelight Dinner on the 21st when they will share their fun and experiences with us. Our theme for this 12 days of Christmas was "Family". Each gift is to be opened together as a family and most of the gifts require them to do something together as a family that day. The purpose of this is to help them draw closer together as a family and realize that the most important gift that the Christ Child gave us was his example of love and kindness, the fullness of the gospel and family. Cliff and I hope that they, especially the grandchildren, will enjoy this and remember it for years to come. That is why we asked the girls to take pictures since the grandchildren are still pretty young, maybe the pictures will help bring back the memories in future years.

When they are all done, they are going to put the pictures together for us. I will then post some of them.

Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends. We love you!!

Above is our family christmas picture for this year. It may be the last one we get for a while since most of our kids will probably be moving far away during this next year, and won't know when we may all be together again at the same time. Life brings change.....I just don't always like the change.....

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving Day at the Rhoades house this year! We had 21 of us. We were missing my brother, Ken, and his family. And we did miss having them here with us. So there was my Dad, my sister (Cheryl) and her family, and all of my family. After dinner we went over to the park behind our house and took a few family pictures and then we played the newlywed game with everyone. It was fun. Morgan and Mekelle are not married yet, so they were a couple for the game (they know each other pretty well). And also, since my mother has passed away, we still asked my dad the questions and learned a little more about grandma.

I don't have any of the family pictures we took on here right now because Kelsey took them with her camera, so I don't have any copies yet. I'm sure you can go onto Facebook though and see them. She has posted a few, I think.
Starting the food line. We are all hungry.

We had tons of food.

Here some of them sitting down eating. Others still in the kitchen.

The other table

My son-in-law, Jarom, and little Meg. such a cutie!!

Savannah, Jenna, and Rylie

Amanda enjoying her Thanksgiving meal

Here's the two little ones, Meg and London.

At the end of the day, Cameron had surprised Katie with a birthday cake. Her Birthday was a week ago, but such a busy day that she never got a birthday cake. However, we were all so full from the day, that we didn't even cut it. Just sang to her and put it back in the freezer, for hopefully another day. It looked good. It is filled with ice cream.

Halloween Fun at Grandma's House

Halloween at Grandma's House was fun again this year!! On Tuesday our home ward had their Halloween Party and Jenna and Amanda came over for that. Then on Halloween Linsey brought the girls down early for us to see them, and unfortunately Amanda did not get over to the house in time for pictures with the other girls before Linsey had to head back to Idaho Falls.

We had Sloppy Joes and then Jenna, London, and Amanda went Trick or Treating in our neighborhood. It was a nice evening, so not too cold for the girls. When they got back Jenna had fun handing out the candy to those still coming to the house. We had a big turn out this year. In fact, I ran out of candy (which has never happened before) and I started giving out Cliff's diabetic reaction candy bar stache and a big box of fruit snacks that I had just bought. Glad I had the extra!!

It was a fun evening with the Grandkids!! Here are some pictures of all of them.
Here is Jenna and Amanda on Tuesday before the Ward party.

They make a great Cinderella and Umpouloompa!!

Jenna and Amanda

Here are my two little ladybugs!!! Meg and London One little bug didn't want to sit still!!

Meg and London

Meg

Here's the crew, except for Amanda. This is before they went trick or treating.

Cute little ladybug. London

The three oldest ones......Jenna, Rylie, and Savannah

Cinderella is trying to keep the ladybug in one place..... (sisters)

Off they go

The very first house of the evening.....the Matson's......our great friends!!

TRICK OR TREAT!!!!

Family Pictures of my Oldest Daughter

Here are some really cute pictures of Linsey's family. My daughter, Kelsey, took these pictures. She did an amazing job.
She did this one in black and one also. I like them both.

This is a GREAT picture of Linsey and Jarom!!!

I love this one of Rylie and Savannah!!

Rylie

Savannah

Meg

The Before and After Shots!!

Ok. My basement is finally finished. Well, finished for the most part. I still have to put some decor on walls (when i figure out what I want) and a few little things. I really like how it all turned out and it looks better in real life than in these pictures, but it gives an idea of how it looks.

This was my living room for several weeks with part of the furniture from the basement in it. It drove me crazy!!.

The stairwell. I figured if I had to replace the carpet in the basement, I might as well do the stairs too, especially when I already hated the carpet that was on the stairs in the first place.

This is the family room. We had to tear out the wall where the window is and replace it. Wish I would have taken a picture when it was all torn out.

This is Kelsey's former bedroom when she was at home. The wall with the window here was also torn out.

This is Katie's former bedroom. It had a partial wall torn out. I should have taken pictures of how the rooms looked before we started tearing everything apart, but I didn't think about it.

NOW THE FINISHED LOOK!!

Here is Katie's room. She and Kelsey want to move back now that their rooms are cute. I guess they didn't really like the plain white walls.....haha

Another view of Katie's room. Walls used to be white with green carpet.

Kelsey's room. Walls used to be white with blue carpet.

Another view of Kelsey's room

One more view of Kelsey's room.

Here is one end of the family room. It had green carpet and white walls before. I like it this way much, much better. It makes the room a lot more warm and homey. We still have to finish the window seal in this room. It is not done yet. We had the wrong size board and my son-in-law is doing it and he had to leave town.

The other end of the family room

Another view of family room.

One more view of the family room.

It was a long process and I am glad that it is finally done. I really like it. AND......as I speak, or type this.....my roof of my house is FINALLY being torn off and replaced!!!!

I should have taken before and after shots of our backyard as well. We had a cement patio that had to be torn out and we replaced it with a deck and the roof of the deck is being put on next week. So when that is done I will put up pictures of the finished project outside.

Waste of Time or Not?

Is posting on my blog a waste of time now that there is Facebook or Not? that is the question?!?!
Just wondering if I shouldn't bother putting things on here anymore if everyone just looks at facebook instead. Give me some feedback......

Summer Fun!

Wow! Where did the summer go! It went so fast and I haven't posted anything on here for a while. So here goes.........................

On July 2nd, Cliff, Morgan, and myself took one of the most fun spontaneous trips I have ever done. What?.....it is the only spontaneous trip I have done. On the Thursday before the 4th of July, Cliff and I were out taking a walk in the morning before we had to leave for Twin Falls for a wedding. I asked Cliff what he wanted to do for the 4th of July. We usually go to Idaho Falls and see the fireworks at the river and spend time with the family. Well, to my surprise....Cliff said, "do you know what I really want to do?" and when I asked what, he said, "I want to go to the Redwood Forest" He said he has always wanted to see the Redwoods. And to my surprise, I said, "ok, lets go". So we woke Morgan up and told her we were going on a roadtrip and wanted to know if she wanted to go with us. She said yes, we showered and got ready for the wedding, packed a few things, and off to Twin Falls we went. After the wedding we headed for California. We caught up with Highway 101 in Arcarta, CA. We followed highway 101 up the coast into the Redwood Forest. Below are a few pictures and then I will continue the story of the roadtrip.....

Here we are somewhere in Nevada filling up with gas.

This is at the first beach and sign of the ocean that we came to in California.

Morgan and me. I was the only one that actually went down in the water. However, I didn't go very far in as you can see. My clothes are still dry.

We were driving along the road toward the Redwoods and came across Paul Bunyan and Babe. They were huge. As you can see Morgan and I are at the foot of Paul. There was someone inside him and he would talk to people and carry on a conversation with them as they walked by.

These trees are huge. As you drive through the scenic byway on Highway 101 you will see the really, really tall redwoods, but we had to ask at the information place where to go to see the big ones like the one Cliff and I are standing by. Those are in a place called, "Stout Grove" and you have to drive on a dirt road back in a ways and then they have a trail that you can walk through "stout grove" and see many huge trees. It was awesome.

Here's Morgan at the base of one.

Morgan and I climbed up into one of them. The climb up was ok, but the climb down was a little more tricky.

Just a fun picture in the middle of the Redwood Forest. HAHA!

Now for the rest of the story.......while driving through the Redwoods and looking at our Atlas, I found that Highway 101 goes right through Forks, WA for those of you who are "Twilight" fans. When I mentioned that to Morgan she got excited and said, "hey, lets go". Now realize that we are in California and Forks is at the very top of Washington in the pennisula part of the state, by the coast. Anyway, to our surprise, Cliff said, "ok, lets go" So we followed Highway 101 all the way up the coast through Oregon and Washington. We visited all the places of "Twilight". We went to Forks, LaPush beach, and Port Angeles. It was so, so fun. We were there on the 4th of July and it was way fun. Below are a few pictures.

This is Whale lookout. It was actually in California still and we hoped to see a whale, but didn't. We weren't patient enough to wait.

This is a huge, long bridge that takes you from Oregon into Washington. It crosses the Columbia River where the river flows into the ocean. You can't see it all from this picture. This is just the beginning of the bridge. If you want to see more of it you can go to my Facebook page and see more pictures of our trip.It was an amazing bridge.

Here are are in Forks. Morgan thought we were going to be the only tourists for Twilight in the town and much to her surprise, it was filled with twilight tourists and there were many twilight souvenir stores.

Here we are in front of the high school. The parade had just ended when we got there.

Here's Morgan trying to sneak in and steal Bella's man.

So now we are on our way to the LaPush beach. It looked just like it did in the movie.

We say this print on the beach. It was awesome. You Twilight fans, figure it out for yourselves. HAHA!!

Morgan and I on LaPush Beach.

There was a board called, "Bella's Board" at the LaPush store. People have lefts their messages on the board. So Morgan is leaving her message. There were two Russians guys sitting just to Morgan's left and they kept laughing at her while she was trying to find a place to leave her message. It was funny.

So, this was just to fun to pass up a picture. We are leaving LaPush and Morgan sees this red house and barn with a Red truck in front. She says it looks just like Jacob's place with Bella's red truck in front. So she makes Cliff turn around so we can take a picture. We had to drive into their driveway to get the picture and while doing it.....a car that had stopped after us to take a picture in front of the LaPush sign, sees us taking a picture of this house. So when we are done and leave, we pass them as they have turned around and they came back and stopped to take a picture of this house. It was pretty funny.

Here we are in Port Angeles. This is the only picture we took. We are standing by the Ferry Dock where you would ferry across to the canadian island. Can't think of the name right now. It left me, but the island off British Columbia. But you know which one I am talking about. Morgan was ticked because they had their parade in the evening and it was going right down the main drag and we couldn't find a singe place to stop and eat and we were starving by now.. It took us all night to find a decent place to eat and we ended up not eating until we got to Olympia, WA. That was quite a ways and it was night and now the fireworks were getting ready to start. So we finally found a place to eat and a place to sleep.

It was then that I got a phone call from my friend, Sherri.....who has a key to my house.....telling me that my basement was flooded from a huge hail storm that hit Pocatello the evening of the 4th of July. I guess it was a freak storm and I am still getting my house back to normal. We ended up having to tear out walls in three rooms and repaint and recarpet all of those rooms. right now I am finally in the process of painting and then we can get the carpet in and get the furniture all back in the basement. It has been a mess. And...........everyone in the neighborhood has had to replace their roofs from the hail damage and we are STILL waiting on our insurance company for our roof. It has to be replaced as well. Its a long story, but we also ended up having to tear out our cement patio in the backyard and have an excuvator come in and build up the foundation around my whole house. We put in a deck instead of replacing the cement patio. It is very nice, but WHOW! what I project we have had all summer now. I will post pictures when I am all done. I should have taken before and after pictures.


Anyway, back to our trip. So we left Olympia the next morning and drove up to Seattle because Morgan had never been there. We took her to the Space Needle and then we headed home to our diaster.

The three of us in front of the Space Needle.

The three of us at the top of the Space Needle.

Well, our very, very, fun spontaneous trip is over and now it is home to see what damage our house has taken on in the hail storm!!!

OK....I don't know how I got this picture in here again, but oh well.



NOW ON TO OUR NEXT VACATION.......PRIEST LAKE!! We had a great time and here are just a few pictures.

Roasting hotdogs over the fire.

Here's my dad. This was his first year up to Priest Lake without mother. It was tough on him, but we are glad that he came with us.

Amanda having fun on a slide there.

Jenna and me cooling off in the water.

Having ice cream across the lake after a boat ride.

This is London. This is such a cute picture. It was her first boat ride. She was laying on a towel under the front dash so that the sun would not be on her.

The water was so nice. This is me. Just wanted you to know that I can still do it at the age of 52.

Here's Jenna and grandpa letting her drive the boat.

This is such a cute picture of London with my neice, Mekelle.

Well, summer is over and it's back to everyday life. It was a great summer, but also a stressful one with my house in shambles.