Girl Friends & Eagle Project Part 3

When we moved to Texas
I left a couple of realy good girl friends in Ohio.
 I miss them terribly.

We would cook together and make yummy meals.

Mostly savory stuff, and some sweet.

We would have Jungle Jim/Costco trips.

We ate lunch together often, 

We would have ironing/movie parties.

 We would share and try new recipies from French, English, Italian, Indian, and all sorts of cuisines.

So far I haven't really reached out looking for deeper friendships.
I've been telling myself I have enough with my family, my routines, my Chloe...
But after last week I was reminded of how good it is to have a few good closer friends.

Girls just need girlfriends.

This past week, I invited a couple of girl friends here to do the same.
I demonstrated how to make one of my very favorite dishes:

Hearty Fisherman Stew.

I added some live mussels
Heavenly!

I'm hoping we will keep doing this often.
We also went to the temple and to Costco together.
We had such a wonderful time!

Thanks Sandra and Jamie for coming and for your friendship!

We also worked a little on Emric's Eagle Project Part 3
making cat toys.
Yep, we are still working on that!

Going Home

 We left Ohio, the day after Alexi came out of his week-long-hospital-stay.

I was able to take him to Old Navy to get him a few clothes I had promised him for Christmas.

We shared great moments with family and friends.
Unfortunately, we wish we could have seen more friends, it just wasn't in the cards this time...

The snow was nice and so much fun.

But, as the kids and I stopped at the Texas border for lunch, 

we got out of the car and the cold chill was gone!

A nice welcome home...

We even ate our Pizza outside!

The drive home went very well.

We did sleep in a crummy motel though...

La Quinta Inn Little Rock Otter Creek

Don't stay there!
 Believe the bad reviews.

Snow Tracks in a Winter Wonderland

 So much running, playing, and walking in the snow...

Chloe stopped often to chew of the ice that would collect in her paws.

Chloe and Libby are like best friends.
They Love each other!

I love love love walking in fresh snow, feeling it crackle under foot...
the sound it makes, the extra workout.
The beauty of this pure white blanket covering mother earth.

Dangerous kids

 This was naughty, dangerous, disobediant and not smart!

But they hey sure had fun...

Crazy kids playing Tug-of-war with the dogs!

Let's not mention how dirty this dog toy is!
Gross Gross Gross and Gross

Loads of laundry

The Daily Loads of Laundry!

With 3 families, sledding trips, snoman making, trip to the pool,
muddy forest walks, 

we had to keep on top of it. 

Or we would have been buried under it...

Oh... let's not talk about the socks!

Can you spot the 3 dogs?

Exhausted Puppy

All that running in snow every day and playing with her best friend Libby pooped Chloe out!

Hospital Pass Time

Games and more games...

We got some board games for Christmas and brought them to play with Alexi.
I'm glad this time we were able to spend some time with him while he was in the hospital.
He usually finds these stays quite boring...
This time he had lots of visits! :)

 

Hospital stay

Alexi had a 'Holiday' stay at the Hospital.

He got a Staph infection in his blood.
He is now on antibiotics for 4 weeks but had to stay in his steril room for a week.

The good news is that he had a nice huge luxury suite!

Emric stayed four nights on the couch, kept him company and played video games with him.

He was quite happy to make this sacrifice to be with his big brother.

(all night and day gaming, he was one happy camper!)

I just love this picture of Mike and Alexi!

Christmas Day @ 10:44 pm

Feast and Famine Board Game

Sugar and more Sugar Consumption

Sleeping

Watching Movies and more Movies

Puzzled by the Puzzle

Christmas Morning

Sarah Invited the Browns to stay a few days for Christmas.
It was so nice of her.
I'ts not easy putting that many people up for that long.
Sarah is so AWESOME!
She is a giant of a friend! So caring and unselfish...
I wish I was more like her!
:)

The Waiting for everyone to get out of bed...

some are more eager than others!
We had waffles following the opening of presents.
A Nakata tradition.

Muddy Forest Walk

Today, being Sunday,
 we got to see all our fellow church friends from the Liberty ward.
It was so neat giving hugs and greetings

After Church, our Men and our kids tagged along with Sarah and I
on our daily walk in the woods with the dogs.

The kids were actually dirtier than the dogs!
They had so much fun hanging on a huge tree vine and got really muddy!
They played the Hunger games...
And some of us had so much fun cleaning up all the mud on the clothes and the shoes...

Christmas Puzzle

The Johnsons have a tradition of doing a puzzle before Christmas day.
This one was a challenge! A challenge that I didn't even try to atempt!
I normaly love to do puzzles.

Road Trip...

Again...
I vowed I would not take another trip this year after the adventurous summer trip.
Well I lied.
We hit the road to spend Christmas in Ohio,
with Alexi, the Johnsons and the Browns
(Sarah invited them too)
It went pretty well, only one incident when I texted Sarah
"Someone please shoot me!"
Not bad, not bad!
Let's see if the return will be even better with no sibling unkindness...

Chloe is the best little traveler... may I say better than the kids? 

A Fun Cousin Visit!

I am posting this in retrospect. 

I've been looking through some of my journals and found one with just a few entries, my last ones before I started blogging more.

This is what I wrote.

I have had a lot of family stay with us this Summer.

My Cousin Fabrice, Sarah and their boys Paul and Tom came to stay with us for 3 weeks.

They are the perfect guests! Fabrice would cook almost every night. 

They would do the dishes, clean up dinner, and help with chores.

Having the 'Vanaquer man family trait', Fabrice would fix anything that needed fix'n!

Mike's car brakes, irrigation gutters during a bad rain storm that started flooding our basement!

During which as a true French man he ran out only waring his underwear!

I did give him a clear plastic rain pancho for the neighbors benefit that is!

We had a wonderful time while they were with us.

The kids would all go to Kings Island together.

We also went to Hocking Hills.

Emric and I took a road trip with them to Washington DC.

There we did a LOT of walking! 

Like we do a lot in France.
Emric was not used to it!

We went to the Air & Space museum, the Holocaust Museum, The Indian Museum.

We did a little shopping and the Boys went to the Spy Museum.

They left with promises of us visiting them in France in the future!

I'm sure I have some pictures somewhere! 

I just need to find them and I can post them here!

Kirtland

On of our favorite places to go to in Ohio was Kirkland.

There, we would visit our 1st LDS Temple ever built.

We would visit houses and grounds where our Pioneer Religious ancestors first walked.

A beautiful and quiet place, ideal for pondering gratitude and remembering.

Well, that is if you don't have some obnoxious kids running around trying to keep them under control!

Right kids?

They are so cute though, with their adorable smiling faces...

Why am I not smiling and adorable like them?

Judging from my picture... I don't look peaceful or grateful!

What do you think?

More like frustrated and/or exhausted?