Haylee's turned the big 5!

My big girl turned 5 on October 14th! We went to Gertie's for her b-day and had a small birthday party for her with my family. Then we took her on a surprise trip to Boise that weekend to see her Aunt Kalea (who is away at college in Lewiston) and to make a visit to the zoo. We took a quick jaunt to Cabela's first so the men could walk around and drool over all the stuff they want but can't have, and the women could take the kids around to see the animal displays.

 After Cabela's, we went to Tucano's Brazilian Grill for lunch and it was delicious. We had them sing to Haylee for her birthday and she absolutely loved it! From there, it was finally time to hit the zoo.

After wearing ourselves out at the zoo, we went over to eat dinner and cake and ice cream at some of Dereck's family that lives in Boise.

We also tried to get in a decent family picture at the park next to the zoo. But I think we are still going to have to break down and get some professional pictures taken.

Deer Hunting

Dereck left me for a few days to go deer hunting and fend for himself in the great outdoors as he does every year. This has recently become a tradition for him to go out somewhere in the middle of nowhere and camp out and hunt deer in the mountains with some of his friends from Pocatello. I woke up the morning of opening day to find out that he had already gotten his kill for the year and was done. This time around, we decided to take our deer to a local butcher shop and have them cut up the meat and make us some sausage and jerky too.

Back to School!

Haylee started her first day of K-4 preschool the day after Labor Day. She was so excited to be going back to school and to be able to see and play with her friends every day! She is going to the same school this year and already loves her teacher. I am glad to be getting back into a routine again with the kids and to be able to have some time to get the house put together without having it torn apart in a half hour. Brooke is still not old enough to go to school with Haylee but we can look forward to that next year when they will both be in the same school together. So to let Brooke have some time to socialize with other kids and for me to get a break every once in a while and some sleep, we decided to stick Brooke in daycare one day a week. She is absolutely loving it!

We Have a New Addition to the Family.....

We have an announcement to make. We have a new addition to the Sanderson clan. And I know that most of you are probably thinking it is a baby and that is because it is a baby. A baby puppy that is! I have to joke around about the whole baby thing because everyone has been bugging us to have another but no babies for now, just puppies. Our new puppy is a chocolate lab and we got him for a really good deal. So I finally broke down and let Dereck get himself a hunting dog. We named him Moose and everyone is excited besides the cat.

Brooke turned 2!

And she will tell you all about how old she is too. Her b-day was on August 19th and it is hard for me to believe that my baby is really not a baby anymore. We all went to Gertie's for Brooke's b-day and just came back to the house, ate some cake and opened presents.

We also bought a trampoline for the girls towards the end of the summer and they are loving it so far. Now they don't have to go to Grandma's just to use her trampoline.

As you can tell, it is January and I am still blogging about August. I am way behind! To be honest, I have lost some motivation in doing the blogging lately but I have gained some of that motivation back and am going to try to catch up.

Father's Day

I know this is really late considering Father's Day was back in June but I am going to make an attempt at getting caught up. Dereck and Haylee have a special hobby that they both enjoy and love to do together. It is FISHING! He is also hoping to carry that hobby through to Brooke when she gets a little more interested in going with him. So we only found it appropriate to do what Daddy loves doing most with his girls and go fishing for Father's Day. My family came down and we all went to the fish hatchery and fed the fish and then went fishing out of one of the lakes at the fish hatchery. It turned out being really windy so we didn't stay fishing for long and decided to go do some sight seeing instead. We went to a really neat waterfall with my family and then went out for some yummy ice cream. The next day, Dereck and I and the girls went to another waterfall in the canyon by the Perrine Bridge. You can actually hike up to it and stand underneath it. It was amazing and we didn't even know it was there until we decided to drive down into the canyon. We all had a great time and I hope my husband had a good Father's Day with his girls.

Kalea's Graduation

My sister-in-law graduated from high school this year. We are so proud of her and all of her accomplishments even if she did go to our rival school, Burley H.S. She not only just graduated from high school but also finished her EMT course shortly before graduating. Now she plans to move on to bigger and better things and starts college at Lewis and Clark to start on her nursing degree.

Spring is in the Air!!

I am pretty sure every time I blog, I talk about how I should blog more but I just don't. I keep saying I will get better about it and it has now been 5 months since I last posted. So I am going to attempt to catch up within the next week and then hopefully I will get better. Although, I am making no promises. Anyways.....Spring is in the air! Which means our already busy lives are only going to become busier. We always have so much more going on in the spring and summer than we do any other time of the year that I will have lots to blog about for the next couple of months. On to the updating.....Haylee did soccer this spring, and although I know she had fun with it, I think I enjoyed it more than she did. Brooke even got into it! But now that soccer is over, Haylee has been bugging me to let her do dance. I will have to think a little harder on that one.

After we closed on our house, we decided we could move on with our lives and start buying some things we knew we had wanted to buy but had to wait for since we were in the process of buying our house. So we bought 4-wheelers for the whole family. They were supposed to be a Christmas present but came just a little late. The kids love riding around on their little 4-wheeler and I have to admit I really enjoy having one of my own too! Now that we have dangerous toys in our house, I proceeded to buy life insurance policies for the whole family as well.

Haylee finished up preschool in the middle of May and I don't think Haylee will be the only one missing it. Haylee had a great teacher that made this year fun and memorable for our whole family and we will truly miss having her as a teacher this next year. But Haylee is very excited to be moving on to K-4 and experiencing a new teacher and classroom. So that pretty much covers anything major that happened within the months of January through the middle of May. Now on to doing posts for the last month or so.....

Denver Vaca!

So we knew we wanted to make a trip down to Denver this summer to see my family and get away, but it made it even easier to decide to make it down there when one of my old friends from Idaho (she now lives in Colorado Springs) let me know she was getting married in May in Colorado Springs. So this time around, we decided to spend a little more money and fly instead of drive to save our sanity. Even though, we later realized after getting on the airplane that driving may have ended up being better as Brooke did not want to sit still for any part of the flight. Lucky for us, she was much better on the way back home. We stayed with my Uncle Stew and cousins for most of our trip, and I really enjoyed being able to spend some time with them just hanging out. Needless to say.....we had a BLAST and I am so glad that everything worked out for us to have this nice getaway.

Since Haylee enjoyed the aquarium so much the last time, we could not miss out on hitting up the Downtown Denver Aquarium again. This time both kids got to enjoy it!

Since we were already going to be in Colorado Springs for Madison's wedding, we decided to stay there overnight and do some sight seeing. Madison's wedding was at a beautiful place called Blue Skies Inn Bed and Breakfast. The kids enjoyed wearing their new dresses and showing them off and even Dereck and I dressed up for the occasion (even though there are no pics of us). Madison also married a guy named Derek so I guess we both have the same taste in names. Congratulations to Madi and Dereck Switzer!

While we were in Colorado Springs, we visited Garden of the Gods. It was absolutely breathtaking! I couldn't help myself from taking a million pictures.

We also had to stop back by the Denver Zoo again since we only made it through about half the zoo the last time. This time, we started on the other end of the zoo and made it through the other half before we called it a day when we were all getting too hot, tired, and hungry to go on. We finally made it through the whole zoo! It only took us two visits to do it. Maybe next time we will get really ambitious and try to do the whole zoo in one visit. We had a great trip and are already planning our next trip to Denver.

House News-The Final Posting

So this will be my last posting on any house news because.....

WE FINALLY CLOSED!!!

And shame on me, because I am actually a little late on posting this great news. We closed on January 5th and are so happy the journey to owning our own home is over with! It was a very bumpy road to get to where we are at but it was worth it. Since we closed, we have been busy doing some remodeling, painting, and preparing to move in. Everything should be done by the end of the weekend and we should be able to start moving in at the beginning of the week. We have already posted some pictures of our new home on our blog previously but we will post some more when everything is completely finished. We were just so excited that we wanted to share the good news with everyone!

Christmas!

So now that it is nearing the end of January, I have finally decided to get our Christmas pictures together and posted. We had a fairly traditional Christmas this year that consisted of making Santa cookies with Nana, spending Christmas Eve with Dereck's side of the family, opening our pajamas on Christmas Eve, and then spending Christmas Day with my side of the family. The only difference between this Christmas and any of the other ones we have celebrated together was that Dereck and I both had to work on Christmas night. It was a bummer deal that we were not able to play games with my family and relax that night (But I guess that is what I get for becoming a nurse). The highlight of my Christmas this year was to be able to enjoy watching both of my kids take part in the holiday season. So here are just a few pictures that captured both of the kiddos enjoying Christmas......

Santa cookies with Nana.....

Opening presents with Dereck's family.....

Opening presents with my family......

We also want to wish everyone a happy new year!

We Have a New Addition to the Family.....

And no it is not a baby!......it is a dog! We have actually had him for about 4 months now but have yet to announce it to everyone on our blog (shows how slow I am on posting). His name is Prince and he is a german shorthair.