Christmas Dresses

Our girls are such sweethearts, but these dresses makes them look like angels. The Black and red dress that Lizzy is wearing is from gracious Aunt Leah and Uncle Chris. The know the style that i like my girls to wear, which is the " Preppy" look. So a great thanks to Aunt Leah for listening to me!!! Just kidding, that dress suits Lizzy's personality so well. On the sleeves in case you cant see it is a feathers and the bottom of the dress is really puffy.

As for Jamie's dress it is a velvety sorta texture with a great ribbon around the waist and a cute long sleeve tee. Jared chose this outfit for her Christmas gift but we forgot to wrap it.. When we got home and I emptied the suitcase I was like "DUH!!! " But Jamie didn't care she just wanted to wear it to church. It was a great deal at the store and luckily the last one.

but they look cute in their new outfits. They watch America's Next Top Model with me and they learned all these cute , fashionable poses just check them out!!

Christmas Lights At Temple Square

After a hour of sledding in Sugar House we decided that the best way to end the night was to go downtown to Temple Square to see the great lights. At that time all the parking on the street was free, so you get to walk around downtown for 2 hours for free, which is a great deal.

However, finding a place to park on one of the busyiest nights was difficult, and we ended up spending half an hour looking for a place to park. If we had a little car it would have been way easier, but with a truck we needed a bigger spot. Once we found a spot we got out somewhere close to the Conference Center, which was also lit up.

But we were looking forward to seeing the best part of all. A special display was made.. a really old tree close to the Joseph Smith building and the Visitors Center was lit up with red lights. I know this doesn't sound too special, but what was great was that this tree is only lit up every four years, so for us it was a real treat. Just think about in four years Lizzy will be 7 and Jamie will be 6. So i guess for me it is a big deal. I got some great pics of another tree that was lit up with gold lights and there was the Assembly Hall that was lit up with red, orange, gold and purple (great fall colors).

We got alot of great pics and if you want to see them all you can check out our account at http://picasaweb.google.com/chasefamily19 which i will get Jared to post soon.

Sleding in Sugar House.

Finally we got snow, at least enough to sled on. The weekend that we spent in MO, the weather guy said that SLC had 15" of snow but when we got home there wasn't that much left, even though it was bitter cold.

We later found out that we were going to get a huge storm coming in later on that week. We were so excited because we were waiting for the right time when the snow would fall then freeze over and we would get another storm to keep it nice and slippery for us to catch some "air" on the sleds.

So this Saturday we " took to slopes" and got some great pictures of the girls and their daddy going down the big hill in Sugar House... And for you info this hill was huge, it was so big that there were some kids snowboarding down the hill and hitting the hay bails at the bottom, that was the barricade so that nobody went into the lake.

I went down once. After Jared and the girls went down about three times Jamie was ready to go home. Lizzy however, was ready for another fast trip. She said " I wanna go agian daddy, let's go fast" Next year Jamie and I will stay home while daddy and Liz go sledding. It was a great Family Home Evening activity.

20 Hrs

We left Salt Lake City around 1 pm. We were in for a long haul. We were really concerned about the road conditions because they said that it was going to snow in CO. We were hoping to follow the storm so that we didnt get the full blast of it.. Unfortuneatley the aftermath was worse than we imagined.When we got into WY there was still alot of daylight, but the roads were covered in ice and the wind gusts were somewhere betwwen 50 mph - 65 mph. We were really worried now.Even though we were really sleepy you couldnt help but keep you eyes peeled especially around those semi's.

The semi's and RV's would throw enough snow up that we couldnt see the road or anything else and at times we would have to come to a complete stop in order to find our bearings on the interstate. But most of the time we were the only ones on the road.

When we came close to Chyenne, a RV drove past us and blew all the snow up in front of the truck it looked like a blizzard. We couldn't see the road cus the headlights were reflecting off of the snow that was blown up,so we stoped and jared let off the gas and some how our truck was pushed off the road and into a ditch. Luckily the ditch wasn't very big and we used the 4WD to get out, but after that our speed went form 10mph to 2mph. I admit I was pretty scared and vowed never to do that again.But as soon as we got into KS, 72 miles before Kansas City, all the roads were iced completly even the toll roads were bad, and it was 7 am.. we couldnt believe that snow trucks hadn't come out yet. and for 72 miles we slid across three lanes and almost hit a baricade and then had the oportunity to be in the early commute with icy roads. There weren't many cars on the road be we were more scared of them sliding off the road and hitting us than we were of sliding off ourselves.

And finally we made it into MO. But we will never forget all those cars at the side of the road that got pushed off or skated off. It was the luckiest 20 hrs of our life.

Christmas at the Chase's

We arrived in MO. around Sunday afternoon. We had a great time with Leah and her family, although Jared and I would have loved to play Risk or something with Chris and Jacob, but our visit was too short. Sunday night we made our way to Warrenton to see the whole Duree family and their new additions, Amy (Jasons new wife) and Jack and Heathers new son. We took Leah with us and she had the opportunity to see Jennifer Duree and her family while I visited with Linda, Elaine and Bonnie. There was a ton of food there and we definately had our fill.

Monday was spent getting ready for our Christmas Eve dinner at Marc and Holly's house in St. Louis, there we saw Granny, Linda, Levi, Susie and their new baby Aubie. She was the youngest there for now, Leah is expecting her 5th child somewhere in early Jan. 2008. We can't wait for some pics.

The girls really enjoyed playing with their cousins, Julianna, Dee-dee and Rachel. All the girls got together to play dress-up in Julianna's room. That was a sight to see. Meanwhile , in the family room all the grown-ups spent their time 'chit-chatting ' and taking as many pictures of everything as possible.

Once we were done eating and talking we opened presents and got some really great gifts. Just look at those happy faces. Altogether it was a great Christmas and I must say that dinner was amazing everyone who helped did a great job. The cooking were also really good. I had 20 of those Russian cookies....

We are really glad that we were able to make that trip out there. it was worth seeing everyone and sharing Christmas with friends and family. The only thing that could have made Christmas even more special was if it snowed.. But it was definately cold enough.

Halloween 2007

The Great Jack Sparrow and the Princesses.

Our Halloween was great we were so excited to get the girls some costumes this year. Origanally I didnt want them to get princess costumes because I thought that the material was to light and I would have to make the girls wear a sweat suit or something thicker under their costumes. We were all going to be pirates, Elizabeth was going to be Elizabeth Swan, Jamie was going to be a buccuner, Jared was of course, going to be Jack Sparrow and I was going to be the Voodoo Princess Tia Dalma. However my costume cost something close to $300.00 and Jared couldnt get the Jack Sparrow costume that he wanted which was the one that Jack had in At Worlds End. So Jared settled for this costume and we decided that we would just keep adding to it till we got the look that we wanted, you know like a better wig , some boots, etc.

As for the girls I saw these great pricess costumes that were really thick and "poofy" almost like the real dress. I wanted Jamie to be Snow White and Elizabeth to be Belle. We found the Snow White costume but not the Belle costume. So in the end Elizabeth decided to be Barbie Island Princess. And I went as me.

Christmas with Santa Clause 2007

Here we are at our old Ward's Christmas partey, there was lots of really good food and all of our new friends were there too. Elizabeth and Jamie had the best time running around the gym playing tag with their Nursery mates. Jared and I enjoyed our time together with our friends while we waited on dinner. It was almost like a date!

After dinner it was time for the gift giving and for Santa to come and share some gifts with us. This was the first time that the girls ever saw Santa or had the opportunity to take a picture with him, but they were both really scared of Santa. Once Santa gave Elizabeth her gift (a candy bar) she finally understood that he was the "Candyman". Then Jamie had her turn to sit on Santa's lap He screamed the entire time, luckily i got a cute picture of her grabbing the candy out of Santa's hand. In the end I think it was a great night.