We had a Christmas/New Year celebration in Nevada this year, along with a trip to Red Rock Canyon where we took the kids and my brother, Matt to do some climbing at the Kraft Boulders in Calico Basin. 

Last Friday we decided to take a "Snow Day" and head up to the mountains with the Deputies.  We even withdrew Dylan from school for 1/2 the day.  He was super excited...as were all the other kiddos!

Chris had been monitoring the weather all week prior and was chomping at the bit to get OuTsiDe!!!

 The webcam we had been monitoring was reporting over 4 FEET of snow!  So, we packed up the kids and headed up to The Rim. 

This was Denym & Dyxon's first time in the snow.  And, with Dyson being just a baby his first time, it was so fun watching these 3 Deptuties venture out into the wintery white playground!

All the boys set out to complete a {Snow Tunnel} and {Snow Fort} with the help of Dad.

Dyxon did his best at making a {Snow Angel}.  It was so hilarious!  He just couldn't keep from laughing & giggling at himself.

Although there were some serious moments...or perhaps he's just deeeeeeep in thought.  I suppose being a young man surrounded by a bunch of wild & 1/2 crazed monkeys in the snow can make a person stand back and just watch in a puzzled wonderment.

HMMMM?

I managed to capture a smile on Dagyn's face right before she "froze to death".  She has her mommy's thin blood and gets cold easily.

Oh, & btw...
She recently lost her first tooth last week.  We'll have to post seperately on that as she is so impressed with what the Tooth Fairy brought her.

Did we mention...the snow tastes GOOOOooood!

And what little brother wouldn't jump at the opportunity to throw a HUGE snow ball at his BIG brother?

I believe these 3 Amigos might have had the most fun of all.  That based upon the fact that they were the last ones to round up when it was time to leave.

Then again...it could have been this BIG KiD.

Although, I believe that could have just been a rare case of Mountain Sickness {I hear the high altitude can cause that in men who don't get outside enough}.

And of course we couldn't leave without mounting the traditional "Snowman Hood Ornament".  The idea is to see how far we can get without it falling off the hood.  It is so entertaining & well worth hearing the squeals & giggles that come from the kids (ok, & from me too!).

Even with all this fun & excitment we even were able to squeeze in a Science Lesson too!

We learned that the Moon was at it's largest & brightest Full Moon of the year.
Some may even call it a {Wolf Moon} or better known scientifically as a Perigee Moon.  It was 14% wider & 30% brighter than lesser full Moons of the year.
We were even able to get a glimpse of Mars (an orange, star-like sphere to the left of the Moon). 
Fascinating!

Below is a much better photo taken by Steve Greaves of the Perigee Full Moon (Wolf Moon) with Mars the red planet (tiny speck of orange light on far left).
Photo taken in Darfield, Barnsley, South Yorkshire on 29 January 2010 at around 10pm.

Yes, we are back!
Sorry I havn't posted in awhile.  Things have been crazy busy over here with the Greevers Posse.
Let us recap...
Dec. 18th, we drove up to Nevada to visit my Dad & Carrie (Gma & Gpa Walker).
The kids were absolutely spoiled by them.  That's why it didn't surprise me when the kids wanted to go back the instant we left.
Dagyn & I spent most of the time there sick & unable to eat all of the good food Carrie (Gma Walker) prepared for us all.  We think we may have experienced a bit of food poisoning from the food we had when we stopped to picnic on our way up.  Chris even had a bit-of-a-spell with it too one evening having him retire early one night.
At any rate, because of my health, I didn't take very many pictures while we were there.  But, I did manage to document our drive up there.
Here are a few pics (ok, A LOT of pics) of the road trip.

After we returned to Arizona (the night after actually) we had another Christmas celebration over at Gma & Gpa Madsen's (Chris' parents) with the whole family. 
We ate Chris' famous chicken enchiladas (well atleast they are famous within our families walls) + all the fixin's.  The little kids opened presents and then we headed off to a local neighborhood for their annual display of Christmas lights. 
Not sure why...other than doing a lot of talking...I did not manage to get any pics.
The following Sunday we were off to my sister's to celebrate another Christmas with my sister, Aunt & Uncle and families.
Chris made marshmallow shooters for all the boys (that would be the Big Boys too *wink*) and thus we littered my sister's new home with mini colored marshmallows all over her back yard.
The kids (young & old alike) had a blast.
As you can see by the pics below I kept safe by taking them from behind a closed glass door.  So, they are a little blurry.  Smart thinking on my part since when I tried taking them outside...I was an easy target.  As you can tell in the first pic by my Uncle Clyde aiming right at me.
Later they will have been taught by Chris how to make adaptations to their guns to send them into a fully automatic mode.

Well, that would just about wrap it up but I would fail to mention we had yet another celebration back over at Gma & Gpa Madsen's for a traditional Christmas dinner with a layout of Turkey, Ham & all the fixin's later that week.

Well, folks I'm off to bed.  That about covers the tail end of 2009.  We have a birthday to celebrate tomorrow {Devyn turns Double Digits} and then I will play catchup with you all on how things have been going since we started 2010 & how we got back into the groove of schooling (homeschool & public).

g'Night!

When we found there was FREE admission to the Science Center on Monday, boy were we excited!  But that meant we would have to opt out on our monthly History Party co-op.  And we were pretty excited about that too!   

You see, we are studing about Ancient China
and
we had planned on teaching our friends how to use chopsticks.

Some of the things that we found most interesting in our studies of Ancient China were:
The Binding of Feet
Chopsticks
The Food
How Silk is Made & Was Discovered
No Forests so No Fuel
(which meant they had to chop up their food very small to cook it since they had only small fires)
Their Clothing
Where and How Rice Grows & is Harvested
The Different Dynasties

So you can see our delimma. 
We have been leading-up to this History Party All Month and then WHAMMO we are struck with a FREE deal that comes by only...well we're not sure really how often but, we know a great deal when we see one.

So...we put it to a vote.

The deal is if they choose the Science Center then they are to get their morning routines done, leave the house clean & pack for the day.
(lunch & diaper bag)

Well, here it is after 11:00am and still their morning routines are not done.
Looks like we will be staying home kids and working on some
well needed housework & packing before our weekend get-away to Temecula, California for Aunt Christine's wedding.