It's About Time

As you can see it is past the middle of January and I'm barely getting around to blogging about our holidays. (I hope that isn't a sign of what the year to come will be like!)


Once all our family got home we had plenty to do before Christmas even got here. We had to take Amelia to have her first picture with Santa.
Take a family photo for our Christmas cards that never got made or sent. (Sometimes something just has to give and that is what I gave up on this year. I've had terrible guilt but it will eventually go away.) We do look pretty good don't we. What is even better is that we didn't even plan on taking our picture that day and everyone just happened to coordinate. I just love it when things like that happen.

We had to make a quick trip to St. Johns so Amelia could meet all of her great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My dad even came over from Albuquerque. Here is Garth with his mom and Amelia.

Amelia also needed her first hair cut which I wasn't too happy about being chosen to do. The top and sides turned out pretty okay but the back looked awful. Good thing Lonica has her wear headbands all the time.

And of course we had to play with Amelia every moment she was awake.

Finally, Christmas Eve arrived and we all sat down for dinner. Without Anita, Rob and their kids here this year our table seemed kind of empty. But for the first time in two years we had Jason home and that was wonderful!

After Christmas Day, we just sat around for the next week in a messy house, eating, playing games and going to movies. It was wonderful. Here we are having a fondue dinner with Preston's friend, Clark. He was really impressed with fondue and we taught him to play hearts. That is all he still wants to play.

Scott also made us a speculaas-cake. Anita had brought the recipe and spices for it last year, but we never had time to make it. None of us had eaten it before or knew what it was supposed to look like but right or wrong it was delicious!

Finally, on New Year's Day I decided to get outside and get some exercise by hiking with a friend, Terry, and his friend. This is a picture at the beginning of our hike (actually we'd probably gone a mile already) and you can see Flat Iron (our destination) way in the background, it's that point clear in the back.

Once we got to the top of Flat Iron we could see the top of the Superstitions about 1/2 mile further, so of course we had to go up there. Here I am at the top and you can see Flat Iron down to the right of me. It was a good way to start the new year - on top of the world (or the top of the Valley).

Since that day life has gotten back to normal. I'm taking four classes this semester, Lonica, Scott and Amelia went back to Ohio, Jason went back to Utah, Preston started his last semester of high school, Garth, Dave, Raquel and I all went back to work. So while life is back to our same routine, we will always look back to this past Christmas as one of our best - just a lot of family time, good food and relaxation.

Fiesta Bowl Parade

Our day began early with taking Anita, Rob and the kids to the airport at 5:00 am. Rob had forgotten his most important luggage - his golf clubs - so while Garth ran home to get them I was able to spend a few more minutes with one of my best friends. We had had such a great time having them all here. It was busy and fun and we hope they will come again.


Our next stop was Paul and Judy's house for their annual Festivas brunch. We never miss that because the food is to die for. After filling up we headed to the Fiesta Bowl parade. We were disappointed that Anita and her family couldn't go to it, so most of these photos are to show them a little of what they missed.

Since Ohio State was playing the Fiesta Bowl, we were anxious to done our OSU apparel and show support. Notice who isn't wearing the red? The Ohio State student! It took us a bit to find the parade route because it had been moved since the light rail now runs down Central Ave. where the parade always went. The parade just isn't the same without all the tall buildings surrounding you and even though we were late, we found a great spot to watch from. It looks as though we are about the only ones there but we are behind a couple of rows of people sitting in chairs Disappointment was on the horizon though when we found out that we had just missed the Ohio State marching band - the the one entry we really wanted to see. But we showed our spirit by doing the OHIO sign and yelling to any other Ohio fans we saw.
Of course the Fiesta Bowl queen and her court came by in their carriage.
And as you can see, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade isn't the only one with big balloons.
There were some entries with some pretty crazy costumes like this one from the Caribbean.
And no Arizona parade would be complete without the Mexican dancers in those dresses Lonica always coveted.
Since we had just had Dutch visitors we were especially aware of the marching Dutchman band from the Midwest.
Check out these "wooden shoes", I can't imagine walking the whole parade route in them.
The Bill William's Wild Man always have to appear in the parade
along with their counterparts, the Wild West Women.
But our favorite entry of the whole parade were the Star Wars characters. Check them out! Darth Vader and the storm troopers,
C-3PO, Princess Lea and Hans Solo,
Chewbacca, and every other Star Wars character you could think of.
It didn't matter if you couldn't walk or you were very short, there was a character for you!
All in all, another great day in the Valley of the Sun.

The Last Day

Okay, it is ridiculous that it is now February and I'm still trying to finish blogs from the Christmas holidays, so we are gong to do the condensed version. Well, maybe it didn't end up being too condensed.

Below is a picture taken 14 years ago at this mining town out by the Superstition Mountains that I take Anita to each time she comes. You can see how small Preston and Jip are plus all the other kids. (click on the picture and you can get a close up of it) Well, Anita wanted to go back to that same mining town to take Jip's picture in the same place that she has previously, so on their last day here we headed back out there.Here is everyone in front of the big saguaro in the middle of the "town". But this wasn't the one she was looking for. We walked all over looking for that certain cactus with no luck. We took time out to watch the "gun fight" in the middle of the street.
And then found a substitute cactus to take pictures with. Wouter was the bravest of all and he hugged the saguaro.
Everyone else just stood in front of it like Jeske or

tried to jump. Years ago when Jip was just almost three, Anita had asked him how tall he was going to be and he jumped as high as he could and said, "This high!" while she took his picture in front of the giant saguaro. So everyone played, "How tall are you going to be?" Here's Jip

And Maxim

And my three kids who had a really hard time all jumping at the same time.Do over - one, two, three, jump!

One, two, three, try it again! Oh well.

Finally Anita and I tried and we had just about as hard a time as Lonica, Raquel and Preston did, but we have an excuse, we are older!

For dinner that night we made Anita cook and make us a Dutch dinner of hutspot.

One thing we didn't lack over the holidays was food or hungry people. We had plenty of both and had a great time trying and sharing Dutch and American foods.

Here is the hutspot. Yumm

After dinner all the boys went to Bass Pro Shop to check it out and play at the shooting gallery.

Jeske's last request was a little car but Rob refused her for once and they didn't take it with them the next morning when they left.

Everyone had to come home and pack up because they had to be to the airport at 5:00 am for the long flight home. We hated to see them go and we all knew we had had a holiday that we would never forget. Thanks Creemers and de Vries for coming and sharing your vacation with us. It was GREAT!!!

New Year's Eve and Day

Anita treated us to another Dutch tradition on New Year's Eve by making us oliebollens (translated oil balls). She fried them out back on our grill which I'm quite sure they don't do in the Netherlands. The sticky dough is filled with currents and after they are fried you sprinkle them with powdered sugar. Their name is misleading because they are very good. We enjoyed sharing this New Year's tradition with them.

The rest of the day was spent playing games and eating; every one's favorite pastimes. That night all the kids went ice skating with our ward and the adults went out to eat at P.F. Chang's.

None of us are great party people, so we watched the New Year come in on the TV with all those in Time Square and then headed to bed.

New Year's Day we planned a barbecue and invited Garth's Uncle Paul and his wife, Judy and Mrs. Cooper, Judy's mother. We started early in the all day getting the baby back ribs and pulled pork roasting. Lonica made some great green chili cornbread and Judy brought coleslaw and Paul's famous salsa. Needless to say, we had plenty of food! I appreciated all the help I got from everyone and especially from Scott. I really miss having him around when we barbecue.

We also planned to have a white elephant exchange and I'd told Anita to have everyone in her family bring something for it. They were intrigued by a game where everyone brought something they wanted to get rid of and wrapped it up nice. During the day everyone had snuck into the office to wrap their "gift".

Here are pictures of our group while instructions and rules are given. You can see the excitement building in their faces.

Wouter and Garth look as though they can hardly control themselves. We actually had a really good time opening the wonderful white elephant gifts and "stealing" them from each other.

We were blessed with things like stuffed bears, really small sunglasses, pictures of Lonica, bobble heads, Corvette pins, world maps. But I ended up with the most coveted gift - gloves that could peel a potato in 8 seconds! After the game, Preston had to run get a potato so we could try them out.

As everyone gave it a shot, none of us able to peel the potato, let alone do it in 8 seconds. So if you see the infomercial for these gloves, resist the temptation and don't buy them. As amazing as they sound you WILL be disappointed.

Day 4 - Zion's and Las Vegas

We woke up in this beautiful setting on Monday morning and after a quick breakfast, headed back to Zions for another hike.
Ever since we had first hiked the Narrows I had wanted to come back and hike Angel's Landing. Luckily for me one of the few trails that was opened was Angle's Landing although not all the way to the top. Here you can see the first switch backs we had to climb. We lost Garth before he got to this point.

As you can see, it was another beautiful day even though we were hiking in the snow it was warm. This was the point that we lost Rob, Jip and Preston.

These short and steep switch backs were amazing the way the snow covered them.

Maxim beat us all to this point but started down before we could get a picture of us all.

Here is another great shot of Anita and I. It almost looks as though we have be cropped into this picture.

At this point the trail narrowed and you had to use chains to pull yourself up with and when we got to the next small set of switch backs, I lost Anita, Wouter and Jeske.

I hiked up to another amazing point where I could tell that I still had a long way to go (when hiking it always seems as though you are almost there then you top out and realize you have further to go) and too many people waiting for me. So another hiker and I took pictures of each other and started the decent together. While the trail was definitely narrower up here, the snow gave you a false sense of security and I think it will be really interesting to hike it again when there is no snow.

Just a couple more photos of this beautiful canyon covered in white.

From Zions, we started our longest day of driving thus far as we headed to Las Vegas. Once we hit the city we hit traffic jams due to construction. Garth got off the freeway and when we got closer to the Strip we hit more traffic jams. Las Vegas is just one big traffic jam day and night!

We were staying at the Venetian and had quite a time just trying to find the entrance. Once we got out of the van and knew we didn't have to drive anymore we were thrilled. Then we walked into the hotel and looked around and we were even more thrilled.

Check out our room that looked down on to the swimming pool.

After a little rest we headed out on to the strip. Here is an outside photo of the Venetian.

Our first stop was the Mirage and we managed to get there just minutes before the volcano erupted so we stood around with all the other tourists to wait.

Here Maxim is pretending to be a Oriental tourist with his peace sign.

We were all rewarded and warmed when the volcano erupted.

From the Mirage, we went to see the pirate show at Treasure Island which has always been one of our favorites. We waited a half hour or so and we were so disappointed. It is longer the family entertainment it once was. The pirates now fight the sexy sirens who sink their ship and bewitch them. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

At that point we just walked down the strip looking at all the hotels. Earlier in the evening we had talked about getting some Italian ice, since it is a favorite of Rob's, and when we were in Caesar's Palace I saw a store so we headed over to have some. They had cups displayed of the various sizes and I chose the smallest size and Rob started ordering his family's in the next smallest size. There weren't any prices displayed and when I walked around the counter to pay for mine I couldn't believe that it was $14! And then I noticed that the size Rob was buying multiples of was $17!! I went and told him how much they were and he didn't order any more but he still ended up paying $92 for Italian ice! The price kind of took the sweetness out of the ice.

As I said before one of the nice things of going right after Christmas was seeing all the decorations still up in the hotels. The Bellagio's decorations were absolutely outstanding. Jeske is standing in front of just a few of the many huge presents and ornaments they had on display.

After checking out the inside of the hotel, we went and watched the wonderful fountain show in the frontand thought about the Ocean's Eleven movie.

From there we finished off with New York, New York and then headed back to the Venetian because our legs were tired and it was after 1:00 am.

As we were walking to our room Preston talked Garth and I into walking down to the Encore that had just opened the day before to get him a chip as a souvenir. He was sure that their chips would be really special. I can't remember when my legs and feet had been so tired but we decided to go. We walked though the Wynn which is connected to the Encore and then had to find the cashier cages to purchase a chip. While Garth was buying a chip I thought I'd take his picture for future blackmail threats, but as I was about to take the picture the security guard came up and I quickly took a picture of the beautiful mosaic floor - or so I told him. Actually they were very beautiful. The chip on the other hand wasn't special at all and the ones at the Venetian were much nicer. It was after 2:00 am that we finally drug ourselves back to our room where we slept in as late as possible.

We headed back to Mesa the next day and we were all very happy with all the sites we had seen. The trip had turned out perfectly.