3 days of Easter!

We enjoyed a WONDERFUL Easter long break. My sweet husband has been working 16/17 hour days recently, due to this class he has been in, and let's just say it was nice to actually get to spend time with him this weekend. We took FULL advantage of his time off!! Our weekend consisted of:

Face Painting, crafts, train rides, getting to see 2 Easter bunnies, 3 egg hunts, a bunny hop, 3 trips into the bouncy castle, a trip to the driving range, BBQ with friends, Easter brunch, new Easter clothes (for miss Emma), a wonderful and uplifting day at church, a very non traditional but VERY delicious Easter steak dinner AND lots and lots of CHOCOLATE!!

We did A LOT, but it was all worth it. We went to bed every night totally exhausted and it felt great. We certainly made up for overdue family time!!

I didn't get pictures of everything because the camera is out of comission, so this is all we got on our phones!!

Happy Easter!!

. . .

Obviously this is before the hair cut...but what do you think? Pretty cute!

If you didn't "get" the picture, look again!! We're pretty excited!

IT's Time...

This was LOOOOONG overdue... Here is the before:

And the after:

She looks SO grown up...I LOVE it!!

A good 'ole Canadian tradition eh?

So what does one do for a fun ward activity in Canada...well duh...you go ice skating of course!?!? You didn't know that?? You must not be Canadian...

Now, how do you know your daughter who was born in Canada is VERY much American?? When she steps foot on the ice, and wants to get RIGHT off!! She was NOT into this whole ice skating experience!! Well actually, she was VERY excited at the thought of ice skating before we got there...she was even okay once the skates and helmet were on...but the moment she stepped on the slippery ice, she was D.O.N.E!

We tried the little bars she could hang on to, but she wasn't falling for it. We really tried to get her out there...but it wasn't happening for her.

(it actually got SO bad, that we borrwed someone's stroller and we pushed her on the rink just so we could actually get some skating in...pathetic? YUP!)

I am pretty sure our dreams of a future figure skating Olympian are GONE!

We still got clogging we can try for!!!

Maybe we will give it another shot in a few months...year or two!!

After the "fun" skating event we went down to the beach and then out for fish and chips with some friends...this is Emma and her BFF Fyn...they are SO cute together. Fyn is 3 months older than Emma, and they are together ALL the time!!

Too Cute

Chef Emma...and Snow Day

Emma got a very special gift from Santa this year...her very own kitchen!! She didn't even get it until we got back from Utah, because Santa knew it was just too big for mom and dad to have to bring back in the car. So Santa left her dishes and pots and pans at G & G's house with a note letting her know he left it at home. But lets be honest...she could have cared less about the kitchen, she was having way too much fun "cooking" with her knew dishes and food. That was until we arrived home...and started putting her kitchen together!! She could hardly wait for us to finish, we had to put Toy Story 3 on to entertain her while we put it together. About half way through our work Emma had disappeared. I thought she went upstairs to use the bathroom, but when she came down the stairs she had a BIG grin on her face along with her knew apron for her kitchen!! Now she was ready to cook!! It was pretty cute, we obviously worked even harder to get that thing put together. Our little girl is quite the chef! She makes delicious soup...I think that is all she makes...it's all she ever gives us!

We also recently enjoyed a snowfall up here in our neck of the woods. Enough to have to actually shovel the driveway. So we all got bundled up and took advantage of the snow-because we knew within 24 hours the rain would make it all disappear.

she was "sweeping" the snow away...such a good little helper

we even made our own little frosty...sort of...close enough really!
It's always a pleasant suprise to wake up to snow up here...we certainly had a fun day.



Emma really enjoyed it, because that poor little girl was couped up inside for a week recovering from a mild case of Pneumonia...nothing serious...don't worry!! She is all good now!

Utah brought EVERYONE a lot of fun "sickness suprises"

We miss home (Utah), but are happy to be back in the swing of things!

Merry Christmas

Last Saturday morning we woke up and were out the door by 6:00 AM to start our trek down to SLC. We wanted to make sure we were only driving in daylight, as we knew we would hit some pretty rough mountain passes that would probably be snowing. The plan was to drive from Surrey to Middleton ID, were we would stay with our friends.

We were making great time, we went through the Snoqulamie pass...which we really expected to be a lot worse than it was...and headed towards Idaho. We really thought things were going great until we hit Le Grande Oregon. It was then EVERYTHING went wrong. They had closed the highway due to 5 jack-knifed semi's. They said it would be closed for at least a couple of hours. We got there at 2:oo PM and it had closed around 1:30. So we headed over to Denny's to eat and wait it out.. When we arrived at Denny's there was NO snow, when we left Denny's about an hour later...there was probably about 2 inches of snow on the ground!! CRAZY!!

We then headed over to Starbucks to pick up wireless and see if we could find out if the highway was open yet. To our surprise it was!! It was now about 4:00 PM. We decided we better just get going and take it slow, because it was now a good blizzard out there.

The weather was INSANE!! It was foggy and snowy and just NO FUN! As we were driving along we saw a flashing sign saying "curvy roads next 10 miles"

As we approached the first curve, we slammed on the brakes and SLID...I kid you not the ice was about 1 inch thick and VERY slick!

Every time we came around a curve it was parking lot...there were semi's ALL over the road and they were in the way, therefore no one could get through. Se we would have to just sit there and wait for the semi to chain up so he could get out of the way...it was crazy! And this literally happened at every curve in the road. Emma was a trooper!! She was wonderful, seriously the best kid ever!! When we stopped the car we would bundle her up in her coat and her and daddy went and played in the snow...or she just played inside the car, she was just happy to be out of the car.

This picture here is the line up behind us, obviously the pictures don't do this experience justice, but it was the best we could do as it was dark.

This was the front...check out that ice!

We FINALLY made it out of this mountain pass...it took forever. We went about 1.7 miles in and hour and a half!! We were 120 miles from our destination when we arrived at 2:00 PM (pacific time) and we made it to our friends home in Middleton ID at 12:15 AM. Again, we left at 6:00 AM that morning. So we were in our car for 18 hours...the whole drive to Utah only takes 14.5 hours...so yes, 18 hours only to get to Middleton was A LONG TIME!!

The next day we left around 12 noon and got into Draper around 5. MUCH BETTER!! We are happy to be down here and enjoy the Holidays with family!!

Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!

Love,

The Gordon-Smiths

Book of Mormon

So recently Wika and I finished reading the Book of Mormon, and we are currently reading Doctrine and Covenants. But once we finished reading the Book of Mormon, we decided we needed to not just read the book, but really study it. So every night, after we put Emma to bed Wika goes to the computer upstairs while I sit at the laptop downstairs and we do our "personal study." Wika came across this AWESOME website that really just gives a play by play of the Book. And I thought I would share it with you!

YOU'RE WELCOME!!

click HERE

*once you get to the website, click on "book of mormon commentary*

I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!! It's very helpful, especially for when you reach those awesome Isaiah chapters!!

Happy Studying!