Beautiful Hannah on blessing day!
Valentines Day weekend we took a quick trip to Columbia South Carolina for our neice's blessing. We are so grateful Hannah is part of our family. It was such a quick trip. We left Saturday morning got to North Carolina around 4 and into Columbia South Carolina around 7pm. As we are driving to Columbia we both looked at each other and realized we didn't think it though. We spent 2 days of travel and 1 day of family time. But we are grateful we were able to be there. Dakota had a great time with his cousins. And we were able to be there when we found out Julie and Ryan are going to be having another addition to their family. We love our family.. and wish we could see them more often.
Julie, Ryan, Kori and Tattila.. Soon to be another one! Congrats Strouds! We love you!
Carter. Proud Big Brother of Hannah!
Gracie and Hannah
Jon and Sue proud parents of Carter and Hannah (this is what happens to you when you have over 40 people in your house!)
A rare picture of Stephen
Dakota and Gracie in the jump castle
Having a great time. Thanks uncle Johnnie!In other news. Jennifer is now done with the Navy. My last day in the office was Feb 26th. It was bittersweet. It's hard to find a new routine... after being in the Navy for 8 years and having the same routine for most of that time. We are grateful for the time I served on Active duty. My office gave me a nice going away luncheon with lots of my friends and co workers. I am going to miss being in the building everyday, but I am excited to be able to spend time with Peter and Dakota for about a month. We are grateful we are in Denver. We have a great ward family and enjoy the area. So we are looking forward to new adventures for 2009. We are excited to see where this next part of our life will take us.. but wherever we go we are doing it together.
We headed up this past Saturday to Winter Park for some fun in the snow. The drive was great with the sunny blue sky overhead and once we got close enough the actual snow on the ground. We had thought of trying out a tubing hill up that way but while stopping in Winter Park Dakota had so much fun at the playground and the little hill there we just let him stay there.
We had fun going down lots of times and even got Jenn to go down one time with Dakota. 
It was a great little park there in town and a couple at the bottom of the hill in the picture below was just hanging out giving hot chocolate to everyone. 
Dakota had fun going down the slides and climbing around at the playground too, so 
I thought I would join him on the climbing around. Part of the parks retaining wall was made up like a rock wall.
It was a fun filled day down at the Denver Western Stock Show today. This was our first time going since being here. We always think of going to the it and the many rodeos, but dont ever seem to make it out. So this year we did and Dakota enjoyed it. We asked him what he wanted to see and he said the pigs. So we set out to find them after checking a few things out.
The lamas and alpacas, I guess we missed the pigs day because we were in the right room but no pigs. So instead we checked out the alpacas and Dakota had fun.
As soon as we got close for a picture Dakota closed his eyes until we were at what he deemed a safe distance again. Fun stuff, so we continued to check out the various on goings except for ironically the children events due to extreme high traffic in thoses areas. The petting zoo looked like a Disneyland ride in the peak of summer. So although we might of found a pig there we gave up on that option.
He must of had fun though cause he went right to sleep on the ride home and stayed asleep for two hours after getting home.
We were excited to spend a week with Peter's mom and dad. Dakota hadn't seen Grandma and Grandpa Ouzts for a long time. By now Dakota and Uncle Stephen were best of friends. We spent the time there at Aunt Mararget's house. We are so grateful for her and her welcoming us into her home. We were able to see a lot of family and friends while we were in Utah. We had a wonderful time. We went sledding, which we haven't done in the 3 winters we have spent in Colorado, but I think we found a new favorite family activity. (any time anyone wants to go, just let us know... we love it) we had some awesome dinners while we were there, and many many WII bowling games.
