Lassen National Park

For those of you who know Brent, know we had to do some hiking while we were in the states.  Lassen is pretty close so we headed up there. We went with Brent's dad, my mom and my sister and her kids.  Everyone did great and we had a fun time.

We did the hike to Bumpass Hell. There was a lot of steam, cool colored, bubbling pools, and stinky smells.

I'm not sure if the 4.5 miles was sufficient for Brent to get his hiking fix but I think it was better than nothing. 

Halloween Stuff

For the one weekend we were all together, we decided to have some Halloween fun.  My mom has boxes of costumes and the kids tried on and tried on.  They had a blast.

My two sisters and I were all cheerleaders for Manteca High.  Here are our children in our uniforms.  My mom even taught them a cheer to perform for us.  It was pretty cute.

Here is Marcae as a cute little puppy with her Aunt Brandie.

 Jaycee as a pirate witch and a clown.  Darling if I do say so myself.

Morgan as a princess and a princess.  What a surprise!

 Then we had a family pumpkin carving contest.  Morgan and I decided to paint a little more than carve with our Nemo pumpkin.

You'll never guess who did the eyeball pumpkin.

All the pumpkins lined up for the judge

                                        

We did got to a Halloween party at my mom's church but she took the pictures on her camera. We unfortunately missed Halloween day. We left Hawaii Halloween morning and arrived in Guam on the evening of Nov. 1st. That darn time change.  The girls didn't get to trick or treat but were fine with it and ended up with plenty of candy. 

First half of trip to CA

Brent had a conference in AZ so I decided it was a good excuse for a trip back to the states. I told my family and they all planned accordingly. I planned to use a military flight but after 16 days of not getting off the island, I bought one way tickets to CA. My sister Kalli drove for 16 hours from AZ with her 5 children by herself to spend the week with us.  My other sister Haylee drove from UT 11 hours by herself with 3 kids to spend the next week with us.  My brother and his wife flew up from San Diego to spend the weekend with us.  And the rest of my family was local.  We had a wonderful time full of making memories.My little and angels during our 18 hours of travel. We took 3 separate flights and they really did pretty good. It was just long.

 The day after I arrived, Brent's niece Alexis got married.  I got to attend the wedding.  Here are grandma and grandpa Collins with baby Juliet.

 The father of the bride and his first grandbaby.

 One evening we went on a picture scavenger hunt with the theme of Awkward Family photos.  So we had different things we had to get in the picture around town and then had to make the picture awkward.  With my family, not hard to do.  This is my group. We didn't win, but we had a great time.

 Morgan loved painting with grandma

 And coloring with grandpa and Kasen

Jaycee loved loved the cows and being outside.  She would search all day for anyone to take her outside and then scream when they wanted to take her in. She was grandpa's little girl.

Cute little cousins in their matching shirts made by Aunt Kalli.  Morgan loved all the attention and playing with her cousins.

Visit from the Tanners

Be nice to people because you never know when they may cross your path again. :-)

When we lived in Southaven, MS, we were friends with the Tanner family.  They moved to Alaska and then to Siapan and now back to Alaska.  Siapan is a close neighbor to Guam and they came here on vacation before they moved back to Alaska. We had a wonderful time showing them the island and spending time together. Fei used to babysit Morgan while I was in school.  Morgan was 18 months old at the time. They were fast friends during the visit.

We went to Leo Palace where they were staying and enjoyed the pools and waterslide.

Here is Dirk with the kids.  They were much more brave than my children.

Morgan did go down by herself once with a float.

We hiked just behind our house to a Japaneese WW2 plane that crashed in the Jungle.

Had a fun time at the beach

The girls loved playing Dress Up.

Jaycee had to get in on the dressing up action too.

A cool lion fish we saw while snorkeling. 

Fun times at Chuck-E-Cheese.

A group shot.  

For those of you who know the Tanners, the oldest girl pictured is not theirs.  They brought her with them for the weekend though.

Guests are always welcome!

Running

A new family moved into our ward and I quickly became friends with the mom/wife.  We work together in primary and our kids are the same age.  She is a runner.  She has run 7 marathons.  Like a for real runner.  I am not, and have never been into running since track in the 7th grade. I've always thought it would be cool but have never had anyone to motivate me.  So I asked my new friend Jennifer if I could run with her.  We began running several days a week after the kids were in bed.  We did a 5k and then a few weeks later, a 5 mile run.  That's the farthest I've ever ran.  It was on the beach at 6am and beautiful.  I really enjoyed it. Then I left for CA and haven't really run since.  She is trying to convince me to train for a half marathon in February but I am currently not too motivated.  We'll see.  Here we are at the 5 mile run on Gun Beach. It was a USA/military themed race so you could dress up if you want.  Jennifer is lady liberty and won the costume contest.

Okay, It's time to blog again. Random

 Morgan's went to a Monster High birthday party for one of her friends.  We were totally unaware of what Monster High was at the time but had a great time anyway.

My friend Marjie went all out with the food and decorations and it was fabulous.

Here are all the girlies dressed to the hilt.

Morgan and Ella (the birthday girl) strutting their stuff!

Anytime I try to do laundry, I find Jaycee hiding out in here.  She seriously loves it in there.

 Morgan and Daddy playing hid and go seek with Mommy.  They were in the linen closet if it's hard to tell.

Just hanging out one the evening.

                                     

We had a great Labor Day weekend.  Friday night we stayed home and watched Mirror Mirror as a family.  On Saturday I went on a hike with the Boy Scout troop in our ward.  It was just over 5 miles long.  This is the first real hike we have taken the boys on since I started working with the troop about 6 months ago.  We had 24 boys from our troop attend.  For many of the boys a few valuable lessons were learned:

1.  Eating breakfast before going on a hike is a good idea.

2.  Bringing only 16 ounces of water to drink is a bad idea.

3.  Guam, a tropical island, is surrounded by water (yes, while standing on a ridge where you can see water almost completely surrounding the island an11 year old scout who has lived on Guam his entire life sincerely asked "are we surrounded by water?")

In spite of some poor preparations, all of the boys had a good time.  We hiked down to these beautiful falls and cooled off in the water.  Many of the boys proved their manhood by climbing midway up the falls and jumping out from behind the falls.

 Saturday night Paij and I went diving with two other couples.  We went at dusk and the visibility was pretty poor.  We were pleasantly surprised when we came across a rather large ray.  It was the first ray that Paij or I had ever come across.  A video our friend got of it is posted on my facebook timeline if interested.  

On Sunday we relaxed, TOOK NAPS!!! and hung out as a family.  We watched family slideshows of the girls since they were both born and then had chocolate fondue.  It was a lot of fun.  Morgan struggles to understand that the baby in the slideshows is her.  In spite of multiple reminders, she continues to refer to herself in the third person when she sees pictures of herself as a baby.  The girls both love watching the slideshows and even start to dance a little to the music we have put to them.  It really is a fun family activity and Paij and I love to reflect back on all the memories our little family has been blessed with thus far.

 Today (Monday) we went on a hike with some friends to a beautiful isolated beach.  After seeing a puffer fish in the water Morgan finally built up enough motivation to actually use her mask and snorkel and put her face in the water.  Granted that only lasted four seconds, but that is huge progress for our daredevil Morgan.  Hopefully soon we will have her enjoying more of what these waters hold.

Here are Morgan and Paij celebrating Morgan's first snorkeling experience.  

  To get outside the reef we had to snorkel over coral in some very shallow water. If you look close in this picture you may be able to see the aftermath of Paij's first close encounter with the coral.

Jaycee, our adventurous one, having fun on the beach. 

We found a couple puffer fish while snorkeling and brought them in close to shore so the kids could check them out.  They really are fun fish to play with.  

Came across this pretty little black and white fish.  I have never seen one like it before so it caught my attention.

It has been a great weekend.  Next weekend we celebrate Paij turning 30!!