the little gard family

When you're gone so long where do you even start? So we are living and learning and staying busy. So lets just do two highlights. I had a baby! A super duper cute baby!And we went ice skating! And yes this was a bit ago, over Christmas break, but I have to start somewhere.

Some of us didn't skate very much.

I think these people are pretty cute!

Eve is pretty good at this!

Its been a while but I thought I'd just throw a few pictures up here from our trip. We went to Oregon to see my family and run the marathon. See my running blog for those pictures.

We did a lot of things while we were in Oregon. Mostly we went to the beach and spent several days there. Above is the kids climbing the stairs at the light house.

We spent a lot of time on the beach with my family!

One of our favorite beaches was the tide pools. We saw and touched star fish and sea anemones. It was fun!

Isaac loved touching the sticky ones.

It was lots of fun!

We spent hours playing in the surf.

Eve touching a sea star.

Yes we had a great Christmas so maybe will put a little post about it. As my kids have declared "this was the best Christmas ever!" I think they might be right it was pretty fun.

These are my cute little chicks a week or so before Christmas. I don't think I even asked them to pose this was just one of those impromptu feel good moments.

This sweet picture of Elaina is a tiny representation of ALL the sweets we ate!

My girls have two pretty Christmas dresses this year but its very difficult to get them to act pretty and girly while wearing them.

On Christmas Eve we made Ginger bread houses with some of Lance's siblings. It was a lot of fun.

My kids are goof balls and thought this was the best activity ever.

Isaac and his house

Evelyn's house. She spent the most time on hers

Eli's has the most creative design.

Stolen straight off of my friends blog I made Chicken a la king which was awesome and I will make it a tradition every year. We ate it on Christmas Eve because we had a big family dinner with Lance's family on Christmas and they wanted ham. I toasted bread to look like crowns and poured the delicious Chicken A La king on top. It is suppose to be representative of the birth of our Savior and King. We got out the fanciest china and silver and ate like kings! It really was cool.

Christmas morning its self I was REALLY sick. So I only took like 4 fuzzy pictures of the kids and then I spent the rest of the day in bed. And somehow Elaina didn't make it into any of the 4 pictures. Sad. But I was too busy throwing up.So this is a picture of the kids waiting in my room to go downstairs to see if Santa came.

Here is Eve. I think she is holding the Barbie Santa brought her.

Isaac and one of his favorite presents

This is one of the favorite gifts for all the kids. Its a desk with a roll of paper underneath that you just roll out and the kids go to town on it. It is really cool as Isaac is demonstrating below in the picture I took after rolling out of bed around 2:30pm. (oh wait there is Lainy in the picture above to the left of Eli sitting on her new slide. Yay I did get a picture with her in it!)

And this is Eve's first creation.

It was a great holiday (other then being sick) and we hope you all had a good one too. We are enjoying our break playing in the snow and freezing weather conditions. Sad that it is almost over :(

I just thought I'd catch up a little and post a picture of Lainy's birthday. My baby girl turned 2 on December 4th. This is the first time I've had a child turn 2 and I haven't been pregnant or just had a baby!! I love it!

So Elaina- she is a character. She is talking up a storm and has really become quite opinionated and really hard to get dressed in the morning since she must pick what she is wearing. She is funny, independent, POTTY TRAINED and sweet. Love my girl!

So I know everyone says they are busy but I REALLY am busy. So I've taken kind of a break from blogging trying to focus on the most important thing. But the trouble is I've noticed is once you take a leave- when you do post it doesn't seam like anyone notices so why do it? Well here I am again. I thought I put a little something up

I'd like to introduce you to someone. This is BOB- big ole' beater and he took us hunting this year. Lance built him, fixed him and painted him all last winter and it really is his baby.

So hunting... we did awesome this year!! The trifecta! Antelope, Deer and ELK!!! None of which would have been possible without wonderful fantastic Granny who so graciously watched our children over and over and OVER again so we could go out together. I took up hunting last year in an effort to spend more time with my husband. I thought it was better to join him instead of staying at home cursing him for being gone all the time. And guess what? I really like hunting and I'm pretty dang good at it!!

We started with antelope. I shot mine from, no kidding, 350 yards away! (If you don't already know- thats a really long ways away.)

Lance had a much closer shot but he had to be quick. I believe he jumped out of the truck while it was still moving to get this buck.

Then we moved onto deer which was considerably harder to hunt then last year. We were so desperate that when a fawn crossed our path we seriously considered shooting it for a minute.

After at least 6 different occasions of hunting we made one last ditch effort the morning before we drove down to Utah for my Half Marathon. Lance and I went out on our own and miracle of miracles, thank the Lord, we both got one!! I shot a little spike and Lance got a two point. Not too shabby for two desperate people. :)

Next Elk hunting... by the time we got to Elk we were both exhausted and ready to be done! But, we drew these tags back in June and had already invested over $100 so we had to give it a shot. After two really unsuccessful days of not even a glimmer of hope of seeing Elk we decided to give up. But then... the last day of hunting season... last minute, the night before we decided to go give it one last shot- but only a morning hunt. We drug our neighbor Gabe along with us who was so kind to come even though he didn't have a tag, left at 4:45am and hunted the morning. I called Melany at 10:00am to say we were on our way home because there was NOTHING out there. Minutes after I got off the phone with her Gabe spotted a herd of 100 Elk, so we turned around and 6 hours and a lot of work later we were headed home with a truck full of Elk!

Here is Lance and his Cow Elk

And me with mine. This is the closest I've been to an Elk and it was HUGE!!!!! I couldn't believe it. It was like I shot a horse and it was SERIOUSLY HEAVY!!!

This is just a cute picture of Lance- before we shot an Elk

And me... on the quest for Elk.

My Father in law is a big supporter of Ron Micheli who is running for Governor here in Wyoming so naturally we are to.o. Today was the big parade to start the county fair and we helped build the float for Mr. Micheli and we rode in it. My father in law drove his fancy Mustang for Mr. Micheli while we threw candy from the float. Eve declared this to be the funnest day of her life. The kids really had a good time though I don't think they have any idea why we were in the parade. Lance wasn't too excited about it but I think he ended up having more fun then the kids. He got in a candy throwing competition with his brothers. One of them got a candy to land in someone's drink, Lance got one down some poor lady's shirt and he pegged a bunch of his students from school who were watching the parade. Clearly Mr. Micheli had no idea who he was asking to support him.

He is Mr. Micheli in the hat and my father in law driving his car.

Now tell me this man is not having fun... I don't think so.

My cute boys

My cute girls

And our Uncle Richard is running for city council so he was in the parade too in his fancy Jag.

If it hasn't been obvious already... I've been really terrible about updating my blog lately. I've really been trying to focus on my kids and limit my time on the computer. So I have been playing with children and I haven't been blogging. So here is a summery of our summer so far. We are about to go on "vacation" next week so hopefully I will have more photos then. So here's a run down of our summer...The girls were very cute while they watched...

Eli play baseball.

We kicked off the summer with a hike to the falls

I ran a race- a 6 mile kick my butt up and down hills and jumping over valleys race.

Isaac played soccer

We felt very patriotic

We went 4 wheeling

Lance Camo'd another truck so now we have two, you can't just have one ya know!

Eve caught a fish

We played in the boat

Eli got baptised (along with his Uncle Adam)

I ran a race
My dad came to visit so he raced with me

Elaina was cute

We went hiking
My Mom, brother, his wife, and 3 kids came to visit so we went hiking, again.

Elaina was cute again

and I ran a race, again.

So we still have a few more adventures to come perhaps even another race!