We're gonna make this place our home.

 Aah ah aaah, ah ah aah aaaah.  That song has been in my head like crazy since watching the olympics.  And it's pretty fitting for this post.  Another Idaho trip for us is coming up, so I better hurry and finish posting about our last one.

 We did tons of stuff while we were in Utah and Idaho, and we loved every second of it.  Jerzi can't seem to understand that we live in Texas.  She still argues with me that we live in Idaho.  And Jeter is convinced that we are moving back to Idaho when he is 6 years old.  Well, at least if we aren't living there, we can warp their little minds that Idaho is the best!

Grandpa Pocock took us up the river on his fishing boat while we were there.

  Good food and good company!

We drove up (a little too far) onto a little rock bar, so we could get out and play with rocks, go the bathroom, and cook the food.  I'm pretty sure that I should not have been the one that was teaching the kids how to skip rocks. Look at that form.  HAHA

 Jerz, thinkin she's hot stuff driving the boat!

Jerzi loved all the attention she was getting from everyone, and Jeter...well he was just too pooped.  No naps and staying up late for many days in a row takes its toll on this little guy.

 After Fuller Fest got over, me, Jete and Jerz stayed a couple extra days at my sister Angie's house.  It was super fun to spend time with them and their awesome family.  It was Javin's birthday while we were there.  Jav let Jete pick out his birthday cake (a basketball cake).  Jeter was so excited about it, and also about the donut that Jav got for his birthday.  It was the biggest donut we have ever seen (sorry, no picture).  Holl and Jeff, and Dustin and Alissa and their kids came and celebrated his b-day so we had a ton of fun with everyone.

We went to a park/splash pad and played and ate dinner, then went back to the house to play some more.  The kids loved the pinata and all of it's goodness inside.

The three cute princesses

Holl and Jeff brought silly string for everyone.  It was so much fun.  I think the adults liked it more than the kids.  It was pretty much everywhere, but oh so fun!

I love the look on Dustin's face.  He was getting everyone in their face, including poor little Mag, and just laughing his head off. 

Cute cousins

Jerzi hangin out with the boys, playin Jav's new game on the wii (or xbox or whatever they have.)

So Josh and Ang let me drive their sweet '86 Lincoln back to Rexburg so that I could have my own car to drive around in.  It was so nice of them, and that car was so sweet!  I'm so sad that I didn't get a picture of it, cuz it was the bomb.  It's a nice, big, yellow, luxury Lincoln.  The seats were so comfy and it rode so smooth.  It was a little long though, and only a couple times I felt like whew, am I gonna make this turn?  Anyway, we drove that thing all over town, and it was a champ.  Thanks again Josh and Ang.

We went to Jackson Hole,Wyoming for a day with some of my family.  We went swimming at their rec center while my parents went and waited in line at the Bar J.  Swimming was a blast! 

We started out going down the slide with Jeter and Jerzi.   Then the kids got a little more brave and wanted to go down by themselves, but just have us catch them at the bottom.  (Jeter wasn't quite tall enough to reach, but he could bounce off his tip toes for a sec, then go back under) So he decided he wanted to do it by himself.  He loved it and thought he was so big to go down by himself and not have anyone catch him.  He would go under the water, kind of splash and kick around for a little bit under there, each time looking like he was gonna drowned, then come up with a huge smile on his face, and want to do it again.  He was so brave, and both him and Jerzi loved this swimming place probably better than any other swimming place we've been.  I hope we can go there again in our next Idaho trip. 

After being so brave on the little slide, we decided to try out the big slide with the little munchkins.   

More fun than the little one! Jeter eventually started going on this one by himself too.  We were all in the shallow pool and all the sudden we notice that Jeter and Miles were not anywhere.  We were starting to panic for a second, then we noticed the two 4 year olds were just climbing up the stairs to go on the big slide, by themselves, and didn't tell any of us.

 We all had so much fun.  Even Ern got in on the fun, even though her hand was in a cast.  She saran-wrapped it and kept her arm up the whole time.  HAHA  Oh I guess it wasn't as much fun for Audrey.  She was 9 months pregnant and didn't get in.  So she took pictures for us, super nice, but not that fun. 

After we got done swimming we went to meet up with my parents at the Bar J.  In case you don't know what that is, it's a little cowboy music, comedy, and dinner.  We used to go to it all the time when I was younger, and my whole family just loves them.  It's always a good time.  

My parents waiting in line all day paid off.  They got us front row seats!

We love the Bar J!!!

I had a little video clip of them singing a song about Texas, and the guy in the middle looked down at me in the middle of the song, and started singing and smiling right to me as I zoomed in on him.  It won't download though, dang it.  It was funny. 

More Idaho fun to be continued...

Fuller Fest 2012 (Part 2)

The last day of Fuller Fest, we ported in London where we had the Fuller Olympic Games.  Bud and Audrey were in charge of this and they did a great job!  People were prepping for the Olympics way before we went to Fuller Fest.  Every individual family had to choose a color for their team, and so when peeps started claiming their team colors, the trash talking started.  Good times!

Here's our small, but oh so talented team in front of Big Ben.

  

GO BLACK!!!

We had all sorts of races, events, and fun games.

That's me, Jete and Jerz out in front of everyone in the three legged race.  I was tied to Jete and held Jerz's hand on the other side of me.  After we raced down and back, we were still in the lead and thought we had it in the bag, then someone came up from behind with a sneak attack right near the finish line, so we dove to the finish and won the race. I may or may not have given Jete a rope burn so that we could win.

HAHA

When everyone found out that Hadley wasn't going to be able to make it to the olympics, they thought the black team was no longer a favorite to win.  Even without one of our main competitors, the black team proved we were still a force to be reckoned with.  We still made it to the podium, and brought home a medal. 

Davis family: gold

Dustin Fuller family: silver
Mcarthur family: bronze

We also had The Freaky Talent Show later on that day.  We had some freaky talents that was for sure.  We all laughed and cheered and loved every second of it.  My camera card was full after only taking a few pics, I was so sad. So some of these I stole from off of Audrey's blog.  And I still am missing so many people's talents.  They were all so good!  Audrey has videos of some of the talents that are super funny, and more pics. If you wanna go check them out, go here.

Dres, Brientz, and Brityn showing us all how crazy flexible and talented they are, and Josh trying to copy them.

Athen lip-syncing and dancing  to "21st Century Girl"

Jav break dancing for us

The Braithwaites made up and performed a song called "We are the Braithwaite Clan"

 Me, Linds, and Bird danced to Beyonce's "All The Single Ladies", but with our own version called "All the Saggy Ladies."  Oh yes, I even danced.  It was quite a site.                                             

My dad held auditions for this commercial he was doing.  Seriously, he held auditions on the way down to Utah.  Bird was the only one that made the cut. 

This is them doin "Dr. Ross Dog Food"

Later that night we ported at the lovely Hawaii!  When we walked off the ship, we all recieved flower leis and were greeted by this awesome hula dancer. 

We painted moracas...

and made up songs to go with our new instruments.

We all got our pics taken wearing grass skirts and coconuts out on a "beach", by Josh, our professional photographer. So he has those, not me.  Sorry.  I'm sure they were cute though, except my coconuts were sagging way down low I remember.

Also, Linds made a little souvenir shop for all the grandkids.  Each day they could earn money by doing something nice for someone else and come buy stuff at the souvenir shop.  All the kids loved this.  Jeter and Jerzi are still talking about it.  It was a huge hit!

Well, I'm sure there were tons more things that I could have posted and that I forgot to mention, but I've got to end this.  It's way too long anyway.  But I am so thankful for my family and that we get to do things like this, and make such fun memories together.  And I'm so thankful to Had and his family that made it possible for me to go. 

Families are the best!!!

Fuller Fest 2012 (Part 1)

Every other year we get together with my family and rent a big place for a few days and have a big celebration of being together, and call it Fuller Fest.  When you live so far away from everyone, it's really hard not being able to see them very often.  When we do come home to Idaho, we usually get to see a few siblings, but its basically never that we get to see everyone.  Last Fuller Fest, we were not able to go, and it was so sad and hard to know that my whole family was all together having fun, making memories, and me and my little family was missing it all. 

Well this year, because my husband is so nice, and his family is so sweet, they flew me and my kids to Idaho so that we could go.  (His family was planning on coming out to see us, but learned of our Fuller Fest, and flew us home, instead of them coming out here to Texas to see us.  Hadley was on call so he wasn't able to come to Idaho with us.  So Had didn't get to see his family, so I could see mine.  I love him, and his fam!)

So first things first....we needed to take care of some business.

Family Pictures!

They were long overdue.  And even though Hadley and Josh (Lindsey's husband) were not there for pics, we decided we had to have them anyway, and hopefully we can crop them in somehow.

I snapped some pics throughout the long process with my own camera. 

Family pictures....always a good time!  ha 

After that was all said and done and it was time for us to check in, we drove up to this montrosity of a house (9,000 sq ft), perched on the top of a hillside, overlooking the beautiful valley of Herriman, UT.

We also have a theme for our Fuller Fest every year.  This year it was a cruise ship, and our ship was called the Fuller Legacy.  When we got there, Bud, Zach, and my mom were our bellhops and took all of our luggage and brought it to our rooms.  They stood under this sign as we drove up.  HAHA

We climbed aboard the ship, met the ship captain, and had our pictures taken as our individual families.

Each day we got an itinerary on our beds, complete with mints and animal oragami. Everything was so detailed and set up for a cruise.   Angie spent a lot of time on this and everything turned out so awesome!

We lounged and talked.

Our first port: Pirate Island

We were divided up into teams and had to create a flag for our team.  Our team was No Mercy!
  We also had a pirate birthday party for everyone where we all got a gift.  The kids went on a treasure hunt for their birthday treasure, and the adults played a game to get theirs.

Our next port, was the Aquarium. 

On our way home from the aquarium, we could see smoke coming up from the mountains where the house was.  Some peeps that went back to the house said this was the view they could see.  The fire was just on the other side of that mountain.

Well, some of us didn't want to go back to the house, we wanted to go check it out!

As we drove closer, the smoke got so thick.  We got there before the firetrucks and police did.

It was crazy!!!  I've never been this close to a wildfire before.  It was so hot, and smokey, and close!  When we got out of the car to see it, I was trying to send Hadley a pic on my phone of it, and I couldn't even see what I was texting because the smoke was so thick.  There were so many people that were still just hangin out in their yards, calling peeps, or taking pictures.  We couldn't figure out why they weren't gathering up their stuff and leaving.  Don't get me wrong, we did see a few do that, but for the most part, not too many of them were leaving.  These were all new, big, beautiful homes.  So scary!  We were all talking about what we would grab, or when we would leave if those were our homes.

When we thought our tires might melt to the road, we decided it was time to get out of there.  And by that time, there were firetrucks and police everywhere, running to homes and telling them to get out, and closing roads.  So we all went back to the house we were staying in, and packed up our bags just in case we got evacuated too.  We all kept going outside and checking to see how much closer it was and if we should go, or wait until we get told we need to evacuate. 

Then came the phonecall from the owner of the house:

"We are being evacuated!"
All the sudden it turned a little chaotic at the house.  Everyone started loading crap into any car that they could see a little space.  Kids were thinking the fire was coming to burn us up, and some peeps just laughed at it all go down.  Anyway, we loaded up everything, including our food we had in the crockpots for that night's dinner, and decided to go to my brother's house, which was about 30 minutes away.   

We filled their street, their yard, and their house.  It was a little crazy with all of us (I think there was 36 of us) in a regular sized house for a regular sized family.  Fun times!!!

Later that night, we got another phonecall from the owner of the house and he told us the fire was contained and we could go back.  Whew!