Kanigan Family: Looong Time Coming...

I have been trying to post for ages now. It's been a long time coming! I tried back in January, but Blogger was acting up and wouldn't let me add a new post, and now that I can, I feel so overwhelmed with everything I need to catch up on.
So...to start, here is the post I tried to add a few months back, with pictures from our trip home to Utah, and I will just go from there. I've been very chatting lately, so I may be posting quite a bit. Writing is a really good outlet for me, and my stress levels have felt much higher than normal this past month. But, more about that later!
Here's Christmas in a nutshell:

Man oh man has it been a LONG time since my last post. I guess it is just evidence of how busy it’s been around here! Since November, we took our R&R to visit the U.S. and spent Christmas with family there in Utah. I will post a heap of pictures from that visit below. It was such a fun visit. The kids enjoyed all of their “cousin time” and have been missing them ever since we got home.

Our first stop upon arrival, was with my sister Kir to Café Rio and then the grocery store for fresh milk and donuts. I can’t explain how giddy we were without sounding totally lame, but in all seriousness, it was heavenly…and so much less expensive than we are used to here in Rio!

Dan and I got to go do some Christmas shopping in Logan, while Abuela watched the kids for us, so we stopped in at Kneaders for some breakfast…just the two of us. We ordered a pile of food, including a hot chocolate and a smoothie and the total came to just under twenty dollars. The food was fantastic and I about cried. J I don’t want to sound like I don’t like the food here in Brazil. There are so many things here that I am going to miss too after we leave. It was just so nice to catch up on the things I missed! I laughed at how much milk my kids drank while they were there. They couldn’t get enough!

We spent Christmas Eve (and a few days before) at Bear Lake. We went swimming in their indoor pool and sledding. My kids were drawn to the snow like magnets to a refrigerator, and they never got sick of it the entire trip! The hill we sledded down opened into a street, so Dan and his brother Abel manned the bottom of the hill and tackle stopped the kids on their sleds. It was pretty funny and I think they were both sore from it later!

Christmas morning, we packed everything up and drove through two canyons to my parent’s house. We spent the

afternoon in the gym of the elementary school my Mom works at. I have a very BIG family, so it worked out really well! We even attempted a family picture of all of us that turned out pretty good too! We’d just finished taking what we thought was the final shot, (with me setting the timer on my camera and booking it into position) when Lincoln sauntered in the back door of the gym, completely clueless to the fact that we’d been taking any picture at all. We laughed pretty hard and took a few more. J

Some other fun things we did on the trip were: bowling, going to the movies (Frozen, plus Dan and Logan went with our friends to see the second Hobbit movie.), I went to lunch with some girlfriends, and Linc got to spend an afternoon with one of his foreign service buddies form Virginia, Sam. We went on a ride around Perry in the back of Grandpa’s truck, read a lot of books with Grandmas, saw Temple Square (first night there with jet lag…not such a great idea), visited Grandmere and Grandpa Great, walked around Cabellas with our cousins, went to Bella’s baptism, sledded some more in Diana’s backyard, shoveled a few driveways, got haircuts from Aunt Emily and played a lot of Mind Craft with our cousins! Needless to say, It was a really fun trip!

We had a few weeks left of Brazil’s summer break when we returned. I came with the kids a week after Dan got back. He met us at the airport, and even though the kids did exceptionally well on the flights home, I was relieved to see him. We made it through customs really fast, and it felt nice to be back in the humidity and crazy Rio traffic.

The only down side to coming home was that the apartment above ours, had a leaky pipe that ran into our pantry while we were away and it grew a lot of mold which unfortunately, Dan and Linc have severe allergies toward. They both had some major breathing issues and we had to get a stockpile of medications for them. I think the mold is under control now, so things are looking up again!

School is back on. And the kids are having a great time. They each like their teachers and classmates a lot. Ellie is getting very impatient to go herself She will be more than ready in August when she starts kindergarten. Logan’s been busy with his Destination Imagination group and Linc came home last week declaring that he was going to join the Computer stars club after school on Thursdays. I smiled because it fits him so well. He is looking forward to learning how to build a website and create apps. Owen had a fun birthday party on Friday. I got to visit him for lunch last week. He was so good to Ellie, leading her to all his favorite places at recess and taking such good care of her. We finally got all our pictures and decorations hung last week. It feels like a real home now (for at least 15 months until we leave again!)

I have been keeping busy with Ellie, photography and I have also been doing a little writing. I’m working on a novel that may or may not be any good. I’ll let you know when it’s done! ;)

I think that catches us up for now. I promise not to be a stranger to the blogging world. Here are a few pictures that capture the last few months!