What a Wonderful Surprise!

I haven't blogged for a while. Reason being is that I'm pregnant and I don't do much of anything in the first part of pregnancy except complain. But I am happy to report that I'm feeling wonderful. It's always at this point where I look back and realize, I really was sick.

Since we moved into our house, almost 2 years in February, it has been pretty much empty. It hasn't really bothered me because I have just been so happy to have a house of our own, a garage, and space to put everything. Tim and I have talked a little bit about what we would put in our great room to fill the space and I have showed him a few times.

Well thanks to Kim, his little helper, they were able to somehow have the couch I had been dreaming of and a rug all in place in our great room when we returned home from our Thanksgiving trip to Utah.

Now the tricky part is how am I ever going to come up with a surprise as good as this for Tim?

This is a picture of Kate, our table that my friend refinished, and the carmel apples we made for neighbors and friends for Christmas. This table was given to us by Tim's parents when we moved into our house. It helped feed the 9 Gatten children for many years so it needed a bit of a face lift.

Family Pictures-or atleast an attempt

Thanks to Cassie we have some new pictures of our family. We are not the easiest subjects. We couldn't get Sally to sit for a second. We tried to form the picture around her. Not the greatest idea-you get some pretty strange angles.

Britsh Columbia Canada -1st Ever Tim and Lizzy Gaten Family Vacation

I can't believe it but we took a family vacation without attending a family reunion or to visit family. We had a blast! Since we were in the car a lot, we had lots of time to remenis about our family vacations when we were young.

"The Glass House" Amazingly this house was made completely of old formaldehyde bottles. The man who built it was a retired mortician. He actually lived in the house for many years. Now his family gives tours of grandpa's house.

Each day of our trip we went swimming at a different hot springs. Our first hot springs stop was Ainsworth Hot Springs. Our kids swimming abilities improved a lot after a week of soaking in different pools.

It is always amazing to me what our kids will do for an ice cream. Tim is "Mr. Briber". I guess you got to do what works.

I sure love my Jackson. This is a picture of him filling his pockets with flowers for me. Jackson's favorite part of the trip was the Ferry rides.

Sally made camping interesting. The first night we camped she screamed on and off all night long. The next morning a woman said, "So that's the baby who kept everyone up." We also tried staying in hotels to avoid the screaming. Didn't work:)

On the last day of our trip we went to the historical Fort Steel. I think this was Kate's most favorite thing we did. She was practically running to the next thing that they would act out or teach you about. We learned about a women's work, panning for gold, what a black smith would do, how to pack a team of mules and the list goes on. We thought our kids would last a few hours. but to our surprise they loved it. Basically every 15-30 minutes you could go to another spot at the fort to see how things use to be a 100 years ago. This is a picture of our kids at the school.

Happy 34th Tim

This was Tim's 34th Birthday. The Dance family came over and we had some good old chocolate cake and Tim's favorite Papa John's Pizza.
Sally Eating Pizza

Kim, baby girl, Tom, Tim and Kiddos.

Kate made homemade hats for everyone

Lizzy's Blog

So basically I'm starting a blog for you, Lizzy. Now that it's up and running, you just have to post pictures and customize it to your own style! Hope you have fun!