New Years

 New Years eve weekend we headed up north to Jordan's brothers house in Oak Harbor, WA on Whidbey Island.  

 On New Years eve we went and walked Deception Pass Bridge.

 View of the bridge.

 View looking the other way.

This picture just cracks me up...  Sibling love.

 Dottie and Sadie they are less then 1 month apart in age.

 Dottie Cooper and I walking on the bridge.

 Then we went back to their place and had lots of food!  And fondue!  Waiting for the clock to strike midnight so we could light off our fireworks.

 And of course the New Years baby did not forget.  New Years Day.

On the way home we went a different route and took the ferry over to Port Townsend from Whidbey island.  The girls loved this.  Cooper slept the whole time.  To worn out from the festivities the night before I guess.

Christmas '11

 Christmas Eve.   The girls put together their own nativity to share with us.  It was pretty cute.  All props were made by them.  You can kind of see an angel and wise men on the wall behind that they drew and taped up. 

 They got Grandpa Mills involved too as Joseph.  Dottie was Mary and Emma was a shepherd.

Then we got to open one present, the new PJ's.

 Cooper in his new Thomas PJ's.  Could hardly get these ones off of him he loved them so much.  He also loves wearing this plastic baseball cap around too. It's actually a popcorn bowl shaped as a baseball cap, but he loves it.

 Christmas Morning.

 Checking out the loot.

 Excited faces.  HA.. pretty funny.

All dressed and ready for Church Christmas day.

Later that day we went down to my parents and had more cousin time.  Cooper and his cousin Kyla playing games on their parents phones.  It was pretty funny to watch.

December activites

Constructing ginger bread houses.

 Cooper was being so silly while waiting for Dottie's kindergarten Christmas program to start.

 There she is in the parade up to the stage.

 3rd one in.  Second from the top row.

 Cutest reindeer hat ever. 

Thanksgiving '11

So I am a little behind.. but here is thanksgiving. Here is Emma helping with the prep work.

 We had dinner at the Erickson's this year.  Jordan's brothers Travis and Brad were able to be there with their families as well as his sister with her new husband.

 Getting ready to eat.. so much food!




 The Adult table if that is what you want to call it.

 And the KIDS table.  Don't ya love their hats!

 Silly Faces.

 After dinner.. (probably the next day) it was time to cut down the Christmas tree in the mountains.

This must have been Bryan and Renee's tree.  It looked much better than ours.  We had to cut 5 feet off of it when we got home.  Still a tall tree.

Nolan B-day party

We went down to Battle Ground for Nolan's 18th birthday.  Just had to post this pictures because it was hilarious!

Job

Well some of you know already, but Jordan has been offered and accepted a new job last week.  Which means some changes are coming our way.  It's been in the works for a little bit and he has actually already been working the job for a month now but with all the politics involved with transferring over he was finally offered the job a week ago and accepted it last Monday. He officially started last Friday.
So what does that mean?  Well..  he still works for Boeing.  The biggest change is his commute, it went from 30 mins to anywhere from an hour to 3 hours depending on traffic.  He now works up at Boeing Field near Seattle. He still works as a manufacturing engineer.  He specifically works on the horizontal stabilizer for the 787 doing developmental work.
The job is good and is what we think will be a great career move.  He is getting his name out there which is great.  He is now able to work overtime which rarely happened before.  Now overtime is mandatory which is fine for him.  He just hates the commute which I do not blame him for. It's a horrible commute.  He will have more opportunity to travel either by himself or with the whole family. We are excited for this. He is able to learn more and be in leadership positions which is great for moving up.
Now the commute...  well we are looking to move.  Most likely it won't be till next summer.  We are trying to decide what to do on that.  We can not sell our house at this point so we will have to rent  it out.  And we hope to buy another house closer to work.  At this point I am happy to stay where we are until the girls get out of school but when it takes Jordan 3 hours to get home he wants to up and move the next day.  I really don't blame him though.
So far we feel really good about the whole thing and know that we are going in the right direction.  I am very proud of Jordan, he works very hard to support our family.

Halloween '11

 Happy Halloween.  Here we are after all the festivities so don't mind all the chocolate around everybody's mouths.
Emma- Batgirl
Dottie- Super girl
Jordan- Afro ski bum
Cooper- BYU fan since he wouldn't wear the costume we got him.

 So cute messy hair and all.


Scary picture below but they do love each other.
Both the girls costumes are a little small.  I bought them two years ago on clearance and intended to wear them last year but forgot to bring them with us to Australia. 

Here we are at the ward trunk or treat.  Cooper was afraid at first but he got the hang of it once he realized they were giving him candy.