The Big 3-0

Normally my birthday is my most favorite day of the year.  Something about the thought of turning 30 though, made me not as excited.  Now that it's here, I'm not really sure why I was ever concerned about it.  Ben organized a small get together with some of my closest friends and I had a blast!

 Amy & Andy - college friends

 Katherine - the best sister in law a girl could ask for!

 Kim - co-worker

 Sarah - a previous co-worker.  I sure do miss her

 Liz - best friends since 16

 Christine - grade school buddies

 LOVE these girls!

 Stephen and Tim - 2 very tall brother in laws :)

 Emily - BFF since 6th grade

 Katrina - best friend from Miami.  Made a long surprise visit from Chicago!

 Birthday dinner at my parent's house.  These two guys are my everything :)

Can't get enough of him!

Not A Good Year For Santa

This year was a little rough for Santa Claus. Lucas loves to talk about Santa, but when we went to see him he cried.  He did a little better the second time because we didn't have him sit on his lap, but he still was scared.  Poor little guy! Maybe next year?

 Every year, we join Phil and Cathy and their kids on St. Nick's Day to celebrate Sarah's Baptism Day.  We go to Bass Pro to see Santa.

 Playing in the trucks with his cousins was a lot more fun :)

 Still not too sure, but at least there is a little bit of a smile!

There is my happy guy - loving the snowman.

Hale Cousins!

While moving from New Mexico to DC, Ben's brother Matt and his wife Carly (along with their 4 kids) were able to stop in town.  It happened to be the littlest Hale's baptism day.  We were able to get a snapshot of the all cousins!

 My little man - loves rockin the bow-tie!

8 Little Hales :)

Zion National Park

While we were in Las Vegas, we rented a car and drove to Zion National Park in Utah.  It was beautiful.  The weather was really nice too.  We got to take a shorter hike the first day we were there before it got dark.  And then the second day, we got up when the sun came up (which at that time it was really cold - 13 degrees!) and started hiking.  We went up a trail called Angels Landing.  Well, I should say we went most of the way.  The last half mile of the hike really isn't on a trail.  You have to walk on the mountain side and they have a chain that you could hold on to.  We did this for a quarter of a mile (which felt like 5 miles to me) and thought we had made it.  We then saw we had about a quarter of a mile to go and this was even steeper.  I am terrified of heights and was already extremely outside of my comfort zone, so we didn't go any further.  Here are some pictures of the beautiful park.

 We stopped for a drink at a pub right outside of the park.  Here we learned that it was a Utah State Law that you could not order alcohol unless you ordered food as well.  So we also had some soft pretzels.  They had a really yummy pumpkin beer!

From the first day's hike

 Here is what we thought was the top of Angel's Landing, but it wasn't :(