Christmas in Colorado

With all the new changes in our life I still wanted to make sure we made it out to celebrate Christmas in Denver. My Aunt Carrie Lou and her family came from Boston to celebrate as well which was such a nice addition to the festivities- especially the Christmas Eve Caroling event. We really did sound like a choir with 2 Boston Symphony Choir members there. :)

We did a lot of the usual Christmas stuff- making cookies, caroling, Christmas Eve gifts, Nativity reenactment, and early Christmas morning gift giving-6:30am this year. We had 20 people squished in the living room/kitchen on Christmas morning. It was crazy as usual with a moment or 2 of "no visible carpet". The notable gifts of the day were Sarah's Shake Weight, David's huge Machete, the guys metal figurines from Grandma, Joseph's Onesie with a butt flap, Jacob's reaction to getting Spongebob stuffed-animal, Just Dance Wii game, and our baby hiking backpack. I'm sure there's more, but those were the most memorable ones.

Slippers for Christmas Eve

Lily plays the part of "Baby Jesus"

Where's the floor?

Shake Weight-hahaha!

This is a onesie with a butt flap

Sponge Bob!!!!

Just Dance, ha!

We LOVE the backpack!

Travis and I also spent an evening with my friends from high school doing a white elephant and eating a delicious pot luck dinner. It was so nice catching up with everyone and getting just about all the girls together again- Laura, Chelsea, Jocelyn, Catie, Kym-me, Trisha, and Lisa. 5 out of the 8 of us are pregnant too. (Me, Catie, Kym-me, Lisa, and Trisha) Exciting stuff. So good to see everyone!

We also got to talk to Jordan who was flying out to Nashville from the MTC. It was so good to hear from him and he sounded so happy! So exciting to have a brother on a mission.

It was really nice to be home for the holidays!, although we did miss the snow. It came the next weekend, of course.

p.s. Everyone loved having Lily around! Mom even let her jump up on her bed a couple times! She got lots and lots of love.

Beaver, Utah- Here We Come!

Amidst all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, Travis found an amazing job in Beaver Utah! He passed his boards (Yeah!) and went through 2 interviews and was offered the job. He will be doing 10 24hr ER shifts/month plus building a patient base in the clinic. Since Beaver is a small town of approximately 3000 people he will get to provide all types of health care in the clinic. The hospital is beautiful and fairly new. The people are really nice and we amazingly found a nice place to rent our during our trip up for the second interview. Beaver has all sorts of fun stuff to do nearby. Our favorite lake is just a little over an hour away with skiing, hunting, ATV trails, mountain biking and all sorts of fun outdoorsy stuff basically in our backyard. :) We feel so blessed to have found something so perfect so quickly. Look out Beaver, the Hicks are movin in! :)

Hicks 2010 Christmas eCard

A slideshow by Smilebox

White Elephant Fun

We had a great time at a few Christmas parties this year, one being the annual Hammond White Elephant Gift Exchange. It was hilarious as usual with the entertaining gifts this year being tampon slippers, a bejeweled toilet seat, batman boxers, etc. We had a Mexican buffet with tons of extra food and was just way yummy. It was so fun to laugh and chat and be with good friends and fun people.

Birthdays!

Can't move onto to December without a post about our birthdays. Mine was on Monday this year- 29yrs on the 29th! Silly, I know. :) Work was nice just to see all the birthday wishes all day and get some flowers from Trav and eat lunch at our favorite pizza place, Enzos. In the evening we went to my favorite Mexican place, Cafe Rio of course, with Travis' parents :) Then we opened presents and had yummy strawberry shortcake at David and Linda's. They all were so generous with their gifts: Travis got me a jogging stroller a few weeks ago and also went out and bought me a cardigan (so sweet of him!) and a couple other things. David and Linda always give so much- a massage, new purse shell, shoes, etc. Travis' sister and her husband got us tickets to Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian which I was really excited about and had been wanting to see forever! We went on the Saturday after our birthday and I LOVED it!! The performance was amazing!-the singing/acting, the theatrics and special effects... such a great show! (Thanks Shawn!)

For Travis' birthday on Tuesday we went out to Outback with a gift card we had. Then we went over to his parents for gifts and delicious Nothing Bundt Cake. I got him parts to his truck to supe it up some more, which he was wanting really bad. His parents got him a few things but the main thing was the iPhone Tom Tom. I think he had a great bday too. :)

Overall it was a pretty exhausting week of celebrating etc. But all good stuff! Being 29 isn't so bad after all. :)

Give Thanks

It has been such a nice Thanksgiving break. I have so enjoyed sleeping in everyday and just being home with my hubby and doggy. It's been nice to slow down yet get everything done! Thanksgiving Day was so nice at David & Linda's. I brought green bean casserole and sweet potato pie this year. We had all the essentials and just enjoyed a delicious meal with the Capparellis, Peters, and Culvers, a group of 16. It was so nice to get a bunch of people together and make it feel like a big holiday event. After dinner I played LIFE with Taylor and PJ, Travis' cousins who are 13 and 16 yrs. It was so relaxing and fun to feel little again and play a game a played sooo many times when I was that age, which was almost 15 years ago! So crazy. I still love playing board games and miss having my siblings around to play with. We ended the evening watching Grown Ups, a light hearted Adam Sandler movie. It was a such a nice Thanksgiving and I truly am thankful to be part of the Hicks family. :)

p.s. I totally forgot to take pictures!

St. Jude's Ranch for Children

At work, it is the business' 10 year anniversary this year. Instead of having an office party, we decided to give to the community by donating Christmas gifts and decorations to a house at St. Jude's Ranch for Children. The campus is a place where children go whose parents are no longer allowed to care for them and they have no where else to go. The house we chose had a family of 5 kids ranging from 1yr to 10 yrs. The foster parents had 2 young girls as well. When I first went to meet the parents, the baby just clung to me and didn't want me to go! He was sooo cute! We all went back on a rainy, cold Saturday afternoon and put up more lights outside then they ever had and a bought a Christmas tree for them as well. They had lots of other decor to set out as well and the house just looked amazing once we were done. They fed us dinner as well and the kids were so sad to see us leave. They loved the attention and had so much fun.


The following week Jill and I went to Toys R Us and bought gifts for each of the kids. It was sooo fun picking out little black baby dolls and barbies and finding all of the things they wanted. If we hadn't decided to forgo our office Christmas dinner and buy the gifts for them, they might not of had nice gifts this year. The only way they get nice Santa gifts is if someone donates to the campus or chooses their house specifically to donate to. And who knows if those donations are just hand-me-down used stuff or actual gifts they want. Just gave us all warm fuzzies to know that we really are making a difference for someone this holiday season. And what better people than children who bring the Christmas spirit to us to much more than we do for ourselves! It was a great event and something I'd love to keep in mind for the future for our family.

Little Caroline

This summer when I went home to Colorado I scanned in some baby pictures of me to have when our little baby comes to see if it looks like me or Trav. Of course Jess is in a bunch of the pictures too and couldn't look more like Sophie! Here are a few of my favorites:

First Baby Portrait. Aren't I a cutie?! :)


We determined that those are oars between my legs. Just another vacation at Bonita Beach!


Jess never smiled for the camera-this was the best we found in all the pictures, and neither does Soph! Ha!


This was my favorite kitty Leo. He let me do whatever I wanted with him!


This picture is how I remember home when I was in high school: me studying and wearing sports gear, Claire and Emily as the little girls, Joe and Jordan as fun young boys (well they of course still are), Sarah, Jess and I wearing crazy weird clothes. :)

Great memories! I posted these and more on facebook and got more comments on an album then ever before! We decided we need to pull the albums out again at Christmas this year. :)

Mindy's Babyshower

Mindy's little Savanna comes next week so we had a baby shower for her with a bunch of friends from the ward. It was so nice to get everyone together and so fun to see all the cute girl clothes! The girl stuff is just so adorable! We're so excited to meet Savanna and happy for Cael to have a sibling!

Graduation-Hooray!!!

It is finally official! Travis graduated PA school on Nov 14th!!!! We had a graduation party for him that weekend and had about 40 people over to our house. We accommodated everyone in our living area, den, backyard and front yard under a pop-up shade. We had tons of food and great company. :)





My parents came to town as well, and it was so nice spending time with just them! We went on a hike to the Arizona Hot Springs, at a turtle pace (since I couldn't breath-this baby making is no easy thing on the body!) but we enjoyed the trip and view of the Colorado River. We had a nice dinner on the strip that weekend too. My brother Joe and his friends also came to town that same weekend, and crashed at our place for a couple days. He loves coming to Vegas and it's always so good to see him.

It's so unreal that he's actually done! He just has his board exam left to take in a couple weeks and then he'll be certified and ready to work. He's started to submit resumes and we hope to know where we'll be or what he'll be doing by the beginning of January! So exciting!!!

Pet Bird

Travis found a cockateal flying down our street one day. Since he has this amazing ability to befriend/train birds he eventually got a hold of it and brought it inside. We had the bird for 2 days and thought that Trav just might want to keep it. Lily could not keep her eyes off of it and actually yanked out a feather! Well thankfully, it turned out to be a not-so-well trained bird and would bite him and fly all over the house. I was not amused- it even broke one of my nick-knacks! It was nice to see him go. We got someone on Craigslist to come get it.

Halloween

So we actually celebrated Halloween again this year! We're not big into dressing up but something got into me and I wanted to dress up with Brighton this year. So I bought a simple black cat costume (one of my favorite costumes) and headed over to Travis' parents for the festivities. His mom is so cute and made the house all eventful with treats and decorations. We ate a quick dinner and then Brighton, who was a witch, and Shawn and I headed out to go trick-o-tricking for about an hour and a half. She was such a trooper and ended up with 2 buckets of candy! It was fun seeing all the kids having a blast and just spending some fun time with Brighton. Travis enjoyed staying at the house with little David and held him for a good long while. He's a daytime sleeper so we haven't gotten to interact with him much yet. Overall it was a fun Halloween and I can't wait til next year with our little one!

Hunting....Witches

This hunting season Travis was able to help out with Nick's deer hunt up in Utah. They wanted to camp, so instead of Mindy and I just hanging out at Grandma's, we went up to Provo to be with family and friends. Travis had a nice wet time camping in the mountains and hiking all over. He found some nice bucks, but Nick wasn't closer enough to him or them. The tent got some good use and of course kept everyone nice and cozy and dry.


I stayed with my good friend Lisa in Provo and spent most of my time with her and Sarah. The main purpose of me going up to Provo though was to spend time with Jordan since it was going to be the last time I'd see him before he goes on his mission in December. He's headed to Nashville and we're sooooo excited for him! It was rainy all weekend but it let up enough for the entire BYU football game which we barely won. Jordan and I had a great time watching the game. It was so nice to chit chat and was so sweet of him to invite me. It was his second college football game he'd been to! He's such an amazing guy and I'm so proud to be his sister. He's going to be a great missionary and will come back even more amazing than he his. It was sad giving him his last hug, but it was a good weekend and nice last memory for a couple years.

The other main event of the weekend, besides taking Lily around to see Jacob and play with Carter, Lisa's son, and of course going to Tucanos and Noodles, was going to Witches Night Out. There's this place in West Jordan that has all sorts of craft stores and what not that puts on a Witches night. All the women are suppose to leave their kids at home and dress up like witches and go shop, eat, dance and just hang out. I went with Becca, Lisa, and Sarah and a couple of their friends. It was sooo nice to see Becca since it had been over 3 years since I saw her last! I got to meet her daughter, Jane, who is just adorable as well. So it felt like old times with Becca and Lisa dancing, and being dorks on the dance floor. :) It was lots of fun and we decided that next time we have to dress up even more and totally get into it. Hopefully I can go again!


It was such a wonderful weekend for both Travis and I getting to do the things we love. Travis' trip ended on an anticlimactic note though with Nick shooting his buck about 2 hours after we left! Such a bummer since Travis worked so hard hiking and scouting around in the rain all weekend. But we're so excited for Nick and it really was a nice buck.

Hicks' Family- Our Newest, Most Exciting Addition!!!

Finally we can make the announcement we all have been waiting for... I'm pregnant!!!! :D We're expecting our first little one May 29th, 2011. We are elated and just feel so blessed. I'm still in shock and can't believe we're actually going to have a little one join our family! I mean Lily was definitely an addition, but this is just amazing and is going to be such a great journey. We found out on a Monday morning right after I woke up, before Travis left for work/rotation. I was basically still sleeping, as anyone who knows me would know mornings aren't my thing. So I was definitely in shock and felt like I was dreaming. I happened to have a doctor's appointment that morning so we got to do blood work and make sure the stick test was correct. Three weeks later we had an ultrasound and got to see our teeny tiny baby. We also got to hear the heartbeat which we weren't expecting to hear, so that was awesome. After eight weeks of being pregnant we just couldn't keep a secret any longer and told our families one night and friends the next morning. Thank you all for sharing in our excitement! We are so looking forward to our newest, most exciting adventure yet!

New Nephew!- David Andrew Capparelli

We are so excited for our newest, cutest little nephew, David Andrew Capparelli! Travis' sister and her husband Shawn had their first little one on Tuesday, October 12th. He is just adorable and totally looks like his daddy. David's older sister, Brighton, is so excited to be a big sister and loves being part of the new family changes. Kristin is doing well and recovering from her surgery. We got to visit them in the hospital about 10 hours after David was born. So adorable!! And I'm not just saying that. :) David was named after his grandpa, Travis' Dad. It's so fun to be an Aunt & Uncle to another little bebe. :)