Welcome to the Family

There was an addition to the Nilsson Family made yesterday.
Like all Nilsson girls she is beautiful and unafordable..........yet IRRESISTIBLE!!!

"Raia Rocks"

So Raia discovered the rock wall not to long ago and decided she should get a turn like all the other kids. I hesitated putting a harness on her and told her to take it to Daddy. I assumed that dad wouldn't let her go. I was wrong!!! The harness tightened up right around her and the following display of pictures tells the whole story.

At first she didn't quite understand what she was supposed to do.......
Do I just hang here and look cute???
Or do I just plain look cute??
Maybe if Dad just shows me what to do I could get the hang of it. . . .



Yeah, that's me more than half way up the wall.
Whatever you do, just don't make me come in for dinner!!!!!

She loved every minute of it, and nearly every day she says, "Climb...wall...high" "Yes Raia you did "climb, wall, high!"

Every Girls Dream

Raia has really taken up cooking.
It is her favorite thing to do.
Most of the time she just wants to taste everything.
So I decided to let her do what EVERY girl wants to do while making brownies.

Just One of the BOYS

It sure is fun to have girls as the bread of our little family sandwich, and the boys as the meat. The only downside I have found is that sometimes the bread on the bottom of the sandwich gets a little saturated with the meats flavor!!!! I don't know, you can be the judge of that.

I do think she was the winner of that push-up contest!!

Photo Shoot

These are my beautiful children on the day of our Christmas Photo Shoot. I had forgotten about these pictures because of the busy December we had. It was fun to find them again. Some days I wonder how I got so lucky to be their Mother!!!!!

Trip of a Lifetime

Darron and I had the opportunity to attend his brother Adam's wedding in Sri Lanka a few weeks ago. Sri Lanka is a large island off the coast of India. Yeah, that's on the other side of the world. It was truly a trip of a lifetime. We saw, heard and smelled things that we will probably never see, hear or smell again. We had the best time. We are so grateful to all who made it possible. Most importantly to my parents who took our 4 children for 9 days and became their parents. This is a challenge in itself but at Christmas time......we love you mom and dad. We took lots of pictures, but I will include mostly those with people in them. Congrats Adam and Pek, and thank you for making this a memory never to forget.
This was our layover in Bangkok, Thailand. We went to a snake farm, bought tailored suits, and ate food off of the street. We stuck out like sore thumbs, as I am taller than nearly every person, male or female. It was kind of fun to be obvious tourists.


The wedding photos on our end are very sparse for 3 good reasons. Reason #1: We didn't take our good camera, and this one doesn't work great indoors. Reason #2: We were in the wedding party so carrying around our camera wasn't a great option. Reason #3: Darron had the stomach flu and was pretty miserable. So what you do see is me in a Saree (which was really fun to wear), Adam and Pek in their "homecoming outfits" (a Buddhist tradition after the wedding, which they combined with the wedding), and Darron in his short appearance at the reception.


After a couple days of relaxation in the most beautiful hotel (not pictured...oops) we set out on a tour of the island. This was one of our stops. An elephant orphanage. It was very cool to see those large animals up close and personal.



This was one of the Buddhist temples that we saw on our trip. This particular temple was inside caves that were naturally made inside this large rock hill. This was a really interesting place. We had to take our shoes off out of respect. For those of you that know me well, that was REALLY hard for me. But I survived and it was a great place. It was also our first of many monkey sightings.



This is Christmas Day...Can you tell???? This was an ancient archaeological ruin (right up Darron's alley) that the Sri Lankans believe will some day be named the 8th Wonder of the World. I wouldn't be able to tell you first hand, as I was layed up in bed all morning with that nasty stomach flu, but I hear it was awesome. There were lots of stairs involved, monkeys, monitor lizards, and breathtaking views.
This was the last stop for us, a very large, very beautiful botanical garden. We were the ONLY white people in the entire place. We had our picture taken by a small girl, it was very entertaining. We saw large fruit bats here also, Darron was in heaven.

Overall, it was extremely amazing. Darron's brother Dan took 3 times the photos we did and for more visit his blog savannahofsanibel.blogspot.com. We are so grateful for the opportunity we had to do this trip. We had so much fun and experienced so much. Thanks to Dave for being such a great travel companion, Thanks to Ambien for being such a great Sleeping Pill, and Thanks to Darron for being my newlywed on a second Honeymoon.

What did you do for Family Home Evening????

This is the newest addition to the family. We hope we aren't the only ones who enjoy it. We want others to want to climb it so much they'll pay us. Sorry the pictures aren't great. We could afford a better camera if our toys weren't so dang expensive!!!!!