Alex and Alayne's Quick Connection: February 2005

Our trip to Sun Valley

We spent the last week visiting my parents in Sun Valley, ID. We drove over with Tom and Traci Degan along with their little guy Jesse, yes in case you are wondering we all drove over in one car. Oh and we also had Darby (our black lab). Tom and Traci have a suburban and even to our surprise the trip went really well. The kiddos did great!! Also, for the record the trip is 11 hours each way, however on the way home we were able to shave off about 20 minutes.

Alayne, Tia Darby and I had a great time visiting my parents and Jinna. I skied a few days and we also had some family adventures. We went sledding with Tia and Darby, Tia's first sledding experience and it was a good one.

We went snowshoeing with the entire Johnson and Degan families for a afternoon up at Galena Lodge and everyone had a great time. A few days later Alayne and I went up to the Sawtooth National recreational Area Headquaters to try out skate

skiing. At first it was a little awkward, but before long we were cruising right along. By the end of the trail we were able to keep up with Darby as she ran down the trail.

All in all we had a great time out there and were not ready to make the trip home. Although it is nice to be back, we sure do miss the great Sun Valley area and hope to make it back there again soon.

Here are some pictures from our trip.

Alayne and Tia at the house

The family at the house

Playing on Momo and Papa's bed

A few pictures of Tia from this weekend...

Tia has really begun to enjoy having books read to her, and she really doesn't care who reads them to her. Or in Darby's case as long as Darby stays put long enough for Tia to sit with her, then Tia is happy.

Tia and Mom are playing piggy back. Tia was in absolute histarics over this. Alayne would rock back and forth and Tia would just laugh and laugh and laugh.

Hope everyone had a great weekend.

In a attempt to keep up with the latest technology we have decided to try out VOIP (Voice Over Internet protocol) as our new phone service. We decided on Vonage and so far so good. We just got the router today and it was very easy to install. Within about 5 minutes I had our new phone line working and was calling my parents in Sun Valley. Mom, could you tell the difference?

The best is the price. Its $24.95 a month for unlimited long distance in the US and Canada and that includes, vm, caller id, call waiting, call forwarding etc... it comes with all the bells and whistles. It also allows your vm to be sent to you via email as a attachment (.wav file). If your internet connection ever goes down it has a automatic call forwarding to a number of your choice, ie cell phone. The only down fall for us is we use DSL so we had to keep our home phone and get a new phone number, but Tom and Traci use cable and were able to keep their existing number and have Vonage ported over to become their exclusive phone service provider.

CNET rated Vonage as the one VOIP service that you could dump your home phone service for.

We'll let you know how it goes.

Tia and her cousins...

We were finally able to celebrate Tia's birthday with her cousins Martina and Anneli. Dad got sick on Tia's birthday so we kept the family away. Tia is 1 yr, Martina will turn 2 in late April and Anneli turned 5 in December. They all had a really good time...