Happy New Year 2008!

I love the holidays!  I love the New Year!  I also love looking back at all of the fun times and blessings we've shared in the previous year.  Since we're new to blogging, we'll share some of our favorite times in 2007!  (Starting with the most recent.)

Christmas 2007!  We had to celebrate a little early this year since I had to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  But on the 26th we went to Mississippi for a week so we got to celebrate then too!  More pictures of Christmas and our awesome time in Mississippi to come!

By best friend, Maria, and her wonderful husband Tony had Jordan on December 21st!  She is such a cutie!

ADORABLE Jordan Elizabeth St. Louis-Sanchez!

Chris' first solo flight, in a Cessna instead of a Piper Cherokee, and with me for the first time by himself.  If you look closely you can see the cloth coming off the ceiling of the plane, it wasn't in the greatest shape on the inside.  So poor Chris, I was scared from the start.  And then the high winds while we were doing touch and goes didn't help.  But it was fun!  Chris is going to be the best pilot!

Jose, Jay, and Chris.  Thanksgiving at the Lunas with many other people who didn't have family in town.

In November all of Chris' family met up in San Luis Obispo for Grandma's 80th Birthday!  Everyone was there and we had such a wonderful time!

Chris and I at Morro Bay!  It was a bit chilly and windy but we LOVED being at the beach!

Great friends from freshman year in the dorms at CSU!  Brooke, me, Amy, Alyssa, and Maria.  Amy and her husband Jason were in town for a wedding, so we all got together for the first time in eight years!

Chris spent four out of six weeks of September and October in Lubbock, TX.  His friend from El Paso is the president of a flight school there so Chris traveled there to get his Private Pilot's license.  He loves flying and did very well!  I got to spend the last week down there with him and had a blast!

Very handsome Chris in Lubbock, TX getting his Private Pilot's license!

Grandma, Me, and Chris at Shaw's Cove in Laguna Beach during our hopefully annual summer trip to sunny California!

Debbie scuba diving at our favorite beach in California, Shaw's Cove in Laguna!  It's not quite like diving in Cozumel, but still fun!

Chris and I at the beach at Dana Point for a family weinie roast!  How fun!  I would LOVE to live by the ocean!!!

I had soooo much fun at SeaWorld this summer!  I loved all of the shows, especially the dolphin and the Shamu Rocks shows!  We went with Chris's friends from high school, Marco and Angie, and one of their sons Gabriel.

I decided to do two triathlons this year but by the time I signed up, I could only do an olympic distance of the Rattlesnake.  It was a 1 mile swim, 24 mile ride, and 6 mile run.  Boy was I tired afterwards, but it was fun and I plan on doing it next summer too!  (I'll just be more prepared and train more for it.)  :o)

We made it to the top of Mt. Evans!  It was a bit windy and cold.

I thought I was in pretty good shape until Chris and Jay took me up the Mt. Evan's (a 14er) road.  Chris would give me a little boost and push me from behind when I got really tired.  What a sweetie!  And even after that he wasn't breathing hard!  It was a fun and beautiful ride!

After Telluride we went to my gorgeous hometown of Ouray, Colorado and went hiking with Jay and Cyndi to Chief Ouray Mine!  This picture is of Chris and I in front of Upper Cascade Falls.

In July we went to Telluride to watch Jay race!  The day before we did a preride of the course with him and it started raining sooooo hard when we were about half way done.  We were sooooo muddy and freezing!  I wish we had pics!

This year my very buff and beautiful sister, Laura, did the Danskin sprint triathlon with me!  I beat last year's time by five minutes!

Mountain biking consumes a lot of our time in the summer, especially for Chris this year.  He rode more this year than ever before and was in the best biking shape ever, especially in May and June!  This was before Chris and Jay's looong and difficult ride starting at Buffalo Creek.

For several years I have run the BolderBoulder, a fun 10k race with about 53,000 other people.  This year my best friend whom I usually run it with was pregnant, so my wonderful hubby ran it with me!  We stayed together the whole time and I had so much fun with him!

I am so lucky to have such a wonderful family!  I married into such a loving family and I feel like we've been family forever!  I don't have a group photo of everyone who came to my baptism, but here is Chris's mom, grandma and myself.  His grandma, aunt, uncle (who did my baptism), cousin and one of her darling babies all came from California for it.  Sharon, Chris's mom came from Mississippi.  It meant so much for them to all be here for it!

On May 27th, 2007 I was baptized!

One of my best friends from high school, Mariana, and her lovely husband Todd got married in June!  Unfortunately the wedding was in Brazil and we couldn't make it, but we had a great time visiting with them in Kansas in May and attending Mariana's wedding shower!

In March Chris's family visited for a week and his mom stayed an extra three weeks!  We had so much fun with them!

Last February we were supposed to go to Salt Lake City to do the open water dives for our Rescue diver class, but ALL of the roads heading west were closed.  I was tired of the cold and snow, so we decided we'd head south to Chris' old stomping ground of El Paso!  He lived there for about eight years and showed me everywhere he used to live, work, eat, sleep, run paramedic calls... you get the picture.  We also got to take his Jeep Cherokee jeeping in Las Cruces, NM!  (I have no idea why this is underlined.)

I've wanted a puppy for as long as I can remember and last January we finally got one!  We got Jason from a rescue when he was 4 months old, so he was already potty trained and crate trained!  He's been such a joy to our family!

Sorry this is so long.  It was just such a wonderful year, I had to share it!  I look forward to 2008 being another fabulous year, and I hope it is for you too!!!