The Christmas Post

Before I do Christmas I'll do our anniversary. It was December 13th, we've been married 11 years! This is our anniversary tradition:

No-bake strawberry cheesecake and apple cider. We have it every year no matter what else we do. We even brought the cheesecake in tupperware the year we went to Vegas. Also notice the napkin. We saved 100 of our leftover wedding napkins so we'd have enough for 50 anniversaries. Oh also, the glasses are from the Little America Hotel, one of the places we stayed on our honeymoon.


On to the Christmas stuff . . . .

One thing I'm very proud of this year: Jason and I BOTH went to Jessica's class to help her decorate her gingerbread house. We're really loving the idea of doing stuff with individual kids these days. We even invite one of them on our dates sometimes.

Our Christmas Eve tradition is a "Shepherd's Dinner". We have crackers, cheese, sausage, and fruit. This year when I cut open the sausage the kids cried, "it smells like Christmas!"

We did some puzzles too.

For their one Christmas Eve present the kids opened pajamas from Grandma. I got to pick them out! There's nothing like beautiful new jammies.

On Christmas morning I guess I only did video of the present opening, I don't have any pictures of it! But here's some aftermath:

I told the kids that if they wanted their picture taken with all their presents they had to get them all set up themselves. Nat and Jess are the only ones who did:

And here's mandie with her 2 "bees"

Hope everyone else had a fun Christmas!

99 things I may or may not have done.

Got this one from MaryLynn. The bold ones are the things I've done, the purple ones are the things I really want to do!


1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band (marching band!)
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt (i was too young to remember, but I did, right mom?)
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain (sounds fun!)
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job (officially I was downsized, but I FELT fired!)
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper (won the cow milking contest on pioneer day in 3rd grade!)
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee (I think it was a wasp)

Mostly Mandie pics but some other things too.

This is another fairly random post. But hey, my life is nothing these days if not random.

Here's Manda being a helperShe really loves emptying the dishwasher, she and josh were quite a team the other day!

Every morning lately this is what she does the minute I get her jammies off.

Scratch my back mom!

And of course she loves the Christmas tree! And she really loves the tree skirt. She thinks it's a blanket, so she lays on it, lays her babies on it, and even tries to curl up in it.

Okay, then this was a picture tag by Jen, take a pic of yourself with one or some kids. So here's me and Josh. We're BFF.




And of course after that one he made me takes more pics of him, this one cracks me up.

Also, stockings! The kids have had plain store-bought stockings their whole lives, but this year I finally decided how I wanted to do them, and I made them! I even taught myself how to applique! Ta-dah!

My First Big Thanksgiving

We had thanksgiving at my house this year! This is was my first time being the hostess and I was so excited about it. We had Jen's fam, Annette's fam, my parents and Kimi here, so there were 20 of us. We had turkey, red mashed potatoes, sweet sweet sweet potato casserole, broccoli & craisin salad, fruit salad, rolls, olives, cranberry sauce, and pies-- pumpkin, apple, french silk, and banana cream.

I have a lot of fond memories of thankgiving at my grandma's house, so I did whatever I could to make it like that. We had the same big long table in the living room, grandma's famous rolls (I made a practice batch last week so I could get them just right) and my mom made the chocolate pilgrims that we brought to grandma's one year.

Here's the rising rolls

Sweet potatoes, rolls, and turkey #2 in the oven (I ended up with 2 small ones), potatoes on the stove.

Fridge full of pies and broccoli saladEverybody watching Wall-e while waiting to eat

Getting the table set

And digging in!


On friday Kimi mentioned that she had to break a board for her next belt test in her college Tae Kwon Do class, so Jason gave her some pointers and let her practice with his re-breakable boards. THEN we all got to watch while she broke her first real board!

We were so proud.

Politics at Home

So this morning I was cleaning the kids' bathroom. (in case you haven't figured it out already, that's a great way to pass the time while little ones are in the tub.) I happened to be spot cleaning a bit more closely than usual and I came across something.

See it?

No, not my sadly scratched paint or our lovely homemade toilet paper holder. It's those tiny black lines, right there.

Upon closer inspection, I discovered that it was writing! Tiny tiny words written in black pen by one of my children.

It says "Vote for Joshua"


And a couple minutes later, I spotted yet another subliminal billboard.





Josh doesn't know it yet, but he's a republican.

In case you were wondering.

Halloween

Okay, blogs just rock. How fabulous that I have such a fun and easy way to share all these supercute pics of my supercute kids! Go blogs!

Josh was a leprechaun (costume made by me for Nat last year)

Jess was a witch (again made by me, for nat, 2 years ago)

Mandie was a pink poodle (found this at walmart after halloween last year. Too cute and cheap to resist!)Nat was Pippi Longstocking (we had so much fun putting this together! The only sewing I had to do this year was to put the patches on her jumper)
Missy was Tinkerbell (my mom made her costume!)

We actually put up some spooky decorations this year! (we've only been meaning to do that for our whole married life)

I love the gravestones, we're totally getting more for next year.

Mandie was amazed at the flying ghosty guy. She gave him a lot of hugs too.

We went to the stake trunk-or-treat

And of course good old fashioned trick-or-treating! The little girls are sick so they didn't go far, but the big kids went off by themselves and brought home a good haul of chocolate for me to steal.

Happy Halloween!

All the latest

Thanks for telling me to come blog, Reesie, I've been meaning to do a random pic post.

On conference weekend my parents came through on their way up to Salt Lake. On thursday night I met them in St. George and we saw Les Miserables at tuacahn! It was so fun. Then the next morning I drove the kids to school instead of sending them on the bus, which gave them an extra hour to spend with Grandma and Grandpa before they left.

I was making pancakes and my dad took over. He made people shapes and letters for the kids. They thought it was SO AWESOME.

Here's missy helping me clean up . . . if I ever said my house was sanitary, I was lying.

The other day Josh was riding bikes with the neighbor kids and I realized it was way past time to take those training wheels off! So we did, and we went up to the church where it's flat so he could practice riding.

He caught on really fast! And he loves being able to GO fast.




Oh, also while my parents were here my dad and the kids pulled out all the halloween stuff. We got some cool glow-in-the-dark fangs last year. Mandie tried them out too.

Mandie always wants to be at the dining room table with whoever's there. Especially her dad.

And this is the product of further halloween box perusal. Natalie the Kangaroo-Witch-Pirate-HarryPotter-Doctor.