Holiday Recap

Christmas at our house proved to be a wonderful day! Santa came and left the boys their most requested gifts and a few surprises as well.

Christmas eve:
Jed and Kathy came to join in the festivities with us and as always that made the day more special. We had a nice Christmas eve dinner of Chicken Cordon Bleu, homemade bread, caesar salad, cheesy potatoes and for dessert...triple layer chocolate cake (which ended up being double layer as one of the layers got stuck in the pan.) After dinner we had our annual Christmas reading complete with Christmas hymns and the boys got to open a few gifts. They got new Christmas pajama pants (that I can't believe I finished) and a few books from mom and dad. Then they got to open presents from Grandpa and Grandma in Utah. Erik and Cameron were thrilled when they discovered that they had been enrolled in the Lego Brickmaster club and they even got a couple of lego sets to start them off. Thanks Grandpa and Grandma M! Then from Grandma S, they opened a card with money in it for them to spend on whatever they wanted. Last, we started a Christmas puzzle and worked on that until it was time to check Norad to track Santa and off to bed.

Christmas day:
The boys waited until 7:00am to wake us (not too bad!) and then it was downstairs to see if Santa had come.

He came all right!





We had a great morning tearing open presents and sharing in the excitement of our boys!






What did I get for Christmas?

Brett did good!


Merry Christmas!

(We completed our puzzle)

Enjoying our Sunday

It's cold. It's rainy. The boys are watching a Christmas movie (Ok, so they're having some kind of battle on the couch, but the movie is on in the background). Austin is asleep. Brett is watching football and I am doing this......




and this...



A couple of small steps closer to finishing up some of my last minute Christmas projects. Feels good!

And now my mantle looks like this:

We've decked the halls....

We pulled out our Christmas decorations and put up the tree the weekend before our trip to Utah for Thanksgiving. We wanted to come home to our own winter wonderland (minus the snow of course). So here is a sampling of our Christmas decor and of course I have a few projects that I would like to finish before the end of the holiday season. I guess that I better get busy!




The mantel needs work. A couple of my projects are going right here!




My favorite decorations of all...

Got Cereal?

Austin helped himself to a HEAPING bowl of Lucky Charms! I found him happy as could be eating nothing but the marshmallows! Luckily he didn't attempt to pour the milk. That could have been disastrous!

Some Christmas joy from Utah

The beautiful Salt Lake Temple all lit up:




Don't my kids look thrilled to have their pictures taken?!




The boys with Santa.



Their Christmas lists.

Erik: Legos and building sets

Cameron: Pokemon (after seeing Santa he was very concerned and said "Mom, I forgot to ask for Bakugan." I replied "Don't worry, Santa knows")

Austin: Well he didn't ask Santa for anything (we were thrilled he even sat on his lap), but if you ask him he says that Santa is going to come and bring him presents. I have a feeling he's right!

Thanks for the sneaking the Santa picture Mom! And thanks for being our photographers Dad and Annie!

I can no longer keep a secret....

(thanks to my ever expanding belly)



We are excited and happy to announce that our family is growing! We are expecting our fourth in June! Morning sickness is fading (thank goodness), and now I'm just waiting for my energy to come back! The boys are so excited and convinced that this baby is going to be a girl! Cameron told me that he hopes it's a girl so that I won't have to be the lonely girl in our family. Aaah, thanks Cam!

We're home!

Well our last trip to Utah in 2008 has come and gone and now we are home busily preparing for Christmas (which is coming way too fast if you ask me). As you read from my previous post, we all had a great time being sick while on vacation (everyone except Brett, how he mangaed that I'll never know). After we were all well again, we were able to enjoy our final week. So, here's the run-down of our vacation. We shopped (shocking I know). We went to the mall to visit Santa. The boys gave him their christmas lists and even Austin even sat on his lap. We made it to Temple Square. Getting there was quite the experience, we drove to my dad's building which is a few blocks away from the temple and we parked in his garage (free parking right?!). We decided that it would be much faster to take Trax (Utah's light rail) to the temple since it was free. We all boarded and found seats and made it to our stop. The doors opened and we all proceeded to exit Trax well, I was 3rd from the back and as I'm stepping off, the alarm starts sounding that the doors are about to close and as I step down on the last step the doors start closing on me! I narrowly escape being wedged in between the doors and I jump down and turn around to see my sister Ali, sister-in-law Adrienne and my mom and niece trapped inside and the darn car takes off to its next destination. So we wait and wait for them to take the next car back and finally we see them walking up the street from the station 3 blocks down the road. Needless to say, we did not take Trax back to my dad's building. I think that I'm scarred for life. I have had nightmares about being trapped in the doors by my coat as Trax flies along the rails. Luckily we all got a good laugh about it and the Temple looked beautiful all lit up for christmas. The kids got to spend lots of time with their cousins. I crafted and sold a few of my goods at a craft boutique hosted by my Sister-in-law Simone. We ate out at some of our favorite restaurants (AKA The Pie and Arctic Circle for the kids) and we managed to see a few movies (Twilight with the girls, Madagascar with the kiddos and Quantum of Solace with Brett,yeah date night!) So despite the rough start, things turned out pretty well. We even survived the loooooong drive home with Cameron asking every mile how much further we had to go, and he wanted to know even down to how many seconds until we arrived in good old CA. Fun stuff I tell ya. Now we're home, the boys are off-track and we're trying to keep busy. I am managing to complete our christmas shopping (no easy task with all the kids in tow, thank goodness for online shopping.) Oh and in case you didn't know there are only 15 days until Christmas and in case you don't believe me, ask Cameron!