Merry Christmas!

I hope you all have a great holiday season with your family!

Festivities

I love Christmas! One of the things I love is all of the fun family time. This week we've had some fun times with family.

Nate's family has a tradition of making marshmallow castles instead of gingerbread houses. So this year we made one with the kids. It was actually great, a lot cheaper than a gingerbread house and the kids loved sticking on the marshmallows with frosting.

This year for Christmas gifts, Nate's parents took the whole family to the church cannery and let us spend $ on food storage. It was actually really fun! (Not that I didn't expect it to be, but it was REALLY fun!) Plus we've got our food storage stocked up. What a great Christmas gift! Thanks Mom & Dad!

And then there was fun...

We are all healthy and happy... and boy has the last month been fun and busy! We had a great Halloween, and now it's time to Christmas shop!!!! My favorite thing ever :)

I changed my hair to dark! And it's shorter, which forces me to do it everyday, a good thing... I think.

Miss Gracie was a ghost.

Sadie, a witch.

Carson, a skeleton.

Waiting for the rainbow.

2 weeks ago Nate got sick with a fever, chills, and a cough. Then Gracie got sick, then me. Nate & Gracie tested positive for H1N1 (swine flu) and so we were all treated with Tamiflu. (Love that stuff!)

Well, more than a week later Carson starts getting sick and then 3 days later Sadie. So, the good news is that we have all had the H1N1 virus, so no need to get immunized.

Luckily, we have all had a very mild case of this flu, thank goodness! But, I am seriously ready for a normal routine. The kids are ready to return to school & playgroups. They miss their friends, I miss my friends!

I told Nate last night I am having Target withdrawls, it's been almost a whole week without a popcorn combo!


With all of our time spent at home, Gracie has had lots of practice mastering her 2 new skills: sitting up & scooting. And oh does she scoot.... fast! Time to babyproof my house!

Some fun stuff

I hope everyone has been to see the new baby elephant at the Hogle zoo. She's a doll. I could sit and watch her for hours if I didn't have 3 kids begging me to move on to another animal.
Did you know that elephants nurse their babies for 3-5 years, and they only have 2 baby-feeders (not like cats or cows with zillions of em).
And another big event. A wedding actually. Here is the wedding cake I made to celebrate the OFFICE WEDDING last week. I know, Diego doesn't really look like Jim, but it was either him or Prince Charming and he was too tall.

Went to Vegas to watch BYU vs. UNLV. Well, Nate went to the game with his friends. I stayed and played with Meredith & the kids & ate Cafe Rio, which was fun too.

Oh, and if you want to know what Carson's going to be for Halloween, just come by our house any time, any day. He'll be sporting his skeleton jammies.

Gracie is officially 6 months. I should be a better mom & do a whole post on how big she's getting and all the cool things she can do. Instead I'll just say she's still cute and I can't believe she's 6 months old!

Crazy.

This little one started kindergarten. Crazy.
This little one started preschool. Crazier.

Spent a night away with a few friends & then at Swiss Days in Midway. First night away from Gracie. Pretty Crazy!!!

And the craziest thing of all... BYU beating Oklahoma Saturday night! What a fun time with friends.

My thrifty craft

I thought of a cute way to store flower hair clips, but didn't want to spend the money for a new frame and backer-board. So, I took this rooster picture that was replaced by the temple picture I got for Christmas....
And then with a little spray paint (actually a lot, black is hard to cover), some fabric, ribbon, lots of hot glue, and my handy dandy staple gun (love that thing!) I transformed that old rooster picture into.....



A little flower garden for my girls' flower clips.

Here it is above the dresser. Don't you love the feeling of doing a craft AND saving money?

In the last week...

We had a fun swimming day with some friends. Fun times! My idol, Julie Lewis with her 2 year old and 2 baby twins. She's amazing!

Went waterskiing up at Pineview Resevior with Nate's family. Do you think Sadie loves her aunt, Chantell? YES, she does!

For the first time in 2 years I actually wakeboarded. The water was glass, it was SO fun! Good to know I still have a little of that in me.

We volunteered at the Babe Ruth 13-year-old Baseball World Series here in Murray. It was such a fun night. We witnessed a postal worker riding his bike into a parked car, poor guy. We got a free dinner, yum. And, we got to see some talented 13-year olds play baseball. (Although a couple of them with full mustaches made me wonder :)

Starburst Babies

Apparently I was deprived as a child because, according to Brittany, everyone else was making "starburst babies."
And we all thought Brittany was done creating cute kids, here is her final addition.
(Not nearly as cute as the first 2, but pretty sweet if I do say so myself.)

Radio Disney

My friend Brittany and I took our kids to Radio Disney at the Gallivan Center. It was fun, and most everything was free, gotta love that!

"Got milk?" Actually, I do.

A little resemblance?

Gracie is 4 months old! She is rolling over, laughing, and getting more and more fun each day.

She is a super-cute baby. Sometimes I look at her and she reminds me of the baby gorilla from Tarzan. Something about the hair sticking straight up, the big eyes, ears that stick out, and the big cheeks.... if only I could get a picture of her with a big smile.

Holy Moley!!!

I went to Albertson's last night and came home with all of these groceries. In the end (after the 2 mail-in rebates from Kraft & Kellogg's) they cost about $10.00!!! Yes I said 10 bucks baby!

Kyle's married!

My younger brother, Kyle, married his cute long-time girlfriend, Jamie, this weekend in WA. Nate and I took Gracie on a quick little trip to attend the wedding. Nate's fabulous sister, Chelsie, watched the 2 older kids here in UT.

The wedding was pretty simple, but beautiful too. I still can't believe Kyle's married

The cake-topper was just perfect! Kyle is a mechanic, and is always working on his car. The cake topper was a bride dragging a greasy groom away from his mechanic tools.

Firsts

Gracie had her first swim in Grandma & Grandpa Milne's pool. She did great, and was styling a ginormous swim diaper (one leftover from Carson) and cute teeny weeny swimsuit.

Gotta love the white thighs.
And another first: canning jam. We picked 3 buckets of apricots from Nate's parents yard and spent Saturday morning making and canning jam and syrup. I'm trying to forget the amount of sugar we used (an entire 25 lb. bag!) and just enjoy the delicious outcome.

A crazy, wonderful, week

Last weekend began a CRAZY week, and I mean crazy.... in a fun way of course. First my parents, my 3 nephews, my sister, her husband, and their 6 kids all came to stay at our house for the weekend. Yes, our 2200 sq. foot house held a total of 6 adults and 9 kids.

Sunday we blessed Gracie. The blessing itself was wonderful, Nate did a great job. He had to talk loud though because Gracie screamed through the entire blessing. And I later found out she was almost dropped during it, thanks to Blake for keeping her from slipping!

She had a super-cute bonnet on during the actual blessing, but I think that's what was making her so mad, hence the bonnet-free pictures.

Right after the blessing lunch we went to Bear Lake with my parents, Ramie's family, Tiff & Blake, Rob & Pam, and Nate's parents & younger siblings. We had so much fun, I LOVE Bear Lake!

Kids love the sand, I love the hours of entertainment the sand provides.

My wonderful parents, I miss them already.

The kids got SO dirty playing in the sand all day long. The first day I showered them and then they just got right back into the sand, so they went the rest of the week without showering. You should have seen the bath water when we finally bathed them at home.

My parents had ALL 12 of their grandkids there..... but only 2 out of 5 of their kids. It was a little crazy at times, we were definitely outnumbered.

We got home from Bear Lake and the next day left for the Heber Valley girl's camp property for the Porter family Reunion. The first night we had a blast canoeing and paddle-boating on the lake. Chelsie and I just had to take the photo-op with the sweet life-jackets.

The next morning we did the challenge course. Sadie was so brave and did the zip line all by herself. You have to climb up a pole, walk across a log, and then go down the zip line. I decided if Sadie can do it, I can too. Oh, Nate did it too, but that's nothing for him :)