Christmas Family Night!

Every Monday night Dan and I try to have a Family Night where we spend time with our family doing something extra fun.  We really try to make it different than any other night of the week.  Tonight was extra fun for us and the kids.  Any time candy is involved means fun for the little ones!  It's a good thing they have a dentist for a father, 'cause they love their sweets!  We started the night picking out our favorite Christmas music to listen to while we made our 'yearly' Gingerbread house.  (I cheated and bought a kit from Costco this year)  KJ looks forward to this every year.  This year was fun because all the kids wanted to pitch in and help make it "pretty"! (in Olivia's words)

Getting started....

look how excited they are!

She was so cute and extra careful to make it 'pretty'!

The whole family pitching in.

Olivia kept kissing her "pretty" house, it was so sweet!

The finished product, they did pretty good huh?!

Another tradition in our family is that every night in December we do our Christmas Calendar countdown where the kids get to pick a treat out of the pocket.  Tonight the kids drew the pocket with a tag for a Christmas book.  Russell's Christmas Magic.

So before bed, Dan read the book to the kids, they loved it.  But they love a book anytime, especially when Dad reads it to them!

I LOVE December!!

Big Thank you to Blink Photography for capturing some great moments! You girls are the best!

Make a Smilebox postcard

check out their website: www.lifebetweenblinks.com

They do amazing things, even with my children who HATE pictures (especially at nap time)! Thanks girls!

Happy Turkey Day! (well in our case, happy ham day)

We always seem to be extra grateful for the blessings we receive at this time of year.  This is my favorite part about the holiday season, it brings out the best in everyone.  Dan and I continue to count our family as our greatest blessing.  We are amazed with the love we have for our kiddo's.  We can't imagine life without them.  This is the first Thanksgiving that we have stayed home and the first Thanksgiving that I cooked everything by myself.  It was actually surprisingly fun!   Dan wanted ham instead of Turkey this year, which was fine by me, the whole Turkey was too intimidating for me.  We ate dinner, had some laughs, shared what we were thankful for (my nana's tradition), and then we were off for a long weekend trip to Portland.  We thought it would be fun to spend Black Friday in a bigger city that actually has toy stores!  KJ's also been wanting to go to the OMSI museum for quite a while now, and I wanted to swing by a cute Christmas Store on our way home.  So we packed up Thursday night, found a hotel downtown, ate a late night snack at the only open restaurant in town on Thanksgiving night (Denny's, yuck..) and fell asleep.  A few hours later we woke up to Olivia.... she caught a stomach bug.  We were hoping it was just from the trip over so we got her cleaned up, had clean sheets delivered, and fell fast asleep again, only to wake up to KJ running to the toilet because he had the same stomach bug.  Turns out those few hours we had of sleep were all we got for the night!  Luckily Jack had it last week, so he was immune!  The next day we checked out late, missed the Black Friday shopping and then it hit me fast.  I just wanted to go to bed so we found another hotel over by the Portland Temple.  Dan took the kids out, they got to see Mrs. Clause and hit a couple of stores while I slept.  The next day we all felt great, but very tired, so we bagged all our other plans and came home early.  Bummer!  I guess life continues to be unpredictable, but that's what makes it so interesting right?!  We are especially grateful today (now that we are all feeling better) for our health!  Hope you all had a memorable Turkey Day as well.

   

KJ, thankful for Thomas Kemper!   ~     This is the turkey hat he made!

    

Jack trying to ignore my obsessive picture taking!  ~  Olivia's Aunt Bert face!                 

     

Okay, there's the smile I'm thankful for! ~  Couldn't keep their fingers out of the chocolate pie!

 

Sweet Dreams little ones!  At least for a few hours! What's cuter than watching your kids sleep?

Polar Express

Thanks to a wonderful friend who organized the whole amazing trip, our family along with 4 other families that we love, were all lucky enough to start this Holiday Season with a Ride on the Polar Express.  We all met in Hood River, OR at 3:30, had really good pizza by the train station, had a very yummy 'polar express' cake made by the Cake Lady, opened cute little Katie's birthday presents and then were off to board the train.  My kids have been looking forward to this adventure for months now.  We love the movie and book in our house.  KJ even watches the movie in the dead of summer!  And well, Jack is completely OBSESSED with trains, so it was really cute to watch how excited he was to see the train pull up to the station!  We loaded the old train, found our seats, and were off for a holiday adventure.  We started the ride with some cookies and hot chocolate.  The conductor came around and punched the kids tickets, like the movie.  We sang Christmas carols with Santa's elves, and then the best part of the night happened....we made it to the North Pole!  There was a little town all lit up with lights and we saw Mr. and Mrs. Claus and their elves waving to us.  We stopped for a minute and then were off again, but to the kids' surprise, Santa had boarded the train to take turns with each of the children and ask them what they wanted for Christmas.  I thought Olivia would be scared of him because both our other kids were, but she loved him, wasn't even phased!  Santa gave each child a silver bell, which KJ was excited about, Jack threw his, and Olivia kept trying to eat hers??!  Anyway, we got Santa's autograph on our Polar Express book.  We had a really memorable night!  It was a great way to start off the Holiday Season and get me in the mood for holiday music!  Be prepared, I took a LOT of pictures and I have a hard time choosing my favorites!

  A special Thank-You to Matthew and Tasha for doing this for all of us.  

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Happy 2nd Birthday Katie!

Jack watched that train so closely, he was in heaven!

                                 

Olivia with Santa, asking for a doll house!

KJ with Santa, asking for a Wall-E robot!

Jack with Santa, asking for trains!

Can you hear the bell?

Would you like some spit with your cookie??

Today we celebrated Dan's birthday! It was extra fun because we had my sister Nicole and her boyfriend Teddy here visiting from Boise. We had a yummy breakfast full of Dan's favorite breakfast foods; omelette's, extra sour-dough English muffins, spicy hash browns and BACON being his favorite! Then we took a nice scenic drive to check out our new lot. He had his favorite Thai food for dinner, we opened his presents, watched a movie and had dessert. A nice relaxing day, well, as relaxing as it can get with 3 little kiddos running around. I had bought all the stuff to make those fancy chocolate lava cakes and all he wanted were these Devils Food Cake Chocolate cookies. The easiest cookies in the world to make. I'll add the recipe for you to enjoy, because they really are pretty good and super easy! The highlight of our night was watching the kids try to blow out the candle. In our family, if one person gets to blow a candle out, they all want a turn! We thought it was so funny, we had them do it at least 20 times, they never got tired of it and neither did we! It might be one of those, 'you just had to be there' moments, but I'll add a video anyway. We are so thankful for Dan. He is such an amazing dad and husband, the rock of our family! 

One year older and wiser too....Happy Birthday to YOU!

Devil's Food Fudge Cookies

1 package Devils Food cake mix

2 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350* and grease cookie sheet. Combine cake mix, eggs and oil in a large mixing bowl and stir with spoon until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts. Mixture will be stiff. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool and dust with powdered sugar. Enjoy!

Olivia's turn!

Jack's turn!

Twilight!

So, last night was the LONG awaited Twilight movie release. Yes, I, along with a bunch of friends, am one of the 'crazies' that braved the cold, the long lines, and all the little teenie-boppers to make it to the first showing! First off, we started by going to a pre-movie party at the Hassels house with yummy snacks and cute vampire decorations! Then at about 10:45pm we went to the theater to try to get a good seat. The theaters were already crowded but, luckily we found a group of 6 seats together where some of us could sit together. Some other friends were in a whole different theater. There were 6 theaters showing it. And then, at 12:05am, it started. The movie was actually only okay, not nearly as good as the book, but when is a movie ever as good as the book??!!?? I'm extra tired this morning, but it was fun and worth it girls! Until the next movie realease....




Are you Team Edward or Team Jacob?





Thanks for the memorable night!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Stitches again??

This must be the month for stitches. A few weeks ago Traci posted that her daughter fell and had to get them and I thought, "I'm glad that wasn't us". Then last week Kelli said her son fell and also had to get them, once again I thought, "glad that wasn't us". Then today it must have been our turn because it did happen to us. We were at TJ Maxx looking for a birthday present for Dan and Keaton tripped and hit his eye on the shoe rack. I heard a huge crash, looked around and didn't see Keaton, then I panicked because I heard him start to cry and he never cries when he gets hurt. All the metal racks had fallen down and smashed his fingers. It looked worse than it really was because the head bleeds so much. I had a lady run to the bathroom to get some wet towels and after we cleaned it up it looked pretty deep so I left my cart full of goodies to take him to the Immediate Care. Jack was at preschool, luckily, and they let him stay extra long while we waited to get KJ all fixed up. He was so brave and tough. He only needed three stitches. This incident was less than an inch away from his last 'stitch' incident. Poor guy, has an unlucky eye. I guess that's what you get when you have a 6 year old BOY! Hopefully this will be the end of the stitch run!




We let him pick where he wanted to go to dinner tonight and he picked Pilot Butte! It was fun, we haven't been there in so long. Then Dan took him on a father/son 'date' because he was so brave. They went to Barnes and Noble and KJ picked out his very own "Spy Kit". I guess a new toy makes everything better, you would never know he had an owie! It was a great ending to another crazy day!

Our amazing weekend in Boise!

We had such a great weekend!  We always have so much fun visiting family in Boise but this was an especially great weekend because we were able to go to my brothers' 'Eagle Scout Court of Honor!'  I had no idea how many hundreds of hours of service that award entails.  Jess is such a great kid, I'm so glad my kids have him as a great example of what it's like to be an honorable man!  They really look up to him.  Here are some of the highlights of the weekend....

Jesse's Court of Honor~  I am so proud to call him my brother!!

mmmmm....food! Jack was in heaven with that HUGE pizza!  Olivia didn't want us bothering her.  Hey, at least she loves veggies!

Bryan sporting a vintage football uniform!

Coley and KJ, their famous dippin' sauce!

I had to add this one cause it was so funny to all of us who were there!  We had many, many laughs at Olivia's expense!  Poor girl, got my round buns!!  Hey, I guess the J.Lo booty is in now!

Ninny Shell and Jack spending some 'alone' time together!  Those are Jack's favorite times

Thanks to everyone for the memorable weekend!