christmas 2011

 

I love Christmas so much, especially when NO one in our entire family is sick this year!! It makes it so great when everyone gets to be there. For Christmas Eve this year we had my parents over for our annual Christmas turkey dinner. It was DELICIOUS! We then had all my siblings come over to decorate sugar cookies i made so they could take them to santa. We then let all the kids exchange gifts and then it was the birthday cake story. Every year since i was a baby my mom reads this story called the birthday cake. It helps set the story for Jesus and the real reason for christmas. So everyone gathers around her on her chair and candle and listen so quietly. Well this year Cam was actually paying attention to the description in the story of the cake. As my mom read the description and the part that says it had raisins cam said,"EW GROSS!!" Everyone broke out laughing for a good few minutes because it was so funny and timed perftectly! I know it is going to be a memory we all will carry forever because it was so cute to see this three year old trying to listen so intently and realize it sounded so gross. it was hilarious!

Christmas Morning is my favorite part! I even made Fro and the kids do our family tradition train. As a kid I loved doing the train. We all wait on our pillows in our door way. My dad would come around with his train whistle and one by one pick up all our family members. He would make it so fun and I was so happy my kids and Fro participated this year just for me!!
When we got downstairs it truly was amazing. I love watching ali and cam get so excited! Their eyes went CRAZY!!
Our game this year was Shoot the Christmas Bingo. It was Bingo, but you had to shoot a dart at the clues to match to the bingo board. It was a lot of fun and the kids loved it. Each person had a specific color of smiley face sticker on their present and Cams was green so all day he just kept saying, Mine were the green ones. He loved opening so many fun things!!
Ali has been wanting a Telescope for 3 years now. I kept thinking she would grow out of it, but it was put on the TOP of her list this year. So i hid it in the other room and left a note on one of the other presents to have her look in the office. I told her it was from her mom and dad because she is such a bright star to us everyday and she was SOOOOOO excited about it.
Cam had asked for a green or BOY dollhouse. He loves playing with alis stuff but wanted a boy version of things, so he got a big BATCAVE and a lot of Heroes to play with it like batman,and superman, and flash, and batgirl, and a bunch of others.
We were all spoiled and had such a great day. It was just fun getting to be together and play . We then had to drive up to fros sisters house in kaysville for lunch and play with the uncles and cousins. It was a fun day and we were all tired by the end of it!!

More Christmas time fun

 

At christmas going iceskating is a must for me. I have always loved going iceskating in december, it just makes it feel more festive to me for some reason. This year fro couldn't skate again and we didn't want to have to drag cam around the rink- that is no fun for anyone, so this year I got to take just Ali and my neice madison. We had a great time and they skated non-stop, except for the zamboni, for over 2 1/2 hours. My legs were pretty tired and they didn't want to stop, but it was tons of fun, and really special that it was just me and the girls!
We also took the kids to South towne mall to see santa. My sister Brittany and her kids came and they each took thier turn to tell santa what they wanted. Ali wanted a telescope and Cam wanted a boy dollhouse (batcave), and heros to go with it. We then went to Cafe Rio and b98.7 was there and i won a family 4 pack to the aquarium and to Planet Play. It turned out pretty good for us, and gave us even more things to do with our time off!!

Browns Talent show 2011

 

What my sister Brittany wants, my sister Brittany gets and in all our glory~~ Brittany came up with doing a christmas talent show last year and we thought that was good, but NO she came back again and said she wanted everyone to perform a talent this year also- since it was on her birthday!! So since we all love britto we all tried to come up with a talent. My family decided to do a family dance to LMFAO party anthem and it was pretty dang awesome. My sister Brooke and her two girls did the three amigos my little buttercup dance, Noah and steve amazed us with their jump rope talents, Kate and maddie did a penguin dance, My mom played the harmonica, and my dad played the piano upside down, and to top the night my sister britt pulled our our old school keyboard from when we were little and played a "demo" song we all grew up pretending we knew how to play and it was Hilarious. It brought back so many memories, and her doing it again with a wig made so many more. It was a funny night and so fun to share with my family. We had our annual white elephant auction and among the greatest gifts were gifts fro and I stole from my sisters houses and wrap up and gave away. it was priceless watching thier faces realize the gifts being given were their things they had no idea were missing!! It was a lot of fun- lots of chia pets, roosters, and cut up credit cards thanks to the year of Dave Ramsey revisions!!

Christmas Activities

 

Even though my husband is not working and that sucks for everyone, it has been pretty fun to see more of him and get to do some fun things while ali is out of school. Every winter for the past 4 years we have had someone injured or a new baby or some reason we couldn't go to temple square. Despite Fros arms being broken i decided it was no excuse to miss it and we needed to go. I was glad we did!! The weather was great and we went at about 5ish before it got crazy busy! we got a parking spot right outside the temple and that made our whole night!! that doesn't happen often! We showed the kids the lights, and went to the top of the JSM building and looked out and had dinner- it was a lot of fun.
My sisters neighbor makes the best toffee and i was wanting to learn how to make it so my sister in law camille came over and between the two of us, we made some pretty good toffee. I learned some tricks to make the next batch even better, but it was fun to finally get that under my belt! We had a night to make gingerbread houses, and my sister brittanys birthday, and the time off was just getting started!

Phinney 2011

 

Every December 1 we get our first visit from Phinney our Christmas Elf. He comes to watch over all of us to make sure we are being on our best behavior. My kids look forward to Phinney coming all year long. It is so fun to watch thier excitment as he moves through the house at different times of the day to keep an eye on them. They behave so much better and they love asking him questions and getting answers from him. This year as a special gift he brought both of them remote control cars. They have played with them everyday!! I love Christmas and the magic of it all!!

My kids

I feel like I have not updated on my kids lately- so this is my update....
Ali- She is my little 8 year old blessing from heaven. She has just enough sass, and just enough sweet. she is always trying to help and wants to do what is right. She loves music, books and MOVIES.she loves writing stories and making pictures to go with them. If she had a day to do whatever she wanted it would be at home playing a "craft" with mom and watching movies as a family. she loves being home and just having her time. I am not crafty and she is so patient with me to be creative. I love her so much!! I constantly take in all of her hugs and hope that there will NEVER be a day she doesn't give them to me. She is very picky about who she tells she loves and gives hugs to, and it makes me smile bigger when she gives them endlessly to me. She wants to play the violin, which is the first thing she has shown any interest in doing and I am really excited to see how that goes. She has a funny personality and loves telling jokes. But out in the world she is so reserved and a little on the shy side and i love knowing i get to see all of her all the time!! She is a great student and tries so hard at school. She still loves riding bikes and we are bummed the weather is a little to cold to do that everyday. She constantly changes her room around and everyday i go in there something new is out or some stuffed animal has made their way from the basement to have a luxury bed in her room. She is funny and crazy and loves dancing in the family room with me for ever!! I am so proud of the little girl she is and am so grateful for her example to me.

Cam- he is my crazy, full of energy, sass, spunk, and character. He is the never ending facial expression that makes me laugh. The squeeze around the neck right when you need it guy. He is always on the move, but if there is a movie on- bam he is all in. he loves playing. Playing cars, balls, trains, anything! He loves turning on music and dancing his dance moves to it. He loves being outside, and loves riding his big bike! He is in a constant phase of holding his weiner and it is driving me crazy. I hope he grows out of that phase soon!! He says funny phrases like - watch and learn mom, or are you kidding me, or what the..... He is constantly suprising me. We were watching tv and a commercial for a victoria secret tote came on and the girl was dressed but flaunting the bag and when it ended he looked at me and said, "I like that girl!!" YES he is 3!! I am nervous about that!! He loves making us laugh and loves being with his family. He follows me around that i knock him down daily because he is standing right behind me all the time. I love that he crawls on top of me just to get closer. I often feel guilty that he isn't in preschool because he wants to go to preschool so bad. He loves other kids and wants to play any chance he can get. He loves playing with his cousins christian and Jamison and loves when Ali gets to stay home from school. They are best buddies!!- He is such a great blessing to me and makes this family even more fun!!

"live like no one else so you can live like no one else"

Okay I am going to be a hypocrite for a minute!! Last year my little sister was on a HUGE Dave Ramsey kick. They had a strict budget and we all got really tired of hearing "it's not in our budget!" Well after they overcame a huge amount of debt in 18 months we realized that if we save as well as they budgeted we could really get ahead. So as a family we all started watching the Dave Ramsey teaching videos. I wasn't super thrilled at first but it really has helped to focus on down the road where you want to be and being in control of your money. Two areas i don't really focus on. After doing our budget,which by the way was really fun with fro not working, We decided to make several changes. Fro continued to push selling the truck to have 2 paid for cars. He really pushed being debt free. I kept dragging my heals because lets face it, I LOVE MY TACOMA! I have always loved it and being an '04 with 53 K miles I was pretty proud of it!! I kept hoping he would grow out of this debt free faze and we would keep it. But realizing that "IF we live like no one else, later we will live like no one else" - dave Ramsey- I realized not only will it help us save now and get ahead and be debt free but it is also what the prophets have been encouraging us to do. So i said good bye to my wonderful, beautiful, freakin awesome truck and said Hello to our first step to being 100% debt free!! Next goal-- the House!!