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!!

Yep It's November and we have another ACCIDENT

Ali made this poster for Fro for when he got home from having surgery on his arms. He broke both of his arms biking last week at the bike park. He went up on a metal ledge and his bike slid out from under him and he landed on his arms. He ended up being in surgery for 4 hours and they put a plate and screws in his left arm. His right arm had two fractures that they thought would need surgery but ended up just needing to be casted. It is really difficult to do anything with NO arms!!

He has been very sleepy the last week and hopefully it will start improving for him- he is miserable. He said that this totally is worse than his ACL surgery last year. That at least allowed him to do things for himself he just couldn't walk. This has made him very dependent on us for everything. He had his temporary casts taken off and know that he can move his elbows it has helped alot, but still is not fun!! He is out of work for at least 2 months. His boss said "You just got back to work and now your out again!" That is sometimes how life works and you just have to roll with it. We can't believe it happened at the same time of year. I told him there are better ways to get the holidays off!!!

Tron Family

 

I have not always been a big Halloween fan, but several years ago I realized you can make it fun. Every year Ali usually decides what she wants to be and we do a theme around that. I have never been a "theme" kind of person but it does make it a little more fun and creative. Well this year Cam was pretty set on being Sam Flynn from Tron. I kept thinking he might change his mind, but NOPE. So TRon it was!! I am not crafty in any way so i looked online to find some tron costumes. yeah not cheap and none existant for a little girl. So I let my creative juices work and decided to do a little experimenting with Duct Tape. Love the stuff and the variety of colors. We had a fun Halloween being Tron and Ali loved no one else in her school had her costume!!

Moab with the Derricks!

 

Last Year we decided that we don't spend enough time with Fros side of the family. We wanted to do fun things with them since we try to do yearly trips with mine. Last year we went to St. George and had a lot of fun so we decided to do another trip this year. Moab was decided and I am glad we chose moab. There really is A LOT to do in Moab. There are NO stores or restraunts, but tons of fun activities.

My favorite thing of the whole trip was watching Ali ride the same trails as all the adults. I was SO proud of her. She peddaled over everything and tried everything. I was worried she would panic and get off and walk, but NOPE!! She showed us all up. It was so much fun for me to ride right with her. I loved every minute of it. It was also fun for fro to ride with his brothers. He rides a lot with us, but not usually with them.

We stayed in little cabins at a campground and it had a pool and was warm so in the October chilling mornings we were perfect. We went to delicate arch, bowtie arch, went jeepin' at least Cam and Ali did. We hiked to dinosaur ruins, we swam, we went to Music park. This way awesome park that has all kinds of wind chimes and musical things for kids to play. We went to the sand hill where YES I broke another camera. It just goes to show I can't go on vacation without braking one. Good thing I had a back up!!

It was fun for everyone and I was glad almost the whole family was there. And we will see where next year takes us.