Sunday-Funday

For Christmas we got a Wii and Kael and Koen stood back and watched the older kids show off their Mad-Wii-Skillz. One quiet night at home I put on Mario Kart and turned the wheels over to the boys!
Now having their dad's genes, I believe some of his "nerdy/computer/game" skills were passed through the amniotic fluid because they picked it up instantly! They knew which screen was their player and knew how to get out of corners. Very serious little gamers........ :)

For the last 3 months we have had Sunday-Funday at our house. Every Sunday we have family over and we cook yummy food together, play games, have a movie night a Wii-off, or just spend the evening hanging out and laughing. This particular Sunday-Funday we decided to paint. So after filling ourselves to the brim with chicken enchiladas we sat around the table and painted.

The twins love to paint. Koen (standing up) would paint very fast and vigorously while using lots of colors and mixing all kinds of fun combinations. Kael took his time and was very concerned about the details. He used half as many colors as his brother and was more of a quiet artist while every once and a while would look up from his masterpiece and give us all a smile.

Kael making a new color to paint with.

The second painting Kael did he threw a lot more colors in, especially after seeing how colorful his brother's work is.

My lovely cousin Blaynie. I was amazed at how talented these girls are.

Calley, the illustrator to my book. She is extremely talented and super sweet.

Painted hands!

The many sides of Gina.....

Group shot! For some reason the boys weren't too interested in hanging out with us to paint so they went downstairs and played the Wii.

You can't really see my paintings here which is a good thing. It was just so much fun to hang out with the girls and speak in British accents......lol... Love my cousins!

Blaynie getting ready to leave. Love this pic.

Non-Resolutions of 2010

As the New Year comes around again I take time to reflect. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try; life really gets in the way of itself. Even when I work as hard as I can and things don't happen, all I have to do is remind myself to keep trying.

Deep down I am a list maker, a planner, a dreamer. After a while looking into the things I need to keep after, the things I need to fix, the bills I would like to pay off, the spaces I need to clean, the trips I've always wanted to take, the book I want to finish, the garden I've been meaning to plant, the instrument I've been meaning to learn, all the recipes I've been meaning to cook......absolutely nothing is immune from my list making and those things will remain there because, let's face it, they're things I really, really want to do. And no matter how many of these I will eventually accomplish, there will always be something on my "to do" list.

This being said, we had a good year and look forward to another and all the adventures it brings. So this year I will NOT be making resolutions, I am making non-resolutions. Here is my list .........so far....


Non-Resolutions of 2010

I will remain ….
…semi-organized
…curvy
…to schedule more things for myself than there are hours in the day
…eat more pizza, pasta and chocolate that one might deem unhealthy
...to love friends and family unconditionally no matter how many times I may get bruised

I don’t resolve ......
..........to stop forgetting about laundry I put in the dryer days ago
..........to remember every one's birthday outside of my kids and hubby. I have a hard enough time keeping track of the days as it is.
..........to hide my semi-neurotic quirks
..........to return every phone call....
..........to stop complaining about the yucky, cold winters in Utah
..........to make my bed every morning as I will mess it up every night

A Visit with Santa a.k.a Ho Ho

It's that time of year to make a visit to Santa and let him know our deepest wishes we want to discover wrapped under the Christmas tree. The twins, even after watching hours and hours of Christmas movies and cartoons, continue to call the old man "Ho Ho." When they first spotted the Jolly Ol' Elf they pointed and said "look mom... Ho Ho!"

While standing in line Dallin decided he didn't want to get his picture with Santa he just simply wanted to chat with the man and let him know he wanted Transformers for Christmas. After asking nicely he posed his cute Dallin pose and let me take a picture after all.

I also snapped a shot of their serious Transformer conversation.

Hannah has ALWAYS loved Santa...and why not? He's such a nice man who happens to bring her what she wants every year. Who wouldn't love that?
Now all through Dallin and Hannah's turns the twins watched very intently at a safe distance. When it came to be their turns I warned Santa of their typical behavior and expressed that I wasn't expecting a happy-smiley-Santa picture because I wasn't going to get it. Even after I told Kael and Koen that he had candy, they still cried and did their best to get away as fast as they could......not forgetting their candy of course! So Kael was up first!

I am SO impressed with this Santa! Not only did he look great, but he actually had a sense of humor and a great smile after nearly a month of dealing with all kinds of colorful children's personalities and moods. Koen just sat and cried while covering his face. He didn't take his hands away until we were far away from Santa.

Even after all this I did attempt, OH YES, the group shot! Santa had a firm grip on Koen and Hannah's job was to hold onto Kael. Seeing how all the kids are in the picture I consider this shot a success and plan on framing it and putting it on my mantle next to all the other pictures every year of Aidan and the twins crying in all their "Ho Ho" pictures.

Since I couldn't find the exact photo I wanted, probably because it's buried deep in the stuff we haven't unpacked from moving yet, this was the closest I could get. Seeing Aidan cry through his Santa visits, and then the twins, I figure it's gotta be genetic and then my mind brought me this mental image of this pic with me and my mom. This picture is me crying BEFORE I get placed in Santa's lap. The picture I will eventually find and hopefully post is of me screaming with a bright red face with both arms reaching out for my mom! LOL!

Now let me assure you I have no fear of the man today. My mom believed in Santa until the end and since then we have had presents mysteriously show up on our doorstep and tree.......so yes, I'm proud to say I STILL BELIEVE! Here's a cute shot of Jace who came out with us. Now this is a brave little 6 week old boy, enjoying his visit. He's even cheering himself on! :) GO JACE!

Christmas 2009

So this year was our "off" year. Kids spent Christmas with the other parents so it was just Barry, the twins and myself. In order to celebrate together we moved Christmas up on our calendar to December 20th. *We got special permission from Santa :) * Since we planned on celebrating Christmas sooner this year I had to get everything done earlier.

Barry had just gotten surgery and so he was in no condition to leave the house and I worked a 6 day work week prior to the 20th and hadn't even begun to shop yet. So needless to say, the week was chaotic! But still through all the challenges and time constraints we still managed to pull it off.

First thing Sunday morning I have Barry waking me up at 7 a.m. to open presents. He says to me "come on, let's get up, the kids are excited to open presents." Now even though it's pretty early for me I still notice that he was already out of bed with his slippers and sweats on and I could hear the kids quietly playing like they do every morning while waiting for us to get up to make breakfast. I smile and remember that he has no idea what anyone is getting this year because we didn't go out together. It was so cute, I briefly imagined little Barry getting up on Christmas morning, so excited to see what Santa left everyone. AWE!!!..... so I didn't hesitate and hopped out of bed.

This is our tree shortly after Santa left, but before we put some of our presents out. Hannah's job was to make sure we left out the milk and cookies and she did a great job!

Minutes after we got situated and presents started to be distributed there was paper and boxes covering the entire floor. All Dallin asked for this year was Transformers and Transformers he definately got!
Mid-present paper clean-up.
Bubble wrap was one of the big hits.... who knew!

Kael and Koen have been infatuated with Thomas the Train. So when they got to the Thomas the Train section of presents we heard lots of squeals and cheers.

Kael digging into a box of tracks

I got enough tracks to wrap around the entire family room twice! So you can tell what we all did for the next 2 hours :)

....and more Thomas!

Kael working on his end building tracks.

Our first complete track!

Kael and Koen were so excited about their trains that they would not leave them or the tracks to eat. They skipped breakfast and Koen even skipped lunch because he just wanted to play with his train set.

I ended up sneaking upstairs because we had my family annual Hot-Chocolate-Pajama-Party-Gift-Exchange! It's modeled after the idea of my family waking up every Christmas morning, making hot chocolate or cider and opening presents together in pajamas. So even though we can't be together Christmas morning, we can at least re-create the feeling of Christmas morning.

With the kids downstairs I got to work in the kitchen making 4 different kinds of cookies, 3 different kinds of fudge and a few other deserts moving furniture around to accommodate 28 people and decorated.

It was pretty stressful putting all of this together on one day but so worth it! All day we had Christmas music streaming throughout the house and yummy stuff cooking all day with happy kids and family. What a perfect Christmas!

More Thomas! Dallin shares his excitement!

Just a few goodies....I got distracted and didn't take pics of the rest.

Sara, Tim, Ian and Nathan (Sue's oldest daughter)

Sue and my Dad

David (Uncle Buba), Munch (Haileigh) and Heather (Heather)

Kim, Clixie, Jackson and Bryan.

Mike, Brody, Kyrsten, and Klayton

Reed, Raquel and Baby Jace

Cutest Little Stocking Stuffer!

One of my cool cousins.... GINA!!

We love Gina!

Kael, Barry, Dallin, Hannah, Me and Koen

This was the first year in 3 years we've been able to buy presents for our family because one or both of us was unemployed. What a blessing to have a roof over our heads, good food in our tummys and have such wonderful families! Although we didn't get to spend this year with Barry's family we sure missed them!

All our love to the Michaelson and White families and our wonderful friends! Merry Christmas!