The simple things

You know the stories you hear about a child getting a big, $$$ gift, only to find them playing with the box it came in more? This photo reminds me of those stories.

I am a bargain shopper and therefore come Christmas and Birthdays, the gifts my kids usually get only cost me $12, but are $50 toys! I have noticed that the one thing I am constantly finding Hunter playing with is the cheapest stocking stuffer he received, that I paid full price for and made sure everyone had a pack. HOT WHEELS TRACKS! Only one store in town carried them, the Big Blue Store! They are the best thing! He can put them together himself and builds the tracks so long!

I was making dinner and looked over to see this~his brothers have helped set up the different hills and vales for him in the past and he has learned to use the table, pillows, couch and his fruit snax bucket to make for a more adventurous ride!

There are many days I think it's great to know he can entertain himself and have fun doing it!

In the "Dog House"

About 2 days a week I work a few hours in our office for Rick. Our office is in the basement and we have a heavy duty baby gate preventing curious hands from entering. On these days I bring Hunter in the office with me where he plays and rides his tricycle.

On one particular day he was being quiet...TOO quiet! I looked over to see this:






Apparently, in our house the figurative term of "being in the dog house" is taken quite literally by our 2 yr old!

For clarification, this is NOT a punishment, he thinks it is fun to climb into our dogs bedtime kennel.

Sunday Mats

Before Christmas I was looking for a cute, easy, cheap craft for the boys to add to their church bags. I came across different ideas that I loved on blogs and in etsy. I decided on chalkboard mats! I do say that if you love these and want to buy instead of sew, I loved everything in this gals shop:

http://www.etsy.com/people/adornwithaandm?ref=ls_profile


I loved the print she used, but I needed 3 and couldn't afford to buy....so here is my version of her cute mats. Joann's had all I needed and I loved the monster print. My boys love them and it only took 30 mins to make 4! I'm getting better at this sewing business! My favorite thing to use on all my projects is extra wide double fold bias tape! It hides most of my flaws and gives it a clean edge!

Grandma's Cooking

I have a grandmother who is an AMAZING cook! Everything is made from scratch, made with tons of flavor and made with plenty of LOVE! A few years ago she and I made a cookbook of all the best recipes for our family!

I am fortunate to have her live 2 miles from my house and so we get to enjoy her cooking alot! She is a very healthy young 82 yr old, but I realize that one of these days she will move on to a bigger and better eternity, then, I will be the one cooking all of her good recipes!

So the other night I was hungry for her yummy chocolate cream pie! So, I made one! It turned out great, and was delicious! My favorite part of her pies is the meringue! I like a lot of peaks on my pie, so I made 3 times more peaks than Gma Mae usually does! I had to take a picture it was so pretty and delicious!



Don't you wish you had a piece?!

Snow Day!

Rick came home from a very cold morning loading the big brown trucks, and said he was going to make Omelettes and wanted to take the kids to Pine Valley to play in the snow!

What a fun dad! We had breakfast and then I got them all in layers of clothes, then snow clothes, only to remind them all to go potty before we left, and ALL of them had to undress, go and then redress!

So we invited my Uncle to come, it is always good to have a more even adult to child ratio when going outdoors! We drove 2 Toyota 4 wheel drive trucks, which ended up being a blessing after Rick thought he was bigger than the snow and got STUCK! (I was dying laughing, but held my composure just long enough to take photos!)





My uncle insisted on taking a photo of Rix mishap and we all rubbed it in a little bit! Karma is a funny thing...on the way home as we drove over the icy roads towards home Rick saw in his rear view mirror the image of my uncles truck carrying myself, and 2 kids, fishtail slightly to the left, and then a correction caused a much larger fishtail to the right and finally the last correction caused his truck to spin completely around and faced the opposite direction landing us in the ditch. (For those of you who know my uncle it makes this even funnier...he is the slowest, most cautious, safe, over protective driver I have ever met! ) Rick wanted a side note that he did note JUMP out of the truck to photograph this mishap, rather he pulled over, turned on his flashers and made sure it was clear for us to get back on the road! Needless to say I screeched a little and was slightly terrified! Of course this all happened in the 5 ft. area where there was NO protection from the mountain drop off on the side :) Guess I should say an extra prayer of thanks tonight!

We took up sleds and extra gloves! Hunter could not stand on his own his layers of clothes were SO heavy! Therefore, he was grumpy a lot of the time!



Here we are moving from 1 sledding hill to another on the other side of Pine Valley



The adults spent a lot of time bringing sleds and kids up the hills!




This was our favorite hill, it is just past the historical LDS chapel in Pine Valley.





We finished off the day at home in new, warm, dry clothes and Hot Chocolate! Such a great day!

Christmas Morning

I grew up in a big family with a lot of FUN people! We are all our own people, have different personalities and all do things the same, but jut a little bit different...so we do Christmas BIG in our house, but that isn't always the case with many of my siblings. I remember growing up and Santa brought us that ONE thing we wanted more than anything and then we had a stocking filled with nuts, clementines and a few little things for fun and always some clothes or beautiful handmade things!

I loved the Christmas mornings from my childhood, but I also have to appreciate and respect the way Rick, as a father wants Christmas morning to be for our children. I have realized over the year that it isn't about the "things" they get, it is a deeper, emotional connection to his childhood that is the reason behind his desire to have a BIG, abundant christmas morning!

A lot of our family does the 3 gift theme, relative to the 3 gifts the wisemen brought to the baby Jesus. I love the idea, but don't know how to backtrack after all the years of big and grand! So, I choose not to post Santa's Loot photos on my blog, FB or our family site. But, I can say they all got everything they REALLY wanted and were very grateful and surprised that day!

This photo was taken at 4:59 am (which is the specified time they are "allowed" to wake everyone up and come upstairs) with them all gathered on the stairs waiting for the green light from us!



It was a great morning and they were all so happy and appreciative. By noon, it was a GREAT morning for me as all the trash was out of the house, all the toys were removed from their packaging and all put in new places in their rooms! Now, I can enjoy my family and our christmas day together! (Darn OCD!)

Parker helped me set out the treats for Santa and his reindeer!

Reason for the Season

So we did it! We survived another christmas morning with 5 kids who have a loving Santa who works very hard to make it a HUGE magical morning! I love this time of year with all the holidays back to back, but mostly knowing that Rick gets a few extra mornings off from the big brown truck is what I love best! Being home with our family and just watching great holiday movies and eaing yummy food is wonderful. Seeing the excitement and joy and gratitude on the kids faces is priceless!

So, we love the man in red but we DO know that the Saviors birth is why we find joy this time of year. Knowing that his life and death would mean so much to us and our faith is what we DO celebrate and that is why I will drag us all out of bed at 7am today so that we can be to church to celebrate his birth and that is why I will not go to the red store and load up on the 1/2 price holiday sale today...tomorrow all bets are off! I promised myself that I would always keep the sabbath day holy, I just hope the Lord blesses me and their is an ABUNDANCE of stuff left for me to buy tomorrow :).

So photos will come tomorrow, today we celebrate, just like the other 364 days a year, the birth the death and the life of our Savior Jesus Christ! Merry Chrismas.