Elf on the Shelf

Just thought I'd post a calendar pic of what our little elf was doing during the month of December:)

The 24 Days of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas we decorated our trees.  The kids did an awesome job with their trees... I was having stress about mine.  I wanted ornaments to match my new living room and all the Christmassy stuff clashed...  I kind of had a melt down.... I ended up doing silver and white which matched absolutely nothing... I just gave up!

The 2nd day of Christmas...We made the journey dinner our actual dinner, so we tried to have a lot of food.  The kids loved eating jerky and nuts... they had never had pistachios, and we watched mormon messages on the ipad.  

The 3rd day of Christ mas...The kids wrote their letters to Santa.  My favorite part was that Terek said he was naughty and nice... so true.  If you look closely, you will notice he put that he "needed" pull-ups... I will have to post the video of him opening them on Christmas morning.

The 4th Day of Christmas, we went to town square.  The trees had awesome lights in them and the kids got to jump around on the rocks in the fountain.  They also got to see Santa and ride the carousel.

On the 5th day of Christmas, we went shopping for new ornaments for the boys.  Note for next year... TARGET:)  We went to both Walmart and Kmart and this was the best we could come up with.

The 6th day of Christmas, we mailed our Christmas cards.  The kids helped put on the stamps and stuff and seal the envelopes.

 On the 7th day of Christmas, Brenner had the first of one of his many choir concerts.  He sang at Lin's grocery store.

 On the 8th day of Christmas we had our ward Christmas breakfast.   Food with friends and Santa:)

 On the 9th day of Christmas I started a new tradition that I need to continue.  We had a grinch dinner.  We read the book, ate "grinch" food and watched the movie.... the short cartoon.  Next year I think I will add some fun grinch cupcakes or something cute and fun like that.

On the 10th day of Christmas, we went to Staheli family farm for the live nativity.  IT.WAS.COLD!  We bundled up in  a blanket, but still froze.  I would highly recommend it.  The music was beautiful and you could really feel the spirit of the true meaning of Christmas.

On the 11th day of Christmas, we made gift for the kids to give all of their classmates.  (These are not the ones we made... I forgot to take pictures).  We made reindeer noses... the brown ones were whoppers and the red ones were cherry sours.  We made 70 of these little things!

On the 12th day of Christmas, we had another choir performance at a care center in St. George.

On the 13th day of Christmas, we went to Target so the boys could buy presents for each other.... they get to open these presents on Christmas Eve.

On the 14th day of Christmas, we drove around to look at lights... there were some awesome ones out there!

On the 15th day of Christmas, we headed to Kanarraville to go sledding!  The boys had a blast!

On the 16th day of Christmas, we acted out the nativity.  It was fun to have a real baby (although baby Jennika was a little girly for baby Jesus)

On the 17th day of Christmas... I had planned to go to Tuacahn... my little party poopers just wanted to watch a Christmas Story... so I went shopping and they watched a movie with their dad.

On the 18th day of Christmas, we made a little sand ornament Christmas craft.

On the 19th day of Christmas, we had a choir performance at the school.

On the 10th day of Christmas, we had a birthday party for Ryan and our friend (Matt Hammons).  We had an adult party... and the kids partied at our house with a few babysitters.  We had a hot cocoa bar and played some awesome minute-to-win-it games.

On the 21st day of Christmas, we had our CHRISTMAS dinner with the Blake family.  We had some awesome yummy food:)

On the 22nd day of Christmas, we went to a light show put on by Kuhn heat and air.  They had free hot chocolate, hot dogs and Santa!

On the 23rd day of Christas... well, we went to church.  Then it was West's birthday, so we went to my parent's house (where Lucas and Shellie were staying) for dinner, cake and presents... I didn't take any pictures.

 On the 24th day of Christmas, we went to dinner with the Blake family at Buca di Beppo.

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!!!

Fall turns to winter...

... and that's about how much I blog.

November is always a busy month... Ryan's mom is one of the directors of the Jubilee of Trees.  She spends 18 hours a day working on the Jubilee for the month of Oct. and Nov. (I really don't think that's an exaggeration).   We help her as much as we can... this year our names were even in the paper:)

Of course, we also attended the Jubilee...

The kids had some fun stuff going on at school.  Brenner participated in a story-telling festival.  He also is in his school choir.  Joren's class put on a fun Thanksgiving program.

We got to see a lot of our family for Thanksgiving.  We had Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday with Ryan's family.  We had Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday with my family.   And the only pictures I took were of my cute craft... nice:)  We also went to a temple session with a few of my Williams family to do the temple work for my cousin, Jeremy, who passed away last June.

 The week after Thanksgiving, I had surgery.  I had a benign goiter removed from my thyroid.  Luckily it was benign and luckily I only had to have one lobe removed.  I recovered quickly.  This picture is right after the surgery... the scar looks much better now.

 Stay tuned for December... I actually took lots of pictures of December!

Family Pix

We got our family pix taken a few weeks ago.  I had sooo much fun putting the outfits together... I even got Ryan to wear a Pink shirt:)  Kassidy Baker took our pix and she did a fabulous job!  

 I love how she captured their personality in the pix!

Fall Fun

I've been a HUGE blog slacker... honestly, I think it's because I'd rather post my pix on instagram and facebook.  But, since I do know there are a few people out there who may check my blog that don't have instagram or facebook (Libby and Cash), I hope you read my blog... I'm doing this just for you.  So, here's the instagram photos I took in October...

Fall Break from school was a chance to work on some projects around the house... and take the kids out to have a little fun.  We always love Staheli Family Farm.   There are so many fun things to do there.  

We went to Kanarraville to work on Granny's house again.  We got done sooner than we thought we would, so we headed over to New Harmony to pick some apples.  On our way home, Libby sent us on some dirt road from New Harmony to Pinto.  We were hoping to see some fall leaves, but we didn't see many.  We definitely went on a road we'd never been on before!

A lady in our ward has a swimming pool in her back yard.  Her daughter cuts our hair, so when we were getting our hair cut, the kids begged to swim.  It was October and only 76 degrees, but they had a blast!

We got our family pix taken... this is a preview:)  I'm loving the colors we picked!  You can leave a comment if you want to make sure you get a Christmas card!

Monday night before Halloween we carved pumpkins.  The kids were so excited.  Brenner had found his template weeks before halloween on Pumpkin Masters.  He did a great job... with Ry's help as well (left).  Joren insisted on making his own design (middle).  I think Terek really just liked stabbing his pumpkin.  He designed his own as well (right).

For some reason I really got into the trunk or treat this year.  I found some black fabric and a skeleton at a yard sale a few weeks before Halloween.  I thought a "dead end" theme would be fun.  The skeleton was stabbed and had blood (although the kids liked to say that skeletons wouldn't bleed... blah blah).  I used this idea to make the glowing eyeballs....

Halloween was fun.... my awesome principal let me leave work early so I could get to the school for the kids costume parade.  Then we had our ward trunk or treat and still went trick or treating in the neighborhood.

Brenner is a mad scientist (he was going to be a vampire until he wore his costume to a party before halloween and the cape drove him crazy being around his neck.  So we came up with the mad scientist thing kind of last minute).  Joren wanted to be the same ninja he was last year.  Terek got his power ranger costume as a present for his birthday from grandma Rose... perfect!

Ryan and I were bah humbugs and didn't even dress up this year!

Our New Humble Abode

Life has been busy crazy lately... what with moving and all.  So, here's how the story goes.... We moved to Ivins 2 years ago.  We have been living with my parents...  helping take care of my mom, but also because we were short on money.  Well, you can only live with your parents so long...  I have been wanting to move for quite awhile, but Ryan kept talking me out of it....moving really is a lot of work:)  Tanner (my nephew) moved in with us in June... his parents were still living in Oregon.  Now there was a total of 8 people living in a 4 bedroom home... Tanner was sleeping in the storage room.  Well, his parents moved back from Oregon the end of August.  That brings our total to 10 people... they chose to sleep in my parents travel trailer over on the farm rather than the uncomfortable hide-a-bed in the family room.  We started looking for rentals and found one in the neighborhood where all of my kids' friends live... Amber Estates.  It wasn't one of Ryan's dad's rentals.  When Ryan mentioned to him that we were thinking of renting from someone else, he said, "I have a rental in there that's been available for 2 months."  What?????  To make a long story short, he had already promised it to someone else, but they backed out, so we got it!

 Here is the front of our home.  I don't love the southwest style of these homes, but it's all good.

Here's the back...  It's the house on the right.  We don't have a back yard... just an open commons area. The kids can ride their scooters back there....

... and they had a blast playing their own version of Angry Birds there last week...

... the house is nice... 3 bedrooms 2 baths... it has an attached Casita that will be Ryan's office and my craft room... it's a huge mess right now!   It's a rental, so it's not as clean as I would want it to be... I'm scrubbing grout and cleaning carpets... I don't think the carpet will ever look good enough for my liking.  BUT, the biggest downfall of our house is our visitors... Scorpions!  We have lost track of how many we've found... I think we are over 10!  The first one we discovered when it Stung me!!!  It was in my bathroom on the floor and I stepped on it or right next to it.  Don't worry, you don't die from scorpions... they just hurt really bad!  We have found 3 alive in the house and many more in the garage.  We have sprayed 2 or 3 times... yesterday I bought a black light flashlight and went on a hunt!  I found 2 pretty big ones in the garage as well as a smaller one.  We also some some out in the yard... we must have a nest somewhere.   We are now setting traps... we will conquer these creepy critters!!!  Eeek!!!

PS... I will post pics of the inside of the house when I feel like I have it decorated cute enough to post pics.

Preschool

Terek gets to go to two preschools this year!  The first preschool is at Red Mountain Elementary School. 

 He was a little nervous to go since it's a new place for him.

Tanner took him to school an had to stay with him for a few minutes.  But Terek loves it now!!!