More Christmas Traditions

I love our traditional baking day, my mom, grandma and two sisters and of course our three boys. :)  Each year we make gingerbread cookies (my favorite) cathedral cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, and this year we reintroduced toffee, yum!  While we do our baking we listen to a hilarious radio program of the 12 days of Christmas, it is a favorite!  I do love having boys, a lot, in fact most of the time I think I would be fine to have all boys, but then this tradition rolls around and I realize that I really do hope to have a daughter or two. :)

 Even the boys had fun rolling out the cookie dough, cutting out the shapes and decorating. :)

 Love, Love, Love this group of people!!!!!!!!

 When the boys get board with cooking, or when we get fed up with their "help" they go in the basement to the playroom, a child's paradise!  This year they invented the "cozy".  While we were unaware, they stole anything soft and cozy from every room in the house and piled it up at the bottom of the stairs.  Fun idea right :) and look how darling they are.

Then, with such a perfect cozy, they jump - naturally. :)  I love boys!!!

Another wonderful outing this Christmas that I mentioned in a previous post was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert - it was precisely what I need to help me feel the true spirit of Christmas this year!  Words will not do justice to the wonderful evening this was!  I am so glad I got to spend it with some of my most favorite people!!

12/12/12

I think unique dates are cool, and being as this was the last matching date that we will ever live to see I wanted to do something fun.  But there was next to nothing in the way of ideas online, so I came up with a silly dinner that turned out to be pretty fun.  A 12 of 12 dinner.  Brandon was a great help as I made the cookies for our dessert. :)

 12/12/12/ 12:12 :)  So cool :)

 HAPPY 12/12/12

 Our dinner consisted of 12 chicken nuggets, 12 peanut butter celery sticks, 12 mini cornbread muffins, 12 jello shooters (non alcoholic of course) 12 lettuce roll ups, 12 homemade oreo cookies, 12 apple slices, 12 muffin cups filled with macaroni and cheese, 12 homemade mini quiches, 12 drinks (4 waters, 4 juice, 4 milk) 12 mini taco salads - yum!! and 12 little smokies.  This meal took a surprising amount of time and thought, because it was such a last minute idea, but I am very pleased with how it turned out, even if it is really weird. :

 I do wish I had thought in years past to do something for each repeating date 01/01/01 - 12/12/12, how cool would it have been to have a picture celebrating each day, oh well.
Cool story about this day.  Jared's grandpa Bowman was born on 12/12 1910, he lived to be 101 years old, if he had lived one more year I am sure he would have been the only person ever to have celebrated two birthday's on 12/12/12.  Maybe he did a little celebration of his own in heaven. :)

Next years cool date will be 11/12/13, I don't have any idea what I would do for that day, so if you have any thoughts - let me know. :)

December 2012

The beginning of December is a busy time for Heber and Midway; we have the Nativities to visit, the Gingerbread House Exhibit to visit, and the Swiss Christmas to visit.  Last year we went to the Gingerbread House Exhibit and had a wonderful time, I must say we missed it a lot this year.  List year we chose to go to the Nativities; it was beautiful and a great way to set the tone for a Christmas season.

 There were so many different, beautiful nativities, but I definitely liked the olive wood nativities the best.

 We had a lot of fun, dressing up for the different parts of the nativity. :)

 Oh how I love my precious little boy!

 Brandon had his preschool Christmas program and Grant and I were able to go watch it.  Brandon gave me a preview of the program earlier that morning and he was darling, apparently he did all his performing at home because when it was time for the program he didn't participate very well!  Following the program Brandon continued to perform for me at home during the month, he even taught Grant one of the darling songs, Santa Claus is Coming, will forever be a favorite Christmas memory for me because of the way they both sing and dance to that song. :) 

 Decorating the tree was a very fun family activity, everyone got involved and this year I didn't care if the ornaments were placed where I thought they should be and I didn't care if all the ornament were continually moved to one general area, I was just so happy that it was a family activity.

Our neighbor and good friend, Spencer, who is now 14 years old, spent one of his Sunday afternoons constructing a train track that went from the floor of his living room, through the Christmas tree, onto the window sill and back down through the tree.  We were all impressed, and had a great time watching the battery powered train drive through the tree. :)

 Our ward Christmas party was as always a lot of fun, I just love spending time with my ward family!  A man in our ward, just a little older than Jared, bought a Santa suit and has loved being Santa for our ward parties and he does a great job.  He and his wife are now Brandon's primary teacher and he loves them, even though he does not know that he is also Santa. :)

 The one draw back to our Santa is that he has not learned the "rules" of being Santa to not promise certain gifts.  Brandon for the longest time didn't know what he wanted for Christmas, after all he has everything, or so it would seem.  I was fine with him not caring about what he wanted and didn't push it, but a week before his visit with Santa after being asked by so many for so long, he finally came up with what he thought would be a great gift, he loves whales, so that was an obvious choice and he has heard about how wonderful remote control toys are, so naturally he wanted a remote control whale.  What's a mother (I mean Santa) to do?  Jared and I looked on line to see if there was anything that might work and surprise there were a few options, but nothing that we wanted in our home and nothing that Brandon would really love.  So after much agonizing we decided not to give him the remote control whale, even though Santa assured Brandon his elves would get right on it. :)  I worried all season and was especially worried when everything was laid out Christmas Eve, but my worry was for nothing.  Come Christmas morning Brandon was so happy with what he did get that he never thought to look for or wonder where his remote control whale was, he didn't even notice the nice letter tucked in the branches of the Christmas tree from Santa explaining why there was no remote control whale.  What a relief!

 Grant is still not so sure about Santa. :)

 One of Annabelles favorite hiding spots during Christmas was right under the tree, can't say I blame her, looks cozy to me. :)

 One of the nights in December we let the boys have a "sleep over" the loved it and did remarkably well.  They are so ready to be sharing a room, and so are we, we just need to bunk beds and mattresses, and the money to get them. :)



Hawaii Day 11 Thanksgiving Day

We spent Thanksgiving Day in Hawaii.  The night before Jared and I watched Jurassic Park, we knew that Jurassic Park was filmed on Kauai, so I did a little research to find where we could go to see some of the film sites.  I found out there was a road very near to us, that was perfect for jeeps - yes that is what is said on the web site.  So I didn't have to do too much persuading to convince Jared and Dave to do the drive.  We had so much fun testing the limits of the Jeep.  These pictures do not do our adventure justice.

 At the end of the trail we found this beautiful stream and little waterfall.  If we had the time we could have spent another seven hours hiking two miles deeper to the blue hole - one of the wettest places on earth. Maybe next time :)

Can you see the cement pole in the middle of the picture - that is all that is left of the main entry gate for Jurassic Park, but hey, we were there. :)  The drive was so much fun, full of joking, bumping, splashing, and surfing. :)

 At 1:00 we met at Wyn and Dee Ann's condo for Thanksgiving lunch - a turkey and potatoe casserole. :)  Then we dressed for a boat ride and luau.

 The boat ride was relaxing and beautiful.

 The boat took us to the fern grotto, another beautiful site.  I am amazed at the beauty of Hawaii.

 We had a little bit of time in between our boat ride and the luau so we took all the others part way to the Jurassic Park trail.

Then we were able to go into the park and tour the grounds before the luau.  It was beautiful.  Oh what would it be like to have a 30 acre garden.

 

The dinner was wonderful, complete with kalua pork, and turkey. :)

And the show that night was beautiful.

Wyn with the fire dancer. :)

That was our last night in Hawaii, it was a wonderful way to end our trip.
On Friday we had a bit of time before our red eye flight, so we went back to Anini beach to snorkel with Jodi, Megan, Ann Dee, Wyn and Dee Ann.  I am SO glad we did.  I really hoped to see whales or sea turtles while we were in Hawaii, unfortunately we were a few weeks ahead of whale season so we didn't see any, and our three previous snorkeling outings didn't have any sea turtles.  Fortunately we saw two different sea turtles at Anini beach, it was AWESOME!! 

Our trip to Hawaii was wonderful, so many great memories made.  Hawaii is beautiful and the people are very kind and friendly.  I love the warm weather, sunshine, and beaches.  That being said Hawaii is not my paradise, Utah is.  When I compare pictures of our hikes during October and the pictures of our trip to Hawaii, I love them both, but the pictures of Autumn in Utah are the ones that sing to me.  Jared on the other hand is all about Hawaii.  We will have to agree to disagree on that one and simply look forward to lots of tropical vacations for Jared.  I do love Hawaii and hope to visit several more times.  Brandon and Grant seem to think we can and should take them to Hawaii right now, if only. :)

Special thank you to Wyn and Dee Ann for providing our accommodations, and affording the PCC and Smith Family Luau.  We would not have been able to go otherwise.  Special thanks to my parents and Natalie and Kevin as well for taking great care of our boys while we were gone.  Our boys had a great vacation as well, just spending time with family.  Mom took them to the Natural History Museum, the new Shiels store and swimming.  Natalie treated them to Thanksgiving dinner with the Wieler family and Chandler's birthday party.  The boys were so busy and entertained they didn't have time to miss us, too much. :)