Christmas Traditions

What are your Christmas Traditions?

We pretty much do all the regular things but I want to try and branch out in the years to come.
Some of the things we do or have done are:
Christmas lights at temple square
Pinata on Christmas Eve
Pajamas on Christmas Eve
Festival of Trees
Have Santa come to a family christmas party
Drive around to houses/communities that put up big Christmas light displays
Go to the light luminary at the Winder Dairy graveyard
Have sticky buns/pull aparts Christmas morning.

I'm thinking this year we will do gingerbread houses but do them as stables instead so we will have gingerbread stables.

I am also making the husband take me to A Christmas Carol play this year so that is something different.

I knew a family that had an orange peel fight on christmas eve. I always thought that sounded fun but feel dumb stealing it.

Is there anything else fun out there?!

Another

So as most of the people who view this blog know (since there is only like 4 of you) we are having another chitlin in March. We found out on Monday that it is most likely a girl (the cord was in the way but they were pretty sure). I was kind of hoping for another boy so that it would be closer to kid #2 which is a boy, but no big deal really. There are advantages & disadvantages to both I guess....I'm really not looking forward to teenage years...
Today #1 taught #2 to say 'mine' which he automatically picked up on.
My morning was spent listening to a shouting match between a 3 & 1 year old saying 'MINE!'.
It was a rough morning needless to say.

I guess I wouldn't be a very good mom if I didn't post the traditional kids dressed up in their Halloween costumes would I?

Arbor Day 2010

Sabrina sent me some Larkspur seeds for Arbor Day this year so I sprinkled them in my planter bed and let them take their course.
This is pretty much the only one that grew but isn't it a beaut?

Sharing Time

I got all artsy with my camera the other day and these are some of my favorites. If you like these push your 'like' button...oh wait...wrong application.

Enjoy

Bet you've never seen a gray cat child dressed in a pink jacket talking on a cell phone before huh?

The contortionist

OK, I'll admit it...I've always been jealous that I could never do this with my lip.

On a side note if he ever finds out that I posted this picture on my blog I'm in big doodoo.

I couldn't resist

I know this is wrong on so many levels but I couldn't resist...

Yo Mamma

My Momma made these slippers for me. What can Yo Mamma do?

{thanks to my twice removed cousin Amanda's Grandma special knitting pattern}

Spring Fling

So I've been totally obsessed with flowers this year for some reason.

I'm trying a variety of methods this year:

1) Seed
These are currently chillin' in my kitchen. Out of the 20 or seeds that I have planted only a few have sprouted but needless to say I am excited some are still alive and thriving. We shall see if they get big enough for me to transplant outside.

2) Store bought
I got some gerber daisies for mothers day which I promptly embedded in deep rich soil. I'm pretty sure one of the pesky neighborhood kids decapitated one already much to my chagrin.

3) Cut & Delivered
I also received the fancy kind for mother's day delivered. That was nice of him.

This year we also rebuilt our flower beds outside. I've dug up all my daffodils and separated out the bulbs. When they say that bulbs reproduce they're not kidding. I ended up with twice what I started with!

I've been on a flower buying binge. I got some good deals at Sams Club on some perennials so I have quite the assortment going in my front planter. I would post a picture but it pretty much looks like dirt and you all know what that looks like. Hopefully it will bloom as I diagrammed and I can post you a spectacular color filled picture.

My garden is planted also, so I'm on a roll there. I did a couple of different produce this year so again we shall see how it turns out. Once again I would post a pic but it just looks like a plot of dirt also, but a pretty plot of dirt.

Now I have to go wash my green or rather compost covered thumb.

The Adventure

So I got a free weekend from the kids last week. However it was not exactly what you would call 'free'.

I went down to George Shrinks as my niece used to call it for clogging competition (which was a whole other story in itself that won't be highlighted here).

On Saturday after we were done me, my friend Brandi, and her sister decided to take a side trip down to Vegas. About 5 minutes outside of Vegas our 'adventure' began.

We got a flat tire.



Well for those of you who know me (or have been 4 wheeling in skippy with me) you know that I have had A LOT of flat tires in my life. I believe I learned to change one when I was about sixteen when I started driving. Therefore I was all over getting it changed and on our way.

We pulled out the jack, took the tire down from underneath the suv, and grabbed the lugnut wrench. However upon inspection of the wheel we figured out something was horribly wrong. The lugnut wrench did not fit the lugs. I didn't know if it was just me not figuring out how to get a hubcap off or if it was special rims.

Well, Brandi ended up calling roadside assistance. Out came Luis the roadside assistant man to save the day. He jacked up the car, got his tools out and inspected the lugnuts...only to find out that they were special lugnuts that require a 'key'. Yes they make special lugnuts that have special fittings to them so people cannot steal your tires. Brandi had been in an accident a couple of months back and just bought a new car, but somehow they had failed to mention or give her the special key to be able to change her tire. I had known about the keys because I had a car once that had this and I did not have the key either and had to drive all over ending up at a dealership to have them take the key off and replace it with a normal lugnut.

Well it was getting late and so Luis the roadside assistant man and I headed to a Pep Boys to see if they sold the special key. After the fact I realized how dumb that might have been for me to hop in his van with him but I figured I would have kicked him in the head if he tried doing anything.

No luck at the Pep Boys so we ended up towing the car to what they call the all night spanish tire shops. We had to take a ten dollar five minute cab ride to the tire shop in a nasty smoke smelling cab. We went into the shop explained our situation and the little spanish man ran off. A couple of minutes later he came back with someone that could actually understand English and we explained our situation. The tow truck with the car got there, they inspected the wheel and did in fact have the key to get the lugnuts off (after me looking over and seeing that they had to grind the special lugnut key down they had as it didn't fit initially).

After trying to sell us another used tire, Brandi telling them no, them telling us we must be up for another adventure, they changed the tire and two hours later we were back to being on our way.

And why were we really going down to Vegas you ask? It was because of this...



The Baja Fresh! They have the most delicious burritos ever! They come in pretty close to the Cafe Rio. They used to be where we live for about a year and one day dissapeared so I was left with an eternal craving.

We were able to get our eats which was delicious and then we walked down from the Excaliber to the Bellagio to watch the fountains. The fountains were awesome as they always are.



I think it has been about four years since I was last down there and as Vegas always does it has changed A LOT. Also I can't recall if I have ever been on the strip on a Saturday night but apparently you need some of these to wear and fit in:




They tore down a hotel that used to be by the Bellagio and built a the Aria hotel and they have constructed a lot of new walkways to basically keep you off the street of the strip but make it quite confusing to get around (not to mention it took us like a 1/2 hour to find the exit and get out of the Excaliber).

We ended up getting back to our hotel at 3 in the morning and crashed. Good times, Good times.

2 cute stinks

This cute stink refuses to crawl - hopefully it will happen within the next two weeks



This cute stink refuses to be potty trained...the stubborn little girl. I've tried just about everything.

The never ending project

We are in the works of shifting kiddos room arrangements around & painted a new room. It took forever thanks to small breaks for sicknesses and such. The picture is bad thanks to the flash but I'm too lazy to fix it.

Cake Eater

So I'm not a huge fan of eating cake or frosting. My friend talked me into taking a cake decorating class so I said sure why not I need to expand my knowledge base. I told my Sunday School class of kids this week that it is important for them to pay attention in school especially to science because someday they may be making their own worlds...I'm just trying to figure out how the knowledge of cake decorating can fit into this category. Anyway I digress...The class wasn't too bad. I actually enjoyed it but ended up throwing away all the cakes I made because nobody around here would eat them. Here is the cake I made in my last class. It is no masterpiece by any means but now I know how to make roses out of frosting (instead of play-do which is what I usually make them out of when feeling creative).

Merry Christmas! (3 months late...)

We just downloaded our pictures from the past couple of months so I thought I would post a few from Christmas

Diseased

So this has been our life lately...
Sunday - Acelin flu
Tuesday - Erin flu
Wed - Aaron flu
Mon - Cooper cold
Wed - Acelin cold
Mon - Aaron & Erin cold
Sounds fun right?

The Haircut

BEFORE


DURING



AFTER

Someone told me that they were always sad when they gave their baby boys their first haircut because they no longer looked like babies anymore. I thought it wouldn't apply because the kid has so much hair but it's true!

Halloween

Say heeellllooooo to baby Elvis (younger days Elvis mind you)

So apparently today is Elvis' birthday and he would have been 75. That means he could have still been alive today under normal circumstances. How weird is that?

Here is the perfect angel


Here she is in action

Please don't judge me by the streaks on my mirror...or maybe it is just your computer screen that looks really dirty.