A Whirlwind Christmas

We had BIG plans to do it all this Holiday season -
- road trip to Utah and visit Grandma Gracie & Grandpa Bob (& cousins)
- road trip up to Idaho for time with entire Anderson Clan
- road trip over to Boise to see Brent & Janeen & fam, & Aunt Dee Dee & fam
Guess what?  Plans changed.  We started out at my cousin Alicia's to see her new baby Audrey...

It turns out that 20 hours or so in the car makes kids CRAZY!  I think we scared Mark to death with all of our wild children!  Oh well, it was worth the bad impression to see precious baby Audrey.  She is all kinds of adorable!
Next, we went to spend the night at Grandma's house.  We got to visit with them up until lunch time the next day.  We talked and looked at pictures while the kids played.  It was a special visit…

We left Grandma's to meet up with Uncle Carlos & fam at Melina's for some Mexican food, Ogden style.  We love these guys and sure wish we lived closer…

Next we made the drive up to Idaho.  We kicked off our visit by a trip to the farm…

Zoey with Carver the Cow Whisperer

Kittys & Cows - what more could an animal lover want?

The cows are cute, but the smell isn't…right Kelan?

Haystack Climbing

Brooksie & Carver, just about 3 years away from driving this thing by Anderson standards

We love reminiscing in Rexburg at all of our old places, seeing our old friends.

Me & Tiff and all our crazy kiddos

Favorite roomie of all time…except for Ry.  I'm pretty fond of him too.

Next we hit up the Annual Anderson Family Christmas Party…there's not a party in Southeastern Idaho to rival it!

This party is always lots of laughs!

Making some new friends with 2nd cousins!

Christmas Eve Traditions & Fun...

Nativity Time

Apparently Kaydree didn't like the responsibility of being Mary, so she opted for an angel instead.  Oh well, Ansley & Kelan make a cute couple anyway.  And Baby Ledger was the perfect Baby Jesus.

Presents from Grandma

Cousins in Jammies (except Cohen & Ledger)

Christmas Eve pj pic

Christmas Day...

This picture says it all - craziness, everyone trying to take pics of their own kids and keep them focused!  E&A got a Dora house, Carv got a bike, & K got a leap pad.  A good Christmas for everyone!

Time for church…

Baby Ledger's baby blessing was after sacrament.  It was really neat to have all the guys together for it.

The night of the Anderson Family Christmas Party we found out that my sweet Grandpa Bob passed away.  Even though his health had been pretty bad for the past few years, it was still a shock for me that he was finally gone.  It was a game changer too - we cancelled our trip to Boise and made plans to stay a bit longer to be in Utah for the funeral.  Then, Ryan got deathly ill with strep throat.  I know what you're thinking - strep throat is not really deadly, but you couldn't have told Ryan that while he was out cold in bed for 3 days while I struggled to keep my kids under control in a house full of people.  Everyone else was getting tired of each other too.  It got ugly.  I am hoping to remember the first part of the trip and not the end part, because the beginning was pretty great.  All in all, it may have been our last Christmas all together under one roof, so I'm glad that everything turned out the way it did.

Thanks for the Memories

So here I am, catching up on my blog.  I am looking back through all my pictures of 2011 trying desperately to remember details.  I need to wrap up the year so I can move on to the present…and these are the ONLY pictures I can find from Thanksgiving...

These were taken with my iphone at the Texas Motorspeedway Grub Run.  It was a fun 5k that Ryan and I ran together early on Thanksgiving morning.  It is a good memory.  But I can honestly say it is the  now the ONLY memory I have left of that day.  I can't remember where we had Thanksgiving dinner.  I think it was at Chris's spent with all the Carver clan and maybe Johnny and his kids too?  I seriously cannot remember.  I searched around for pictures on facebook that maybe someone else in the fam posted, but apparently it was not so memorable to them either.  So right now, this is what I am thankful for…

I always tell my mom in regard to her teenagers or kids up at college "no news is good news."  In other words, if something bad happened, you would hear about it.  Well, right now I am grateful for the fact that no horrible catastrophic events happened during this period that caused them to be burned into my memory forever.  Like the time we were at Mimi's having Thanksgiving dinner and Mom had to rush Dad to the hospital because he had a horrible asthma attack.  Or the many many Thanksgiving memories I have of some boy in my family getting hurt for playing too rough in that year's turkey bowl.  There were no stitches, broken bones, or hospital trips on record.  I am thankful that I have a nice, somewhat normal, and mostly drama free family that I probably spent Thanksgiving dinner chowing down with, and taking a peaceful nap beside afterward.  

I would normally say, "I hope next Thanksgiving will be just as memorable" but for the purposes of this post, I can hope that it will be just as unmemorable.

Callin' the Hogs

One of my best friends from high school left Cleburne for University of Arkansas (home of the razorbacks) when we graduated, and she has lived there ever since.  When Susannah sent out her wedding invite for 11/11/11, I knew we just had to make the trip to Little Rock to see this fabulous wedding for ourselves.
My mom watched the kids for the weekend, and Ryan and I made the road trip up to Arkansas.  Thanks to Ry's frequent traveling, we used our points for the hotel stay, and the trip was practically free!  We saw some fun sites while in Little Rock...

I know Bill Clinton is a big deal in Arkansas, but he'll always be a creeper in my book

SOOOOEEEEYYY Pig!

We went to this amazing sushi place and gorged on all different types of fancy sushi.  As if that wasn't enough, we topped it off with this deep fried cheesecake for dessert…YUM!

 Me and Suzy Q - so happy for her!

How can I even describe this wedding?  It was SO fab, reality tv-worthy, Kardashian-esque, pinterest-y, and picture perfect.  The pretty Arkansas fall leaves, Susannah's pretty red hair, the coordinating colors…it was just SO beautiful!

I am SO glad that we took the opporunity to go to this fabulous celeb-like wedding, but even more glad that we had the chance to have a little weekend getaway with just the 2 of us!

Super Hero Halloween

We kicked off the Halloween season this year like we normally do, with a trip to the Flower Mound pumpkin patch.  We had to go sans Ryan & Kaydree this year - since K is in school and Ry is super busy at work with end of quarter stuff.  There were no free weekends that we could make it all together, so I took the terrible triplets and met up with Aunt Afton, Brooks, and Zoey for some pumpkin patch fun.

With the girlies favorites - Dora & Boots

With the little guy's favorites - Buzz & Woody

Twin princesses

Pretending to work on the farm like Dad used to

Annual height check…yep, still growing!

Pal-ing around with Brooksie

Then, we got all ready to go to our Ward's Halloween Trunk-or-Treat…it is always a good time!  Nana and Papa came up for Halloween night to go trick-or-treating with us.  Here are all our little super heroes...

K

C

E

A

I made all of the costumes for pretty cheap this year.  I bought the girls shirts on clearance at Wal-Mart and sewed on sparkly capes.  The tutus were super easy, I'm pretty proficient in the art of tutu making by now.  Carver's muscle suit was the splurge, but I know he'll wear that any chance he can get, so it's more of an investment really...

The whole fam…we've got mad super hero skills

 Getting ready to bring home the loot!  I love that it's so warm and sunny during Halloween every year…

Happy Halloween!