Oops, it's been a while!

I suppose I will do this backwards because I don't know how to rearrange the pictures! So I started making Christmas candy. This is called Brown Candy it's my Aunt Beth's recipe and it' my dads favorite!

 When I went to Gilmer this year I found a cookbook that had one of my favorite candies in it. Peanut patties, I never realized that I could make them myself! This is a microwave recipe I found on-line.

 We had our big Relief Society Christmas Party. Part of my assignment was to make the Christmas "gifts" for the ladies. So here they are 110 little ornaments. Rubies, with an uplifting little message. 

 I started crafting. I have been making these flowers and having a blast!

 I also made these fun little boxes. I have seen them over the years, but this year I broke down and made them. It was super fun also.

 110 partially finished Christmas ornament hand-outs.

Me in my new very colorful blouse!

                             Mike took me to a huge Christmas show with hundreds of Christmas tree's. I think this one was the most unique! It's actually 4 trees.

 My hot husband, waxing nostalgic over the colored records!

 Mikes birthday tractor has moved into our Christmas town and got right to work!

 We had a super great Thanksgiving. We were at a table full of young people, and it was very touching to hear the things they were grateful for. Nathan was grateful that Mike and I are still married, he has a lot of friends who's parents aren't.

 Issy wanted ice cream, so I put a little pumpkin pie with it. This is her angry face, she said "Grandma you put pumpkin on my ice cream!" I love it, she is so much fun!

 Our table, sorry about the drink containers they aren't so cute on the table!:-)

 This is my darling baby princess! I need to start calling her my "Prissy, Prissy, Princes!" She enjoys her accessories and shoes! To, to cute!

We have been having to much fun. We are healthy, happy, and surrounded by love! What more could a person want... we are blessed.

Good times.....

Jon had to leave town, so we had Erin and the girls come and spend the weekend with us. We worked in some fun stuff. I made a seek and find bottle with Issy. She had fun making it, putting all the little treasures in it. But when it was finished she didn't touch it again. I said, "Issy I thought you would like to play with that bottle we made." She said, "It didn't hold my interest." I had to laugh! We decided to make a gingerbread house. I have never ever made one, my poor kids! But Costco has one already assembled. I bought extra candy and made extra frosting and we had a party! It was so much fun I will do it again:-)

 The finished house. The gummy bears kept disappearing off the house. When we questioned who might be taking them off, Issy said "Ophie (the dog) is taking them off." Funny that Ophie can get up to the counter to get the gummy bears:-)

 Mike hit a huge milestone during this time. He turned 50 on Tuesday! Wow 50!!! I told Erin to stay for his birthday. He was going to be out of town for his birthday so I hadn't quite figured out how to handle it. Well he didn"t go out of town he was home. So I pulled off a surprise party in 2 days. It was nuts, we had a great turnout. But me the picture taking fiend that I am, forgot to take pictures until the end!

 I told him he may be 50, but he is hotter than ever. How lucky we are to have such a great change to ourselves just as we are starting to hit mid-life:-)

 The girls decided to stay for the week. Elizabeth was sick the entire week, she is such a funny little girl. She just sat on the couch holding that balloon for about 1/2 an hour. She has the funnest personality and makes some of the greatest faces. Her speech is behind, from her walking being behind. So she has learned to communicate with her face, it's great!

 I decorated for Christmas. Mike loves Christmas so I was going to do it while he was gone, so he would have a fun surprise when he got home. As you know he didn't go, so I just decorated anyway. It got to be super stressful as my house was stacked full of Christmas boxes, toys, people, and cheerios were all over the floor. During all of this I decided to throw a party, Erin got super sick, so I had to help with the girls, try to comfort her, and finish it all. I made it and Mike is happy. Now when everybody else is stressing try to decorate after Thanksgiving, I will be relaxing in my warm glowing house!

 We were taking Chris somewhere and I saw these mushrooms. I really liked them, but they were for sale in somebodies yard, no phone number, no price, and I didn't want to just walk up to their door. But they caught my fancy and I would love some in my yard.

 Mike started working on the Christmas light show, it seems very promising this year:-)

 Issy and I had a sleep over. Mike went out of town for 2 days and a night. So she slept with me. We got up alone the next day and made pumpkin waffles. they were yummy! Oh the night before she had a bad dream. She was sleeping next to her mom, but she came to our room at 2:30 AM. She climbed in bed with us, then told us what happened. She said, "a man put fire on her cute flower footy pajamas." As she was telling us she started to cry. I told her it was just a bad dream and she was safe and ok. she said "Thank you Grandma." Then we all went back to sleep.

 The girls decided to paint, Elizabeth painted her mom!

 Issy painted a beautiful colorful picture, she was quite the artist.

 Then we worked on another project. But it ended up being much more fun. Issy's favorite color of the week is turquoise. She made me buy her some turquoise Christmas ornaments, because she was in love with turquoise. So she picked turquoise to make her project. We had to mix colors to get the right shade, but on the girls it just looked blue. The girls painted themselves like Avatar. They had a blast!

 Cute Avatar girls.

 Cute girls in the tub, trying to get all the paint off!

It was a big week with lot's of family time and fun. It's good to have all of your kids under your roof once in a while. The girls were pretty sick by the time they left. Elizabeth was really sick and didn't sleep for a few days. Erin got them to the doc and she had croup, an ear infection, and a pussy red throat, Issy had croup also. Hopefully they are doing better and will sleep for their parents. But we enjoyed the week they spent with us.

month at a glance.........

I love, love, love my family! I am so blessed to have such an awesome family, my husband, my kids, and those awesome little granddaughters!!! BLESSED!

The day after our New York trip I went and picked up the girls. Erin and Jon took a trip to Ireland, and London, so we watched the girls for the bulk of the time 9 days! It was an adventure!!! We also had our 1 year follow up with our surgeon we had to take the girls. We just said Grandma and Papa have to go to the doctor, we didn't say why. when we started to be weighed Issy said, "I remember when you were bigger, bigger, bigger." I thought that was very interesting:-) Our Doc was thrilled with us I was down 101, and Mike was down 150! It has been a very good year!

 I fed them naughty things like Mc Donalds:-)

 This is Elizabeth's favorite toy. Her raccoon Bandit, the kids actually have 3 of them because they lost him once, and that was not good!

 We had lot's of fun with the girls, they just made me happy. I loved being with them every day. Issy would say the most hilarious stuff I should have written it down because now I don't remember most of it. One thing she said that cracked me up was.... I had her sitting on my lap after her bath and I was fixing her hair. She said, "Grandma you have splinters on your legs and they hurt my bum!" I cracked up. One night Steven was telling her it was time to go to bed. She said she wanted to stay up. Steven said, "but we are all going to bed and you would be up all alone." She put her hands on her hips and said "I can handle it, I was born and I can handle it." We were laughing at that one. Mike got caught up in Dora the Explorer, he said the girls had been there much to long:-)  One day Issy was watching Little Einsteins or something like that. They ask, "can you help me find my friends?" Mike said, "no." Issy said, "Yes Papa, your in big trouble!" Mike got in big trouble a lot that week!  Erin sent Pictures of a tower in Ireland that had been built around the year1100. It was called Isolde's Tower. So I showed the picture to Isolde and told her this tower (it was mostly ruble by now) was named Isolde's Tower. She said "Oh thanks grandma!' I loved getting credit for something done around 1,000 years ago!

 Elizabeth was cuter than cute. She had started walking all of the time while she was with us, she just toddled all over the house and what a doll she was doing it! 

 It made us all so happy to watch her get around so well. I think her physical therapy has really paid off!

 Issy was so cute she was posing for me in this shot.

 Issy likes to get the camera and take pictures. This is a picture she took of me.

 Uncle Steven wasn't home very much between school and work, but the girls made good time of it when he was!

 Elisabeth gives out the kisses freely, but most of the time she keeps the binky in her mouth!

 This is a picture of my mother spider. I had hundreds of spider all over my walls. Actually Issy ask me when I was bring her home that first day, "grandma is your house still spooky?" I assured her it was, that made her happy. It was a great 9 days with the girls, but I was so tired when they left. I'm not young any more!

 Friday Jon's work had a cute little trick or treat party for the kids. Erin had come down with a very horrible stomach flu and so Grandma got to take them. They were having a great time.

 The kids brought the girls these cool capes from London, and my sweet little Elizabeth looked like a little queen  walking around in her royal cape. 

 Issy is always a darling "Princess" Tinker Bell!

Mike and I had a little fun for Halloween our selves. We dressed up and went to a party. We hadn't had good costumes for years, just black cloaks. But this year we dressed up Mike was all handsome as a King, and I was a gypsy. It was fun!

 Mike told somebody in this picture, that I wouldn't let him have a cookie, so he had to take action!:-)

                                   Nathan picked a super scary mask for Halloween. Elizabeth was not thrilled with his choice. As soon as I was done taking pictures she dove into my arms. Then when he took off the mask she gave him kisses, minus the binky! How did he get so lucky?

My Mother and Father had very bad news that week. My mom had had a part of her foot amputated in May. It wasn't done correctly and it wasn't healing. They took her for treatments every day for around 8 weeks, and after all that work it didn't heal. The surgeon told her she had a bone infection and if she didn't have part of her leg cut off it would get in her blood and be very bad. So on Halloween weekend she had the bottom part of her leg amputated. She is doing well, and I have been saying constant prayers for her and dad.



I went with Erin and the girls Friday to do a little fun shopping. Issy loves the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" and her favorite dragon is Toothless. So I found these marshmallows that were Toothless and gave them to the girls. Cute huh?

 They were pretty chewy and hard to eat. Issy gave up, but I helped Elizabeth by ripping off bites. she enjoyed it. But she was magic, when her daddy went to change her diaper the next day he panicked because it was a pretty shade of blue! hahaha They were scared at first but them Erin remembered about that marshmallow. It cracked me up! Sorry for the potty humor but I thought it was funny!

New York......

Mike took me to New York last week. It was such a great trip! We had a great bike ride came home showered up and headed to the airport. We got to NYC late that night. I was up bright and early the next day looking for adventure. Actually I had a friend that was going to be in the city that day. I got a map and headed off to find her. She was at the Regis and Kelly show, with a friend. I found my way up to the ABC studios where they record. It is right by the temple. That was way cool. When I got to the door the funniest thing happened. A lady from my old ward in Mesa came walking out of the show. It was just funny to run into somebody I knew so randomly!

I met up with my friend we had an amazing lunch in a very nice restaurant. In a place they film a TV show that I don't watch:-) I felt bad because I hadn't dressed nice,  I was in jeans and t-shirt (We were just going to meet for "coffee" but decided to do lunch)because I was going to walk all over NY.

I had such a great time with these ladies.

 Then they headed home and I headed out to explore. I went to Central Park and ran across these dog walkers. The dogs were all very nice and there were a few breeds of dogs I had never seen before.

 We stayed in the garment district. It was so great there were so many different stores, I couldn't take them all in!

 We laughed about the size of our room with the other guys who were there with Mike. But the truth is we weren't in the room very much and when we were it was very cozy!

 We went out on the subway for dinner in Soho. The places that we went on the subway were safe, and the people were nice.

 I love all of the little crazy restaurants in the city. This was a  macaroni bar, you could have mac and cheese with anything you could imagine
                                              I hit a big lego store, this was the monthly lego display.

 I went to FAO Shwartz it was humongous and I spent a couple of hours looking around at all of the fun stuff.

 I love the muppets, and they had a muppet section. You could design your own muppet!

 I had an amazing lunch, white spinach pizza! I of course could only eat half of it. But it was so good. Then I had a guy come and sit with me, it's sort of family style seating there. He looked back at a table full of girls. I told him he should have sat there. He looked at me smiled and said, I am very happy to be sitting here with you. So I figured he was gay or not into 20 something girls:-)

 As I walked around our hotel I found all these cool shops way to many to take pictures of but fun to visit! This is a wall of zippers.

 This was one of many stores of trims, buttons, zippers, appliques, and all kinds of things.

 Spandex World, there was also a Spandex House, and a silk house.

 This is a window display of one of the shops, the owner was one of those close talkers, he really invaded my personal space!:-)

 Polyester House that one made me snicker because I pictured leisure suits in the 70's!

 This was a rhinestone display, there was also a shop of all sizes of tassels, huge fabric stores that said 20 swatch limit a day after that .25 a piece. This district was swarming with fashion students. I fit right in with all those young kids!hahaha They also had a little book store full of  books about the clothing styles of the different centuries, biographies, designs, plays, and all of the artist stuff you could imagine. It was so full of people it was amazing. 
   
 Mike took me to a super fun place for dinner. He had been there before. The wait stuff are all wanna be Broadway stars so they sing and entertain you while you eat.

 This isn't a great picture of Mike but the food was sooooo good there. It was a fun night.

 On our walk back to the hotel we stopped in the middle of Time Square and got a picture of ourselves on this huge billboard. We are  kind of down on the right hand side. It was a rainy night which made it very pretty with all of the bright lights of Broadway reflecting on the streets. We were up at 3:15 AM to meet our car at 4:00 to get to the airport. We rode home in first class, but I slept most of the way, so I didn't enjoy it to it's fullest capacity!

 It it was a great trip, I really enjoy Mikes company. I loved that I ran into the Manhattan Temple, while I was just walking around. Life is good!