The Christmas Post

Ok, here's the Christmas post...

On Christmas Eve, we gathered at our house for a party with my dad. We had a white elephant gift exchange, snacked and played a game.

We also opened gifts from Grandpa Waite. Grandpa gave us a neat gift. He gave us "Our Family Home Evening Journal". It's a notebook with pages in it to fill out as we have our FHE's. Documentation that may become precious in the years to come.

Christmas morning, Jason and I woke up around 7:00am. We got the orange juice mixed up and the sweet rolls baked and then headed upstairs. We thought we'd find the kids waiting to pounce. Instead we found this......
sleepy bedheads!
We were shocked. We had to turn on the light and wake everyone up from their "visions of sugarplums". Then we were told the rest of the story.... Treyson awoke around 4am, woke everyone else up and then was told to go back to sleep, cuz mom and dad would NOT want to start the day that early. (They were totally right about that.)

The kids had slept together in the family room. We had our traditional sweet rolls, orange juice and milk for breakfast.

"Hmmmm, wonder what Santa brought????"

Then it was time for the traditional line-up... youngest to oldest. (Each year the older girls try to convince us to start a new tradition... oldest to youngest. They haven't convinced us yet.)

Treyson had a Bakugan-fest...everything Bakugan.

Rylee got the Nintendo D.S. she was wanting..... lucky.

Abree got her "D.S." a.k.a. V-Smile handheld game system.

Taylee said she was 100% POSITIVE that she would get a Nintendo D.S. from Santa.... she was right. How was she so "100% POSITIVE"???

Jason got BSU attire from Santa.... and some Utah Jazz (wooden) candy canes.

The "Aftermath".

I received a new camera from Santa, that I'm still working on figuring out. (The instructions were printed in a foreign language, so even if I wanted to read them I couldn't.)

In the evening, we went to my mom's house to celebrate and open presents. Each family received emergency preparedness items to put in our 72-hour kits from mom and the grand kids got cool kit type gifts. Treyson's was a model car kit and Abree's was a clothespin doll kit.

Christmas was a wonderful day of celebration and family.

More Birthday Fun

Some how these photos didn't make it into my last post...

Some of mom's favorite foods and favorite quotes:

"Every time I say the word DIET, I wash my mouth out with chocolate."

"There is a skinny person inside of me screaming to get out... I shut her up with chocolate."

"Well behaved women, rarely make history."

Words she lives by.

Suprise!

Last Saturday, we had a surprise birthday party for Jason's mom.

Background: Mom had been wanting to go to a well-known quilt/fabric shop in Burley, ID. Cathy and Melissa (Jason's sisters) offered to take her on a birthday road trip, from Ogden, UT to the Burley, ID area, for a "Shop Hop".

The set up: Friday, her birthday was celebrated as usual; lunch with friends, dinner with family, presents opened, birthday calls received. We hoped she had no suspicion as to what we were up to.

Saturday, while mom and the girls were shopping, the rest of us gathered in Jerome. We decorated the church and prepared for the surprise. As the "Shop Hop" came to a close, the last address of the day, was typed into the GPS. (Melissa's GPS had been on the fritz, leading them in the wrong direction and to strange locations, all day.) As they approached a corn field, with an LDS church on the right, mom believed the GPS was leading them astray, once again. Then they continued on into the parking lot of the church...

"SURPRISE!!!"

We jumped out, from behind a parked van, and ran to greet her.

We SPOTlighted her all evening.

We had decorated with cute bright colors and pok-a-dots.

We showcased her life with tables of her memories.

Dad made a video, put to music, of her 60 years of life. It included; baby pictures, wedding photos, young mommy moments and grandma shots with grand babies.

On the tables, we had decorated with items associated with events and stories of her life. At one point, in the evening, we asked her to tell us some of those stories. As she held her wedding dress up to her, she made some sort of comment about how it USED to fit. Bob piped up, "Grandma, did you wear that BEFORE you liked chocolate?!"

The stories held the grand kids attention and they ooo-ed and ahhh-ed and laughed at the funny things grandma did as a little girl. (She seemed to have several potty/bathroom stories???)

She told us that she had a little suspicion, but was generally very surprised. It was a nice evening and successful birthday celebration.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

PS- Great job Julia!

Robot Party

Monday, we had Treyson's friend birthday party.
Our guests were greeted by Bob the Robot (named by Treyson).

My attempt at making Bob the Robot, in cake.

(I know, it looks like Cookie Monster having a bad day. Not my best cake, but Treyson liked it.)

As we waited for everyone to show up, the boys colored robot pictures.

We had a robot type of lunch...

squeeze juice "motor oil"

fruits and veggies "parts & pieces"

Cheetos "memory cells"

"battery acid" salsa, tortilla "computer chips" and corn dogs.

Boys have the most interesting (ok, gross) conversations. Here are some of the topics discussed at lunch:

-Burping the ABC's, who could and couldn't do it and who knew someone that could do it.

-How to swallow and regurgitate food. YUCK!

-What's the best or grossest mix of food combos. Celery and ketchup anyone?

-A friendly debate on what robots eat.

-Loosing teeth and having gnarly cavities.

-Snot.

-How to best "spark" your Wint-o-green Lifesavers.

-Putting duct tape on your little brothers head and then ripping it off! OUCH!

Then we played a game. Robot pieces were hidden all over the back yard. The boys hunted to find all the hidden pieces.

Next, the boys created edible robots using marshmallows, pretzels, licorice, mini chocolate chips, Lifesavers, straws and toothpicks.

Then it was time for presents. Treyson received Bakugans from everyone! These boys knew what he liked. He was so excited. I think he's up to 13 Bakugans now!

Jonah, Treyson, Houston & Dylan

Then is was cake time.

After cake, we turned up the music and all did our best robot dancing. These boys had some moves! They were break dancing (or something like it), moonwalking and poppin' all over the place. I danced along with them and pretended that I knew what I was doing. (I'm not a big dancer, but they didn't know that.)

We sent our guests home with these party favors. The face parts are stuck on with magnets, so they can be played with and moved around like Mr. Potato Head. They also had goodies inside!

Two parties down.... a baptism and dinner to go.

Treyson Turns 8!

Yesterday, we invited family over to celebrate Treyson's birthday.

Because we've been doing "friend parties", this year, I've asked the kids to pick something other than cake, for their family birthday get together.

Treyson was open to anything sweet and really couldn't make up his mind, so I made him a fruit pizza. It was so yummy and Summery (a word?).

A perfect piece..at least one of every kind of fruit.

Then it was gift time. He receive a whole bag of stuff from Grandpa(including one of his favorites, a Bakugan), a book and M&Ms from Grandma, a Spiderman squirt gun picked out by Kyrick, a Transformer from Audrey and 3 Little Mermaid pictures, colored pink, by Katelyn. Katelyn was SOOO excited to have Treyson open her gift. She kept saying, "Dat my pik-tur. Dat my pik-tur." It was so cute!

He also received a few things from us including; Bakugans, diving rings, cool collapsable ball/frisbee thingy, a DS game, a Sunday suit (we jokingly call it his "birthday suit") and a set of scriptures (an 8 year old/baptism tradition in our home).

Side note: Scriptures are SO expensive! For Rylee's 8th birthday, I was able to purchase a set of scriptures at a discount, because they had previously been name engraved. (They removed the previous name as best they could and then engraved Rylee's name over the top. You can barely tell.) For Taylee, I wasn't as lucky. For Treyson, I know this sounds silly, but I said a little prayer asking that I could again find a discounted set of scriptures. I looked and looked for several months. A day before his birthday, I went to Deseret Book, and there they were, a set of scriptures (previously engraved) for 50% off! I was so excited. They were a different size than I was originally looking for, but I was grateful to find them, whatever size. When I checked out, the cashier told me that she had marked the scriptures down and thought they would go fast. She said that A LOT of people had looked at them, but no one purchased, until today. I told her it was because they were waiting for me... an answered prayer, a small miracle. I belive in miracles. Do you?

Daisylyn was one of our guests. She came with grandma, because her mom and dad were at the temple. She has grown so much. Look at those sweet cheeks!

Kyrick, Jason and Treyson playing his new DS game.

It must be a fun game, if you don't notice the sweaty, hot, boy bodies in close quarters.

One party down... another party and baptism to go.

Cooking Up Birthday Fun!

For Taylee's party, we decided to go with a cooking theme.

As the girls arrived,

they each made and

decorated their own Chef hat.

As official chefs,

they put on their chef hats and aprons,

washed their hands and got to work making dinner, mini pizzas.

For the dinner beverage, they blended up some Orange Julius.

Testing their pastry skills, they each decorated their own cake.

Courtney's Creation

Taylee's Trophy

Lauren's Lovliness

Brittany's Beauty

Kassidy's Confection

Alyssa's Adorableness

Sage's Sensation

Amber's Awesomeness

Kenzi's Mad Skills

The aftermath

Then Taylee opened gifts.

Meet Chicken Joe and Twilight (Webkins).

As the guests left, Taylee thanked them for coming and gave them a pastry mat and cookie cutter... to help them keep up their pastry chef skills, of course.