Happy Christmas to YOU!

December was a busy month as always, yet I felt like this year I tried to focus more on our Savior and to have the spirit in our home. Which to me, made this December even more special than previous Decembers as I felt that special spirit in our home in abundance. I believe that having Christmas music about our Savior playing almost everyday really helped invite the spirit into our home. Yes, we did all the holiday fun and traditions, but it felt different this year. I am truly grateful for those precious moments that touched my heart this year. We are so grateful for our Savior and this time of year to celebrate his birth.   

We sent out Christmas cards, 3 different kinds of Christmas cards, because I am dumb like that and didn't order enough each time! And I still didn't get to everyone. So if you didn't get one, sorry! I am sure you really care! But if you do, let me know and I will add you to my mailing list! :)

This year we made 19 plates of goodies for friends and ward members and it was a lot of baking! I am not saying this to brag at all, just that I have never done that many different types of treats before for that many families and it was a lot of fun and a lot of work! I was excited to have a large enough kitchen to be able to do this. Ryan was a big help in making the peanut butter cups. And the girls helped out with the sugar cookies...

After 5 hours of baking and making a variety of treats, including chocolate/vanilla/mint covered pretzels sprinkled with... holiday sprinkles of course! We loaded the kids in the car with 19 plates and the girls would jump out of the car to deliver them to our friends. The girls loved it and it was so cute to see their faces light up as we went house to house. We told the girls to tell everyone, "Merry Christmas!" Avery said she forgot what to say at one of the houses and instead said, "A happy Christmas to you!" She was all embarrassed because she thought she said it wrong. hehe :)

We like doing a gingerbread house every year with our girls. As always though, it's just store bought. One of these years we will have to make our own gingerbread, but it's just easier and stress free this way and they don't seem to mine so neither will I! :) We always let them decorate it themselves. "Go at it," we say!

I wanted to share a few of the crafts I did this month....

I didn't have any nice Christmas wreaths for our home but didn't want to spend a fortune on buying any, so I went to the dollar store and bought most of the material there to make both of these wreaths. The bows were a bit tricky to do so they weren't quite like I wanted them to look.

This one I just used a clothes hanger and bent it in the shape of a circle...my circle is a little off, but you get the point. I found this wreath off Pinterest of course!

I wanted to make a felt board for the girls so we could re-inact the story when Christ was born. It turned out a little different than I wanted but it still worked pretty the good and the girls have enjoyed playing with it.

Close up of the felt grass. I laminated everything and added a small strip of velcro to the back and it works pretty good.

My friend Megan (that lives directly across the street from us) and I made these "Joy" Signs together for our front porch. 

We let the girls open one present from us the night before Christmas and it's always been a new pair of PJ's. 

Madisen and Avery took turns every other page reading, The Night before Christmas...

Santa came....

Christmas Morning...

Mom and Bob came and stay with us for Christmas for a few days. It was fun having them here with us. The girls loved having their grandparents here to play with.

It snowed a bunch the day after Christmas and Emily was ready to go out and play!

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas or as Avery says, a HAPPY Christmas!! And a MERRY New Year!!!

"...Smile that Frown Away..."

I can't (actually, I CAN) believe it's been 2 months since I last blogged.

Blogger just makes me sad! It was once something I enjoyed and even looked forward to doing. Now it's just depressing and has become something on a check list that I HAVE to get done....which I then don't.

I think blogging has become sad for several reasons:

1. It's sad thinking how very few people even post anymore, and even then, rarely. (Come on people! You post more and I will too! ;)

2. It makes me sad thinking how far behind I am on events and pictures of my kids. And super overwhelming  thinking about trying to get caught up! ugh.

3. It makes me sad thinking I haven't been good at journal-ing our lives and keeping up with the small and even great things that have happened to our family the last couple of years, which I guess goes along with reason #2.

4. It makes me sad that I haven't taken the time to compile all the blog post I have done into a book for our family. I keep saying I am going to do it and haven't...

5. I say I don't have time, but I waste plenty of time doing other things far less important...*cough*, Facebook and watching dumb shows like Chopped, and Storage Wars.)

In spite of these reasons, I am going to simply sit down once a week for an hour and blog! (I say, "simply" like it's super easy. Obviously the past two months of not blogging has shown otherwise!) But I can do that much.  I WILL do that much. I want to post at least 4 posts a month! No more sad faces around here... So check back every week for a new post! :)

In October I know I mentioned we went to Disneyland but I never had the time to post pictures and I still don't have the time, as there are hundreds of them.  I made a digital book of our trip with many of the pictures and stories so if you would like to see that go here. We had the best time at Disneyland! We went for 4 days at the park and two other days we spent just hanging out, swimming and resting. Here's a quick sneak peak...

It was so much fun surprising the girls and being with Dad and Trudy. We also got to be with some of our best friends, Alan and Cristi and their two adorable girls, Emma and Brooke. We are so glad we did this! Best vacation trip ever!

November and December were both great months. They flew by super fast. Those two months always seem like time goes by the fastest every year.

The girls have been busy, Madisen with school, homework and dance. Avery with Preschool, learning to read and write better and doing dance class as well. Emily and I go and do our coupon shopping while Avery's at Preschool. Emily is a big help and loves to hold mommy's coupons. Avery likes to help cut all the coupon's out for me. Her cutting abilities have really improved! However, she still pronounces, "coupons" as "Q-cum-pons" or sometimes even, "Q-Cum-ners". Hmmm...have to work on that. lol. Last week Emily and I had a successful trip at Wal-greens, stalking up on razors and toothpaste. The total came to $49 but I only paid $17 after all the coupons. I was bummed though, as we got out to the car I realized one of the coupons I had got misplaced and it was for another $5 off, so I would have only had to pay $12 for all of it. Bummer! :)

For Thanksgiving we headed 2 hours east to Pocatello to my parents house for the weekend. It's always fun to hang out with my siblings and parents. We play hard and eat hard. It's what we do best!

We celebrated Audrey's Birthday early while we were all together. She's a cutie! We love her and love having a baby in the family again. Audrey was named after my Dad's sister, Audrey.  My aunt Audrey died when she was just 16 from a brain tumor, so I never met her. Aunt Audrey died on December 2nd, the same day April's Audrey was born. 

April made her this really healthy birthday cake, but I think it was so healthy that Audrey didn't want to eat it! (We didn't blame her!) She preferred the chocolate cake we were all eating! I kept teasing April that this cake looked like Grandma Cherryholmes meatloaf that she makes and feeds to her dogs!! haha!! Sorry April, but you know it does! My sister, April is amazing. She is an amazing cook and an amazing mom!

Some of the gang hanging out and watching a movie.

We're missing April in these!

My baby sister Celeste! She is pretty funny. :)

Grandma with her two youngest grandkids

We finally bought (well Ryan's work bought) an I-pad.  We are probably one of the last families in America to own one. We have never tried to "keep up with the Jones" as they say, but it's great to be a "Jones'" now! I have a love/hate relationship with it already. I hate it because the only thing my girls want to do now is play games on it, but I love it too because it is so convenient to be able to look something up really fast and because I love doing lots of pictures like this with them:

And you thought we were a normal family. Ha! 

Let's just say I am glad that my kids, husband and myself don't look like these above images in real life all the time. That would be a bit frightening! But it is sure fun to mess around with how we could change ourselves to look.

I am feeling a smile coming on, aren't you!? I think I changed my frowning face for a smile after all! Yippee!!! Blogging's fun!!! (No sarcasm in that at all...

...maybe a tiny smidge ;).