Christmas Vacation 2009

We are back in Virginia now and had a wonderful trip home to Utah. It was so nice to see family and friends. We had a great Christmas and the kiddos were very spoiled. Here is a picture overload of our holiday season.

Starting the long plane ride from ATL to LAS, the kids and I...

And here is Daniel, He got to ride first class most of the way to Vegas. He had a ton of room along with a nice dinner and snacks the entire trip. Thanks to my brother Erik who is a delta employee, Daniel took advantage of his first class seat. About the last hour of the 4 hour flight I made Daniel come back and sit by me cause the kids were driving me crazy.

We stayed the night in Vegas and spent the next day shopping, then headed to Kanab. The next day we went to Mesquite and attended the Laub Christmas party. The kids had a great time.
This is Easton opening his cousin gift, he got a set of nativity blocks.
And Emilie got a set of girl dogs, we taught her to name them Erik and Michael. :)

This is the kiddos in their Sunday Christmas attire. It is so hard to get a good shot when you have a child like EMILIE!

This one turned out OK.

A few days later we went over to the Gilberg Christmas party. We had a great time considering I had my wisdom teeth pulled (not planned) and had passed out about 8 hours earlier....but we had a great time and it was fun to see everyone. This Emilie as an angel in the nativity.

Minus Easton he was a cranky bum

Emilie opening her Christmas from G&G Gilberg

She got personalized luggage

Easton also got a piece of luggage but he just enjoyed playing in the wrapping paper box

Christmas Eve

There was a major picture session going on with Christmas PJ's. So I had to group them and show you all of Emilie's crazy poses.

Easton and Emilie in their PJ's

And a few with their cousin Ethan. He has never seen someone acting so crazy.

Setting out cookies for Santa

Taking a bite herself

Christmas 2009

These are just a few of the MANY items Emilie got for Christmas

A Leapster 2 thanks to G&G Bartlett

She got a ton of things, Puzzles, Leapster 2, Umbrella, Flashlight, Clothes and other things I cant even remember now. Easton enjoying items from his stocking. He got books, and walker and a t-ball set, clothes...etc.

The family on Christmas morning. The kids are too worried about their new toys.

Daniel and I on Christmas day

We had a great Christmas Daniel got his TV from the Gilbergs during Black Friday and I got a sweet double Jogging stroller to replace my single one that the kids would fight in, sorry no pictures of that. But we love both items very much. Thanks for the great Christmas.

This is of Emilie and Anna exchanging some gifts. While we hung out at Sam and Mandys new place.

Anna gave Emilie some way cute things.

And last I cant forget the few nights of the late night Ping Pong competitions. Daniel and my Dad against Clayton and Sam. It is so funny to watch these guys, it gets crazy and loud. But fun times.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!

The kiddos got to go see Santa this week. And....Emilie actually did it, she sat on his lap. Once at the library and then at our church party. And she now LOVES Santa, she knows that he is going to bring her presents to grandmas house in Utah. She is so excited I love it.

Now Easton...well it went a little differently. He took one look at the guy and he was terrified.
Wondering when his mom is going to stop torturing him just to get a picture.
And this was the library Santa the first one she saw this year
This is the not so sure face, but I'm a big girl now so I have to do it.
And now she is excited, telling him everything she wants for Christmas. Do you want to know... She is already asking for a Computer, umbrella, flashlight, and more random things I cant remember.

And Easton, terrified again.
And last this is a cool little web site where you can peronalize a video message from santa for your kids. They will love it, Emilie thought it was so cool that santa would send her a message. Anyways, here it is http://portablenorthpole.tv/

IT SNOWED!!!!

We have been so lucky this year, we have not had any snow yet which is amazing. But needless to say we woke up around 7:45 this morning looked out the window and there was a good amount of snow. Emilie instantly was like lets go outside. So Daniel gave her a coat and some shoes and she went out the back door. After figuring out if it was a good enough snow to build a snowman we decided to eat some breakfast and head on out. It was actually very nice and not too cold and a lot of fun to build one. Here is Emilie in her snow outfit and boots.

Daniel and the kiddos
Me and the kids
Emilie eating the snow, she said 'after I eat this ice then I can get more' after 2 bits she threw it down. Later that day she also said 'when is it going to stop colding outside.' This is our 2nd finished snowman. We got the first one all finished and we live on a hill so it kind of fell over...bummer. So we built another one and this is it. Sadly a couple hours later it was still snowing and we looked outside and it had fallen over too. Good thing Daniel is in Pharmacy school and not architecture school :), maybe we built it to tall, IDK, oh well we really enjoyed it while it lasted. Frosty has oreo eyes, carrot nose, candy corn mouth, tree branches for arms, and blueberries for buttons.
Trying to get a family picture with Frosty! We had to set the camera on the window seal.
TAKE 1:
(Emilie got scared when I was running down the hill, she took off and ended up on the ground as the timer went off)
TAKE 2:
(Easton turned is head at about the 9 sec mark, 1 more second and it would have been great)
TAKE 3:
(Finally a good one, even though Daniel says I look like an alien)
Later we decided to make our gingerbread village. Instead of one house the village comes with 5 little houses. We had a good, stressful, crazy, candy eating time.

I love easton in the background of this one the kiddos
no words...
the village

And now time for... some ELF YOURSELF videos to put you in the Christmas spirit. Turn off the blog music above.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

And this is for those of you who are just as nuts as Glenn Beck!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Thanksgiving 2009

This year we had our very own Thanksgiving. So here are some pictures of the day and the nice week long break that Daniel had. It was so nice to have him around and not have to study all the time. We played tennis a few times in SHORTS which makes it even better, we have been pretty lucky with the weather. Anyways, we had a great week and are just waiting another 2 1/2 weeks till our trip home. YAY

This was my first time ever making a turkey, so the night before I started brining it in salt water, here is the proof haha.

Woke up and made some Banana Cream Pie and the Pumpkin was bought at the store :)
After getting the pies all ready, we headed down to Bristol, why? To pick my mom up. :) Yes she came out to spend Thanksgiving weekend with us. We tried to find somewhere to eat for lunch and everything was closed, even the mc donalds in walmart. So here are the kids waiting with Ronald why we pick out some food at walmart.
We got back home and I started baking the turkey
4 hours later, here we are with my first turkey, some pomegranate salad, marshmallow rolls, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Yummy. Sorry about the picture, I look like crap these days, I'm trying to grow my hair out a little. I don't think I'm going to make it without some extensions.

Here is one with my mom, the lighting is terrible because of the light over the table

Then we decided to do black friday this year. I have never gone to it before but it was kind of fun. My mom and I woke up at 3:00 am and headed for walmart. I was on a hunt for a TV, and my mom was on hunt for a few items that can not be mentioned. We both stood in line next to men who were chewing tobacco, my moms guy was gaging himself with it. It was fun to text back and forth about it. But anyways, to say the least I got a TV which was a great deal and my mom got a load of stuff, along with a free GPS cause the cashier didn't ring it up. opps. Don't freak out it is still going to be paid for. But that was a funny little side note. Anyways, so this is our early Christmas present from the Gilbergs. Merry Christmas to us. This is an item that is a little too hard to bring home from Utah.

Daniel with help of my busy body Emilie

That same day Daniel and I got to go on a date. We had a good time going to New Moon. These are pictures of us in the dark theater so we look funny but the flash was blinding us. Needless to say we had fun cause we never get to do this. As for the movie it was good and a lot better than Twilight. I think I need to read the books again cause I forgot a lot. And thanks mom for watching the kids, it was a nice break.

Our Cheesy selves

On Saturday I took the plunge. I cut off the back of Emilies hair her ends were so unhealthy and her front was about 3 inches sorter than the back. So here is her first really dramatic hair cut. I had to cut like 3 inches off the back to make it even with the front. I hope the front starts growing in better.

She loves being able to sit in the salon chair

And it turned out so cute. Daniel loves it and I do too.

And last but not least a random picture of Easton playing with newspaper

So anyways, we had a great week. Thanks mom for coming out, we always love having you here.

Counting the Days :)

So we have 1 month until we get to go HOME for a couple weeks. We are getting excited and decided to make a chain. We have one week till Daniel has a week off for Thanksgiving, and then 2 1/2 weeks till we leave for Christmas. So we just thought we would share these pics with you.

Emilie and Easton

So we were getting ready for church and I needed Emilie curlers to dry fast. So she got to sit under moms Hair Dryer...And she loved it, she thought she was so cool. And looked way cute.

At first she was ignoring me, pretending she was deep into her readings

On nice days, Daniel and I like to go play tennis. The kids usually do pretty well but this time Easton wasn't enjoying it to much, hence the picture. He was enjoying the ride until he saw me.

These pictures don't have great quality because I had turned off the flash, but this is when I had 2 sick kids and was hardly getting any sleep. I found my self sitting there and everyone around me had fallen asleep. This was at 6:30, wondering why I wasn't asleep also.

Easton, who actually fell asleep for a min with out being in my arms. This little guy was so congested, he ended up getting an ear infection. He would not even let Daniel hold him all he wanted was me, and he was not sleeping. It was a ruff week.

And last I found this on my camera along with about 15 other 3 second videos, Emilie got into my camera and started videoing things. This one is of her trying to get Easton to smile. I thought it was cute.