Christmas 2008

Okay, I admit it. I am really a slacker this holiday season. I haven't felt like blogging anything. I have actually had a really good Christmas, and have enjoyed spending time with family and friends, but haven't felt like writing about it.

I didn't take a lot of pictures this month. My camera is so big and bulky, but I knew Santa was probably going to bring me one that fits in my purse, so I waited. Which means I have quite a few pictures from December 26th on, but not many from before that.

We had a really nice Christmas Eve. My sister in law, Victoria put together a nativity program for all of the cousins to take part in at Grandma and Grandpa's house. It was simple enough that we should be able to do this every year. The adults and kids really enjoyed it. It's a tradition to read the story of the 4th Wise Man. That was also really nice. I think the cousins are just getting a little older, and know how to sit and listen better than they have in past years. We had a Christmas Eve dinner, and exchanged gifts. John and Molly had our name. They got us a door mat. The problem is it's so nice, I don't want people to step on it and get it dirty, so I put it on my hearth. I think it looks really nice.

I was really happy to have Great Grandpa Collings and Loa Jean, his wife with us. Grandpa was tired and slept quite a bit, but we were so glad they let him leave the rest home and visit us.

On Christmas, we had a huge windstorm, and decided to just stay at home. My sister, Erin and her family came over and ate turkey with us, we played games, and just relaxed all day. Erin's family gave my family a gift this year, it was a crock pot cook book (I think she got the hint when I kept calling her for recipe ideas for my crock pot), and a framed picture which is a quote from President Monson.

This year my mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brothers and sisters and their families were going to get together on Christmas day and spend the next 3 days together. Sometimes the weather likes to throw a curve ball. Mom and dad were going to be traveling from Washington state, but they have been burried in 3 feet of snow. Dave was going to come up from California, but was worried about the roads. Jamie was bringing her family from Illinois, but the freeway was closed through Wyoming. I was feeling kind of sad because I enjoy spending time with my family.

The siblings that live here in Utah still wanted to get together, but we decided to scale it down a little bit. We spent the Saturday after Christmas together. Lee and Tricia treated us all to a brunch in the morning. Then the younger cousins went outside and played in the snow. Lee has a small hill on the side of his yard that they thought was really fun to go sledding down that hill.

Lee took those who were brave enough sledding just a few blocks away from his house. The name of the sledding hill is suicide! Steve and I, and all of our kids went, Lee took the oldest three of his kids, and a couple of brave uncles... Brayden and Jared. This place was CRAZY!! You go down a small canyon, zig-zagging between the trees. Once you start, you really can't stop your sled, unless you crash. There are a couple of jumps, and some curves that, if you take them too fast, also cause you to flip, roll, crash... you get the idea. The kids went first, and on the first run, the inner tube that Stevie was riding popped. I was the first adult to go, I really didn't have control the whole way, I hit a jump at the end and landed on the side of my face. I'm a little bruised, but no blood. At one point my hubby, Steve and Brayden pulled Jared's hat over his eyes and pushed him down on his tube backwards...not nice! By the end, I had gone down 5 times, the last two times, I learned to control my sled and had a blast!!

All The pictures I have are from the top of the hill. I didn't dare take my camera down the hill, I thought I'd break it. It's really hard getting good pictures from the top of a canyon.Steve stood at the top and threw snow balls at people as they would go by. At one point, Kaylea got plastered by an armful of snow.

Twenty Years!

Twenty years ago Steve and I were married. I thought it would be fun to post a picture of my wedding day.

Steve and I have definitely changed over the years, our lives have also changed quite a bit. We have added 4 kids to the family. We've moved about 12 times, purchased 4 houses and a duplex. We have lived in Washington, Colorado, and Utah. We have started and sold 3 businesses. Adopted 5 dogs, 10 horses, and a canary. We have dealt with dance, singing, basketball, football, pre-school, soccer, gymnastics, plays, piano, trumpet... man we've been busy!

I am so blessed to have married such an amazing man. He has always been so thoughtful of me and has kept life exciting. It's a great place to be when you can say after twenty years, I still love spending time with you. We still make each other laugh. I can't wait to see what the future holds.

Who needs Marie Callendar's?

I like using leftover roast to make a meat pie. Usually I buy a Marie Callendar's frozen pie crust, it's soo good. But today I thought, "What the heck? Pie crust can't be that hard to make." Well, pie crust is easy to make, and easy to cook, but putting it on top of the pie and making it look good is the problem. This was extremely difficult for me. But it tastes YUMMY!! I just wanted to show you all how pathetic I still am in the kitchen.
I didn't take a picture of the finished product, it was gone too fast.

Conner is a Champion!

I said before that Conner's football team took the state championships, and it would be in the paper soon. Here is the article. I don't think you will be able to read it, but it's pretty fun. Conner is on the front row, right in the center. I ordered a highlight DVD, and there are a couple of good sacks by Conner, an interception, and a TOUCHDOWN!

Next comes Junior Jazz, starting right after the Christmas Holiday. Conner and Steve will both be playing.

Temple Square

We decided to take the young women in our ward to see the lights on Temple Square. That was no small undertaking. We ended up having around 30 people there, and had a blast. We drove to a place where we could take the Trax train for free. Then rode Trax to Temple Square. We had dinner at the Lion House Pantry, which was served cafeteria style. Walked around looking at the lights. Then rode Trax back to the cars and drove home. It got crazy there for a while trying to keep track of all the girls, but I think everyone had a great time.

Most of the girls on Trax, we filled the whole train car.

Waiting to go in for dinner.

All the girls... unless we lost some...wandering around... all alone.

These are the leaders.
Waiting for the train to take us home.

Setting up Christmas

It's sure nice as the kids get older to have them help with setting up Christmas. We decided to do it on Monday night for family night. I just let them put things where they like, I'm not that picky. The inside of the house is done, and there's a wreath on the front door. I'm not sure if there will be any lights outside this year.
Everyone hates my clear plastic angel for the top of the tree. They think it's freaky. They put it up just to make me happy, but they tease me about it. As you can tell, everyone had a fun time.

Christmas Dinner

I must admit, it's hard finding just the right gift for people. Steve has 5 brothers, and for the past few years, Steve's parents decided that instead of trying to figure out a Christmas gift to place under the tree for each of their sons and daughters-in-law, they would prefer to take us all to a nice dinner and spend time together as a family. I personally think it's a great idea! This year they took us to Little America. I must say, I think it was the nicest place we have gone yet. We were missing one brother, Todd and his wife Denise. He was spending time with his own family before he had to go out of town. But everyone else was there, and we had a really nice time.

Visitors

I got a message just before Thanksgiving that my Great-Aunt, Bessie, and her daughter, Sidney, would be coming into town for a funeral. Bessie's sister-in-law had passed away. She lived in the town just next to us. I was very excited to have them stay with me because I don't get a lot of visitors. Aunt Bessie owns a bee farm and makes honey candy, they brought me a box of honey taffy, and truffles. They were so good!! I think I'm addicted to honey truffles. They spent Friday and Saturday, and left Sunday morning. It was really nice spending time with them.

I forgot to take pictures while they were here, I don't know what my problem is, but here is a picture I have of Sidney and her husband, Laurence, with Aunt Bessie and my parents.

Happy Thanksgiving

This year, Thanksgiving was held at Steve's parents house. It was really nice spending the day with his brothers and their families. Everyone pitched in with the food, so it wasn't a lot of work for anyone. The weather was amazing, so the kids played games outside for most of the day. Conner was even playing in the dark for a while. Conner and Kaylea got to spend the weekend with their cousins. I think they both had a really nice time. I forgot my camera, so here are a few pictures I stole from others in the family. Thanks guys for a great holiday!

Roadshows!!

Our stake had road shows over the weekend. We have about 60 youth in our ward and all of them were in the road show. Our story was about 3 people trying to come up with a road show idea. They would make suggestions and the kids would act them out in the background. We had them do The Sound of Music, Grease, Romeo and Juliet, and West Side Story. Instead of rival gangs in West Side Story, we did another rivalry... BYU/Utah. Our program started at about the same time the real football game ended, so there was a lot of emotion behind our show. Kaylea was the head BYU cheerleader that the UTAH quarterback fell in love with. Steve was the BYU quarterback.

The Sound of Music idea...didn't work because the kids were too hard to control and got in a pillow fight.

Grease scene didn't work because... they couldn't dance. (They actually danced really well!)

Romeo and Juliet didn't work because the actors were too dull and boring at first and after giving them a second chance were too "dramatic".

Sadly, this is the only picture I have of Steve in the roadshow. Jessica took the pictures and couldn't find him. He is wearing a blue wig, and has a "Y" on his shirt. They actuall had several football plays, Steve was tackled once, and caught an interception. He had some key plays in our faux game. Kaylea is arguing with the UTAH head cheerleader.

Kaylea showing her true colors! (I hope!!) She actually came wearing a bright red coat over her costume... I'm confused.
The grand finale. We are about 5 rows deep on the stage. It's hard to see everyone. But they belted out the songs. People didn't have a hard time hearing us at all. It was a fun night.

Family pictures

We took family pictures last week, we had a lot of fun. These were taken right here in town, and our photographer was amazing! I've been comparing this one to the last family picture that is still hanging on our wall in the living room (taken 7 years ago!) my kids have changed so much! They are almost all taller than me, they are all faster than me, and they think they are all smarter than me. Aren't kids great??

Veteran's Day

Every year the 6th graders have a Socail Studies fair. Steve's was on ancient Greece, and Kaylea's was on China. Basically the kids study that area of history for a couple of months, they each write a report, and create a display. This year was Conner's turn, and they learned all about World War II. On Tuesday, Veteran's Day, they had their social studies fair and put up all of their displays. It was really incredible to see all of the work these kids went to. They really knew a lot about WWII. Conner decided to do his report on Grandpa Dickson (his Great-Grandpa) and life on the homefront. Grandpa Dickson was a welder leadman in the shipyards throughout the war. We had Grandma and Grandpa's journal that was kept during 1941 and 1942. Conner got a lot of information out of that journal and some other fun tidbits from Grandma and Grandpa over the phone. He displayed the journal, and printed up some pictures out of the journal to display.

It was fun hearing about rationing, and how they would only drive 35 miles per hour to save the rubber on their tires. There was one of the kids who had a display of the stamps and cards used for rationing, it was so neat to see. Another had several letters on display with the post mark 1946. Many of the kids wrote their reports on their great-grandparents who served in the war. One young girl's report was titled 4 Great- Grandparents, 2 Sides of the War; it told separate stories of her German Grandparents and her American Grandparents. Several of the displays brought tears to my eyes, I'm so thankful these kids are learning about this, I felt like it made Conner feel closer to his Great- Grandpa, and it was so appropriate to hold this on Veteran's Day.

Erin came with me and brought her kids, I think they thought it was really neat. Corban really liked the airplanes and Gabby liked everything made out of clay (especially the bright colored ones). I'm proud of Conner for his hard work.

Celebration!!

STATE CHAMPIONS!!

Today was the state championships for little league football. Conner is #27, he had some amazing plays. They played against Hillcrest, and won 33 to 6.

Our team mothers really take care of the boys. They brought football cookies and drinks for the boys after the game. On the last practice of the week they painted everyone's car windows with the boys' names, number and "take state". The team was really pumped up for this game.

At the end of the game they took a team photo. This will be in the local paper in the next week or so. This team has taken state 4 years in a row, that is why all the boys are holding up 4 fingers. Conner played with this team 2 of the 4 years, but he still liked to brag about 4 state championships. He says they broke a "World Record" for state championships...I'll have to look that one up.

The funnest part about living in a small town is the small town fire department and police department. They really care about the boys, and take the time to celebrate with us. They took the boys on a ride through town on the back of a fire truck with sirens blasting. All of the parents followed behind honking our horns. People came out and waved, cars going the other direction would honk and wave too. I think the boys had a great time.

I took about 5 pictures of conner on the back of the fire truck, he kept hiding behind his friends and turning around backwards. This is the only one that turned out okay.

There's no place like home

I went out back to feed the horses today and when I threw out the hay they didn't seem too excited to come and eat. I looked in the field behind my house to see what the horses were so interrested in, and saw a herd of deer. I counted eight. I just love living in the country.