Christmas!

We went to Richfield for Christmas this year, and it was great to be able to relax and enjoy the day! Our biggest Christmas present is causing to say good-bye to the old..... And say hello to the new!! I think this camera is telling me that it's name is Fritz. We've had a joyous 5 days together so far, and we look forward to great times in the future! Steven got a doodle-pro from Santa and had a great time!

Cute new Christmas outfit

Slow and steady..the way to open christmas presents I guess!

Cute new jammies!

Christmas #2 - Rowley Family Style

The Rowley's had their annual Christmas shin-dig on Friday and Saturday after Christmas this year. It was fun to have everyone together! I think there are 34 of us now, so it was kind of exciting!

Here is the cute little Hayley in the very popular reindeer antlers and nose Steven playing with Hayley on the tramp Playing with Nate's "o-ball"

This year for the first time, we had the grandkids act out the Nativity. They did a GREAT job :)

Mary, Joseph and their awesome donkey

The angels singing to the shepherds and their sheep

The donkey listening intently :)

Our three Wise Guys :)

Here is one of the adorable angel costumes

Mary, a Shepherd, and a Wise Man

Jeff, Nate, and I doing crazy faces :)

Steven playing with his new toy from his cousin

air soft guns seemed to be the big hit present this year with all the nephews

Darrell's Christmas gift :) It wasn't really a gun. There was a shirt in the gun box. My brother had fun wrapping it though!

Sunday

Sunday was a fun and exciting day, starting with church early at 9:00 a.m. Steven looked cute in his little suit, even though he squints when he sees a camera now! :) He found this black toy thing and stuck it on his nose...it was hilarious, and looks like a lovely little mustache Hanging out with the cousins

On our way home, we stopped in Springville at Grandma and Grandpa Cropper's house. Steven got very spoiled from his aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.

Jana watching closely to see what she gave Steven

Playing with the Elmo's World telephone Grandpa Cropper gave him

He definitely knows what to do with a phone!

Darrell's new blog

Darrell decided to create a blog about learning lessons in finance. Since He basically loves to think about finance he thought he would share some of the things he learns. You are welcome to view his blog at http://learningmyfinance.blogspot.com/. Have a great day! Merry Christmas!

Let it Snow!

Despite the fact that it took me 45 minutes to get to the doctors office this morning, when it should have only taken like 10, I really am loving seeing the snow. I love to look out my window and see how beautiful everything is. I particularly like seeing the snow on the pine trees. They're kind of in the back of the pictures...enjoy!

It's done! Hooray!

So, back in October I was doing some shopping for flannel to make blankets for some of my friends who were expecting. As I was rummaging through the material, I saw this material that said "Quilt me!" (as my sis-in-law told her daughter, "Material talks to Janell!) Anyway, so I bought all the stuff to make a baby quilt thinking this was going to be a piece of cake project for all the ladies to do when I was in Richfield for the deer hunt weekend.

As we began quilting, I decided flannel is about 10 times harder to quilt than tricot....needless to say, we didn't finish the quilt on deer hunt weekend.

Thanks to my fabulous mother, sister, and three of my sis-in-laws, we got a ton of progress done on it that weekend. They came to a decision after working so hard on it that I am not allowed to give it away. My niece, Hayley, loved the doggies on the fabric. She was so cute. (I did make her a pillow that weekend, because I wanted to see something done with my cute cute fabric)

As we got started, it was starting to turn out like I thought it would

Well, after deer hunt weekend, I didn't have much time to work on it, because I knew it would take over my time and I would get behind on homework. However, now that the semester ended last week, it's what I've just been doing with basically all of my time! And this morning, I finally completely finished it! It turned out really cute, if I do say so myself. Steven is in love with it, so we'll see if I pack it away and save it, or give it to him.

This is what the back looks like.

The little steven makes everything better!

Steven makes every day so much fun!! He has decided that he wants the quilt I just finished...we'll see what happens! :)He loves to put on my sunglasses and be a "cool dude"

Not sure what he was doing...but like always, he is cute! This is one of my new favorite pictures. Steven is showing me his teeth and cheesing it pretty good!

This is why Steven got a hair cut this week....

The other morning when I was doing my ab workout, Steven decided he was going to do it with me....this little video was just so cute, I had to share!

Jam Packed Thursday!

Every year around Christmas time, FM100 does mini-concerts at the mall around lunch time with lots of the amazingly talented people from Utah. When I heard on the radio that both Jon Schmidt and VoiceMale were going to be there on Thursday, I knew it was something I wanted to take Steven to! :) So, right when Steven was ready for a nap, we headed up to Sandy to enjoy the Christmas Spirit. We got there late, so we were in the back of all the people, but it was still a lot of fun! Steven really enjoyed listening to and watching Jon play the piano. I think part of his enjoyment was from being able to sit on my shoulders! :) Voicemale did a great job too, but I wasn't able to take a picture, because Steven was starting to get hungry, and I decided that I wanted to go talk to Jon while people were still enjoying the performance. So, I introduced Steven to Jon Schmidt, my favorite modern day pianist. It was cool for Jon to remember me from a shindig Spitty and I lined up when I was in 8th grade, and I was able to talk to him for a bit and get some picture. Shockingly, Steven wasn't afraid of Jon when I asked him to hold him for a picture! Jon and Steven

Then came Thusrday night - Date night! Darrell and I have tried to make going to the Forgotten Carols a Christmas tradition since we got married. We went both years we live in Logan, but didn't think about going this year. However, Saturday night, I was checking the stuff out online and found some tickets for the performance at Cottonwood High School for a great price, so we called up Steven's favorite babysitter, Aunt Sheri, and decided to make it a date night!

As I sat and listened to the beautiful songs from the Carols (and the beautiful tenor voice of Jordan Bluth), I realized it was this sort of thing that really helps me to feel the Christmas Spirit. It really focuses on the birth of Christ, and the importance of letting him into your hearts, bringing you peace, joy, and healing.

I would just like to leave you with some of the words to one of the songs.

Let Him in

Let the joy and hope begin

Let the peace on earth begin

And whether it be in your world today

or a crowded Bethlehem Inn

Find a way, make him room, let Him in

A lil' bit o' Steven

It's been a while since I've really posted, so I thought I would catch up a little bit. We had a delightful Thanksgiving in Murray with the Croppers, and Steven started to think he could become an expert on the stairs. He had so much fun going up and down Melanie's stair cases. Now we just need to help him learn he can't stand up when he's half way up , because he appears to want to topple over. He is just so cute and loves to look out the window and knock. He usually will knock and say "dad dad dad" when he sees the mailman outside. It's so cute. Steven has been officially walking for about 3 weeks now! This is a little video of him at the extended Cropper Thanksgiving dinner having a ball walking all around!

I'm not sure what title my prize for today should be...

The title of this book basically tells it all! :) And...I'm basically a super genuius

....you must hear the story....

I'm not sure if any of you read Amelia Bedelia books when you were younger, but I basically loved them! A running joke I have is teasing Darrell about is his ability to take things SO literally. The last time I did this, I told him I was going to order some Amelia Bedelia books in honor of him. So, I got checking out Ebay, and I bid for what I thought was a set of 10-books in a family album. So I'm thinking someone is just selling ten books that they've had in their own album. I won the bid too, and it was a fabulous deal. I was so excited!

So, the books came today, and I opened them up...and what do I find? 10 copies of the exact same book! And can we guess the title? "Amelia Bedelia's Family Album"

Looks like I'm the one with "Amelia" stamped on their forehead today!

Happy Black Friday!

So, this morning was my first time ever experiencing "Black Friday." I mainly went for the experience, because I've never gone, so I wanted to go this year. I was originally going to meet up with my sis-in-law at Walmart at 5 a.m., but she and her husband got caught in traffic till like 12:30 a.m., and then they didn't get home till really late...so I totally understand how she wanted more sleep. So, at 2 a.m. when I awoke to help Steven, I decided I really didn't want anything from Walmart anyway, so I decided to shoot for an hour later for Target, since they opened at 6, and there actually was something there on a great sale that I wanted to get for Steven.

So..my morning went something like this:

5:40 a.m. - wake up, change my clothes, go out to the car

5:48 a.m.- Park in the parking lot and experience a line something like the one you see in the above picture. I keep walking trying to find an end to the line, which was like 2 blocks long.

5:52 a.m.- Go into Old Navy, since they were smart and opened earlier than 6. I warmed up and checked out some merchandise, but didn't buy anything.

5:58 a.m.- get back in line, and with others by me, talk in wonderment about the people who were crazy enough to have been in line since 2 a.m.

6:00 a.m. - the line starts moving - remarkable fast

6:02 a.m.- Get into Target, where people do not stop speed walking/running. I opt to not follow the crowd and enjoy a leisurely stroll through the clothing department. Hardly a soul around.

(note, during this time, I was again amazed at people who would find the product they were looking for, and practically just throw it in their basket and not even look to see what they are buying.)

6:10 a.m. - find the item I'm looking for, and continue to stroll around non-peopled areas of the store (bedding, clothing, etc).

6:18 a.m. - Get into an express 10 items of less check out line

-wait in line-

6:38 a.m.- decide to jump into a "shorter" line with two ladies behind me that I'd been chatting with for a while.

6:42a.m. - Computer in the line we're in freezes up, so we're stuck in the only non-moving express lane for another while.

6:48 a.m.- manager lady comes to apologize and gives us a $3 off coupon for our purchases.

6:49 - Computer gets fixed and I finally get to buy my item, which already was on a great sale, plus the $3 off.. I ended up paying less than 50% of the original price. Can't beat that!

6:51 a.m. - Exit target leaving the masses behind me. I was smart and parked at the back of the parking lot, so it was an easy escape to the road and on to home.

Now I can say I've done it....it was fun. I may try it again...if I have someone to go be crazy with me!

Cute Cute Steven :)

Steven LOVES to open the phone and will "talk" to Dad. Of course, that's usually when no one is on the phone. If someone is actually trying to talk to him, he'll start pushing all the buttons pn the phone. Tonight, when I was talking to Sheri, I asked him if he wanted to talk to Aunt Sheri, and, of course, he did. It was adorable! He just stood in the middle of the room with the phone up to his ear and after a minute of just grinning, he started to jabber away telling Aunt Sheri about his day. It was so cute, I couldn't help but take some pictures! ( you might even notice Darrell's keys in his left hand)