Just an idea...

Before everyone goes nuts with all the early Christmas shopping tomorrow morning, I just thought I would share an idea that we have used for a few Christmases now.  It is so easy to go overboard with gifts and forget why we even give them.  I heard this idea from a neighbor and thought it was so smart.  So, here it is...

Three Gifts; The idea of giving three gifts reminiscent of the three wise men.

Gold

The gift of wonder 

Wrapping paper color: Gold

This would be the one gift that your child can't live without.  This could be a toy, a planned outing, a season pass...

Frankinsence

The gift of meaning

Wrapping paper color:  Red

This would be a gift that expresses meaning.  This could be a scrapbook, a quilt, a special heirloom, jewelry, new temple clothes, treasure box, etc.

Myrrh

The gift of usefulness

Wrapping paper color:  Green

This would be a gift that is truly needed.  This could be a coat, new shoes, something practical yet worthwhile.

Kelly and I have tried to do this for a few years and I have been so grateful for this idea.  You can interpret the gifts however you want.  For example, last year Kelly gave me a new phone for my green gift.  I gave my boys their own journals (for me to write in about them) a couple years ago for their red gift.  You can go however big or small you want with each gift.  In the past I have used this as a shopping guideline and  we haven't actually used the colors of wrapping paper, but this year we will.  I look forward to explaining to my kids why the colors and what they are reminiscent of now that they are getting a little bit older.  I want them to know that we exchange gifts to remember that Jesus was given gifts, not just because Santa brings them.  I told my boys that we would write Santa a letter and tell him that we have a lot of toys already and that he could bring us stockings with some toys in them and to take the rest of the toys to some other kids houses.  It will be nice to have a more simple Christmas and think about the real meaning of Christmas.  The economy isn't exactly great right now and that makes this program even easier to follow :)  

Anyway, I just wanted to share...  Happy Thanksgiving and happy shopping!! 

tagged!

I got tagged by my cute friend Michelle, so here goes...

The rules

1. post the rules

2. Answer the six "8" items

3. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 Favorite TV Shows:

1.  The Office

2.  Arrested Development

3.  So You Think You Can Dance

4.  Extreme Makeover

5.  America's Next Top Model

6.  Biggest loser  

7.  I can't really think of anything else...

8.

8 Things I did yesterday

1.  cleaned my house

2.  made broccoli soup

3.  shopped at the outlets with the kiddos

4.  hung out at Lori's house

5.  went to the grocery store

6.  asked my sweet husband to clean out the vapo rub from Camden's hair  (for the 2nd time)

7.  watched Kung Fu Panda with the fam for a special treat show

8.  went to bed without doing the dishes :(

8 things I am looking forward to

1.  Rocking the NKOTB concert tomorrow

2.  seeing my cute sister from out of town

3.  Next weekend

4.  Casen sleeping through the night

5.  moving to a place with no snow

6.  the hollidays with my family

7.  Angie and her cute family coming to visit

8.  Camden being potty trained

8 favorite restaurants

1.  Fresh Choice

2.  Cafe Rio

3.  Bajio

4.  Tepanyaki

5.  Pizza Factory

6.  Olive Garden

7.  Hogi Yogi

8.  Mimi's Cafe

8 Things on my wish list

1.  Happy and obedient kids (Forever Family)

2.  Kelly to be done with school and have his own company

3.  To be comfortable financially, with no debt!

4.  lose 30 pounds

5.   A car that doesn't make regular stops at the shop

6.  To be a better teacher to my kids

7.  To have more patience

8.  To be more organized

8 People I tag

1.  Lori Muse

2.  Angie Haynes

3.  Deanne Hanson

4.  Jessica Howard

5.  Megan Iloa

6.  Diana McKee

7.  Kendra Price

8.  Tami Greene 

casen's blessing (a few weeks ago)

a week before Casen was to be blessed, I realized that his blessing outfit was going to be a little snug on my quickly growing baby. Auntie Lori agreed to come take a few pictures of him in it just in case he outgrew it completly before the blessing. I asked Kelly to dress him while Lori and I got ready to do pictures. When I came down to get him, this is what I found. Kelly was confused why my mom had bought such a plain blessing outfit. Hmmm, I asked if he usually wore his tie going down his back, probably not! Lori and I decided this would be a great outfit for Thanksgiving day, lots of extra tummy room. Thanks to Kelly for trying :)

Auntie Kellie came from St. George for the weekend. She is recovering really well from her eye surgery and we were so happy to have her here!

Amber and her family came from Lake Havasu (sp?) for the weekend. We miss them so much and were so happy they could make it!!

Sue and Jonny also came for the blessing, we are so blessed to have such wonderful friends!

Grammy Dee, Gary Ronald, and Casen Gary

Grandpa Jim and Grandma Sandra with Casen.

Great Grammy Lois with great grandchild #21! (and four more on the way by April!) Casen is sending out a message of peace, word up!

All the Ladies of the family. We had such a wonderful day! Kelly gave Casen a beautiful blessing and then we got to enjoy the boys in the Primary Program. After church we ate some food with fam and friends and then later celebrated Tyler's 24th birthday. I am not so sure why I don't have any pictures of the birthday boy? Big thanks to everyone who came and supported our little guy on his special day. (Thanks to all of you who would have come if you could have, we still felt the love!!)

Not exactly rated G, but so funny!

My sister showed me this video and I was totally cracking up!! It's is a bit more racy than most of my posts, but if you are feeling a little more on the wild side, I suggest you watch!! :)

If this video is offensive to you, I am REALLY sorry!

Friend Recipe Blog

Ok, many of you know how much I HATE to come up with menus! I have a recipe blog with my family that has been great, but I was thinking that as friends (especially since we have kids to feed) it would be fun to have a place that is fast and easy to share recipes with each other. So, if you are interested I have created a blogger account for this very purpose! Please ANYONE with a yummy recipe contribute! The address is www.feednthefam.blogspot.com and the username is feednthefam@gmail and password is lovetoeat. Anyway, if we can share the yummy stuff that our families like to eat and that aren't too complicated to make, life could be so much easier!!

Don't forget to use your right to vote today!! We are so blessed to have so many freedoms at the cost of brave American's lives, use your freedom for good and VOTE TODAY!!

Party, party, party halloween style

We started off the Halloween party times at the boys "library school" halloween party. Yeah, I'm a good mom and I don't have Kaiden in preschool right now, so library time is part of his feeling like he has a cool place to learn like Keagan. The party was awesome! There must have been about 75 kids all dressed up so cute. The kids had a blast and Casen was looking oh so chubbaliscious in his cow/dalmation hybrid outfit!

Princess Miss Sally was having a little trouble with her not so beautiful teeth, so the dentist came to save her and teach the kids about dental hygene during the hollidays. So cute! (The kids all got toothbrushes as one of the game centers too)

Kaiden rocked the beanbag toss! He threw the beanbags in the hole every time! Go Kaid!

On Thursday we headed over to the school district carnival. I couldn't believe how huge it was! The kids were so excited! Tickets were .50 ea (one ticket per booth) so we bought enough for the kids to play for a while, not a single booth asked for tickets. Nice, well at least we contributed to the school district right? :)

Camden and Kelly leaving the haunted house

Keags and Kaid getting off the huge shark bouncer slide.

Keags and Kaid rockin the cake walk, they only won smartie consolation prizes both times, but had lots of fun anyway.
Hurray! Finally it's halloween day! What better way to start the day than pumpkin pan-ko-pakes and green scrambled eggs! YUM YUM!

I was lucky enough to spend the day at the dentist making my week and a half grand total of dentist time 13.5 hours! Yeah crappy teeth! Huge thanks to my mom and lori for helping out so much with my kiddos!! Luckily I got home just in time to head over to lori's for a spooktacular halloween dinner! She made these super cute skull bread bowls complete with spagetti hair and bone chunk soup, and super cute chocolate covered marshmallow spiders. Keagan refused to eat for a long time, finally he confessed that he wasn't sure what it was and that's why he wasn't eating. i assured it was real food, and just potatoes, then he was ok. :)

For dessert, because you definetly need dessert before you go trick-or-treating right, I made martian treats. Yum yum!

After our fabulous dinner we got ready to head out when Keagan announced that he would not be wearing his costume! Great! This, we figured out, is the reason he was up half the night with nightmares. Yeah, I am a good mom buying super scary and disturbing costumes. Anyway, luckily Ethan was a super good sport and made a last minute switch for batman. Thank goodness for Ethan, he saved Halloween!

Kelly decided he would be a busted up BYU football player. Nice. Too bad my dad took all the football pads and helmets to the dump the day before. Oops. Still, it was pretty funny! He couldn't find a byu shirt, so he decided to make a stencil and spray paint byu on the shirt. It obviously didn't work, but we were all getting high from the paint fumes in his shirt. He opted for some white tape and just made a Y.

This is my last minute attempt at dressing up, and my sleepy little froggy

Here is Ethan in Keagan's costume. Can't imagine why Keagan was scared of it, can you??? It's just so cute ;)

Keagan as batman. Whoever made those bat ears is my hero!

The boys of Halloween. Kaiden kept taking off his blue mask because he didn't like how it kept getting spit in it. YUM! Too bad we didn't have a Michael Jackson costume for him.

Cam getting high on Daddy's shoulders

After some knocking doors, the kids were all done and we headed over to the ward trunk-or-treat. Did I mention this was the first halloween that I was actually sweating carrying my kids. It was wonderful!!

Someone in our ward brought the coolest haunted trailor. It was so funny to watch Camded realize there was a creepy little jason guy right in his face. I love halloween!

Some of our friends brought a cotton candy maker to the trunk-or-treat. Yeah for spun sugar! The kids were loving it!

We ate some yummy chili and corn bread and finally headed home

When we got home, Grammy Dee had a fun little scavenger hunt for the kiddos to do. Yeah for a fun week of sugar and costumes!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!