A Happy one

This Christmas came and went pretty quickly. It's definitely fun to have a child around this time of the year. I'll hear him randomly singing Jingle Bells or Santa Claus is coming to town and it makes me laugh inside. Among all of the gifts I did try to remind Cody that it is Jesus's Birthday and that is why we have presents but I think he got lost in opening the presents during that.

Santa turned my boys into skaters this year and got me ready for more convenient exercising...big surprise! Santa gave both Daniel and Cody skateboards. Cody loves going out everyday and practicing. He surprisingly is doing well and we've seen a bit of an athlete in him yet even though he's taken a few good spills on the back and butt.

Cody made out pretty well this Christmas and has been pretty entertained with all the toys. Lets just say that Cody's gifts this year took up half of the couch. Unfortunately he left his much loved light saber in the shopping cart at K-mart today and by the time we got back to the store it was gone. He has been pretty bummed about that.

Cody with his gifts from Santa

Daniel also got a new pack for hiking since he, his brothers and Dad are going to be climbing Mt. Whitney this year. Good luck to them!

We thank our family and friends for the wonderful cards, gifts and time spent together this holiday season. As the economy has hit many of us hard, we've been very lucky this year not to experience the loss of job and our hearts and thoughts go out to the many who did and are in tuff situations this past year. We truly hope this next year will be better for everyone.

Lets make it a healthy and happy new year!

What do you do 2 weeks before Christmas?

The past few weeks have been pretty busy here at our home. With Christmas just a couple of weeks away I really felt the pressure to get everything done so I was over half finished with my Christmas shopping...phew...but had many more things to do!

We spent about half a day trying to figure out what to do for a family picture for our Christmas card. This was not the final picture but this was where we started off in the morning on a damp/rainy day. My hair was nice and straight, Cody was all smiles, clean, and Daniel was not upset, and bribing Cody that if he could sit still and smile for one more picture (which was actually like 10 more pictures) he could have a sucker.

Cody had fun taking pictures with me but when it came to a family picture...forget it! As you can see in the picture my hair started getting wavy from the damp air quickly

The Young Women's President at church was out of town for a couple of weeks and it was my month to conduct in Young Women's and teach the first Sunday of the month. I made some ornaments that I used for my lesson about doing good works this month.

Cody and I also made some other ornaments. Cody had fun painting his ornament but eventually dropped, and broke it.

We had a fun Santa visit at our ward Christmas party. Cody was pretty excited this year to tell Santa what he wanted. We are having a Wall-E obsession this year.

Daniel got the lights put up outside quickly and we had to find a tree, decorate and of course Cody had to put the star on top of the tree before any decor was put on.

We made our annual goodies this year. This is Cody frosting a sugar cookie and about to lick the frosting off his hand. We made about 4-5 dozen this year, along with fudge, chocolate dipped pretzels, and Daniel made his famous homemade salsa to distribute. One of my larger projects though this year was to make our 12 young women fleece, knot tied blankets. I did about one a day, some days two. I didn't get any pictures of me actually cutting and tying the blankets, but all of the work was worth it when the girls opened them up and really liked them.
Other than that, it was just the final shopping details I had to finish for the family and try to stay dry (from the rain) while doing that. It was great getting people's Christmas cards in the mail also! We can officially say that we are ready for Christmas. How about you???

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Man in Uniform

Daniel's department (SAFD) had their 125th Anniversary. The city had surrounding cities cover the stations so that all of the guys could dress up in their class A uniforms and take pictures. It was kind of a big deal so I decided to catch Daniel before he changed and took my own pictures since I probably won't see him in his class A uniform again for who knows how long. Nothing like a man in uniform!

Mom, you would be so proud of me! I had to take the hem out and let his pants down so he wasn't flooding. They turned out pretty good. My first real hem job. All of those years I never wanted to sew...who knew!!

My future firefighter??

Trying to help out

Last night I had Daniel come help me set up tables for our Young women's activity and Cody was playing with his little girlfriend, Belen. He was pushing a metal serving cart from the church kitchen and chasing it. Sure enough...he tripped and hit his eye on the corner. I heard him crying from the other room and came running when I heard that it wasn't just your average cry. He cut his eyebrow open. Daniel had already done his own assessment of course and we decided that he needed to go to the ER and get stitches. I stayed at Young Women's and Daniel volunteered to take him. They left about 7:00 and didn't get home until after 11:00. Cody was pretty brave until the mention of the word "shot" came up in our conversation. We popped a sucker in his mouth and all was good until the Dr. went in to stitch up. They ended up only doing one stitch and they glued the rest shut. Never a dull moment for Mommy's with little boys!!

Week in Utah

A week in Utah...where to begin? Lets just start off by saying that there was NO snow! Of course, for me that was a dream come true! Unfortunately for my two boys it was a bit of a disappointment. One of the big highlights was we got to take Cody on the Polar Express train ride. It was his first time on a train and he really liked it. Not to mention the hot chocolate, the chocolate chip cookie, a visit from Mrs. Claus and Santa himself. They gave out little bells, sang lots of songs, the conductor came around and punched the tickets and we read the story "Polar Express". Not too shabby!

Cody was very happy to get some Polar Express PJ's and kept his ticket.

After the train ride we hit up McDonald's and they had FREE air hockey, video games, and a two shooter basketball game. Cody had a blast and I think my Dad enjoyed the free games also. I'd like to know why we don't have free games here!!

Another fun activity was playing Wii. My Uncle and aunt (Alan and Rendi) came to my parents for a few days and brought their Wii system. I must say I was amazed that I did really well bowling (I usually not good at the real game) and even beat my aunt Rendi at 3 rounds of boxing (which I think was pure luck) and was pretty sore the next few days. Cody even liked playing it. Daniel loved every minute of it has now decided that he would like the Wii but that will have to wait until a money tree grows in our backyard!

Daniel boxing with my cousin Spencer.

One of my highlights was craft shopping and attending a card making class with my Mom, aunt Rendi and aunt Laura that my Aunt Kathy taught. I am such a newbie at that stuff but I love it. My Aunt Rendi and I saw some really cute paper flowers on display at the class and decided to take on the challenge. After a lot of frustration we managed to whip out a few.

Cody, Brendan and Spencer had fun with the paper cutters. Cody loved having kids to wrestle and play with.

Another highlight of mine was getting to know my nephew, Lincoln and his new little sister, Amelia better. I truly love having nephews and nieces! Lincoln has to be the happiest little boy I've seen and is at such a good age to play with. I was so happy to meet Amelia and get such a cute picture of her smiling. She's such a sweetheart! And just so my sis-in-law knows, I didn't mind her crying one bit!!! We also got to spend more time with my crazy and funny brother Colby and his girlfriend, Emily. Colby was also such a good sport and hit the mountain with Daniel one day to try for a day of snowboarding even though all there was up there was ice and both Daniel and Colby ended up getting a bit sore. Thanks for being a trooper Colby, especially with all the reading and homework that had to be done that week!

We got to visit my old college roommate, Kim, who recently had a little baby boy. I love keeping in contact with my college friends who live all over the place. We got to catch up and I got to hold the baby and enjoy that new baby smell since it's been so long for me.

My parents arranged a date night for Daniel and I and we got to see the play "Savior of the World" which was nice. We were able to make a quick trip to Provo to see and wish Daniel's sister a happy birthday.

We had a great visit with all of the uncles and aunts that came by and stayed, and the Great Grandparents too. Cody loved great Grandma and Grandpa Bell. Thanks to my Mom we got to have an early Thanksgiving dinner and it was yummy as usual! We got to watch BYU's football team get destroyed by University of Utah which was a bummer. I got to enjoy shopping with my Mom (she says I wore her out) and enjoy my Mom's cooking once again which I always look forward to. My Dad is a fun guy and I enjoy our talks about life. We had a good time and maybe next time there will be snow for my boys and Daniel can take Cody snowboarding.

Cool giveaways

For anyone who is interested there is an website http://www.betterhomeinteriors.com/ that is having giveaways. (This is the place that I ordered the witch letters from for our activity at church and has really cute other projects on her website). This months giveaway is one of those totally cute plexi frames. All you have to do is leave a comment on her blog about it to be entered!! Too easy!

Too Much on the Brain

Does anyone know how to turn your brain off at night?
Here's my recent situation... We are all in the bed watching TV. Daniel falls asleep, Cody falls asleep. I put Cody in his bed and then ahhh... finally quiet. But wait why is my heart beating faster? Okay I'll just lay here for awhile and I am sure I will calm down and fall asleep...an hour later...what the heck I have been thinking about everything under the sun including thinking of calming down so I can go to sleep!!! Should I go take a sleep aid pill...well I am sure if I lay here a bit longer and concentrate on going to sleep it will happen. 1/2 hour later...ugh...what is my problem, why won't my mind turn off. Now if I take a sleeping aid it will be hard to wake up in the morning and I need to have enough time to get up and either shower before I take Cody to school or decide if I am going to go to the gym and fight the other mean Nazi women for a spin bike. Oh, and don't forget to make him a lunch and remember his homework...oh, do I want to go to the gym...I don't know. I guess I will just wait and see how I feel in the morning. Is there anything I need to do tomorrow while Cody is in school? Oh wait, I am suppose to be focusing on trying to get to sleep!! Okay so I was told to think of somewhere that was relaxing when I was a child...okay...why is the only thing that comes to mind is laying on the crazy pink shag carpet in my room when I was 6??? Weird. Okay, bag this idea. I guess I will just go take a sleep aid pill. After taking the sleep aid I now lay in bed thinking more for about another 45 min. until I finally feel tired and fall asleep!! PLEASE, does anyone have any suggestions?? I am getting desperate!

Going Country!

Daniel surprised me yesterday by bringing home tickets to see Carrie Underwood. I am a big fan of hers since American Idol and love her voice. We had pretty good seats and needless to say she put on a great show and sounded awesome. She's got a crazy good range. She actually sang an old Guns and Roses song too! It was tons of fun. We took the metro line downtown to the Nokia Theatre, a new experience...but turned out well. I guess I am turning into a true country girl. The more I listen to it, the more I love it. Good old fun, patriotic, clean(for the most part) music.

Happy Halloween

This year after going back and forth between Buzz Light-year (he was last year) and Handy Manny I finally made Cody wear Handy Manny since we invested in the costume and he had already worn it around the house one day. We carved pumpkins a few nights before Halloween but because of the crazy warm, moist air they were nice and moldy for Halloween night. Cody's pretty much was a mush pile and he was pretty bummed. We made the rounds on our block and right as we came home Autumn, Ryan and the boys had arrived to play a bit. All of the boys had fun running around and eating candy. By 8:30-9:00pm Cody was telling me that he was ready to come inside. I couldn't complain. We were out of candy by then anyways.

Cody drew the face on his pumpkin this year

Cody as Handy Manny

Cody and Mommy's pumpkins


Daniel's pumpkin

Tyler, Cody and Porter...a bunch of cheezers


Porter-Indian Jones and Phearson-skeleton/Pirate
Little Tav

Pumpkin patch with Grandma and Grandpa Bell

We took a trip to Pa's Pumpkin patch while Grandma and Grandpa Bell were in town. The boys loved having them here. We also had our Aunt Rendi here on business and Colby and his girlfriend Emily came to visit all at the same time. Needless to say the out of state family wanted to go out and have some fun while here. We had our ward harvest festival which all went to. Cody wasn't feeling too good but we thought we'd try to take him anyways...big mistake. Cody threw up all over me so we headed home. The rest of the crowd (besides grandma and grandpa) went out to Knott's Scary Farm. We hear that was quite an interesting time...long lines and a weird pole dancing haunted house. I think we were glad we had to stay home after all. Grandma Bell ended up returning back to Cali the following week to help Autumn take care of the boys while Ryan worked out of town so the boys got their fill!! Cody isn't asking everyday to see grandma! As cute as that was...it was getting old. We are planing a trip to Utah in a few weeks and Cody is excited to play in the snow. This is my favorite time of the year and as soon as our fall weather returns, I will be happy!! Although I may gain about 5 lbs from all of the candy corn pumpkins I eat!! We hope everyone has a fun, safe Halloween.

The boys with their grandma and grandpa Bell

The boys watching the rides

Colby and Daniel

Aunt Rendi bought Carmel corn and all of the kids took it over

Grandpa Bell giving Phearson Carmel corn...lots of it that night!

playing on the pumpkins

Cody excited to drive the train and ring the bell

Porter and Phearson riding the train

Colby brought his girlfriend Emily to meet his crazy family in Cali

Colby and Emily