The best of 2008

This is my final post for the year 2008. Thanks for the tag Krissi. It was fun reminiscing about the events of the past year.

Here goes:

My Top 12 events of 2008
1. We purchased our first SUV. It became a necessity for me, when I got stuck in the snow for 3 hours in my van.

2. I received the calling as Primary Chorister - for the first time ever. I guess they think since you can play the piano then you can also lead. It's been a lot of fun. The kids are great.

3. I was finally able to have all my varicose veins treated. Although a long and painful process, definitely worth it in the end.

4. Our third child, Megan was baptized. We had a great experience and it was a lot of fun to have all the family together in one place.

5. We made our summer trip to California and had a very memorable time. We visited with lots of friends and family, and we even made it up to Sacramento to our old stomping grounds. Great fun!!

6. We took Jill and Kevin to Magic Mountain for the first time. What a blast!

7. Camping at Bear Lake for the first time was a definite hit. It made it even better to be there with family. I think it will become a fun tradition every year.

8. Our youngest, Holly, started first grade which means that all of our kids are in school all day. Wow!! I was able to start substituting in the schools. Fun times.

9. Our oldest, Jill, became a teenager this year. She's a great kid. Teenagers are actually pretty nice people.

10. I was able to pull off the first ever, real surprise for Zaron for his birthday. Very fun!

11. Kevin started and ended his first successful football season injury free.

12. I watched a marathon for the first time and what made it even more memorable was my sister ran it and very successfully. It was her first marathon. Great job Sis! I also ran in my second 5k race and didn't do too badly.

Bonus event #13 (I know I said 12, but 13 is such a lucky number.)
We enjoyed a very nice Thanksgiving and Christmas with lots of family this year and we made lots of great memories. I learned that you can brine a turkey successfully as long as it's cold enough outside and you have an ice chest large enough to hold it.

2008 was Great! Bring it on 2009!

One of life's happy moments

Yesterday, Zaron and I decided to take advantage of some of his free time off from work. We went to Salt Lake and attended the temple and then went to lunch at The Garden. We had a very nice time. When we returned that afternoon, as we drove up to our house, we saw all four of our kids out in their snow clothes playing together in the snow. It was a happy sight to see.

This picture doesn't show it very well, but the mounds of snow in front of our house are "ginormous".

One of Life's happy moments!

Baby what a big surprise!

Boy were we surprised seven years ago when Holly was born. Not surprised that we were having a baby of course, but surprised that she was a girl.

When I was pregnant with each of my kids, I never had an ultrasound to find out the sex of the baby. I just always had a strong feeling about what it was going to be. I was always right.....up until Holly. I was so sure that it was going to be a boy that I had filled the changing table with all the baby boy clothes and hadn't even considered a girl's name. I even told all the nurses when we got to the hospital that we were having a boy and his name was going to be Kyle. I could not have been more surprised when she was born and the doctor said, "it's a girl". I, of course, was very excited, but the first thing I had to do was call my mom who was at our house with the rest of our kids and ask her to dig out the baby girl clothes and wash them and bring an outfit to the hospital with a pink blanket.

So, as Zaron left the hospital to grab some dinner after Holly was born, he turned on the radio, and no joking, the song that was playing was "Baby what a big surprise" by Chicago. He just had to laugh.

Holly continues to surprise us. She is such a joy to have in our family. She is all girl and a total princess. She keeps us laughing.

I love the baby mohawk!!

What a cutie pie!

We celebrated Holly's birthday on Saturday by going to Jump On It. It was such a blast. Who would've thought that jumping in a room full of trampolines for an hour could be so much fun and so exhausting.






What's a birthday without lunch at Chadders?! Delicious!

Holly is a girl after my own heart. She doesn't care for cake, so each year for her birthday she asks for donuts. Yummy!

Happy 7th Birthday Holly!! We love you!!

Let it snow! Let it blizzard! Let it snow!

Okay, so I know I live in a state where it snows, but sometimes I wish it wouldn't so much. Yesterday, Jill and I were supposed to meet my Sister-in-law and her daughter in Salt Lake. We were going to go to the movies (to see Twilight, of course), and go out to dinner. It was going to be perfect. We were supposed to meet for the 4:00 showing at the Gateway. My plan was to help with Kevin's class party from 1:00 - 2:00, then send my three youngest home on the bus, pick up Jill from school at 2:15, and then head into Salt Lake.

I left for Kevin's party and the sky was actually partially blue and the sun was starting to peek out. It was perfect.....Or so I thought. That perfectness all changed in a matter of 20 minutes. It seriously started to blizzard like nobody's business. It was nasty. The wind was blowing, the snow was falling, the visibility was zero. I however, was not going to let a huge blizzard keep us from our plans.

I knew when it took me 30 minutes to get to Jill's school, which was two miles away, that our plans were headed downhill, and fast. It was inevitable; the snow was getting the better of me. What makes the story even better (or worse) is that I had called Jill's school so they could tell her not to ride the bus (Jill wasn't aware of the plans when she left for school), and they said they couldn't tell her. What? Are you kidding me! How lame is that. So, unfortunately, by the time I made it to the school, Jill was already on some bus, somewhere. At this point, I was just hoping that I made it home before midnight. The streets were serious parking lots. So, much to our dismay, Jill and I obviously never made it to Salt Lake.

It's just really frustrating when you really want to do something, and then something completely out of your control (like a dang blizzard), keeps you from doing it.

Oh well, what do you do? You go to Little Caesars and get $5 pizzas and bread sticks. That's what we did. Delicious!

I love Christmas

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. I love just about everything about it. I love the feelings of Christmas, the hustle and bustle, the surprises, the songs, the goodies, the presents, the Christmas movies, the lights, etc.... There's only one thing about Christmas that I don't care for. And that is the Christmas traffic. We encountered that Christmas traffic last night on our way to Temple Square to see the lights. It was pretty bad (I don't think it had anything to do with the Tabernacle Choir concert that was going on last night). It would of made for a bad mood had it not been for the Christmas music that we were listening to and the fun people that we were with. Once inside Temple Square, all the traffic and the fact that we had to park 6 blocks away were forgotten. The lights were so beautiful and well worth the tradition. I am always amazed at how perfect the lights and nativities look. It is so fun. It was a bonus to be there with my sister in law and her kids (minus my brother and their youngest, who unfortunately got sick on the way to the temple and they had to turn around to take them back home). We always have such a great time together. This tradition is definitely a keeper. Thanks guys for the great time. We look forward to next year!

Note to self: Next year, park the car in Sandy and ride Trax into Salt Lake. Fun!!

Dear Santa......

Holly came home from school yesterday with the cutest letter that she had written to Santa.

Dear Santa,

How are you? I am great. How is your job and how is Mrs. Claus? How are the reindeer? I hope you have a good Christmas. Thank you for all the presents that you gave me last year. I have been good this year. Please bring me a snow globe. I hope you have a Merry Christmas.

Love, Holly

I wish all my kids could stay this little and innocent forever. Okay, maybe not forever, but for longer than they do. I can't believe my baby is going to be in second grade next year and my oldest is going to be in high school. Life goes too fast sometimes.

I guess that's why we need to enjoy the journey.

Enjoy your journey today!!!

We survived the gingerbread house.....barely

Whoever said that making a gingerbread house with your family would bring you closer together? Well, maybe no one has ever said that. Actually, no one should ever say that. I bought a gingerbread house kit last year around this time with the hopes of making it with my kids. Well, I kept putting it off and putting it off until July when I looked in the pantry, saw the box and realized "Oh hey, we never put that house together". And I threw the box away. Well, today at the store I bought another one and decided that we'd put it together tonight for family night. What a great idea! I've been trying to start new traditions with my family so I thought this could be one of them. After tonight's experience, I'm seriously rethinking this tradition.

After dinner, we quickly cleaned off the table, turned on the Christmas music and opened the gingerbread house kit box.

Oh, and then it began..... "Stop touching!", "Get away!", "When do I get a turn!", "I said stop touching!", "Don't put that there!", "What are you doing!", "I don't want to put that there!", "Be quiet!", "Why are we doing this anyway!", "You're not my boss!".....

I'm sure you get the idea.

I wanted to get a picture of the kids with their masterpiece,

their very first gingerbread house.

Well, as you'll see it was a process to get that picture.

Ignore the blurriness in some of the pictures; the camera was acting up. It couldn't have had anything to do with the person taking the pictures.

Ta-Da

Now on to finding more new traditions! Wish me luck!