Week 2

We crossed a few things off of our "must do" list during the second week of December. Unfortunately, we encountered a few things I would like to put on my "never do" list as well.

The MUST DO list:

* Make cookies

Lots and lots of cookies. 16 dozen snickerdooles with cinnamon chips to be exact. I balled them, rolled them in cinnamon and sugar and froze them so I'd be all ready for the cookie exchange the following week. My feet hurt by the time I was done.

* Family Christmas party at the Simpson's

 The week started out strong with a get together with friends.

 

We ate lots of cookies that Meredith made (and this time they weren't the rejects from cookie client orders) and the kids had a candy exchange.

The highlight of the evening, however, was the LIVE performance of the Sound of Music. I can only say that it was about a million times better than whatever was on TV the other night, but that wasn't hard to achieve. Nate's costume kills me!

Spend a day at home doing nothing

I actually felt guilty, but I was seriously burnt out from running around, so I planned a morning at home. And then I invited my very good friend over to spend the morning with me because I knew she wouldn't care if there were dishes in my sink and laundry to be put away. Luke and I adored Allie and we just sat and chatted. I think we should have had a masseuse come in too.

* Temple lights

 

We usually go up with friends, but this year I wanted it to be just our family. It was so fun walking around together and having the kids hold my hand. When we were done with the Christus statue, Luke whispered, "I love you." And as we walked off of the ground back to our car, he said, "Thank you for taking me to the temple, Mommy and Daddy."

 

For dinner we hit up Cafe Rio and ran into my friend Kristin, whose husband was working late, with her kids, so it was like we got the best of both worlds -- temple with family and night with friends.

* Lunch with friends

 

I feel like everyone gets so busy in December and you never get to catch up and just talk. Friday my girlfriends and I spent the morning at the park and then went out to lunch. I really needed to get out of my house because I had been going crazy with the great lice scare of 2013 (see below).

* Gingerbread House making

Usually I buy the kit at Costco and call it good, but this year I decided to try and make them myself. And guess what? Not that hard. I feel so crunchy now. Should I get a cow and pasteurize my own milk now?

 

It did take some time since you have to let the houses set up at first (unless you use a glue gun which I really wanted to do, but Dustin insisted everything be edible), but after that it was smooth sailing. We used all of our leftover Halloween candy that we had saved up. It was actually a lot of fun.

The Christensen's came over to decorate with us and Luke refused to wear clothes. I am grateful for friends who think "underwear only" is a perfectly acceptable dress code.

* Ward Party

The theme this year was a Who-Ville Christmas. It was amazing. I am always in awe of people that can take a ghastly cultural hall and transform it into a magical Christmas village. Ellie dressed Luke and Sadie up like characters from the Grinch. Poor Luke, no one "got" that he was Max. But he looked adorable.

None of my kids wanted to sit on Santa's lap either. I pretty much forced Luke and Sadie to do it.

The play was adorable, but Luke was petrified of the Grinch and spent the  entire thing with his antlers covering his eyes.

* Church

I love Church so much this time of year. I love singing the Christmas carols. I love it when the Primary sings (even when Luke continues to sing "Hosanna" while on the toilet). And I absolutely love my new calling.
* Christmas Lights

So, confession time. Dustin has not put up lights on our house and I don't think he's going to either. Luke asked me the other day why we had to wait so close to Christmas to put up our Christmas decorations on our house. Ummmm, that's never happening.

 

Instead we drive around and look at all the other house's lights. My girlfriend invited us all over for dessert and a trip to a really cool Christmas village. It took her 38 years to collect everything!! My favorite part had to be the picture she took of us. I about died laughing when Maren sent it to me.

OK, maybe it's not as funny now that I've lightened it a little bit. It was literally a big black blob of people. Not that you can tell who anyone is still.


The "I could have lived without" list:

*Shopping

I aim to finish all of my shopping by December 1st. And whatever is left gets done courtesy of Amazon.

I swear everyone gets so crazy this time of year. Every worker just glowers at you. I try and hit everything the second it opens. One day I hit the Post Office, Costco and IKEA one right after the other. I needed a nap that day. But the guest bedroom is ready for the arrival of my parents in just a few more days and the packages are mailed!

* Running kids everywhere

If it were up to me, the kids would stay home every night in December and we'd drink hot chocolate in our PJs and watch Christmas movies. And no homework. I spent all day shopping for a centerpiece and cute table decor for our "red and green" dinner only to realize that Ellie had to be somewhere from 4:45-5:45, Nate from 6-7 and Dustin had to be gone by 7. We had chili instead.

* Having a lice scare

My poor poor girlfriend is going through this right now and had to text all of us after they found some bugs in her son's hair after our boys had all been playing together the day before. I went a little crazy. It may have been 9 pm, but I still crawled into Luke's bed with a flashlight to check and then spent all night researching on the interent. Over the next two days, I washed every single set of bedding in the house. All the towels, pillows, stuffed animals too. Every single item of Luke's clothing. I shaved his head down with a 1 on the razor. I shampooed his head with lice shampoo. I put leave in conditioner meant for  African American hair in his hair. I checked for nits three times a day. I vacuumed every room, couch, and the car. I'm still not 100% relaxed, but so far so good. My house has never been cleaner.

And Luke looks so handsome with no hair.

On the 1st week of Christmas. . .

. . . December gave to me . . .

1 bridal shower

My girlfriend, Malorie, gotten engaged a month ago and we are all so excited for her upcoming wedding. Jill and I hosted her bridal shower and had so much fun doing it.

2 boys at Costco

Luke loves to spend as much time as possible with his best friends, Briggs and Asa. Brigg's mom had to spend a few days at the NICU with their new baby, so we were happy to have Briggs along for all errands. I finally picked up my Christmas cards. Hopefully they'll all get out soon!

3 days of gingerbread men

Ms. Becky always come up with the best holiday activities. Last week was G for gingerbread men. Luke begged me all week to make some gingerbread cookies, so I finally gave in. While I was making cookies I started on my cookies for the cookie exchange. I now have 7 dozen cookie balls in my freezer.

4 parties 

Including a birthday party for our favorite 2 year old, Lucy! Luke especially is a big fan. Ellie and her friend went to a birthday party where they were the only girls. GAH!

5 hours at the temple

 

I was able to take some names through initiatories for a girlfriend and then just a few days later I got to go through the Temple with this cute girl for her first time. I've been her Activity Days leader, her Primary President, her Sunday School teacher, her camp director, her Mia Maid advisor, and her Laurel advisor. It was hard enough sending her off to BYU. I'm not sure I'll survive her being on a mission for a year and a half.

6 families serving

 

My girlfriend hosted a Monday night where we all put together blessing bags. We had to have it at the church because with just our 6 families we had over 20 kids.  It was chaotic, but I love that my kids really got the message. Every time Nate prays, he asks that we will have an opportunity to give our bags away.

7 days of our Elf

 

The return of our elf, Buddy. I actually forgot all about him until I woke up at 5 am December 1st and checked instagram only to see 8 other elves whose mothers had not forgotten. I am so grateful to have Ellie's help this year. She is much more creative than I am and doesn't forget. I know some people hate the idea of elves, but we love ours. I don't threaten the children that hes watching and I don't go crazy with pinterest ideas. He's just a fun elf that moves around the house and sometimes brings something fun.

8  nutcracker ornaments

We have an advent calendar wreath made out of little boxes. Each box has a family activity for the day and every year we go Christmas ornament shopping. This year my children are obsessed with nutcrackers. For example, at the grocery store Luke did not ask for a toy or candy, he picked out a huge nutcracker. And then he said, "Nate is going to be so jealous." He was right. That nutcracker then became his best friend. They watch TV together. They eat lunch together. All the kids have tried to trade their nutcracker with him, but he resisted. In the end both Nate and Sadie picked out packs of mini-nutcrackers as their ornaments. Then they came home and played with all of them together.

9 ladies lunching

Breakfast with some of my girls. We all just finished our health challenge and planned a meal to pig out. Unfortunately for most of us, we signed up for a month of a boot camp where he makes us track our food.  Whomp whomp.

10 advent calendars

 
I absolutely love Advent calendars. I've always made sure that I have 4 to change (one for each kid), but this year I added a few more. There are now so many that we actually forget to change them all every day.

11 Christmas books read

 

I love Christmas books and movies, and nothing is more magical to me than reading/watching them by the Christmas tree.  Our very first night with the tree was watching Elf, my very favorite Christmas movie of all time.

12 degree dip in temperature

The temperature dipped into highs in the 50 which to Arizonans is like dipping into negative numbers. Running in the morning has been brutal, but it's been kind of fun to have a real reason to drag out coats and boots. Luke had been wanting to wear this vest for a looooong time. We even ended up at Bass Pro (my first time ever) and I though it was very fortuitous that Luke was dressed appropriately.

Thanksgiving

Last year was our craziest and maybe most fun Thanksgiving ever. This year, on the other hand, was the exact opposite and I enjoyed every last low key second.With nothing to really prepare for the next day, I spent Wednesday getting the Christmas decorations up.

I woke up around 5:30 to go running with my girlfriends before our heading to our Turkey Trot at 7 am. Or should I say our *almost* Turkey Trot. The city decided to close the canals to do some upgrades which meant nowhere to run. We did a quick revamp and ended up having some small races at the church park instead.

This meant way less work for all of us. PLUS, the kids are growing up and want to help. We made them make all the signs and run most of the races this year. Big kids are the best.

We had a fun run with some physical challenges, sack races, a 3-legged race, and my personal. . . beat the turkey. Complete with dressed up turkeys.

 

 

 The boys raced against each other, but were beaten by Brenna and her twin sister. Dustin and Mike decided they couldn't let that happen, so they challenged the twins to a race.

 

 Winners

Even the adults wanted to get in and try to catch the turkeys

 

The best part is just hanging out with friends. 

After the races were over we had a pie eating contest which only children would participate in. Grown ups are not fun.

 

 

None of my kids won. Ellie couldn't even get past the whipped cream before she gave up and Luke wouldn't even try.

 We had planned on playing kickball, but everyone was having so much fun and the guys ended up with their own Turkey Bowl.

Thanksgiving dinner was back out the Bryner's this year, for which I am eternally grateful. She is such an amazing hostess and I could never hope to compete with her. Dustin worked some magic with the birthday boy, the boys played some more football, and ate the most delicious rolls.

 

It was Kallen's birthday. I can't believe a year ago I was racing to the hospital to see him being born

My favorite part was the Thanksgiving play Sadie put together. She had planned on costumes, but I guess everyone decided on their own. Luke was the best turkey ever. Literally.  He hit every cue and knew every line ("Gobble gobble gobble").

 

We are a weird group and no one really likes pie. I ate a little pecan pie, but the biggest hit is always my lemon bars. Around 8 pm, we had eaten too much food, so we headed home to a clean and decorated house.

Since we had nothing else to do for the weekend we took it easy. Nate really wanted to see what Black Friday shopping was all about, so Dustin took the kids out while I wrapped presents.

 I let the kids put up ornaments on the Christmas tree, we saw Frozen, and went out to eat.

 

We are so very thankful for all of our blessings.

Birthday Princess

It's no secret that I LOVE my birthday. My sister is the same way. She once told me she wanted her January decorating scheme to be "My Birthday," like it's a holiday. And I thought it was one of the most brilliant ideas I had ever heard. I think "My Birthday" is an entire love language for me. And I felt SUPER loved this birthday.

The curse of my birthday is that I was born the day after Thanksgiving. Since Thanksgiving is a rotating holiday, sometimes my birthday falls *on* Thanksgiving. Or the day after. Or the day before. Or whenever it's impossible to celebrate it because everyone has so much stuff going on. I've had years spending it with Dustin's family where everyone has completely forgotten it. Which probably wouldn't be a big deal to some people, but when you're pregnant and it's your favorite day of the year it really stinks.

This year was AWESOME, however, because my birthday was as far away from Thanksgiving as it can possibly get. To start off with, my mom sent cake!!

Last year she promised to make me a cake for my birthday (which was the day after Thanksgiving), but between hosting Thanksgiving for 25, our race, 10 out of town guests, and Nate's baptism that morning we were all exhausted. She made up for it this year with some Wicked Good cupcakes.

My cute family also took me out for dinner the night before and we ran to Trader Joe's where they had all the holiday peppermint treats in stock. Just for my birthday!!! We looked like one of those extreme coupon shows the way we cleared those shelves. Only we paid full price because it's *that* good.

Saturday morning I woke up to birthday cuddles and a little drizzle of rain, which is a rare and unheard of phenomenon in Arizona. But it means we get to wear sweaters and boots and COATS! All the things I've been dying to wear.

I went out for a quick birthday run with my girlfriends who I assure you are all gorgeous despite the fact that we look like death in this picture. But it was early, cold, windy and rainy.  Yet somehow it was an amazing run.

When I came home, Dustin had drawn me up a nice warm bath which felt like heaven. Then we headed off to a baptism for my girlfriend's cute little Mia. It was the perfect way to spend a birthday morning.

 

The afternoon was spent opening gifts from my kids, napping, watching BYU football (if only we could have pulled out a win), and Dustin putting up the Christmas tree for me.

I also had so many of my girlfriends stop by with treats and gifts. My kids at one point said, "You're getting a lot of presents for not even having a birthday party." I know it's totally cheese ball, but the best gift was just getting to see all of my favorite people in one day. I wish I were as thoughtful and sweet as the girls I surround myself with. They are amazing and I am lucky that I get to go through life with each and everyone of them. I can't put into words how awesome my friends are.  Just trust me. They're the best.

 

That night the real party began. Since it was a Saturday and nowhere near Thanksgiving, 6 other couples were able to squeeze a birthday dinner into their schedules. We went up to La Grande Orange and with Dustin's mad driving skills (despite the pig loose on the interstate causing a traffic jam) we still managed to make it there fast enough to get the giant table so we could all sit together.

 

We played a game called, "Maddy's so old. . .", passed around the baby, spoke in British accents (or Southern depending on your skill level), Molly raised her hand every time she wanted to talk, Tia's gift turned into the birthday sentiment kitchen towel, Kristin played waitress but got iced tea instead of water. . . It was a perfect end to a perfect day. I love my friends. I love that they all took time out of their busy schedules to drive forever because that's where I wanted to go.

 

And I love that they would take this picture.