Christmas

I hope everyone had a great Christmas this year. Here are a few pictures from our Christmas Day.

Dean's favorite gift, second only to candy, was his "choo, choo, train set"

On Christmas Eve we read the Christmas Story and acted it out with Rob's family.
(Rob is a sheep)

My Parents got a tube for the grandkids to play in. Dean loves it!

How do you celebrate Christmas?

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
I like wrapping paper. For one I am less tempted to peak, plus I like to challenge my self on my gift wrapping skills.

2. Real tree or Artificial?
I miss the smell of a real tree in the house, but we use a fake one. It is less expensive, you dont have to water it, or vacuum the needles up every day.

3. When do you put up the tree?
the day after Thanksgiving. I am all about celebrating one holiday at a time but as soon as that holiday is over I am ready for the next one.

4. When do you take the tree down?
When ever I have time, but before New Years for sure.

5. Do you like eggnog?
I come from a big eggnog drinking family. You can not have Christmas without eggnog. I do not like it straight though, it's too thick. We normally put one part milk and one part eggnog. My Dad's side of the family likes to put lemon-lime soda in it. I'm not a big fan of that.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
My sister and I got a barbie house that would be the envy of any little girl. It was about 3-4ft tall. almost that wide when it was shut. It had a large kitchen, six rooms about hafe the size of the kitchen and then four rooms about half the size of those. My parents also built furniture, out of wood, for all the rooms. We had beds, dressers, cribs, couches, pianos, tables, refrigerator, stove/oven, even toilets, and bathtubs. It was amazing. We both hope to build one for our daughters if we ever have any.

7. Hardest person to buy for?
My mother-in-law. Even though she loves anything we give her.

8. Easiest person to buy for?
My son. My problem it I want to buy everything. It's hard not to spoil him.

9. Do you have a nativity scene?
I have two. One which I grew up with. It is made of crystal, beautiful.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
I am all about mailing cards. There is just something special about getting something personal in the mail. Someone put more time into thinking about you.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
I must not have received anything to terrible, because I can't think of anything

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
I will have to say that I love the classic cartoons. Rudolph, frosty the snow man, etc. It was fun watching some of them with Dean this year.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
Normally the right after Thanksgiving. After working at Wal-mart for 6 years you would think that I would avoid black Friday, but this year I went. I'm not sure I want to do that again.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Christmas present no, wedding present yes.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
probably anything with nuts.

16. Favorite for Christmas dinner?
I didn't grow up eating the traditional Christmas dinner. We would always have a big breakfast after opening all our gifts then snack on crackers and cheese and vegetables and stuff all day. Now that half of us are married and moved out, we do have the traditional dinner on christmas day.

17. Favorite Christmas song?
There are so many. I love christmas Songs. I pretty much like all of them.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
Stay home. The only time that I have traveled was five years ago when I went to california to meet my future mother-in-law. It was nice, but very different. It is just to hard to pack all the presents now, but we still go to my parents house Christmas afternoon.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
Yes. I hope everyone over the age of 10 can.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Star, maybe because I grew up that way, but an angel just isn't the same.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
My husband and I started a tradition of giving each other and now Dean an ornement each year. We open those on Christmas eve so that we can put them on the tree for christmas.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
Snow. I guess, I love christmas time, I even love having a white Christmas, I just hate driving in the snow.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color?
My favorite theme would have to be memories. My tree has some basic silver bulbs to fill in the holes, but everything else is ornaments that mean something to us, we either have given to each other for Christmas or places we traveled. We alway look for more ornaments everywhere we go. Someday it will fill our tree.

24. What do you want for Christmas this year?
Even though I made a list this year like I do every year. I don't seem to care as much about what I get.

25. Who do I want to fill this out and post it on their blog?
Everyone who loves Christmas!

update with pictures

I"ve been having problems with my camera. besides it is a dinosaur when it comes to digital cameras. I think my son took off with the SD card so now I can only use the internal memory which meant I had to dig out the USB cord to hook it to the computer. Anyway these first pictures are from Rob's gratuation party. My sister made the cakes. She is an amazing cake decorator. These are not even some of her finist works.

These are Dean helping us blow up balloons for the party. At first he was pulling out of the bag each balloon and blowing on the ends of them then going on to the next balloon. It was pretty funny.

On Wednesday we went up to Salt Lake to look at Temple Square. We decided to give Dean the experience of riding on Trax (the choo- choo train). we just road it around in the no fee area down town. He was upset when we had to get off.

We had gotten to Salt Lake before it was dark. So it was still okay weather. By the time we left it was getting pretty cold and I didn't bring gloves for Dean so I gave him mine.

We really enjoyed our trip to Salt Lake this season and learned some new things. For example: We will probably be going early in the day each year because not only is it warmer, but we avoided the big crowds and found parking close and easily. Also, Salt Lake has been doing this for a few years during the holidays, you can park for FREE for two hours where ever a parking meter is that is covered up with a bag or has a bow on it. The bags will say free parking on them.

I also want to wish Rob a Happy Birthday today! Happy Birthday Rob!

Congratulations Rob!

Last night I threw a surprise graduation party for Rob. He is finally finished with school. Yeah! He didn't really care for a party and is not planning on walking for graduation, but I figured he needed some sort of recognition for sticking with it and finishing school. We had my family and his local family there. Thanks everyone for helping out and supporting Rob. I am so proud of him. Congratulations Rob!

Snow Day!

Dean has been very excited about the snow. We had a hard time keeping him out of it yesterday. We just were not prepared for it yet. Almost all of Dean's clothing has been hammy downs from his cousin, from California, so needless to say we needed to buy boots and gloves. We told Dean that we were going to build a snowman today and he put his hands in the air and said tall, tall. It took me a second, then I realized that he must have learned "Once There Was a Snowman" in nursery (because I haven't taught him that). So I started to sing the song and sure enough that was it, he got excited and started to do the actions. It was very cute.



Unfortunately the snow was not good packing snow today so no snowman got built. but we had fun making snow angles and going sledding down the small hill next to our condo. The shoebox lid did okay for today, but we did realize that we need to get a real sled.

Gingerbread Houses

We invited my sister Megan and her family over last night to make gingerbread houses. I've never done this before. It's a lot harder than it looks, but I think we all did a good job.

This is our house.

This is my sisters.


Even Dean and Ty helped. Well Dean did, Ty just tried out the different candy.

This is Dean's ginger snowman. He was so proud.

Biggest Loser

Okay so as some people already know I am a BIG fan of the biggest Loser. This is the show that has inspired me to lose the 5o lbs that I've lost this past year. This season had been a hard one to watch because of the negativity that some of the contestants have brought to the show this season. I try to look beyond that at these are real people who are changing their lives.

Anyway, tonight was the last episode of the season before the live finally next Tuesday. I was so happy that Michelle made it into the finals! but at the same time I was very bummed that Viki did too. It will be a sad day if she wins. someone that mean doesn't deserve to win in the end. GO MICHELLE!

These are me before and after photos. The top one was taken July 4th 2007. I honestly don't have a photo of me from that July to the next. I was approximately the same size in this photo as I was January 2008 when I started to get serious about my weight.

This was taken in September 2008. I haven't lost much sense then. My body seems to have come to a stand still the last two months.

Blogging

I thought I would try this blogging thing out. I've been told that I've been missing out. So it's official I now have a blog. I'm not sure what to say.
Well Rob and I went to the Festival Of Trees last night. We've never gone before. It was about twice as big as i thought it would be and very, very busy. It was an amazing sight and very heart warming to know that all the money goes to Primary Children's Hospital. Most of the trees were sold and they didn't say how much for, but the ones that were not sold had prices marked and the lowest price I saw was around $800.
We also went to Gardner Village. I really liked their Christmas shop. They have about any ornament you will ever want to find.
I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season.