Christmas 2008

Christmas this year was really relaxing and enjoyable! Grace and Jane woke up at about the same time, which worked out well, and we had our little family Christmas morning to ourselves. Grace was finally able to get excited about "presents!!!" and Janie was a rockstar wrapping ripper! (Gracie was never into unwrapping until this year, but Janie loved it!) On Christmas Eve we set out some reindeer food (oats and glitter) and Gracie loved to see that it was all eaten in the morning...though the bowl was FULL of snow. Grace decided to eat all the snow that was in the bowl :)

Christmas afternoon, Joe's parents came over and we had lunch and played some games, I think. Then, in the evening, the Jolleys came for a ham dinner, which was really yummy!

We didn't have to travel at all, which was SO nice. The roads were TERRIBLE because of a huge snowstorm Christmas Eve, so we were content to spend the day as a family in our own home. Ahhhhhh. That's the good stuff.

Each year, Joe buys the girls ornaments. This year Gracie got a silver train that says "Santa Express."

Janie got a beautiful silver star. It was really intricate and delicate, which maybe wasn't the best idea for Jane, but she loved it :)

Here's Gracie sitting in her blue Bilibo. The kiddos love these things! They play with them everyday!

Janie got a cabbage patch kid and when she unwrapped it she kept saying, "Shoes! Shoes!" because the doll has shoes on. She was all stoked that she got some "shoes" :) (BTW- if the shoes are off of the doll, she won't touch it with a ten foot pole. LOL)

Quote of the Day:
"A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year."
~Walter Scott

Christmas Eve

We had a nice, quiet Christmas Eve this year at Joe's parents' home. We had a delicious ham dinner, pecan pie for dessert, and cute little girls for entertainment! Here are some memories...

Okay, aren't these kids darling? Grace played (a kind of irreverent) Mary, and Janie was a shepherd :)

Cool costumes, huh? Sue has a great collection of costumes for the nativity play.

Here's me and the lone shepherd of the night :)

Here's Joey!!! If you're wondering about his expression...he's wondering when he's going to get a piece of pecan pie ;)

Gracie opening some gifts! She finally got into the spirit of opening gifts this year! It was so fun to finally see her excited for presents!

Joe's Mom and Dad, our hosts!

I make a pecan pie for Joey every Christmas. This year's was the best looking so far, but didn't taste quite as good as last years'. (Perhaps things just taste better in memory...)

Janie giving me one of her famous kisses :)

Quote of the Day:

"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one." ~Jane Howard

Teenagers!!!

Is it just me, or am I getting OLD? All of a sudden, a bunch of my nieces and nephews are TEENAGERS!!!!! Where the heck did the last, oh, say, 10 years go? It is fun to see them growing up and coming into their own. They each have such different (and hilarious) personalities. I remember so very clearly when I was their age and it seems like "life" just happens so fast from there on out. I was thinking about them this morning and wishing that I could hold them there in their sweet, funny, innocent states...but then I thought about myself at their age and changed my mind. Who wants to be stuck in High School forever? NOT ME! I tucked tail and ran (to the altar, mind you) a month after I graduated! And my life has been much happier ever since! (But if any of you teens are reading this - Don't even THINK about serious dating until AFTER your missions! I mean it! Yes, that means YOU!)

Anyway, I just wanted to dedicate this post to some freakin' awesome teenagers in the fam...(I didn't have a picture of Dusty to add to this post, because I didn't see them on Chistmas Eve when I was wielding my camera! But I do believe that he is freakin' awesome too...and has great taste in literature, by the by. Michelle and Shakierra aren't teens yet (thank heavens!) so they're not pictured either, but are equally wonderful.)

Myles...need I say more? He's posing as a Christmas present :)

Sierra...of the beautiful hair :) Come to think of it, she's posing as a present too!

McKenna...of the tall genes. What would I give to have long legs like her? A lot, I tell ya! A lot!!!

Quote of the Day:
"When buying a used car, punch the buttons on the radio. If all the stations are rock and roll, there's a good chance the transmission is shot." ~Larry Lujack

I loved this quote because I actually blew up the transmission in my first automobile...a '90-ish Ford Ranger. Ahhhh, those were the good 'ol days when my Dad fixed everything for me :) Thanks for pulling me through those years dad! Love you!

Haircut!

Wow, it's been so long since I posted that these pictures are basically ancient now! Gracie got her first "professional" haircut a few weeks before Christmas! Here are some pics of her in her new 'do!

Quote of the Day:

"I'm not offended by all the dumb-blonde jokes because I know that I'm not dumb. I also know I'm not blonde." ~Dolly Parton

Let it snow!

It has been unseasonably dry these last few months and I was beginning to worry that we'd have a brown Christmas instead of a white one. Well, um, it has snowed about six inches in the last few days! Yowza!

So yesterday during Jane's nap, I bundled Gracie up and let her wander around in the yard while I cleaned out my car. (Just a sidenote: I pulled out 6 1/2 PAIR of socks from the backseat/floor of the van yesterday. My kids just automatically pull off socks and shoes once they're buckled into their carseats! It's maddening!) After I was done cleaning out the socks and junk, I was looking around for Gracie but she had dissappeared. I ran into the house to pull on my Ugg boots so I could find the little scallywag (spelling?) and saw her out in the park behind our house chasing Reagan through the freshly fallen snow. It was pretty cute. When I finally got out there to her, I said, "What's your favorite part about the snow?" and she said, "Following Reagan's footprints!!" It was so cute and childishly innocent. She followed Reagan's footprints around the house and out to the park. He was rolling and romping in the snow with her when I found them :)

Thanksgiving Pics

I realized this morning that I never posted any pics from our great Thanksgiving! We had our dinner with the Tanners and the Jolleys. It was relaxed and really enjoyable!

With all the crazy children! :)

Our family.

Myles, the goofiest kid in town! What would we do without him??

April and Brad with Janie. They always feed her the stuff she wants, instead of the stuff I give her, which is great :)

Quote of the Day:

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie." ~Jim Davis

My 100th Post!

So we're pretty cheap and this year we decided to try to take our own picture of the girls for Christmas cards. Well, um, most of the pictures we took turned out like this...

Is this considered a "headlock" or a "half nelson" ??

We put Reagan between them so they couldn't reach each other to pinch, poke, punch, pull, strangle, or otherwise maime each other. He just added to the rediculous mix. It was definitely an "experience" that we'll remember for many years to come.

Quote of the Day:

"What is a home without children? Quiet." -Henny Youngman

Gobble 'Till You Wobble!

Today's the day! We're having a nice, relaxing turkey day this year, which is desperately needed in our little family. I flat-out refused to cook this year, (last year we had OVER 30 people at OUR house, so I don't feel bad about it, okay?) so we're going up to the Inn on the Creek in Midway for a yummy buffet. We get to enjoy the company of the Tanners (whom we've never had the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving with!!) and the Jolleys (whom we love more than meat loves salt) so we are excited, thankful, and very blessed this year!

The Tanners have this cool tradition where each Thanksgiving they draw a picture of the thing that they're most thankful for. While I've decided that my drawing will be a book with wings (because reading takes me away from the everyday demands of being a mom/wife), the thing that I'm truly most thankful for are the everyday demands of being a mom/wife. My family is the most special, tender, integral, wonderful part of me. They're my soul. I thank the Lord every day (even the really hard ones) that I have been blessed with a soul mate and children of my own. There is no greater blessing than that of a family. I truly believe that.

Here's Gracie sporting her pilgrim hat she made at preschool!

We're thankful that we've gotten to spend so much time with Dennis this year. I have missed my big brother so much over the last few years. We got to see him in August before Torrey, in October when we went to visit him in Sparks, and in November when he came to spend time with mom while she was in the hospital. Dennis' girlfriend Tawny has become a close friend and part of the family, too, which has made this year even better. Blessings, blessings, blessings...

Quote of the Day:

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." - Thornton Wilder

"Smittens"

I was browsing through one of the millions of catalogs we get daily, when I came across these "smittens." They're for people who need to hold hands, but also need mittens. LOL. Is that hilarious, or what? I'm totally going to order some of these and make Joey wear them with me around BYU campus so people can be jealous. (I'm not sure why these tickled my funny bone, but I haven't stopped laughing for about two weeks about them.) Anywho - I hope you all have someone you're "smittens" with these days...

Quote of the Day:
"The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods." ~Theodor Reik, Of Love and Lust, 1957

Dance, Dance, Dance, All Night Long...

My sister April is the best Auntie on the planet :) She comes and rescues Gracie and Janie when they are in imminent danger of losing digits or limbs, and she buys them cute treats all the time! She has been begging me to post some pictures of Gracie at her weekly ballet class, but I haven't been able to take any because the parents aren't allowed to stay and watch! However, last week was a "parent watch day" at her class, so I finally got to tote along my camera and watch my little blooming beauty getting jiggy with it! I was the only mom there with a camera...isn't that strange? Anywho - here she is!

All the other girls flitted across the room and back at mach speed, but Gracie took her time and did her exercises slow and steady. (She's looking in the mirror as she goes along...)

With her prop for the "teddy bear" dance. Oh...My...Cute!

This is her teacher Brandi. Gracie loves her :)

Quote of the Day:

"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels." ~Faith Whittlesey

song dance, steve miller band

The Jersey Worm

Gracie woke up in the middle of the night going, "Ahhh! Ahhh! There's a jersey worm on my arm! Daddy! Ahhh!" I was actually the one to answer her summons, and when I went into her room she was sitting on her bed brushing at her arm. She kept saying that she was scared of her "jersey worm" so I "plucked" it off her sleeve and put it in the "garden" on the floor. She was very releived. :)

Quote of the Day:
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia." -Charles Schulz

song, kung fu fighting, carl douglas

The Perfect Storm

Usually, the title of this post could completely describe Gracie's day-to-day mood/activities, but this week, it applies to the whole fam damily!

Sunday night I went to an InstaCare clinic because I had a painful rash on my chest and back and Mom said it looked like Shingles...which it turned out to be. I feel like a gross leper or something. However, my blisters are all healing up quickly and I've had almost no time to think about it, so it wasn't too bad! Thank goodness for medicine. The chickenpox virus is the one that, once you've had it, can give you shingles. Gracie has already been immunized for chickenpox, but Janie hadn't, so she had to be rushed to the pediatrician on Monday morning for 3 shots of her own :( I was so afraid she'd get sick, but I think the vaccination did it's job and she's just got a cold.

Monday morning, my dad went into the hopsital for a total knee replacement! Yay Dad!

Wednesday, I had to call an ambulance to come and get my mom because she was so sick that she couldn't move anymore. She went into the ER with basically NO blood pressure, bad fever and chills, NO oxygen in her blood, oh, and um, basically no blood...as she's been recovering from a round of chemotherapy. As it turns out, she has pneumonia! Who knew? Definitely not her doctors! (Even though she sees them multiple times a week.) It looks like she has pneumonia for several weeks now. Poor thing. The good news is, it's treatable and she's on the mend! Yay Mom!

Gracie's recovering from a bad cold and still has the smoker's hack, but other than that she's my same old fireball...seriously, I wonder why God didn't send her down here with RED hair?

Janie was recovering from the same bad cold, but got sick again and so she's still on cough medicine and the humidifier at night. She's slowly getting better, but each night is kind of tough for her still.

Joe has been my rock through all this...no colds, no knee replacements, no pneumonia, until Thursday when he had his first migraine on his drive home from work and threw up all over his car :( Isn't that horrible? I hope he wont get mad that I'm posting about it. Poor guy. He was really really sick for the second half of that day, but he's feeling better today. I've never seen him in so much physical pain. His mom gets horrible migraines and I think that subconsciously, I've been waiting for them to hit him too...I sure hope they're few and far between.

So, basically that's the recipe for my perfect storm. Here are some pics to lighten the mood...


Gracie is a daddy's girl. He's the one she calls for in the middle of the night, and when she gets hurt or sad. I don't blame her. I feel the same way about him. (I heart you, Joe.)


He lets her listen to music on his Blackberry...a classic!

I loved this picture when I saw it. Isn't he a cutie pie? I think Davey is up in heaven, looking just like his daddy these days...

Quote of the Day:

"Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young, Who loved thee so fondly as he? He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue, And joined in thy innocent glee." -- Margaret Courtney

song, in my life, the beatles

Serenity Now!

So I learned something new about myself today. What I want more than anything today is "Serenity Now" (think Mr. Costanza from Seinfeld and you've about got the tone.) So I decided to look up a picture that symbolized serenity. Here's what I came up with...Sea Oats! Aren't they so beautiful? Maybe you have to imagine them in motion, on the beach in Pensacola, surrounded by white sand, and being 10 years old like I was when I first saw them...Yeah, that helps somewhat.

My Favorite Scripture: (now you learned something new about me today, too!)

2 Nephi 31:20 "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life."

song: the wind, cat stevens

Halloween Fun

I know, these are SOOOO late in coming, but at least they're here now! Halloween pics!

Joe's pumpkin was HUGE! At the pumpkin patch, the lady said that it was the biggest one they sold that year!! Joe is an awesome pumpkin carver. He has really cool ideas (check out the eyeballs) and is super talented! This pumpkin was so big that he had to go pretty simple on his design though. I thought it was awesome!!

As I said, Joe's super talented at carving...here's Gracie's pumpkin. Cool, huh? (I love the ears!)

I, on the other hand, am your standars, run-of-the-mill carver and all my jack-o-lanterns look practically identical. :)

Janie was unlucky enough to have ME carving her pumpkin this year and this is what we came up with :) She seemed to like it though.

Preschool friends! Mitchell, Dayton and Gracie.

Gracie's preschool class. (She's dressed up as a doctor, by the way.)

My cute cousin Meg and her daughter Lexie! (Dayton's mom).

Janie got to wear a hand-me-down pumpkin costume from the Tanners :) Poor thing hardly gets anything new of her own. Oh well :) So goes the life of a "little sister." She was really happy though because she got to eat Dum Dums all night long!

Quote of the Day:

"Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble." ~ Shakespeare "Macbeth"

song: baby mine, alison kraus

A Seriously Long Nap

This little beauty slept for 15, yes, FIFTEEN hours last night. Can you imagine?? We put her down for her second nap yesterday at 3:30pm and she never woke up for dinner! She slept until about 6:00am! I just had to document this crazy abnormality so one day I could read over this and wonder how that was humanly possible!

It is a true blizzard outside this morning. When Gracie woke up and looked out our big window, she exclaimed, "It's Christmas!!" I wish that Joe didn't have to drive to work today. It rained all day yesterday and then snowed all night, so there's a thick layer of ice under the frost, I'm sure. Icy roads are my numero uno complaint about winter. It is so dangerous, and I just hate it.

Quote of the day:
"Consciousness: that annoying time between naps." ~Author Unknown

song: forever young, alphaville

Makin' Cookies With Grandma

What do kids love more than making cookies with their Grandma? Nothin'! (Except maybe eating said cookies with their Grandma.) Here are some pics of the girls and their Grandma making peanut butter cookies. They were so delicious...we devoured them ALL in one night :)

My mom has been through a lot these last six months or so and I'm so glad that she is all done with Chemo and is on the mend now. She's had over 12 units of blood, who knows how many bags of plasma, and has clocked many an hour at the hospital infusion clinic. It's no fun!! I love you Mom, and I'm glad that you're strong and stubborn because it's getting you through this hard time. You're the bee's knees!!! Hooray for the Red Cross and people who donate blood!

Quote of the Day:

"The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy." ~Sam Levenson

song: love divine, seal

Me...Um, All the Time

The angle of this picture is really strange, but you get the general idea...me...reading. I'm actually reading Brisingr in this pic. It was great! And I'm in post-good-book letdown, where once again, I'm sad that the story is over and I have to do other things in my spare time like sweep the floor and shuck the mail. :( Rats!

Joey says he's in middle-of-boring-book letdown :) He's reading Founding Brothers.

Anywho - just wanted to post even though I haven't uploaded any Halloween pictures yet. I'm actually avoiding it, I think. We took so many pictures that I really don't want to sort through them all, ya know?



Quote of the Day:
"She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain." (1873) ~ Louisa May Alcott ~

Song: Supermassive Black Hole, Muse