Let it SNOW!!!

Only in Utah would you see something like this! Notice his shorts!! Even Gregg who wears shorts probably 300 days of the 365 days a year wore pants and a coat to blow the huge snow storm we had this past weekend! But our neighbor is hilarious! We enjoyed getting a shot of this.

But aside from the snow blowing we had a blast playing in the snow. Our other neighbor got out his 4 wheeler and took the boys sledding around the streets (that didn't get plowed for 2 days!). They looked like they were having so much fun and I just couldn't help myself. I joined in. I did that with my very good friend Cameron growing up all winter. They had 3 wheelers and 4 wheelers and pulled us around on tubes all winter. (Such good memories! I miss my good friend!)

Hopefully the boys can have as good of memories as I did. They braved the cold and snow with me!

On a side note. The boys were just fine. They didn't get hurt. I am sure this is probably not legal and I know it can be pretty unsafe, but they still had fun and Jon our neighbor was really easy on them. Me on the other hand I guess I am not as young as I want to be! I was bruised from head to toe! I had a hard time sleeping that night because my ribs were so bruised. My shins and hips are pretty banged up too, but man! I will still do it again if he gets it out this weekend with the new storm! WOOHOO!

Christmas Morning from Santa

Santa was good to us this year! Man, I thought my boys deserved some coal! But I guess I was wrong. The boys had a ball!

Some of their favorites were Jaxon's trade federation battle tank and clone wars game for the wii.
Kaden's favorites were the clone wars game for the leapster and his digital camera!
Zeke was really easy to please with Thomas stuff and a race track!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Yes indeed this has been the most wonderful time of the year! I love getting together with family and just hanging out! This year we were lucky enough to host Gregg's side of the family on Christmas Eve and my side of the family on Christmas day!

It was so much fun! I am so lucky to have Gregg to help out so much. He really did. If it weren't for him I think I would have been a basket case! He really helped. I made 15 dozen rolls, a turkey and 2 hams! Along with the plethora of before mentioned candies and goodies!

But my family are such health nuts they hardly ate any of the chocolate fountain and candy. Gregg's family ate as much as I thought should have been eaten (and some of the candy walked off the plates at the end!--which was so much appreciated!).

All in all, it was such a good time to just relax and enjoy each others company. I really do love to just catch up with each other and keep in touch. Thanks so much for coming over and hanging out and spending your Christmas with us! We love you all!

Stop the insanity!!! PLEASE!

Oh my goodness this year was crazy. I baked and cooked and baked and cooked straight for about 2 weeks! I love another one of my traditions I have had since I was little of making Christmas Candy. This tradition has been to make English toffee, peanut clusters, and butterscotch pretzels.

As a kid one of my good friends Diana Francis' mom always made home made caramels. They would give us a cup of them every Christmas. I would usually sneak the cup away and devour the whole cup before anyone else got any. I later added that to my yearly tradition.

And another one has been to make Rocky Road Popcorn. This delicious popcorn goody consists of a twist on caramel popcorn mixed with white chocolate, peanuts and marshmallows drizzled with milk and dark chocolate (could there be anything else better?).

How could I forget my last tackle? This year I finally found a fudge recipe that was to die for!! Gregg is quite the fudge fan. In fact every year he would get his own special pan of it from one of his friends mom. So I had quite a lot to live up to. I have tried to make fudge about 5 times to no avail! This year my sister Leslie gave me one of her in-law family recipes and it won!! Oh my gosh it was so so good. It was so good in fact we all ate 3 lbs of fudge in about 3 days!!! I made another batch with nuts for Gregg!

So that was my stint on candy this year and boy was it STUPID! Why do that to yourself? I have no idea. I also made the mistake of not letting anyone snack on the candy before Christmas and now on the 28th of December I still have a TON left! Oh it so has to be gone by next weekend!!!

Christmas Eve

On Christmas eve every year we have a fun tradition. We always put our family Gingerbread house together. For the first couple of years Gregg was a little bit of a grump about it. But after he realized how much fun the kids had with it he totally took over and had fun with us. He likes to take command and be our family contractor!
This year we took a change to the roof. We added the boys favorite cereal...Cinnamon toast crunch.
Kaden and Zeke both had a ball....
the end result was so cute....I love our house that love builds!

Temple Square

Last weekend we were lucky enough to spend the afternoon with my birth-son Tyson. He is such a great kid. He is now 14 (almost 15!). He is part of a great family. My boys love to hang out with him and miss the short time we have while we are together. He is a great basketball player and we are planning on going to watch him play. We went to see the lights at Temple Square. We went a 'little' early. We had quite an agenda we had to attend to. So as you can see the lights were not even on for the first 15 minutes we were there. But that ended up okay. We got a few great shots with the beautiful sunset. It was only in the teens that night and we were a bit frozen, so after the lights came on we headed out.

We finished off the evening devouring yummy Mtn. Mike's Pizza and went bowling. I won't embarrass Tyson and reveal his score (which only ended up 2 less than mine!), but Kaden won all of us!! He thinks he is quite the little Bowler and wants to play professional?! It is really comical to watch I don't know how he ended up with the strikes and spares he got because he just chucks the ball off the railing and the ball bounces from rail to rail the whole way down! In Tyson's defense I don't think he had been bowling for a long, long time. We came back to our house and played a mean game of arcade basketball (one of which he needed to reedeem himself on as well) and toasted Gregg's record. He got 102 points in 1 minute. Gregg had previously held the record at 99 (although no one was around to verify this!).

'8 Tag' from Jenn

8 Shows I watch
1. So You Think You Can Dance
2. House Hunters
3. The Stagers
4. Sell My House
5. Sweat Equity
6. Dream Home
7. The News (is that a sign I'm Old?)
8. Divine Design



8 Things I did Yesterday
1. Workout
2. Cut and wrap over 200 homeade Carmels (appropriate order huh?!)
3. Go to Kaden's Basketball Game
4. Go to Jaxon's Basketball Game
5. Finally finish Christmas Cards!
6. Go to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights
7. Go to Mtn. Mike's Pizza
8. Go Bowling


8 Places I like to Eat
1. La Frontera
2. Cafe Rio
3. Su Casa
4. Market Street
5. Famous Daves
6. Ruth's Chris (on someone else s bill only!!)
7. Home made by someone else!
8. Lanakai Grill


8 Things I look forward to
1. Christmas parties with my family
2. Snuggling with my husband
3. Rocking Zeke to Sleep
4. Reading to/with Jaxon & Kaden
5. Sledding with the family
6. Boating with the family
7. Getting together with friends
8. someday when I can shop, shop, shop and feel no remorse!!?

8 Things on my wish list
1. Clothes, clothes, clothes
2. Newly redecorated front room, family room, kitchen, bedroom etc., etc.
3. Any scrapbook tools
4. New camera
5. The clothes I already opened and wore?! woops!
6. Surfboard
7. Teeth whitening
8. warm slippers no one seems to find (okay so I am picky about my slippers)

8 People I tag
1. Kiersten
2. Bobbie
3. De Ette
4. Rhonda
5. Stephanie
6. Terri
7. Kortney
8. Charlee

Never make a bet with this guy!

If there is only one thing I have learned in the 13 1/2 years being married to Gregg. Never make a bet with him. Actually I say that then I bet him all the time thinking one time I will win. Well, it has taken me that long, but Jaxon at the ripe old age of 8 already won his Dad in a bet. What did he win? Well, only everyone's favorite cookie....homemade Oreo cookies!! YUMMY!

Well in mine and Gregg's defense we really did not think we would loose on this one. If you have read some of my other posts, you know how Jaxon has become quite the story teller lately. Well one night we were talking to Kaden and trying to drill into him vowels and what they are used for. You all know the little rhyme A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y. Well Jaxon kept pipping in saying and sometimes W. Finally we tried to stop him. I thought he was just trying to confuse Kaden, a frequent occurrence. To make a long story short. Yes, his teacher taught him sometimes W?! Now I know I went to Granger High and all but I was never taught that. But yes, we should have done our homework before the bet. If you google it is does say it is a semi-vowel much like Y. Now the only word his teacher could come back and have Jaxon give us was 'snow'. And there is some other weird word that is not even an english word. However, it is still being taught in the school as a semi-vowel.....
We all got to enjoy the cookies though so it wasn't that bad, for me anyway. But for Gregg he did specify to Jaxon to mark his word that that doesn't happen very often. He is such a brat. It is true, I will be surprised if Jaxon wins another one anytime soon. Although, Jaxon is so much like his Dad it may happen more than Gregg would like to hope for. Me on the other hand, I will just keep betting and loosing, hoping for the one day I will win!

In honor of my boys being off track.......



The Mom Song from Northland Video on Vimeo.


Man I love being MOM!!!

Jaxon funny

I got the following email from Jaxon's teacher tonight. Normally parents would be afraid of an email from your 8 year old's teacher. Not this time!

Carrie,

I had to share the tall tale Jaxon told me today.

He shared how he and his dad were Hawaiian and living in Hawaii when they went into a restaurant and met you for the first time. They didn't understand the language you spoke because they were from Hawaii. Then you met them a second time (in the restaurant) and you taught his dad how to speak your language by giving him lots of tests. Then you decided to move to Utah and now you no longer do the Hawaiian traditions, you just do the Utah ones.

He almost had me believing it at first, but the more details he added, the more humorous it became. I told him he had a good imagination and he should write it as a story.

Enjoy,
SB

He takes after his dad SO MUCH!!!

I NEVER THOUGHT

I would be THAT MOM!!!
Tonight I found myself so completely embarrassed at the grocery store. I never thought I would be that mom that walked out of the grocery store with 2 CARTS FULL OF GROCERIES! Oh my goodness, I am so completely embarrassed. I do have to realize I have 4 very hungry and growing boys at home and that is what it is probably going to be like but maybe I should start grocery shopping weekly. That was humiliating! And to make things worse....you know when you get to the cashier and she smiles and says, 'did you find everything you needed?'. Nope, not tonight! She smiled and said 'well I guess you found all you needed, right?'
Oh what joys to come. I know it is only going to get worse when they are teenagers!!! YIKES!

We are thankful

We are thankful this year for so many things. We both were so bothered with the fact Christmas music started the day after Halloween, be decided to make sure we didn't miss making sure to count our blessings and let each other know what and whom we are thankful.

It worked out really good. I liked to pass by in the hall and glance at the cute things the boys thought of to be thankful for here are a few(we tried to do one every day in November):

Jaxon - food, dentists/doctors (he didn't have a cavity at his visit or I am sure he would not have put that one down!), cousins, house, community, indians, police, dad, mom, clothes, transportation, roads, pilgrims, firemen.....

Kaden - trees, bible, windows, school, trucks, mom, books, songs, computers, Tyson, Zeke, Dad, Jaxon, cups, cousins, school, thanksgiving, indians, Book of Mormon...

BLACK FRIDAY!!

Woo Hoo! What fun! Really, I don't know why it is fun other than the fact I get to spend the whole morning with ALL my sisters this year. Mandy was in town this year and she is always so much fun to shop with. Usually because she is the one spending so much money! (love you Mandy!) This year it was pretty even. We were not in as big of a hurry as we have been in the past (we have been doing this for at least 10-11 years) and because of that I lost out on a few deals I was hoping for, but it was still a blast and we ended up scoring on Amazon anyway.
For those of you who don't brave the Black Friday mayhem let me just tell you it takes a lot of planning.....

But after the meticulous planning where, what and who it pays off in the end! We saved $290 this year! It is worth waking up at 4:00 am for that! - am I cheap!?

A scary sight - And it is not even Halloween!

Gregg was a good boy and put the lights up on the house. I wanted everyone to see how stressful it is for me to sit at the bottom and watch this horrifying sight, I swear he was going to fall.

It looks beautiful, even though I know you did it for the boys and not for me!! Thanks!

Wow How the time flies!!!

I can't believe it is already December. I only blogged two little things in November. I guess that is how it goes when you are preoccupied with things. I have been spending almost every spare minute getting our Christmas village up and ready with Gregg. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. We still need to add a few finishing touches (it hasn't even snowed yet in the North Pole or in the City). So after that I am hoping we are done and can enjoy the work.
Gregg and I started this fetish last year. Gregg has always wanted a train under the Christmas tree. So last year when he mentioned it AGAIN for the upteenth time, I said okay get one BUT it has to be a Lionel. My dear old Grampa whom I miss dearly (but honestly believe he is still watching over me)had a whole bunch of Lionel trains. I think when he passed they ended up with my sister (lucky girl)! So anyway, Gregg and I decided on the Polar Express train. But then naturally we needed a North Pole village to go along with it. So it started from there. Gregg being the man he is doesn't do anything little. So he found and bought and found and bought. We went from one little house to a whopping 39 pieces to our village in 1 YEAR!!! No that was not cheap! Luckily he was a really good shopper and found deals. But it still hurt the pocket book a little.
So first we had to get the basics. I found this lady in CA that builds platforms for Dept 56 villages and fell in love with them. I wanted so badly to purchase one from her, but it would have cost $600! Me being the do-it-yourself er that I am I thought we can do it our self. We still have not found how to do resin (that was my favorite part of her platforms). If anyone knows and can give us a hint I would be so happy! It really makes the whole scene so much prettier.

I cut each block out separately then glued them to make it look like ice block walls.

We actually ended up taking this one out and building it again. The blocks were not stacked just right. It looked a little uneven.

The whole house has been completely a mess while we have been working on this! It drives me crazy!!!

Please notice the hard work Gregg specifically did. The shelf in the back has his favorite thing on it. The houses sit on top of a large tunnel for the train. And those houses spell out NORTH POLE! It is hard to see, but it was one of Gregg's favorite things.

Notice the large bare spot, left open for my beautiful resin pond one day. We actually attempted to do one on a scrap and it was not so good (twice I might add).

Our very busy city.