Christmas 2009

We had a fun Christmas Eve with all of the family last Thursday evening. Jamie and Kelly came late because of other family parties and Melinda didn't get to come at all because she had bronchitis - we missed her. We tried our hand at fondue and decided we need a lot more practice - I over heated the chocolate and the cheese was stringy ... so they didn't look very pretty but they tasted good - and I MISSED the yummy artichoke dip that Da was going to bring. It was an interesting Christmas Eve - every year I work hard to find just the right story or program for our family Christmas Eve and then every year we have the Christmas Story done by the grandkids. Well this year I just plain couldn't think of anything to do program wise, so we decided that we would just get together and eat and visit and then do the reinactment of the nativity.

We waited for Jamie and Kelly to bring their babies so we would have a baby Jesus and then we decided not to do the nativity at all - we had a fun time visiting and eating and thought that would be sufficient. But we missed the nativity --- it isn't what you call spiritual because the kids don't practice it in advance or anything - but it is definitely one of our family traditions... and it was missed. It also is a break in the talking and eating and I missed the chance to stop and take a moment and appreciate the reason for the Season -- the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The evening felt incomplete because we didn't 'do' the spiritual part of it!

Another reason that the evening was incomplete was because we were missing Makae. We did get to see her though - a bunch of the family all headed down to North Salt Lake for a 2 pm visit with her. It was a wonderful chance to hug her and talk to her and watch her get excited over seeing many of the family that she hadn't seen for two months.

We also got to see Makae on the Tuesday before Christmas - her whole group put on a very fun musical program for us - This is Makae singing with the girls at Lifeline. She seems to enjoy the staff and the students and has adjusted to their routine very well. She is learning to make some good decisions with her life right now and she is in our every prayer.

It was so fun watching Shawn and Kristanne's boys lovingly hold their new little cousins. All three of them were so excited to be holding a baby. Of course the babies were the hit of the party with everyone - here we have Ethan and Cade holding Taylie and Brayden. Taylie even looks a little bit like Ethan!
Here's Cade - in his fancy new jammies which he LOVED!! With a sweet Brayden
Taylie and Brayden were held and held and held that whole Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - they had to be exhausted after having to entertain all their aunts and uncles and cousins and gramma's and granpas!!
Jace was really excited to try and hold Brayden. At first I held Jace as he held Brayden but it didn't take me long to realize he did a good job holding the babies. So we sat him on the floor and let him go solo. We had a fun evening with everyone - there is nothing I love more than spending time with my family. It gets a bit BUSY in my little house when all of us are there but there is no cure for that problem - its only going to get worse as the families get bigger. I am still waiting for my kids to buy me a bigger house!! ;-D


But we had a lovely evening and then the next day Ed and I got up early and were on the road to Lehi by 6:45 am so we could be there when Ben and Simon came down the stairs to see what Santa had brought.

This picture of Benjamin is priceless - the look on his face is exactly what Christmas morning is all about. The excitement and thrill of a new train set! One that he could make go all by himself!

this is our own version of Godzilla - as soon as Simon realized he could make his train go foward and back, he had to get in the middle of things - literally!
Here's Ben watching Da as she sets the train back on the track again - I bet Dirk and Da wish they had a nickle for every time they have had to do that in the last week!
Benji got a normal looking train and Simon got the 'front-runner'....it didn't take him long to figure out how to get the little person in the train out and then he discovered he could make the train go on the carpet as well as the track...the rest of the time we were there he was driving his train all over the carpet. We tried to get Ben and Simon interested in their gifts but nothing doing...all they could see was TRAIN!!

After we had spent 45 minutes at Dirk and Da's house we got back in the car and headed to Provo where Kecia had been waiting patiently (???) for us to arrive. She woke up Glenn when we pulled up (he was glad to get to sleep in an extra hour!)
this picture should be very last --- I had been taking pictures of Emma and her trucks - there she was running back and forth in her jammies and her high heels and watching the trucks go = she was sooooo excited. Then I looked over at her mommie... sitting there with her hat and scarf on, her stack of presents in front of her and holding up her new saute pan in HER jammies and with her new high heels on too! Like mother , like daughter!
Note princess Emma's glass slippers - she didn't want to have anything to do with her new princess dresses and jewelry and crowns but she put on her new high heels as she chased back and forth watching the trucks going.
She didn't touch the trucks or the tracks - she just ran back and forth and back and forth saying truck truck truck
Like Ben and Simon - Emma was so excited about her tracks and trucks she was not the least bit interested in the presents we brought or any of the other presents under the tree - she would look for a second and then back to the 'truck, truck, truck'.
This was what was waiting for Emma when she first came into the living room - a whole box full of princess dresses and high heels and crowns and jewelry ... NO THANK YOU, NOT INTERESTED.....TRUCK ......TRUCK.....TRUCK!


Thank you Kecia and Glenn and Dirk and Da for sharing Christmas morning with us. Ed just decided on Christmas eve that he wanted to watch the little ones and see and feel the excitement of Christmas morning. I wasn't too sure about it (after all, I didn't get to open my presents until 11 am when we got back home!!)

Christmas Day was a fantastic day as we got to spend it with the people we love, watching the excitement on their faces as they opened the gifts that we had lovingly picked out to give them. Christmas is such a special time - as we drove down South that morning we saw a cross walk above the freeway where someone had taken cups and created the message in the fence that said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS"

Mauri and Ira and their sweet kids got to our house about 12:30. Grandpa was anxious to give them all rides on the RZR but it was sooooo cold and his hopes of pulling them on their sleighs over behind the church house on the lawn there were dashed because of the ice mountain between the lawn and the parking lot. After they left I got a half an hour nap (which is a good nap for me) and then Shawn and Kristanne came with the three boys. While they were still here Jamie and Kelly and the twinners showed up. We had lots of good food all day long and again, lots of love and laughter. About five pm we followed Shawn and Kris down to Kelly and Terrie's house to see grandpa Merritt - All of Kelly's family were there plus Jeff and Teresa and Skye and Katie Jo - so again, we enjoyed the love and laughter of our wonderful family. Teresa and Jeff added so much fun to the group.

Ed and I were getting ready to leave when the phone rang and it was Chase calling from North Carolina. Kelly put the phone on speaker mode and we all sat around the table for an hour chatting with Elder Nielson. It was great - and it was a marvelous ending to a marvelous day. As he bore his testimony of Jesus and all that Christ did for us I couldn't help but feel an even closer tie to my Savior.

People complain about how commercialized Christmas is but I love it because it gives me a reason to put smiles on the faces of the people I love the very most. Christ is the reason - we ARE celebrating his birth day - Thank you Jesus for inviting us to such a wonderful birthday party!

Tonya, Brandy, Bobette

Here you go Brandy - your very own blog!! Cute pictures I think. Ed took these pictures at Jill's funeral in July. It is a fun grouping of some precious women. This is MY favorite of the three of you. You can simply right click and save it onto your computer. Then you can save them on a disk and take them to walmart - or you can download them right to wal mart and just go pick up the pictures when you are done ...or you can have ME send them to wal mart in your name. Let me know if I can help you/

Making Wreaths!! What Fun!

Kecia and I and Jen all showed up at Jamie's house about 11 on Thursday morning with gobs of red and green ornaments (don't say balls around Jamie!) , red poinsettias, red and green ribbon, plain wreaths of various sizes and also a garland or two. We had four glue guns, and lots of wire too. Mauri and Melinda and Kris we missed all of you.

Of course first of all we got to ooh and aahhhh over the babies - they were sound asleep though - and certainly not the least bit interested in all the craft goings on!


this is a very poor picture of Taylie but I wanted everyone to see the pretty sparklies she has in her ears! so sweet!


Brayden was sawing logs too!



I thought she was going to wake up after the first flash went off - she stretched and opened an eyeball and then promptly went back to sleep.


Kecia found a wreath online at Lowe's that she fell in love with - green wreath with red and lime green ornaments. She put out the suggestion that maybe we could make it for less than it would cost ready made - I don't know if any of us 'saved' much money but we sure had fun copying it.

Okay - this is a the stuff I brought - now four times that with ornaments and ribbons and wreaths from each of us. The table was almost too small and Jamie had the leaf in it!!


My finished product was totally different than what was online - but it is ME - lots sof sparklies!


This is Jen's but of course she hasn't pulled the ribbons up tight yet - so we don't really get to see the finished product here,



This is Jamie's and it turned out really nice - their ribbon was a metallic red and added a whole different look than

Kecia's whose wreath has sparkly green ribbon in it. I apologize for the sideways picture - my new camera has a pretty good program to download the pictures with but the program decided that this was the correct way to 'show' the picture and I didn't realize it until I got it downloaded. Now if I were really a good mom I would delete this picture and put in another picture that was sitting the right direction and pull it down into place....forget that!! turn your computer sideways!
Here is another shot of my wreath. I have it hanging on my front door - and its not even the middle of November!! My poor Thanksgiving wreath is feeling really put out right now!



To finish off this blog I put in the video I took of Emma and her reaction to the babies.
So - we had a great time - I left before Kecia got her garland all decorated but I am sure it is gorgeous too - all of us can give ourselves a good pat on the back!

Halloween 2009

Jamie told me to steal the picture off of her blog so I could show off Taylie and Brayden's costumes. When Jamie first mentioned what she wanted her babies to be on Halloween and mentioned maybe dying their hair blue (!!!) I offered to knit some hats for them. I found a bright blue eyelash yarn with a sparkle in it and the hats turned out perfect. Then about a week before Halloween Jamie said she had searched everywhere for red jammies (and they don't make them in size 3 months sizes - maybe for Christmas but they weren't out YET) and so I told her what kind of fabric and how much to buy and I already had an old pattern and I went to work on the outfits. So here they are - THING ! (Taylie) and THING II (Brayden!)



Saturday evening we had a terrific Trunk or Treat at our WARD - lots and lots of cars and candy and kids - it was great fun and the weather was simply perfect. This is a picture of Rachel Hatch and her husband and daughter Tailee - Fred Flinstone, Wilma and Pebbles at your service!!!



This last year of school is getting a little bit too stressful for Tucker Hatch - our 17 year old next door neighbor.
This is a picture of Moore's JAWS car = with the shark tail and fins and big teeth, the music drumming in the background and the kids had to put there hand into the jaws of the shark to get their candy. What a hoot.
I took a bunch of pictures at our family Halloween party but lost my camera half way through it so I didn't get a good picture of Adrie Anna or Ben or Cade Darn it all. all three of their costumes were fantastic.
Mr Simon Clown without the hat -mama's littlest baby for six more months - hurrah!


Fancy transformer - I think it is Bumblebee
Emma Lynn - I don't know what she is asking grandma for her but its about the only full face picture I got of her.
Chico the vampire dog - he looked so cute - he wasn't too sure he liked the cape but he totally dispised the hat. He is such a sweet baby - and he adores mama mauri although adrie can talk him into sitting on her lap too.
This is a softy picture of missy Emma - or should I say Tinkerbell - she looked like a dolly and as it was her birthday celebration too (going to be two on the 13th of this month) she received a stroller and a stool from grandma of which she loved both.
Scary Ira - we told him he should keep the black hair and the eyeliner - it looks pretty cool.
Here's our 'Cop Caleb - we better behave or he'll drag us off to the station - today is his birthday - 7 years old
Here is Jerod looking pretty scary - I told his mom she needed to feed the poor kid more!
Ethan (also 12 years old) was Toad from Nintendo - he looked pretty cute!
One of our birthday boys - Joshua also turned 7 on November 1 - he is a transformer and has a gun that he got for his birthday that shoots nerf bullets but is also a transformer!
=

Cute picture of 12 year old Jared in his skeleton costume. I like this face much better! It has a sween smile!



One of the birthday boys - Caleb was seven years old on that day - last year we started the tradition of celebrating halloween and birthdays on their birthday November 1 - that way they all get to go trick or treating the night before and then the next day we get to see them in their cute fun outfits.

Simon - age 18 months - Here we have a darling clown that wasn't too sure he wanted to be in costume and really didn't want to wear the cute top hat. Mom didn't even have to paint his cheeks - they are always that rosy!



Fun Halloween this year - Kecia and Melinda and I went to Garnder Village to the Witches Night Out and it was so much fun!!! We were more enthralled with looking at all the gorgeous outfits and hats that we didn't even buy anything!! I immediately came home and started looking for stuff to upgrade my hat...which I did - and this is it. By next year I want to have a sparkly purple and black dress with a long cape, striped socks and comfy witches shoes. (that's gonna be the hard part!)

Hawaii - part two

I've been putting off updating about Hawaii because I have SOOOOO many pictures to choose from - sometimes I think longingly (!!) of the olden days when every picture you took was carefully monitored because film got expensive and then you had to pay to have it developed. Today we just snap snap snap - one afternoon at the beach I took 150 pictures of the clouds and sun and sunset!!! Now I get to pick out one or two of them to put on the blog...OUCH!

















here I am playing Shawn - but of course my little camera doesn't do nearly as well as his nice one and my little brain just put it on auto and shot the picture - but it is still a beautiful water lily















The whole road to Hana isn't this lush but a lot of it is!! Gorgeous drive even if it took 4 hours to drive 52 miles! We came home the back way so it only took about 2 hours -



We stopped at a Botanical Garden on the Road to Hana - it was gorgeous. It was a very hot and humid day because the trade winds were not blowing. But still it was worth our time to wander up and down all the paths - I liked this picture because it incorporated part of the water lily pond and yet you could still see the ocean.





























Another view from the botanical gardens with the road in the middle of the picture and the blue ocean beyond.











I didn't realize I picked out so many pictures from the botanical gardens - the pathway on the left took us up and down all sorts of trails with plants and trees from all over the world.












Just a soft pretty flower on a tree - I must be partial to soft petals - thus petal soft jewelry!













We were amazed at the pine trees growing right next to palm trees - but once we stopped at the gardens we realized that the pine needles on the tree were very short - this is a branch on the pine tree and if you look at it up close you can see the little pine needles on the long skinny branches. They were very soft to the touch













This picture is for Cheryl - everyday we walk at the Layton Park and feed the black swan. At the Westin Hotel in Lahaina there was a beautiful black swan - very friendly, always ready to eat out of your hand. There was a white swan with a black neck too! The flamingos you see at the far right are real - I was standing right in front of the check in desk when I took this picture - I had a roof over my head but the pond itself was open to the sky, with gorgeous plants all around - the koi in the pond loved to be fed too - they had certain times posted so the children could come and feed the birds and the fish. There were also gorgeous parrots and two cockatiels (sp?)- one was white and the other birds were all very colorful.












This is another view of the same pond - I just moved back farther under the roofed area and so the picture is more shaded. So the black swan is in the shade and the flamingos are still eating. You can actually see one of the parrots on its perch at the far right of this picture. They loved 'talking' to the people.



More beauty to come...