Santa Claus & Tuacahn

Every year we take our kids to Tuachan to see the live nativity. There is something so special about watching that beautiful depiction of the Saviors birth.
Of course, one of the highlights for the kids is the visit with Santa Claus!! Tonight while standing in line, I asked Piper who that was and she said "Santa!" It was adorable.

Tyson asked for a scooter and J.D. asked Santa to surprise him with either a pair of chaps or a DS. Santa said he has lots of DS's at the North Pole. Good thing Santa's prepared!! After we left, J.D. got really worried, because he didn't ask for games to go with the DS. I told him that I am sure Santa will come prepared!

Piper getting a kiss from her daddy!

You gotta love these things! I was sad that this one turned out a little fuzzy.

Waiting in line to see Santa. Tyson has an unusually long tongue. He can stick it up his nose. Just a random fact for all of you! I'm sure you were dying to know that little tidbit!

This isn't the greatest picture of all of us, but it's all we got! They had a fun horse drawn carriage that we rode on. The girls who own it were so nice and fun to talk to. We loved being pulled around in it. I think the kids may have loved it even more than the train.

A couple of Santa's helpers.

Again, waiting in line. What a fun night to spend together as a family. It's a great way to remember the birth of the Savior and to have a fun family night!

I participated in a Santa Blog Swap a few weeks ago and got to meet Chacoy, from
Ma21cute boy. We have had so much fun getting to know one another and she was sweet enough to give me a fun award! I think this is the first one I have ever had on my own personal blog! Exciting!

I have to tell you 5 things about myself and then pass it along to 5 more wonderful ladies.
So here it goes:

1. I love to read! Love, love, love it. Don't get to do it enough. I am a Harry Potter and Twilight freak!

2. I love to cook and or bake! I just like food. My friends call me Brandy Crocker!! Rumor is, that I make a mean cookie!

3. Christmas is my very favorite holiday!

4. I love to be on the mountains and spend time with my family. We like to camp and hunt together.

5. I love to blog. That's no secret! It's one of my favorite things to do.



Don't forget the rules:

Grab the award
Post it on your blog,
along with 5 things that you like to do
Pass to 5 blogs{people} you'd like to recognize.
*Don't forget to tell them about the award*

Now, the moment you've all been waiting for........

1. Mandee at The Dover Family Circus, because well she's my best buddy and I love her! I also find her family refreshing and I enjoy their brand of crazy!

2. Lynette over at There's Alway's Nyquil, because well she makes me laugh and she can also make me cry. The girl is amazing!! So glad she's my friend!

3. Cute Meagan over at Keeping Up on My Adventures! She's one of those amazing gals, who is much more adventurous than I.

4. Lindsay, over at The Jones Family. A friend from High School has the most darling little girl! I'd put her right up there with Piper! And she makes me laugh. Her last few posts have had me rolling. From gettting kissed from Santa and the confessions of a Mormon Mommy! Hilarious!

5. Jessie over at The Exciting Life of Jessie, because well she's single and in college and that is so much fun to experience agian through anothers eye's. And she is one of our favorite people. My kids adore her!

Congratulations ladies. Pass along the award, if you'd like to!!

Gingerbread Houses

Making Gingerbread houses is one of my kid's favorite holiday traditions. We had Baylee come and help us out this year. They have so much fun decorating and it's fun to see their creativity coming out. They did a great job! I hope it's something they will want to continue and make a tradition with their kids.

Snow, Sweet Babies, & Good Times

First of all, I've decided that I take a ridiculous amount of pictures! 87 pictures in 3 day's. What's a girl to do with that many photo's.

Anyway, we spend the weekend in Salt Lake so that we could attend a baby blessing.
This little guy is scrumptious. I could eat his little cheeks. Seriously! He's pretty cute.

Look at little Micheal checkin' out Josh. I'd be worried too.

I want another baby. Gotta convince that good-lookin' guy that he wants one too!

Got to meet Michelle, who is my brothers girlfriend. I like her alot. She's a darling girl. I won't jinx it by saying what I hope happens, but I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Snow, snow everywhere! Snow in St. George, snow in Magna and snow in Marysvale! Of course we had to go out and play in it.

The kids were cracking me up! They were sliding on their tummies across the tramp. I was just waiting for one of them to slide off the trampoline and land on their face. I would have laughed my butt off. Until it was one of my kids and they had a broken arm! Thankfully all arms are intact and the children safe!

Snow angels!

You can barley see my face in this one. I was trying to get a picture and Josh shoved a snowball in my face right when I snapped the picture. Nice!

I LOVE this picture. Piper looks absolutely enchanted and my hubby is looking pretty hot! It's just a darling picture of two of my favorite people :).!

Growing Up

J.D. had to give his Egypt report yesterday. He looked so big standing up there and he did it all by himself. He is such a good boy and I am so proud to be his mama! Love you J.D.

Piper n' Mia

Trouble makers! That's what these two are. They are good little buddies, though. they were having a blast climbing in and out of the dryer!

A Week of Celebrations

We have had a week of huge celebrations. I just posted a million pictures to prove it. Keep scrolling down, down and down to see all the fun we've had this week. These pictures are from today and sweet baby Kassie's blessing. Kassie is our newest little niece, she is the daughter of Kris and Rowland. We had a chance to go and attend her blessing and then spending the afternoon with our wonderful family afterwards eating lot's of great food and having a great time! Piper got to play with a cousin she has never met, Fenway. They had a great time together. I love the picture of them on the donkey. Cracks me up!

The funniest story from the luncheon. It was winding down and only a few of us were left. The kids were all out playing in the back yard. All of the sudden, you hear Kaleb yelling at Piper, "Hey, that's mine. Give it back!" We looked outside and saw Piper running away from Kaleb holding a hamburger. It was so funny. She can totally outrun him. I had to go and get her a hamburger to get her to give his back to him.

The one sad spot in this week was that Josh's mom was unable to attend the blessing today. She suffered a heart attack on Friday afternoon, and while she is okay, she is still in the hospital until tomorrow. It was decided to go ahead and have the blessing because family had already arrived from all over to attend. Isn't Kassie's dress gorgeous? Grandma Becky made it for her.

What a beautiful day!

Our Christmas Tree

Our neighbor Eric, was nice enough to get our tree for us this year, when he went up. I was getting a littel panicky, wondering when we would have time to go and get one. We alway's have a fresh one. It just wouldn't be Christmas without the scent of pine and all those lovely pine needles!

We spent Saturday night decorating it and I let the kids go wild. They decorated it all by themselves. The only thing left to do is the star. And I have to do that because it has to be wired on to it.

Afterwards, we watched Forgotten Carols and ate popcorn. It was a great night and filled me with the Christmas spirit.

Nativity & Ward Party 2009

Ah, nothing says December, like a ward party and a nativity, put on by the primary kids. This is the first year that I have actually had my kids in a nativity play. We haven't done one in our ward for a long time! It's priceless!
They decorated the tables with glitter!! Whose idea was that?? We had glitter in everything, including our food. It was AWESOME!

Tyson was a shepherd. I was getting him all ready to go and I said, "Ah, you make a cute Shepherd Tyson." He had a huge grin on his face and he replied, "I'm not a just a Shepherd, I'm a Jedi Shepherd!" And then he pretended to break out a light saber. I kept waiting for him to do it during the nativity, but he was good and just stood there and smiled looking so cute!

J.D. was asked to be an angel. And he was an ANGRY angel. He was the only boy angel. All the other boys who were asked to be angels didn't' even participate. Poor guy. He sat with his hands in his chin the entire time.

See how Tyson has his hand up. He's holding his pretend light saber.

And what would a Christmas party be, without the man in red? It was so awesome because I think my kids were like 4th in line!! J.D. didn't even have a chance to ask him for anything because it was crazy. He was so sad he didn't get to tell Santa what he wanted, so I told him I would take him to see Santa at Tuachan.

Piper just posed with him. She wouldn't look at him. Her expression kills me. I think she understands that Santa is a good guy, but she looks like she is stuck between excitement and fear.

And my Shepherd Jedi, well he asked Santa for a dog. A dog!! I told him Santa doesn't make dogs at the North Pole, but he does make scooters! He decided he better ask for the scooter.

Tyson's Friend Party

We didn't get enough partying done on Wednesday so we had to have a birthday party on Friday for Tyson's friends!
We had presents and more Transformers than you can possibly imagine.

We had cake and party blowers!

We had an Optimus Prime Pinata!

We had friends!

We had balloons and games! And we had a lot of fun!

Tyson's Birthday

Tyson partied the day away on Wendsday! It started off with opening present with Mom & Dad. Some awesome Marvel cars and 2 transformers from J.D. and Piper. Cupcakes at preschool and dinner at Grandma & Grandpa's.

Grandpa and Grandma bought him the coolest Optimus Prime Transformer. Which Josh still hasn't gotten to transform into the diesel. He say's it's just going to have to stay Optimus. He say's there are 37 steps to make it transform. Oh well, Tyson is happy with it being Optimus.

Blowing out the candle.

He got this awesome little hat at school and he wore it all day long. I don't think he took it off once. He looked so cute in it. Like a little gangster!

My gosh he's cute and he's 5!! Time goes so fast!

Santa Swap Package

About a month ago, Mandee and I joined a Christmas Swap over at The Mommy Files. I got paired up with a cute gal from Price, named Chacoy. So we each went out and bought each other some fun gifts to send to each other through the mail. It's so much fun to get HAPPY mail and not just bills!!! I got my package on Tuesday and here is what I got!!

She was so thoughtful and sent each of my kids a book. We love books and they were so excited to get them. Piper has been carrying her Barbie book around ever since. I think she might even be sleeping with it :). I also got a fun, monogrammed dish towel. It has the funnest Christmas material on it. There was some yummy Victoria Secret body spray, Some fun little gift cards that have owls (I heart owls) on them and a cute little tissue cozy. A box of orange sticks, which we have been eating on. I love them frozen! Some fun, fun hand warmers and darling hair ties, which I am assuming are for Piper, but I wore one yesterday! They are super fun!

I tried to get a good picture, but the glare is really bad on the pink one. It's got a cute froggy on it!

The very first thing we did was sit down and read the Transformer books.

Yeah!! So excited! Thanks Chacoy for all the time and thought you put into our package! We loved it. It's so fun to get to know others. If you haven't ever done a swap you should. I did one last year and it was also a blast. It's just fun to go and shop for someone else and to know your going to make someones day!

Happy Birthday Tyson

Five years! Time flies by so swiftly. It seems just like yesterday I had you. Grandma Ruth and Aunt Sherry came down to watch J.D. because they were going to induce me on Friday. They got there at 2 p.m. on Thursday and I was well into labor. I had Grandma take me to the hospital and they said, "Yep, your having a baby today!" And they were right. A cute, little bundle of high spirited, boy came into our lives at 6:50 pm that night!

You are your dad in miniature. My mini Josh. You act just like him too. I think that is why you melt my heart. I picture you daddy being just like you. You are so awesome!! You are cute and you say the funniest things. Your obsessed with taping your action figures and cars to the walls. It's a curious obsession. I really think I am going to buy you rolls of tape for your birthday :).

Tyson's Birthday Interview:

What's your favorite color? Blue

What's your favorite food? Corndogs & Eggo's

What's your favorite candy? Reese's & Skittles

Who's your best-friend? Corbin

What do you want to be when you grow up? Tall ?Work with cars, like daddy.

What's your favorite movie? Spiderman & Transformers

What was the best thing that happened to you last year? Going to Disneyland and seeing Bolt.

What's your favorite part of preschool? Play with toys, playing outside, playing games and playing with the cats.

"Mom, that's alot of questions. I'm done. I'm done Mom!" Stomps out of the room!

I love you Tyson. You are so sweet and so funny. I hope your 5th Birthday rocks, just like you!