I did it!!!

I've been thinking about a few of the goals I set for myself this year and am pretty happy with the outcomes.

I lost all of the weight I gained when I was pregnant with Sanders. True, I have gained some of it back and lost a lot of the tone I gained, but I did it! AND I am still ahead of where I started. So YAY!

I went to Quilt Market!!!!!!!! This was seriously the highlight of this year! I met some of my most favorite fabric designers, turned down a contract (I know...some days I can't believe I did that either, but I still hold firm to the belief that it was the right choice), and have maintained some level of contact with manufacturing companies for the remainder of the year. True, I still do not have a contract, but I am SO much further along than I was last year!

And finally, I blogged every day this year! It's been a great goal. Like all goals it hasn't come easy, but it has been worth it.

Thank you to everyone for all of your comments (those are my favorite!), encouragement, and joining me in my journey!

Tonight we had a party with just my little family to celebrate the great year we had. We had some big dreams we shot for this year. It's been a great ride!

The spread!

Love these kids!!!

Ignore the dirty dishes in the background...there's a party going on :)

Happy New Year!!!!

Can't wait to see what next year brings!!! It will be tough to top this year :)

Bitter sweet

The end of the year is approaching. As well as the completion of my goal to blog everyday. There are no cut and dry feelings about this subject. On nights, like tonight, where I feel I am rushing to beat the clock to get my post in I think it will be a relief to just not blog.

But on the other side, I feel like I have really had to evaluate how I am effected by what goes on around me. More importantly, how I want to deal with it.

I'm far from perfect....all right, all right. stop laughing.....I realize that is a rather obvious statement...but even being imperfect I feel that because I took a look at myself, my surrounds, and how I reacted because/toward them on a daily basis I am closer to who I long to be and who my Heavenly Father needs me to be than I was at the beginning of the year.

To realize that may be ending is not so sweet.

So we shall see. Maybe I will continue the goal, but allow for a number of "free" days throughout the year.

The Christmas picture post

So I finally got around to uploading all the Christmas morning pictures. I'll let them do most of the talking tonight.

Karaia's American Girl doll sized furniture,complete with working fireplace, and Tennysons HUGE tub of Legos

Sanders' "Choo Choos and Beckham's Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle Lego set, that has been put together for days now!

Coming in ,youngest to oldest, with Nana and Pappa watching

Ferb's new cat toy

What a great Christmas morning!

Cleaning out

Karaia and Beckham wanted to invite a few friends over today. Being the mean mother that I strive to maintain a reputation for, I required them to have clean, tidy rooms before any friends could come.

This has gone a few ways. Either wailing and gnashing with little to no actual cleaning going on or quick cleaning and fun time with friends. I would say it was mostly the later today. I did, however notice a few of Beckham's "cleaning" techniques that I will have to keep an eye out in future cleaning endeavors.

For example: I would clear a certain area, i.e. a desk top, under a desk, under the bed, etc. place everything I found in the middle of the floor and ask Beckham to put everything on the floor in it's proper home. I would then move on to another area or drawer only to find some of the exact same items I had just recently placed in the middle of the floor. Instead of finding their homes he would just stash them somewhere else.

He's not entirely clever about it though. The funniest time was right after I had totally cleared out under the bed. It was nice and clean and had a clear line of site from one side to the other. After I moved on to a desk I turned to place something in the middle of the floor only to notice that under the bed was not so clean as before.

Sheesh. No wonder he can't ever find all his stuff!

The best part is it is all clean! I went back and double checked everything after I learned his little secret.

It's nice to think about those rooms and not break out into hives!!!!

Down time

I finally found a day that required nothing more of me than playing with my children in our pajamas all day. That and a bit of reading.

That is exactly what I did and loved every second of it.

Birthday Boy

Kevin turned 33 today. I swear we are barely in our still in our 20's but the numbers keep going higher.

We started off the day with some sleeping in and breakfast in bed and a gift of a remote control helicopter. Kind of like the one Beckham got. He LOVES it!

Then I took him out for lunch at Biaggi's where he got his favorite penne sardi. Thank you to Grandpa Guy and Grandma Emma for coming to our house, making the kid's beds, doing dishes and all in all loving our children!!!

When we got home we tidy Christmas toys up a bit and began to get ready for some friends and their children to come and play games. Dinner was supposed to be at 5pm. Unfortunately, the roast was still a bit frozen in the center when it started cooking and struggled to heat up. We were using our New Wave oven we got for Christmas from Mom and Dave (Which we love! Thank you!). We've cooked a roast in there before and it turned out perfect. I was SO stressed!

It took another hour to completely cook, but it was SO worth the wait. Nice and juicy and good flavor.

After dinner the kids ran wild and the adults played games. It was SO fun!!!

Happy Birthday, Kevin! You are my favorite person, my best friend, a terribly successful father, and an all around talented, caring, loving person. I love you!

Early Christmas

Last night I told Karaia and Beckham that they could get up this morning any time after 5 am. I was TOTALLY kidding! These are the two children of mine that will actually sleep in late. Apparently, however, Karaia set her internal clock and at 5:15am Karaia and Beckham were at the foot of our bed wide awake. And by wide awake, I mean Christmas morning wake. There was NO way they would go back to bed.

So we called my mom and Dave who wanted to be her to watch the magic and when they got here we woke the two little boys up. That's right. You read correctly. I willing woke Tennyson and Sanders up in the early morning hours.

Here's the short list of the gift run down:

Sanders: Mega Blocks Thomas train sets. He LOVES them!
Tennyson: an insanely MASSIVE amount of Legos. He could barley be bothered to eat.
Beckham: The big Harry Potter Castle Lego set. He loves that it is taking so long and it's so complicated ;)
Karaia: Furniture for her America Girl Doll. She is in Heaven.
Emilie: The next two books in The Mysterious Benedict Society series. YAY!!!
Kevin: A three tier cooling rack. I know it sounds lame, but I promise he likes it AND I got him LOTS of Resses Peanut Butter Christmas tress. AND Kevin and I don't need a ton or expensive things to be happy.

The rest of the day was mostly wonderful. Mid afternoon was a little rough because the lack of sleep totally took over a few personalities, but other than that it was nice.

We went to Grandma Candace and Grandpa Jim's house, then to the Francom's church, then back home for much needed naps, and rounded out the day with a very nice time at my Dad's.

All in all I'd call everything a success!

No time for relaxing though. Tomorrow is Kevin's birthday and I am bound and determined to make him feel as wonderful as he makes me feel!

Tradition

We opened the Christmas pajamas!

Only one more sleep 'til Christmas!!

Lights

We did it. We finally made it.

We plan every year to take our kids to see the lights on Temple Square. And for the past...oh, I can't even tell you how many....few years something or another comes up and we don't make it.

Well, tonight we did!

Isn't the Salt Lake Temple beautiful?

The weather was fantastic. The crowds? Well, let's call them "cozy". The kids really enjoyed all the lights. We had a family council after seeing the HUGE line to see the Christus and decided we will have a special family night in January and go back when there aren't so many people.

Beckham said, " I liked the nativity scene, seeing the Christus from outside, and being with my family!"

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Comparing

If we compare today against yesterday, today would be 10,564 points ahead of yesterday!

The laundry is done...well mostly. There are still a few shirts that need to be hung but it turns out I actually do not own enough hangers for the number of shirts that I have. How that came to be I can't rightly tell you, but I'm almost positive it had something to do with the fact that I abhor putting laundry away and therefore will dress myself and my children with clean clothes straight from the basket. See, even if I had wanted to put everything away I wouldn't have been able to. It was better to be naive for so long. Really, who wants to spend Christmas money on clothes hangers?

Anyway.

Not only that, but nearly every room is tidy. Sanders' needs a bit of attention and I'm sure my sewing/craft room needs some help, but every thing else is quite presentable.

YAY!!!

Now I feel like we can add toys and trinkets and I won't have to lose my mind. I think that's much closer to the Christmas spirit of things.

In addition to the house being in order, today is also far better than yesterday because Kevin and I found a cute babysitter to watch the kiddos so we could go to Meghan and Alex's annual Christmas game night! Fun!!! Kevin won all the games we played so we are just not sure he is invited next year. Next year I might not be able to "find" a babysitter and I will have to go alone.....Sad.....so, so sad. *wink*

Can't seem to get there

I debated about posting this. Do I document how I'm really feeling or pretend that I'm feeling like the way I want to be feeling? Confused? Yeah. Me too.

I just cannot seem to get in the Christmas spirit. I feel WAY too much like an adult and the piles and PILES of laundry and other house hold chores, but who are we kidding it's always going to include laundry at my house, get in the way. That and the cost of Christmas and the added fun things that go onto our schedule are making it challenging for me.

Today the kids only had a half day of school. So I decided that today would be a stay in your pjs, for those of us not having any school to go to, and do whatever we were in the mood for kind of day. That is what I LOVED doing as a kid and I thought it would bump me right into the Christmas mood.

Instead, I am sitting here thinking about all the extra things I need to do tomorrow because I played hooky today. There is just no pleasing me.

Sigh.

There's still a few more days. Maybe that Christmas spirit is just waiting for the right moment to show up.

Almost Caught

Karaia almost caught us tonight.

The kids were supposed to be in bed...sleeping.

Kev and I were in the living room doing the things parents do this time of the year. We had already run some interference a few times with Karaia as she kept getting out of bed with super-important-can't-possibly-wait-'til-morning items to discuss with us. Shortly after the last time of putting her back to bed there was a loud knock on the door. I jumped so high!!!

It was my cute friend dropping off a gift. As we were saying our goodbyes, we were interrupted by a little voice at the top of the stairs. I jumped again! When I landed, my hand found it's way in front of Karaia's eyes as I guided her back downstairs.

"What are you doing mom?"

"What? Nothing......"

"Why did you cover my eyes?"

"Because I was trying to help you sleep. You shouldn't be awake."

"No you're hiding something."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you moved really fast when you saw me."

"I didn't want the door to hit me when I was closing it after Lindsey left."

"No......That's a different kind of panic..."

"Go to sleep, Karaia."

Fishy

One of Karaia's favorite restaurants is McGrath's Fish House. I'm not totally sure why this is, but when given the choice she will most likely choose to go here to eat.

Tonight was no exception.

At our house you get friend birthday parties ages 3 or 4 through 6 every year. After that you get a friend party every other year. On the off years you get to chose a friend to come out to dinner with us. Karaia invited her friend Asia to come along today.

This girls are so fun together. LOTS of giggling and silly conversations. Add to the mix that Beckham does not do a good job of hiding the fact that he has a small crush on Asia and you get a very entertaining night.

McGrath's does a great job with birthday celebrations. The birthday girl got the biggest serving of ice cream and was serenaded while wearing a fish hat. She thought it was magical.

I'm not quite sure what she will do with herself tomorrow when she no longer has an event to celebrate her birthday....