Month: December 2010

Kyle have been married for NINE years now! And to celebrate, Kyle got a sitter, and took me out to a movie and dinner. However, I’m sure the sitter’s parents must have thought that we were crazy for still wanting to go out despite the storm….

Driving in the snow, by itself is not scary. Driving when there is just snow on the road isn’t so bad either. It’s when that snow turns to ice that things become interesting. Tonight the roads were nothing BUT ice. We went out anyways, and Kyle drove about 20 mph all the way into town. As we were going down Pioneer Crossing we saw another car on the other side of the divider spin out, because they had tried to go around a curve too fast. Luckily there was no one else on that side of the road so there was no car accident. We kept going and were doing fine until we reached a red light on the bridge over the freeway. Kyle tried to stop, but the car just slid. We weren’t going very fast, so we didn’t slide out into the intersection at a fast rate. And our light had JUST turned red so all the cross traffic were already stopped, so we just coasted through the intersection because there was no way to come to a stop a safe distance out of the intersection without just going through it. Crazy. We were about half an hour late to see the new Narnia movie, so we decided to see Tangled since it would have just barely started. It was a very cute movie.

After the movie we talked about where to go to eat and decided to give Texas Roadhouse a try, since it is new in the area and we had never been there before. Let me just say- SO. GOOD. And maybe I’ll just say “YUMM” too. 😛 Their rolls with their cinnamon butter were so yummy. We got the tater skins as an appetizer and those were so yummy too. Kyle had pulled pork and bbq chicken which he enjoyed, and I had ribs. These ribs were so soft and tender that I picked up the bone to eat one and the meat stayed on the plate! The meat had just fallen off the bone when I picked it up. Yummy.

The drive home was slow but uneventful, and I’m SO glad that we made it home safe and sound. 🙂

Happy 9th anniversary.

Liesl came out to spend some time with just us, since she was in town and the kids had a blast playing with her and showing off their new Christmas toys.

Ethan tried on his new cub scout uniform and decided to wear it for awhile. 🙂

Sorry! was a Christmas gift that we got for the family and the kids asked Liesl to teach them how to play it (while I got a chance to clean out the pantry 😉 ) They had LOTS of fun playing, until someone bumped them back to home.

But we all had a great time having Liesl visit and hang out, and it was fun to see her again.

Tonight we went to Granny’s house for Christmas dinner with Kyle’s family. We got there pretty early since Karen hadn’t given us a time and we didn’t want to be late and get there to find her upset that dinner had been ready for awhile and was getting cold. 🙂 But when we got there she was still working on dinner, and Laurel and her family hadn’t got there yet. So while we were waiting for them to arrive Granny had our family open our presents from her. Man! She went overboard! I honestly don’t know everything that she got our kids because everybody opened presents at the same time (we do one present at a time in our house). I do know that Chloe got an Eeyore stuffed animal, Dinah got a Minnie doll, and each of them got some clothing item. It was just crazy. Laurel’s family arrived shortly after we opened presents and Karen continued to work on finishing dinner. I guess between Laurel and Karen there were a couple of other people that had been invited but weren’t coming, and when Laurel asked if it was just going to be us or if someone else was coming, Karen said that someone else WAS coming. She was asked “Who?” and she just said “A friend”. Kyle asked “What’s his name???” We all laughed, but the conversation changed gears at that point.

After awhile, we were still all talking in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. Karen, Kyle and Laurel went to answer it. Roine and I stayed in the kitchen talking, and then we hear Laurel SCREAMING “NO WAY! NO WAY! NO WAY! NO WAY!” So Roine and I looked at each other all confused and then we heard Liesl’s voice! Liesl & Ian decided, spur of the moment, to come up for a visit!

The kids were SO excited, and apparently so was Laurel. 😛

Ian had given Liesl a new massive camera so she was taking pictures left and right. So naturally she shared with me. 🙂

When Chloe finished eating her dinner she started to suck her thumb (which is what she does when she is bored), then she decided to multitask:

Here are most of my crazy kids:

Hey look a crazy husband too:

It has been a great evening.

PS: Naturally there are more pictures in the photo gallery. 🙂

I would like to report that the kids all slept peacefully through the night, but that didn’t happen! Chloe was awake for a good couple of hours just being cranky. She would fall asleep and then we would move her back to her bed and then she’d just come walking back into our room and climbing back into our bed a few minutes later. During that time I saw Ethan come out into the hall and look like he was going to walk towards the living room. I told him not to go out there and he instantly turned and went to the bathroom. I took Chloe back to her bed and sat with her a bit to wait for her to fall asleep, at which point Tyra woke up wanting to know if it was morning. So the two oldest were the ones awake in the middle of the night hoping it was time to get Christmas started and Chloe was just not sleeping well. The only ones that actually slept were Jeremy and Dinah!

By 7 all the kids were awake (Ethan and Tyra were awake first though and I had to put up the child gate to keep them down the hall so they couldn’t go out before the little ones were awake) and so we turned them loose on the living room. They went for their stockings first. The boys got some small lego sets and a couple of cars characters, and the girls got Care Bear toys. Ethan got right to work assembling his legos:

And the girls were excited to play with their new care bears:

Kyle got the Moon Spinners on dvd and a new ps2 controller extension. I got the Pajama Game on dvd. While the kids were playing with the stuff in their stockings (and eating the candy they got) I preheated the oven and got breakfast started. Frozen turnovers are so EASY and we love doing that for breakfast Christmas morning.

Santa kept the candy simple this year too. Candy canes on the tree, and plastic candy canes filled with long laffy taffy’s in the kids stockings. Of course the kids were pigs about it. 😛

After eating breakfast, (which Dinah and Jeremy didn’t want to eat, surprising?) we went back to the living room to open presents. We kept things VERY simple this year. Every year we get each of the kids something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. In the past we have gone crazy with this and they have gotten one or two things they want from us and another one from Santa. They have gotten pjs on Christmas eve AND something else nice to wear to open Christmas morning, and a couple of books each. This year we toned it down BIG TIME. The girls all got a set of Care Bear toys as their want, Ethan got battleship and Jeremy got hungry, hungry, hippos. Ethan and Dinah were they only ones that got a need this year (because I couldn’t pin down a need for the others) and Ethan got his cub scout uniform, and Dinah got a set of scriptures and a crayon bank to keep her weekly earnings in. For the something to wear they all got jammies, which they opened last night, and each of them got ONE book this year. See we toned it down quite a bit this year and I actually had it all bought and wrapped weeks in advance!

I love how happy Chloe was to unwrap and get to look at her book. When Ethan upwrapped his book, his face was much like the one when he found pjs in the package last night.

I gave Kyle a pair of slippers from the kids (which they had told him about weeks ago when I bought them), a corn dog maker, and “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling. Kyle got me a second bowl for the kitchenaid, (but it doesn’t fit so we’ll have to exchange it) and a beater with rubber around it so that it scrapes the sides and bottom of the bowl as it mixes. Santa brought the kids a little people nativity set, a whole bunch of movies for the family and “The Secret Garden” for me (so everyone got a new book this year!).

The afternoon, the kids spent playing with their new things. Ethan and Tyra played a game of battleship. We had yummy sandwiches with our favorite deli meat for lunch. And we watched a few of our new movies. In the evening Debby and Jeff came out for a visit (which worked out because I wasn’t sure when we would be able to get their presents to them) and were here for dinner which ended up being a pot of homemade chicken soup.

Chloe had a REALLY late nap which meant that she was too awake at bed time to go back to sleep, so Kyle and I stayed up late with her and watched the Pajama Game. Thankfully Chloe was asleep by the time the movie was over because I am tired!

It’s been a really good day. I really enjoy staying home and doing nothing Christmas day. The house is a huge mess because I did nothing, but whatever.

Kyle had to work the second job tonight, so this afternoon before he left we took treats to some of our friends, and when we got back the kids got to open their Christmas eve presents. They always get pjs to open on Christmas eve. We didn’t always do it this way. When Kyle and I first got married and were starting our own traditions, Kyle didn’t have any input for what traditions he would like to make, so we ended up just doing what I had done with my family all my life (since that’s what I always looked forward to). And as the years went on that’s just what we did, until a few years ago when Kyle said that we should let the kids each open a present Christmas eve. However at that time we just let them pick one, which ended up making it difficult to put kids to bed right after they opened a new toy…..SO last year or the year before I got the brilliant idea that they should get jammies to open on Christmas eve, and that’s what we did this year too.

When Ethan got his open he suddenly wasn’t very excited any more:

After presents Daddy left to go to work, I fed the kids some dinner and they put their new pjs on so we could pick and lay out stockings:

Then the kids were off to bed and when they were asleep I got to spend some time to myself in a mostly clean living room to wait for Kyle to get off work. 🙂

Between 9:30 and 10 I sent Kyle a text to see how it was going at work and really to find out when he was going to be home. He was trying to finish up at work so he could come home, but he told me not to wait for him. So I just went to bed without him.