Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is hands down one of my favorite days of the entire year! Kids are full of excitement, there's great food, and a house full of family. It's what the whole Christmas season is all about. Jed and Dalton went out for a few hours earlier in the day to do the traditional Weller men shopping/people watching thing. While they were gone, Addie watched "The Grinch" and I made a Red Velvet Cheesecake. Then we all went up to Grammy Dawn and Papa Steve's house to party.

Shortly after arriving, Jed's cousin Brian and his wife Kelsey showed up. We weren't expecting them so it was fun to see them for a few minutes before they had to leave. When the went to leave he asked Jed's aunt Tami if there's anything she would want from Santa. We all SCREAMED when he opened the front door and saw Jenny, Jerry and their girls Mia and Bri from Texas on the porch! It was seriously such an awesome surprise. Tami fell to her knees and cried. Good job, Jen. Way to seriously bring it in the epic Christmas surprise department!

Baby Bri...she's so dang sweet. Plus, she's got awesome hair. It must be a Weller thing.

Addie was excited to see Bri and Mia too

Another girl to play with!! Addie has almost all boy cousins, so these two had a lot of fun :)

We were all pretty much this happy all evening

Doesn't Dalton look thrilled to be stuck between these two?

Addie sampling the dessert

"Addie, Tristan, look here and smile!" or....do that?

 Dalton boy 

Time for jammies and presents!

Addie helping Dalton opening his since he had no idea what was going on.

Oh, wait. This is for me?!

Yup buddy, and so is that pirate ship behind you.

Ta-da! Addie was so excited about the dress she got from Grammy she stripped down right there and tried it on! Then she realized what came with it!

An American Girl bitty baby doll! She had a matching Christmas dress and some other outfits as well as a stroller...can you spell spoiled? :) I prefer the term well loved.

Baby in a gift bag! Never gets old...

Nor does playing in boxes.

It was such a fun night. We went home and tucked our sleeping ones into bed and set up for Christmas morning. I love it. It makes my heart all sorts of happy. 

Christmas week 2011

I told myself I'd blog Christmas before Addie's birthday came so that I wouldn't have ALL of it to do at once. Well, that was a nice thought. Then strep hit me and hit me hard...the day after Christmas. Seriously. Have I mentioned that I'm moving somewhere warm where we can play outside, free of quarantining? Well southern friends, look out. One day soon you may get a knock on your door...

On to Christmas! We had a great holiday weekend. The weekend before we missed out on my family's party and unfortunately we never did get to see all of my siblings or any of my step siblings on or around Christmas. We did get to party with the Weller clan on Christmas Eve and see my mom and Danny and two of my brothers on Christmas. Hey, with all the illnesses we'd had, I was just happy we were healthy for those few days so we could enjoy it! I have a LOT of pictures. I decided to break it down into two posts because we squeezed a LOT into a few days since we'd been sick beforehand. So here's the week of Christmas breakdown.

Addie's Dance "Program"

 I say "program" because it was just a 10 minute gig at the end of her regular dance class. The teacher lets the parents come and see what the girls have been working on since we can't watch her during class. After watching their awesomeness, I'm pretty stoked for the recital at the end of the year :)

The did a cat dance. Addie had already done most of it for me at home, but it was fun to see her with her little dance peeps. Addie was nervous right before they started their dance because a clown came in. Uh, I would be too! She gave them presents after and balloon animals, so all was well.

(Also, don't get me started on what some people dress their preschoolers in for dance.)

Pretty fantastic, no? Lol yes that's me giggling to myself. 

Preschool Christmas Musical

Addie played a reindeer :)

Addie and BFF Lucy in the reindeer outfits waiting to start the show!

I totally rock and hot glued Velcro to extra fur fabric from Dalton's Chewbacca costume and made skirts. Totally necessary right? If you want to hire my fine craftsmanship skills, I can be paid in baked goods and diet coke and I will bring my own glue gun ;)

The boys watching the show. They're pretty dang handsome I think.

Surprise! Santa came!! 

After the program was over, my dad came over to visit and give presents since we weren't able to go to the party at his house the week before. 

It's kind of fun for Addie to get presents for pretty much three weeks straight though!

We also stopped into Farr's Fresh for some rockin' ice cream. 

Eggnog soft serve ice cream with caramel sauce and cheesecakes bites, you complete me.

Blast, holidays are over so no more excuses for that deliciousness...

Addie thought it was hilarious when I tried her antlers on Dalton, so she took a picture. In fact, I just deleted about 100 photos off of the laptop after I downloaded them that she's taken in the past month. Sorry kid, I only need so many pictures of word world on the TV or blurry up close pictures of my face or Dalton's.

 Christmas Village

On the 23rd we didn't have plans, and we hadn't been to Temple square or anything this year so we decided to head to the Ogden Christmas Village.

We convinced our friends, the Hills, to join us. Addie and Lucy look like twins here.

It was COLD. I was hoping to find a night that was over 30 degrees, but alas, we just bundled up and drank some cocoa and partied on. 

I think we've got a little family picture in front of this each year since Addie was born. Guess it'll be our tradition! Since I'm unable to ever remember to get a family picture ON Christmas, it's close enough.

They even rode the little train, and loved it! Then we convinced them to walk down to La Ferrovia for some nice warm Italian food to end the evening. 

When we got home, Dalton decided to attempt climbing into the dishwasher. 

He was successful. (I have a WHOLE lot of Dalton that I need to post, but that's another post and another day. Dang, I love that boy)

Also, here's a random shot of the bench that we made for Grammy Dawn for her birthday. We (meaning our friend Jordan) painted it. Then we put the grandkids hand prints on it. I think it won't be long before that bench is covered with tiny grandbaby hands!

Okay, so that brings us to Christmas Eve!! To be continued....

Pre-Christmas Catch-up

It occurred to me as I laid wide awake after feeding Dalton a 3:30am bottle....uh Christmas is in like 5 days and I haven't updated my blog, other than family pictures since Halloweenish. Then I started making a to-do list in my brain of other things I need to do before Christmas this week, and well here I am an hour later blogging because I can't sleep. Maybe that's because Dalton slept without waking up from 9:30-3:30 and my sleep deprived body has no idea what it's like to sleep for more than 2 consecutive hours so now it thinks I should be good to go with 4 hours? Either way, I'm now rambling. This is what I feared would happen if I blogged at this hour.

I'll give you a little wrap up of what our November was like. First off, let me just say that December can be summed up with one word that I have learned to loathe about winter time with kids: SICK. Addie woke up in the night with a sore throat on December 5th...and since then every one of us has been sick in at LEAST one form. She finally is over her cold, and Dalton is too. Unfortunately, the cough from that cold brought Dalton's reflux back with a vengeance and he had a very miserable few days last week. He's back on his meds for that and doing better (and thankfully sleeping more than 30 mins at a time!) Jed and I both had a stomach bug last week and Jed's recovering from Pink Eye right now (seriously, right??) and we've both now got colds. Here's hoping for a healthy Christmas! Onward and upward....and on to this post. Okay, here's November:

Disney on Ice 

My mom and I have decided that this is now a yearly tradition with Addie. This year was even better than last year because there were more princesses, including Rapunzel :) 

Thanksgiving

Addie took this picture of me, so yes it's a bit blurry :)

That's me with my contribution to Thanksgiving which included making 80 orange rolls. I decided that Gramp's famous orange rolls needed to continue on after he passed away, so I obtained the recipe and set forth to master them. We all missed having him at Thanksgiving this year a lot, but at least a little piece of him was there. I also made some pies the night before, because it was Thanksgiving and that's what I do.

 Dawn always sets everything up so pretty and nice for family dinners...even when it's for 30+ people!

Ashley made cute place holders for each person's place setting too. 

My Chocolate Truffle pie (okay, well it's Paula Dean's but I made it)

Ash's Dulce de leche Apple pie, yum!

The best banana pie ever (in my opinion) Banana pie with Vanilla bean custard

Jed's brother deemed it the best pie he's ever had. Good enough for me! 

Dalton is getting too big....more on that another post (ps, he's crawling all over, pulling himself up and climbed a flight of stairs the other night!)

 Getting Christmas set up and being jolly....or whatever

(what's with my blurry pictures??) Addie and her little tree

So, I have to preface this part with what November at my house is like. Jed's company puts up Christmas lights for several homes each year, which means he's generally gone from Halloween until Thanksgiving almost every evening and Saturday. This is always kind of rough for me, but this year he was already extra busy at work, extra busy with Plutonium jobs, oh and I had an extra kid :)

Needless to say, it was just plain extra rough on all of us. He was gone 12-18 hours everyday of the week except Sunday and he was obviously exhausted by the end of it. I'm sure it's much harder for him, since he's the one being worked to death, while I'm in a warm house baking and what not. Still, it's hard on me and the kids. An example of how busy he was: we literally took the family pictures from my previous post in 20 minutes after I picked him up for his lunch from work, then took him back. Yep, it was like that in November! He's still super busy, which I can't complain about since his long work hours mean that I get to stay home and play with my kids for a living. BUT, by the time the weekend after Thanksgiving arrived, I think we had both had enough and probably should have just sat on the couch in jammies all day after church and taken naps. Instead, we decided to set up the tree and put up Christmas stuff. 

This is a cute little picture....I'm glad that it looks like the whole Christmas set up part was full of laughter and  happiness and joy because it so wasn't. I was tired and grumpy, Addie was pushing everyone's buttons and Jed was so tired he could hardly muster the energy to set the tree up. I think next year we should just wait a week :) Oh well, that's life right? You build something up in your head to be all magical and perfect and at the end of it you think I should have just done that myself when everyone was asleep and saved the trouble. Does that sound awful? Sorry. That's just the kind of day it was. 

 In any case, Here's the tree all set up and decorated!

I redid the tree with some cheap, non-breakable colored ornaments since I have a crawler around these days. I decided I wanted to add something fun, so I made some cupcake ornaments. It's fun and cute and kid-friendly so I haven't worried too much when I see the tree shaking from Dalton pulling on strands of lights he can reach :)

Some random...

I watched SkyleeiPad...and yes, Addie took this picture too lol.

Pretty sure this is the source of our initial illness this month....Kangaroo Zoo. We went for a field trip, and Addie LOVED it. 

 As much as Dalton loves pickles 

This boy won't eat rice puffs or yogurt melts to save his own life, but he decided aunt Teri's pickle was delicious. He seriously chewed on that thing, and then a couple more all during lunch. He still doesn't have teeth....maybe this is the teether of the future. Give your kids a pickle slice.

 Friendsgiving

 Jed and I hosted a "friendsgiving" dinner for my baking clubs friends and their spouses. It was so much fun and so delicious! It was also sans kids, which made it very nice. We were able to squeeze 10 place settings at my table that really seats 8.

Becky made this pretty Red Velvet Cheesecake....I can't wait to attempt this for Christmas Eve!

The crew, except for me taking the picture and Jed grilling up skirt steak

Mmmm...food, and talking....and more food and more talking and laughing. My favorite things!!

Since this WAS my foodie friends, we had two desserts :) 

Doesn't that Cheesecake look pretty? I also made a truffle pie

 My not-so-great attempt at taking pictures of my kids in front of our tree

Addie never smiles great for me, what do you do? Somehow 90% of the pictures I took came out totally blurry, so this was the best I got. I think I'm the last mommy blogger on the planet still using a point and shoot camera, or heck half the time my phone!

Not perfect, but it'll do I suppose....

Oh I like him.

 For decent photos it helps to have a really good camera, a person like my aunt taking them and a backdrop haha....and four kids who are pretty dang cute! Even then, this was the best we got! Getting ONE good picture of four kids took about 50, but it'll do! We took it for Grammy Dawn for her birthday. She loves her grandbabies so she loved it regardless of perfection.

Tristan, Dalton, Addie and Emmett

That about wraps up the goings on here. Unfortunately with all the sickness we've had to miss out on a few Christmas plans and play dates, but we hope to make up for it this weekend and enjoy Christmas with lots of family and loved ones. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

and now I will attempt to squeeze in a couple more hours of sleep...