Happy New Year's Eve

The youth in our Stake are having a "Holiday Sweater" themed dance tonight. Unfortunately, I got released as the Young Women President last week so I won't be attending. I was hoping my sister and her boyfriend could come and be the mascots.

Are they not adorable? They make holiday sweaters look good!! Love you Erika and Jared!

Wishing all of you a fun-filled New Year's Eve and a nifty New Year. You must listen to this hilarious song by Mistletoe Conspiracy to wrap up your 2010!

Christmas Day

After family prayer, the kids were so excited to dig into what Santa brought!


These 5 people with me will always be my favorite present!

Kaleb loved his Beyblade stuff, as well as his solar system model and origami paper. He was so sweet too and wrapped up all of his silly bands and gave them to Noe. What a good brother!

Noe was thrilled for all of her Disney Fairy dolls! She also loved her Toy Story 3 Barbie & Ken dolls and her DVD of The Princess and the Frog. Such a girlie-girl!

Gavin was so excited for his Mega Bloks Thomas set. Unfortunately, he couldn't set it up himself. His daddy set it up time and time again for him (taking 20 minutes each time), but as soon as he would drive a train down the tracks it would all collapse. We were all quite upset at Santa for supplying such a dud of a toy.

On Tuesday morning when I opened up the front room curtains, I found this gift with a note for Gavin.

Santa apologized for the defective gift and took it back to his workshop to redesign. In the meantime, he brought some new Thomas toys for Gavin. Gavin loves them and can actually play with them. Hooray!

Teague was so happy with his teeter-totter, but most of all he LOVES his tiny set of pots & pans and cooking utensils. He also likes his new felt food pieces too. Another chef in training- yippee for me!

Len got a new computer game, Cities XL, but we have to upgrade our video card for him to play it- ugh! Luckily, he can watch his DVD, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and read his new book, Towers of Midnight (13th book in Wheel of Time series).

I love my new picture frames to hang in the basement, my external hard drive to finally put all 6 years worth of digital pictures in one spot, and...

...the Strawberry Shortcake coloring books that Noe and I can color together with!

Gavin got the Toy Story 3 DVD in his stocking and all of the kids got a Toy Story 3 toy too. Kaleb got supplies to make TS3 cupcakes, Noe got Barbie & Ken, Gavin got the set of Andy's Toys, and Teague got Slinky Dog.

The kids got their wish and got to open gifts under all 3 trees. Both sets of grandparents sent us money for Christmas. Instead of buying more stuff, we decided to use the money for family outings. This is how we were able to take Kaleb and Noe to see The Nutcracker. We are also going to take all of the kids to see Disney On Ice. We put the tickets in a red envelope and put it on our white tree. We're so excited. Thanks Grandma & Grandpa and Gramma & Grampa!!

We spent the day in our pajamas playing with our new toys, dancing to Christmas tunes, talking on the phone to our Lee, Pittl, and Reil families, eating a yummy turkey dinner and lots of treats. We also watched our favorite movie, and truly It's A Wonderful Life!

Christmas Eve

We had a fun-filled day getting ready for Christmas. We mailed out the last of the Christmas cards (we sent 152 this year, so they went out in 4 seperate batches) and received some more cards to add to our special wall. We went to see the Festival of Trees. We decorated sugar cookies for Santa. We finished reading our "24 Days of Christmas" book. We watched our 2 special shows, "The King is Born," and " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

When we went downstairs to set up the hide-a-bed we saw that the Christmas Eve Elf had come!

He brought us all new slippers. Aren't Noe's cupcakes the cutest?

Teague's sharks are cute too!

He also brought new pajamas for all of us!

We left out some cookies and milk for Santa.

We tucked in the kids for their annual slumber party, but slumber they did not! They finally went to bed at 9:00 (you can see Gavin crashed out well before that), and were up at midnight, 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, and finally at 7:30 everyone was awake for us to open presents!

Christmas Goodies

This year I was going for quality instead of quantity hoping I wouldn't gain as much holiday weight- it didn't work!


We bought some hand-dipped chocolates from my friend Michele.


We bought Nanaimo bars from Costco. Currently, my favorite dessert ever!


We decorated sugar cookies to leave out for Santa on Christmas Eve.

I made up a batch of Cheery Chipits Christmas Cookies to give to our neighbors.

A stack of 20 cookies fills a cute little wine bag up to the top.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients-

2 C butter

2 C sugar

2 C brown sugar

6 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

4 bags of Chipits

(I used dark, milk, white chocolate, and butterscotch- you could also add nuts)

4 C flour

5 C oats

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

Wet Mixture-

Cream butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. Add Chipits.

Dry Mixture-

Mix flour, oats, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Combine with wet mixture

Roll into balls and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes at 375*F.

Makes 12 dozen cookies (recipe can be halved).

Festival of Trees

We went downtown to the Chateau Laurier to visit the Christmas trees on parade.


This pretty one had a train under it.


Len & Teague in front of the Tree of Hope. This event is to raise money for the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). I hope they raise a lot of funds, because they took such great care of Noe when she spent a month there when she was 3.


This cute tree had a train ON it!

Gavin & I in front of the pretty butterflies.

I thought this baker's tree was so cute with it's bags of frosting and decorated sugar cookies.

Kaleb in front of the traditional red & gold beauty.

This is just classic Canadiana- a Tim Horton's tree complete with popcorn chains, doughnuts, and coffee cups! There was also an Ottawa Senators Hockey tree with it's Lion mascot for a tree topper. The most disturbing tree was by Bob FM because it had a mullet wig as it's topper- yikes!

Noe with the lovely winter white.

This tree was done by Animaplates and it was so cool...

...each ornament was beautiful and was made out of a paper plate!! Click HERE to see some patterns.

Lovin' the Reflection

My darling boy was flirting with me in the mirror. Until he saw the cute baby in the mirror and had to kiss him. Oh, he is so cute! I need to take lessons from him and appreciate more what I see when I look in the mirror too.

All Dressed Up With Somewhere To Go

Jenn babysat Gavin & Teague for us, so Len & I could take Kaleb & Noe out on a date.


We took them to see their first performance of The Nutcracker. I adore dance, but we all enjoyed this magical evening.


Afterwards a few of the dancers came out to give their autographs. Kaleb & Noe got signatures from them all. Klara & the Nutcracker (Kiana Gouveia & Isaac Wright).

Woodchopping Girl & Sock Bunny (Elexa Clement & Katelyn Charbonneau).

This was a "Canadian" version of the traditional tale and these two dancers were simply amazing- they could fly! Danielle Rosengren & Preston McBain played the School Teacher and Painter in the first act, then Lady & Lord Birch during the second.

I hope this is a tradition we can keep often through out the years!