Christmas Eve

This is the exciting night!!! Here are our kids in the Christmas pajamas in front of our tree. This is when excitement is at its peak! :) The night before Santa comes.


Athena and Samantha always leave milk and cookies for Santa with a note. This year they each left their own notes. Their notes basically instruct Santa to leave lots of toys, and Thank You. Normally we leave Oreos, but we forgot to buy them this year. Luckily, the neighbors brought us some cookies so we had a backup. Pshwew! They don't know that they totally saved our hides.

Here is what the kids saw when they got up on Christmas morning. Unfortunately we forgot to take any pictures of them opening their gifts or the aftermath.

Athena and Samantha are at such a fun age for Christmas. Opening gifts was very exciting. Nathan was difficult and had to be taken from the room a few times. Other than that, I think it was perfect!

Christmas Vacation!!

We have been blessed to have a very good Christmas this year and to be able to spend a lot of time with family. This year Jeremy's work gave them all the week off between Christmas and New Year's. It's been a lot of fun just having time to spend together. I thought by now we would be ready to kill each other off, but we are enjoying the time.

I'm grateful for my wonderful family - my kids, my husband, and my extended family on both sides.

A few days before Christmas we went to Jeremy's family Christmas party. It is tradition for them to do an overnighter where Grandma gives all the kids matching pajames, they watch movies, and play in the snow the next day. We ended up doing the get-together at Mike and Ronda's house because the normal place they go is being remodeled.

We hit a pinata in the basement. It was my mistake to bring mini candy canes to put in the pinata. They were all broken and smashed to smithereens. So, don't do that. I included an action photo of Nathan and Samantha trying to break the pinata.

Later in the night all the kids opened their Christmas PJs from Grandma and Grandpa Slater. I think they all look so cute!

Nathan was the first to tucker out. We laid him on a bean bag and he stayed asleep in it the whole night! Maybe we should have him sleep in a bean bag chair every night.

All the kids laid out across the basement. Here is Athena and Amber.

As usual, Samantha went to sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

This is our fun in the snow the next day. BRRRRR! Nathan went down just a couple of times. I think this was his first.


Fun hill, not fun hike.


I was sure glad to get back to warmth after this adventure, but we all had fun!

For our Anniversary

This is what Jeremy brought home for me for our anniversary. :) They are so pretty!

We went out on a date to dinner at Outback and then we just went shopping at the mall. It was soooo nice to not have kids with us! We considered going to a movie, but decided we would rather spend time with each other. It's such a different and fun experience to shop together when you don't have to be chasing kids down or constantly giving instructions. I got a pair of pants and a jacket and Jeremy got a BYU hoodie. Thanks to Mama and Daddy for watching our kids!

HAPPY 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Today is mine and Jeremy's 10 year wedding anniversary. I'm really happy to be married to Jeremy, so today, my posting is going to be for him.

10 Things I Love About Jeremy

1. He opens my door for me, turns back the bed at night, gets my towel ready for a shower.

2. He empties all the garbages and cleans up the messes that make me gag (literally).

3. He likes to hold my hand and put his arm around me.

4. He likes to spend time together as a family doing activities.

5. A lot of times when he gets dressed he asks me, "Does this look OK?"

6. He always says I look good, even when I just wake up.

7. He takes his turn making dinner. Also, he makes a MEAN roast and is good at cooking on the barbecuer.

8. Even though he hates to assemble things and always swears he will never buy anything again that needs to be assembled, he continues to buy things that need to be assembled and tackles those projects with a fury. :)

9. He provides for our family.

10. He loves me.

I don't know why I limited this to just 10 things. I could go on and on and on. Thanks for a great 10 years and I'm sure we will see many more "10 years" come and go together.

I LOVE YOU!!!!

Here Comes Santa Claus!

Last night we went to Jeremy's aunt Jeri's house for her annual Santa Claus party. She has Santa come to her house and each kid gets a chance to sit on his lap and tell what they want for Christmas. Then we sing some songs and have a telling of the Christmas story.

When we arrived last night at 5:30pm, Santa was there, getting out of his car. He thought his time to come was 5:30, but he was supposed to come at 6pm. That was a real treat for our kids. They got to talk to him outside of the house and even walk in with him! Samantha leaned over to me and said very excitedly, "I didn't know Santa drives in a car!" I told her to ask him why he came in a car, so she did. He told her that the reindeer only fly on Christmas Eve. She thought that revelation was so funny! That Santa drives in a car!

Athena still believes in Santa Claus, so this was still a great event for her. She told him she wants more barbies. Princess barbies.




Samantha TOTALLY believes in Santa Claus. She told him that this year she wants a barbie with the magic wand that when you wave the wand over the barbie's necklace, the dress changes colors.

I thought it was so funny. Samantha is not intimidated at all by Santa. He was asking her what she wanted, then talking to her a little bit. Then he got off track and asked her again what she wanted. Samantha started laughing and she said, "You already asked me that!"

Nathan was very star-struck with Santa. At first he didn't know what to say beyond telling Santa that he was 3 (by holding up his fingers). Santa was guessing what Nathan wanted, so I stepped in and told him that Nathan wants a train. Santa asked Nathan if he wanted a train and Nathan nodded his head vigorously. It was really cute. :)

Uh, yeah. She doesn't quite get it yet. I handed Alexandra to Santa for a picture. He held her up at first for a picture and she was fine, but then she glanced over, saw him, and burst into tears. Oh well, maybe next year.


Our Santa encounter this year was a success. Everyone asked for what they were supposed to and we don't have to run out and get any last-minute surprise requests. We all know that you ask Santa for the MOST important thing. Thank goodness our kids asked correctly. LOL!

Here is a little video Jeremy took with our camera as we were singing a song for Santa to leave. Sorry, our digital camera doesn't have sound with video, so you don't need to keep turning up your speakers.

Annual Candy Making Party

Last night we had our annual girl's night where we make our Christmas candy. Mostly we dip lots of stuff in chocolate and the divide it all up to take home to our families. YUM!

We had pizza for dinner, dipped chocolates, and practiced a song that we are performing together at our extended family Christmas party. I had a lot of fun!

Here are Cathy and Shauna studiously preparing their pretzels.


I don't think Teresa likes this activity very much. Don't fall asleep, Teresa! Sorry, she was not feeling very good, but came anyway. I'm glad she came anyway. :)

Don't leave a single drop!

These are some members of my family whom I dearly love. They are beautiful people inside.

Oh fine! I guess if I put in the goofy ones I also have to put in the nice ones. Here is the redeeming photo:

We all practiced our song. I think we all sound nice together. Hopefully it turns out well when we perform on Saturday.

The dividing of the chocolates!!!!

After this I was sent home to eat and eat and eat. I guess a bear needs some way to pack on the fat for winter. We ended up with chocolate-dipped pretzels, toasted coconut, toasted almonds. homemade dipped fondant, cherry chocolates, peanut brittle, and toffee. Thanks family!

Grateful Samantha

It's moments like these that make all the crappy moments throughout the week just seem to disappear.


This morning after breakfast, as I was getting the kids ready for school, out of the blue Samantha came and put her arms around me. She said, "Thanks for taking care of me Mom. I love you." I thought that was so cute!

New Tooth!

Alexandra is getting her first tooth! There is just a little sharp line on her gums right now. As a result, she and I are not sleeping and her nose is quite runny.

She is also very close to crawling. She scoots all over the floor and is really good at it. She can get to where she wants to go in a hurry. She keeps experimenting now with getting up on her knees. She is so cute!

These are pictures of her today, she is just playing on the floor in the computer room while I post her cuteness on my blog.

My Weird Dream

Ok, I guess I'm kinda known for my weird/eccentric dreams. I think everyone probably has them, I just remember them for some odd reason. So, last night I had a dream that I have to share because when I woke up I was really confused about where on earth this came from!

I dreamt that I, and everyone I know, was a worm. We were all in court because of something bad that had happened. We all had really funky hairdos and were wearing pioneer-like dresses.

So, all of us worms were in court and it was my turn to go up and testify. The trial was about several worms who had died recently and were found in a house (the house was our size - for worms - and had worm beds in it). In my dream, I thought back on the events that had transpired and I told the jury that I remembered that right before bed, I mixed up a batch of hot cocoa for all the worms and told them to come and get it. I mixed in some poison and then watched as the worms all sat around chatting and drinking their cocoa. Then they all went to sleep in their beds for the last time and were all found dead.

And that's the end of my dream. What the heck? LOL

Who Do We Look Like?

Athena's Birthday Party

Friday was a very busy day. I spent most of the day getting ready for Athena's party. I baked her cake in the morning and decorated it all afternoon, then cleaned as much as I could. Here are the fruits of my labor.



I guess all my hard work paid off for the cake, because when I brought it out and placed it in front of Athena, there were many ooohs and aaahs from the crowd. :)

We played most of our games down in the family room. This picture is when the princesses had all arrived and I was explaining our first game.

The kids all had a lot of fun. This is the game where we rolled the dice and if the kids got doubles, they had to put my socks on their hands and try to unwrap a gift. It got pretty crazy!

Upstairs, opening presents. Now that Athena is a good reader, she stopped to read every card and note. Cute. :)

Opening the presents. Athena got so much cute stuff! She was really happy with everything she received.



This is the anticipation of the cake!!!!!

BLOW BLOW BLOW!

Athena's party turned out to be a lot of fun. I'm glad the kids all enjoyed their time here. :)