I love this time of year

There are so many different reasons why I love Christmas.
Here a few reasons from this weeks events.
1. Never having enough battery.
I got to Clara's Christmas program this morning to find out someone had left the camera on after taking about 100 photos of themselves....so this is the only picture that I got.

*note this could be that someone mentioned above, and this could be one of the 100 photos taken....
2.Christmas PJ's

I love the Christmas jammies that the kids get each year(ours got opened early this year)......although boys I guess are too cool to get their pictures taken in their pj's....

3. Christmas Outfits

I love the last Sunday before Christmas. Each child gets a new Christmas shirt or dress to wear. The kids look sooo happy in their new Christmas clothes?

Well at least my little girls have a Christmas smile!

No matter what, Christmas makes me end up with a smile. I was not happy this morning when I found out I had no battery, but after I looked (and laughed) at a bunch of video and photos of the above mentioned xchild I laughed till I cried.

I also was not happy when I stood and took the photo on Sunday morning of the kids in their church clothes, but now that I see not one turned out with the group smiling, I have to laugh to myself for getting so worked up about a photo.

I am sure that my kids will not forget Mom...making a big fuss over stupid things! Hopefully they will remember making fun memories. Merry Christmas!

We are off for an amazing Christmas in Costa Rica with the Buehner Family!

LOVE

A few months ago a sign up sheet went around church for women interested in being part of a musical program. Those who know me, know that I am not musical. I have always wanted to be, but you know when you have it and I sure don't. I was in 9th grade chorus in Jr. High and was told many times by Miss. Taggert that "I did not have a good voice" and "sing softer Sara". I really want to be able to sing, so I signed up to "sing in a group". Well, there were several of us who were in this group to sing at a small gathering of women at a dinner. It was fun and I really was proud of my self for stepping outside my comfort zone. I thought that I was in the clear until our church Christmas party came last Friday and our small little group was asked to sing in front of the entire congregation at the party. Over 100 people. I was willing to do it. How bad could it be. Little did I know that our group of 10 was now like 5. As the curtain opened and I started to sing I was so self conscious. I was worried that I was not "singing soft" enough or that "I had a bad voice".
After it was over I went and sat back by Jason. He said wow you really sang. I said...was I bad? did I look fat....did you hear me? was I really bad? He laughed, smiled and looked at me and said . "I was just going to say that I am proud of you and you did a really great job...who would have known that you could sing?"
With that statement from the love of my life I felt like nothing else mattered. I could sing. I will sing.
I love this man.

Gingerbread House

Today we went to the Lansdowne Resort and made Gingerbread houses. We did it last year and had a blast. You get very messy, but it is a lot of fun. The club has about 30 pastry chef's walking around helping you. They have 3 huge tables set up with every possible candy. Huge bowls full of frosting. Everyone gets really messy. The floors are covered in plastic. We all came home with tummy aches from eating so much candy. I think Clara put maybe 2 pieces on the house. She spent the whole time feeding her face. I kept asking her if she was having fun. I don't think she wanted to get caught "sneaking" candy. I told her she could eat what ever she wanted. It was just too good to be true for a 4 year old.

Dylan is always so happy to do family activities. When we were almost done he actually said when are we going home? I said when we are done, why? He said well we might as well stay here....it's not that bad making the house and there is nothing to do at home.

Maybe activities planned by Mom are not all bad D?

Girls Trip to NYC!

I just got back from the most fun girls trip to NYC. Last year 5 of my girl friends Shauna, Sierra, Penny, Emily, Whitney,and I went to New York for a weekend. It worked so well we decided to do it again this year. Sierra has now moved to Seattle, but she made the trek to Va to come with us. Whitney came again from Denver. Emily could not come because she is nursing her sweet baby girl. We really missed you Emily :(
We have now decided to make this an annual event. It looks maybe like San Francisco next year? I come home with aching ribs from laughing, sore feet from walking, several purses that I really don't need, and some priceless memories with my favorite VA girlfriends!
Here are a few photos of our amazing girls weekend. We took this new bus up this year. For $33.00 round trip, it was awesome. We did get in trouble from the bus driver when we got on the bus in DC. It was 8:00am and he kindly let us know that we needed to sit at the back of the bus and keep it down, because people were trying to sleep. I think that just added fuel to the fire. From that point on we were not mother's of 20 kids....yes between the 5 of us we left 20 kids at home with their dads. We were unleashed wild Mormon ladies heading to the Big Apple!

We went to see the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular. Note: you only need to see it once ( I had already seen it)

We were much more organized with our restaurants. Penny served her mission in Japan, so she took us to a "real" Japanese restaurant. It was good? I was a little nervous about all the smells...yuck fish in my soup? But I warmed up to it and it was a great meal. It was so fun to hear Penny speak Japanese. Thanks Penny for making me go. I would have never gone without your push!

The Rockefeller Christmas Tree

When Jason and I lived in Brooklyn I never walked on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was fun to see Brooklyn and remember living in New York.

Here we are after one of many stops to Chinatown. We have to stock up on purses. It has changed so much in the last 16 years. When Jason and I were 1st married Chinatown was totally different. Bags, watches, glasses we hung all over. Now with the police cracking down on all the illegal bags, the Chinese have just gotten smarter. They now have a look out person. This woman comes up to you mumbling...do you want Coach, Louis Vuitton, Gucci? Then you follow her about 4 or 5 blocks off Canal street. She drags you to a basement room about the size of your shower. It is so funny to see these little closet size mini stores full of purses. One time we were asked and the man walked us over to a mini van. The door opened and a little Chinese lady stepped in the back, sat on a stool and told us to get in. 3 of us got in and they shut the door. The van was full of bags. I was laughing so hard I almost wet my pants.

Our last night we took TJ (Sierra's friend) out to dinner to thank him for letting us stay at his apartment. What a nice guy!

I did not make it on the Today Show. Although I sat and froze my behind off watching Penny and Shauna wave to the camera (lucky girls). I wish Katie Couric was there.

I dragged the girls to Dylan's Candy Bar. It is an amazing store on the upper East side. I got all the kids candy bars & jaw breakers. The store was huge and stuffed with candy.

We also ate $22.00 sandwiches from Carnage Deli. It was really overpriced (and like Sierra said you could feed a small village in Africa with all the meat that was on one sandwich) but very worth it. Thanks Whitney!

We found the Manhattan Temple on the upper West side. It was amazing to walk in off the street. We were greeted so warmly by the workers. We used the cleanest bathroom we had all seen in days. We just sat in the small waiting area and visited with the workers. It was great.

Central Park!

I really wanted to find a hat. One my head was freezing and two because I saw these really cute black fur ones and I just had to have one. So I stopped by a street vendor on 5th Ave (who shops in stores in NYC anyway?) I was trying to reach way up high to grab one of the fur hats. I just could not reach. So I asked the man to help. He started talking about how these were "real" fox fur blah blah blah. I asked him how much? He said well in Burgdorff's they are $2,000. I said well I'm not in Burgdorff's...how much. In the back of my mind I was thinking how much I would spend on this hat. I decided $20.00 max. He then tells me that the hat is $450.00! $450.00 for a hat off the street I said? he then begins to yell at me telling me that women come from all over to buy his hats...again blah blah blah. I ended up finding another vendor who had the same hat for $18.00. Don't you just love New York!

It was like the perfect ending to a perfect weekend. As we were driving home. It started to snow. When we stopped at a service plaza we asked one of the other passengers to take our picture with the driver....priceless!

Thanks girls for the most amazing weekend! Can't wait until next year!

Camilla runs again!

For the last 3 months Camilla has been training for the Reindeer Romp, Girls on the Run 5k Race. She has been running with other 4th grade girls from her school. I am so proud of her. I ran this same race last year with her and we had so much fun. It was Dad's turn to run this year. It was very cold. Her and Jason finished the race in 32 min. Yeah Camilla!