Finally Friday . . .

Why is it short weeks always end up seeming the longest? I had Monday off and have to say I didn't use my day home as wisely as I should have . . . I should have put Christmas away, but I didn't want to . . . I should have done all of my ironing . . . but I didn't want to . . . I should have, well, the list could go on and on, but I didn't do much of anything at all, except sit and do a bit of reading, internet surfing and enjoyed a little peace & quiet.

So because I didn't do anything on Monday my house is still a mess of Christmas decorations, everywhere! Daryl took down the tree and took all of the ornaments off today while I was at work, I came home and found all of the red & green ball ornaments in a pile on the couch, screaming for me to take a picture. Love all of the reds and greens and I added a few silver ones this year for a little more sparkle!

This is my other favorite "ornament" photo from this year,

I'm looking for ways to be more creative in my picture taking.

Tomorrow is the Singing Hands Concert that we have been practicing for for that last few months, we are all excited and ready to see what God has in store for this performance. I know that our hours and hours of practices will pay off and we will be ready for tomorrow, it will be awesome!

Hello 2011

But can you tell my why 2010 went so quickly? Why does the time have to keep passing so quickly. I was not a good blogger in 2010 and hope to do much better in 2011. See the problem is once I get behind I don't know how to catch up, so instead of doing something, I do nothing. (I'm pretty sure I have blogged about this before.) I see the solution as NOT to get behind, right? Ok, well, let's see how long we can keep that going!

Today is my last day of "vacation". I've decided that since Mondays are the worst day of the week, and Monday's after being off are even worse, my new rule is to take off the Monday after vacations, this is the second time I've done this and I'm loving my new rule! I'm working on putting the house back together after a week of goofing off . . . and trying to get up the enthusiasm to put Christmas away. I'm just not really feeling it and want to enjoy a little bit of peace & quiet for a bit with no kiddos in the house.

A New Year is kinda like a new slate . . . I guess that is the reason of all of the Resolutions, which never seem to last. I will follow along with Ali again and her One Little Word. I like this so much better than resolutions and I think I have finally decided on my word for 2011 after lots of different words have been flying around in my head for the last few weeks. My word is Create. I wanted a little nicer sounding word than last years ~ I think that I can apply this word to many areas of my life and look forward to working with it this year.

Our Christmas was awesome this year, I'd say the highlight for Meghan was getting her own iTouch . . . yes, I know she is only 7, but . . . she spends sooooo much time on my phone this was almost a gift for me! You might remember this post from last year . . . you could say she was NOT happy about the boys getting iTouches and she didn't. She looks much happier this year!


Although now that I look at these pictures again, she might just be more excited about the iTunes Gift Card she got!

At any rate, she is one happy girl. Trev was only a little bit pouty about the fact that she has a better one than he does, but he did get over it when he saw his present . . . a futon for his room.

Apparently I didn't get a good picture of it before it was carried up to his room, but he and Daryl sat on it all morning!

I can't believe it's all done! It was a great season and we feel so blessed to have our family, our friends, our health, our jobs, our home . . . waiting to see what 2011 has in store for us.

I bet there's an App for that . . .

My iPhone - $199.99
Monthly Data Fee - $30.00
Santa Tracker App - $0.99
A 6 year old texting Santa and Santa texting her back - Priceless


Have I mentioned lately how much I love my iPhone?

Merry Christmas (and an attempt at a little recap of our month!)

Wow! I can't believe that Christmas has already come and gone, time seems to go so fast, I had such a great start on the Christmas shopping yet I still went out on Christmas Eve for just "one more thing", why is that? December is always such a busy month, I thought I was more prepared this year, but I don't feel that I was, I was doing my baking and peanut butter ball dipping Christmas Eve morning . . . but at least the baked goods were fresh, right? I guess all in all you get done what you get done and it all works out in the end, but next year, I will have a little better plan!!!!

December started out with with cooking painting on Saturday with our friends the Howes, we have been doing this since Trevor was a baby, now the boys will paint a cookie or two to eat and that's about it, the girls on the other hand, love love love cookie painting!

Cookie in one hand, paint brush in the other!

This is what I usually get from Trev when I try and take his picture!

Sunday was my birthday, I was recovering from a cold the week before and had stayed up until after 2:00 am trying to get the house finally decorated the night before, so we skipped out on church and headed straight to bagels and coffee! Spent the afternoon finishing up decorating the tree with Meghan, she had been waiting so patiently all week to decorate the tree!

Mom fixed me an awesome Mexican dinner and fixed one of my favorite cakes, it was a great day!

The next weekend started out just as busy, Meghan, Mom and I went to the hospital for the "Gingerbread Run". Meghan had a great time doing crafts and seeing Santa!


My birthday is quickly followed by Hayden's and Meghan's birthdays, on the 16th and 17th. We celebrated Hayden on Saturday after we went to the Gingerbread Run. We met them in Sacramento and had dinner at this very yummy Italian place called Hot Italian, it was the best pizza I've had since I was in Italy. After that it was back to his house for cake and presents. I can't believe that Hayden is officially a teenager, that means Trevor is not far behind! yikes . . .

Meghan was cracking up her Uncle here, I believe this was the conversation about boyfriends and kissing boys!

The next week brought Meghan's 6th birthday!!! She was so excited to turn 6. We made cookies to take to school, she wanted the kind that you can make shapes out of and put frosting on. Is she my kid or what, cut out cookies are my most favorite cookie ever!


Mimi and Grampie came over to celebrate on her birthday and have cake with us, I think she had a great day!


Then on Saturday was Meghan's party with her friends, I'm always pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to do for these winter babies birthday parties. She kept saying that she wanted a Littlest Pet Shops party. Not knowing exactly what she meant by that and also knowing that you can not readily get a lot of supplies for this kind of party, I thought we'd give it a try anyway. I think it turned out great and she had a great time with her friends. They did some crafts, some coloring, they played with all of Meghan's LPS stuff and then all the kids got to "adopt" a LPS of their own to take home.


Well, I think that wraps most of the major things we celebrated this month, still editing a few Christmas pictures to post in the next few days. Only 2 days of work next week and then 5 days off, I can't wait!!!