Christmas trees and parties

Earlier this month we headed out to get our fresh Christmas tree. One of the perks of living in the Pac NW is there are PLENTY of Christmas Tree farms where it's U cut. We went to our usual farm, and wouldn't you know it, they raised the rates! 40 bucks for a Christmas tree? You gotta be crazy! Plus, it was a Noble! I'm not a Noble girl, I am a Dougalss or Grand kinda girl. So we turned around and decided to do a little huntin' for a new tree farm. We went to another place near our house and guess what, they were CLOSED on saturdays, what the honk is that all about, dont they want to sell trees? Ohhh just dawned on me, there is a big Jehovahs Witness population here, I wonder if that's what it was... Anyhow, that was a bust so we went home. Matt wasnt really stoked about all this driving around so he ate some lunch a took a nap while the kids and I searched for a new farm. We found one that is actually across the street from Matt's go-to disc golf course. Its about 15-20 minutes away. We all headed back out and got to the farm, we pulled up and realized... Neither of us brought any money. AAAARRRRGGGGG! So we went home. I didn't know of Matt was going to make it, he was getting quite iritated. (He's a teeny bit of a scrooge and it comes out a little when he's hungry and things dont go to plan) So I got the kids a snack and was going to go back on my own wallet in hand. Matt decided he was going to go too and we all headed back out again. 

This new tree farm had a very large selection. I appreciated the size range as well. Ty was real excited to cut down his own tree too. 

After about 10 minutes of meandering, we decided upon our tree. 

Matt sawed it pretty darn fast, I was trying to take pictures holding Gracie. That was proving difficult. 

This year he even remembered to saw up the trunk a little ways. I bought a newer bigger easier tree stand this year that Matt appreciates. Our old one was so difficult to use! 

Ty was walking around with hedge trimmers cutting up little teeny sticks and things, you know, doing important boy stuff. 

I dont think Grace was super thrilled about the whole thing, but in the end we got our tree home. 

I think we'll go back to this same place next year too, cheaper prices, better selection and they even had a two dollar off coupon plus a shake and bale free! Love that. I think it ended up to be 30 dollars or so. 

On that Monday night we decorated the tree for family night. Usually I am REALLY OCD about my Christmas tree decorating. This year was defintiely a win for me, letting the kids do 100% of it and not re-doing it after they went to bed. They were so happy to decorate the tree. 

While they decorated, I doodled this up. I love my little chalk board frame in my living room. 

That same week we were also able to attend the annual adventure dental Christmas party. They always do such a great job with these events. 

They have Santa and Mrs. Claus there every year for pictures. Maylee decided she likes Mrs. Claus better than Santa. Ty was all for sitting on Santa's lap. Emma was a bit unsure about the elderly folk, so Dad was in the picture and that meant Mom should be too. Grace was indifferent. However i thought it was excellent Christmas photo! 

They had games and prizes and fun there. We chatted with Dr. Josh for a while and also got our pictures taken at the photo booth. They have a Raffle and give each child two tickets to put in for about 15 specific gift packages. Some are toys, some are gift cards, some are art kits etc. The girls picked a bunch of frozen items to put their tickets in and Ty picked some sort of transformer car and another video game thing. Well Monday morning we got a call, from Adventure Dental! He WON! Except, we thought he was putting his ticket in for those two previous mentioned things, turns out he won a Lego birthday party at a store called Bricks and minifigs. Wow! So cool! So come June he can invite 10 friends for a party there. It should be super fun. He's just getting in to legos so he is looking forward to it. We wondered if Dr. Josh had anything to do with the winners, he swore he didn't but gladly brought the certificate to Ty. So fun. We LOVE Adventure Dental! 

Hopefully more time for blogging tomorrow :) 

Ty is a published artist!

Remember  few months ago how I shared a picture of Ty holding a picture he drew with Orange clouds? Yeah, the one of him riding his bike wearing his blue helmet and being safe by keeping his eyes ahead? 

Guess what, HE WON! We entered the picture into Suzanne's company saftey calendar contest and he won honorable mention, and won the five year old division! 

He was so excited, he loves his hard hat and saftely glasses. Suzanne was even able to present the prize to him herself at Thanksgiving. (Nice photobomb Gracie and Maddy) 

He even got a Barnes and Noble gift card for 25 dollars. He has 10 calendars to share, so if you want one, we've got one for you. 

Thanksgiving shenanigans

Finally! I've been so busy recouping and getting ready for Christmas but I haven't had time to post yet. We went down to Medford for Thanksgiving this year. We headed down on Wednesday morning and drove straight to Kelly's house. She agreed to take our family pictures for Christmas cards this year. This is the first year Matt is mailing Christmas cards to his clients. So we picked up Kelly and headed out to Jacksonville. It was so pretty at this little park in the middle of these gorgeous old houses. The weather cooperated nice, and I think we got some good shots. I told the children they needed to smile and then we can go watch a show. I was amazed, Kelly even got a picture of little Gracie smiling. So cute.

After family pictures that mid afternoon we headed over to my parents house. We waited for the readings and Bragg families to come. They arrived around five and we were able to eat dinner. The missionaries came over as well as Skyler and Lucy. We had a good chat with the missionaries and Skyler and Lucy and then settled in to watch the BYU basketball game. They were playing in the Maui invitational. It was A really good game but if my memory serves me correctly the Cougs lost in overtime. 

Thursday morning we all got up and got ready to go play football over at the local elementary school, Kennedy. That's where I went when I was a child. We met up with the members of our old Medford 2nd Ward. Everyone was standing around throwing footballs and just chatting until Bishop Warr came. He brought donuts, orange juice, and hot cocoa. That's a first! Anyway, I walked over to Bishop Warr and asked if he was going to get it started, or if I should. He said something to the effect of, "well, aren't you your mother's daughter!" I just want to get things started. We separated teams, and there ended up being about 10 on each team. For pick up football that's quite a lot. They played about one game maybe, and more people came. After that, they decided to make it two games. That was much better. Somehow, the elder that was assigned to choose teams, chose Matt, Colton, Maddy and Preston. Needless to say, we won. I didn't play, it drove me nuts to watch people spot the ball poorly, so I declared myself the unofficial official. It was actually really fun. I like doing that sort of thing. I think a lot of people probably thought I was fairly of obnoxious though. The opposing team didn't have anyone over 6 foot, except for the quarterback. Nearly everyone on our team excluding Colton and Maddy, were over 6 foot. 

Right when we were wrapping things up grabbing a snack to head home, my Mom started texting all of us. She and my Dad were home watching the four grandkids that were there, Ty, Maylee, Emma and McKinley. Apparently they got into all sorts of shenanigans. My Dad and Mom were having a "fun" time keeping up I think. I maybe was a good reminder for them and how it was when they were younger and had A young family with five kids. We all got a good chuckle and I don't think any feelings were hurt. After we changed we started prepping for Thanksgiving dinner. We always eat Thanksgiving dinner around one. However this year I can't remember what it was that set us back but we actually ate at three. It wasn't bad at all. I was assigned to make the sweet potatoes, I tried a new recipe this year and used A crockpot. I didn't hear any complaints. But I didn't hear any "these are delicious!" comments either. I guess I'll have to try another new recipe next year. If you have a perfect recipe for sweet potatoes send it my way, I've yet to find one that knocks anyone's socks off. But of course we have to have them because Matt supposedly likes them. I sure don't. Colton was in charge of making the turkey, he did a pretty darn good job, he used in Alton Brown recipe. I think I may have to look that one up for Christmas dinner. Ty decided he likes Turkey a lot. So he requested to have it for Christmas, no complaints from me! That's my all-time favorite meal! 

After dinner we all sat around and digested for a while. Finishing the obligatory hour or two of the digestion period we went bowling per tradition, at lava lanes. We met up with the Nate Spence family. They got a new system there, where you can take your pictures, and they insert your face and show funny scenes on the TV after you bowl. It was actually really entertaining. We had a great time bowling then headed home for pie. I made a Rich Heath Bits Cheesecake, like usual. For some reason, it wasn't as good this year. I wonder what I did differently. I think there were about seven pies. Can't say I know which one was my favorite though. Oh, I made a pumpkin roll too. Matt decided that should be A tradition as well to have pumpkin roll on Thanksgiving in addition to pumpkin pie. My parents so kindly bought the pumpkin pie from Costco this year. Funny story, we were keeping it outside covered since it was cool outside and the fridge was full. Well it rained on Friday morning and ruined the pumpkin pie. Left overs. So when we came home I bought Matt another pumpkin pie. He was happy, however there is still some in our fridge right now I need to throw that away. 

That evening, We watched a movie (guardians of the galaxy maybe?) and scanned the Black Friday adds. The Black Friday hubbub isn't really our thing, but we still go out, and get the dealzzzzz. We hit up our favorite bi-mart first. I got quite a bit of wonderful inexpensive gifts there. I love that store on Black Friday. We headed to a few other stores I can't remember which ones. I should probably blog a little sooner after actual events. But, I do remember, that everybody got the dealzzzz that they were looking to find.

 We headed home and picked up more folks to go to the shooting range. We shot shotguns, and 22's. We met up with Skyler again, he's in the army reserve, and he brought his own pistol to shoot while we shot a 22's. It's always a fun time to go shooting with the family. I'm pretty sure that's a tradition as well. I was a pretty good shot with the 22. Shotguns really on my thing at alldue to  my terrible sense of depth perception/leading the target. I guess I would get a lot better if I practiced. However I feel like it's a waste of ammo. Skyler had a friend that works at Bi-mart. Apparently, the Bi-Mart workers buy up all the 22 rounds before anyone else can and sell them to their friends! Luckily, since Skyler was a friend, he got us a bucket-o-rounds. Ty even got to shoot the 22. I'm not sure if he's actually shot a gun before, he liked it though. But what he liked more was climbing up and down a big mound of dirt that was right in the parking area 22 rifle range. 

After shooting, we went home, changed, and picked up everybody for the movie big hero six. We enjoyed the movie, I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times. That's pretty rare for me during a kids movie. I find things humorous generally, but not laugh out loud funny. I think that one we will probably buy. After the movie we headed over to our favorite Mexican place Senior Sams. I had some Nachos. Matt had of course, the little big burrito. After a tasty dinner, We went home and played a game of Would you Rather... I think, again i should blog closer to actual events... Or was it the newlywed game, blast. 

Saturday I think we went to the church and raced my parents remote control cars... And there was Volleyball one of those nights too... And chair soccer.... Booo i cant remember the sequence of events anymore! My brain is mush! I do know that Saturday Night we watch the newest X-Men flick (good one) and I incidentally kept Colton and Maddy up until 3 am just chatting about "life and love and happiness and then the Holy Ghost" (i quoted a song there, but we really did talk about all those things...) 

Sunday Morning we went to church and blessed our little Gracie. Matt, my Dad, Preston, Colton and Nate stood in the circle. It was a great blessing, I tried to record it with my ipad, then the second I pulled it out Emma asked to play games... Ugh. 

Right after Sacrement meeting we conviened in the hallway and snapped a quick picture the  the Braggs amd Readings were on their way back home to Utah. We stayed at church. It was super nice to sit and listen during church instead of running around like a crazy person in Primary. 

We got home and packed up pretty quickly and left at about 2 pm. 

It was so great to see Suzanne, Preston, McKinley, Maddy and Colton special from utah, and my parents and the N. spence family. Whenever  i get together with family I get sad that I dont live closer to all of them, but its fun to live where we live too. 

Every day ordinary stuff

What is this you ask? Oh, it's a stick in the dirt... More specifically a plumeria stick in the dirt. My mom forgot it at our house when she returned home from Hawaii and so she just bought herself another on-line and let me have this one. I need to transplant it into another pot, one with drainage. I always forget to pick one up at the store. She said I should see something in a month or two as far as growth goes. 

Did i post this picture all ready? Huh, not sure... But the babe is growing like a weed. That is for sure. 

The last two weekends I have hosted a Holiday Craft Camp at my house. It's been Saturday mornings for an hour and a half. I decided to charge just 5 dollars, to cover cost of materials... So far I have spent more than I have made but.... It's nice to off set the costs for the crafts. The whole reason I did it was because Ty and Maylee really like doing crafts and I couldn't justify spending 30 bucks on art supplies for a little craft. Anyhow, the kids have LOVED having 5 friends over every Saturday to come play. Matt takes Em and Gracie with him on Morning errands so I can focus on the kids there. Pictured here is the painting of the personilozed chalkboards. 

Pictured here are handprint flour sack tea towel Turkeys. 

The finished product of the Turkeys.

I had planned to do Thank You cards and gift tags in addition to these handprint Turkeys. But they sat and colored for near an hour. I was shocked! I thought they would take maybe 10 minutes! We had just enough time for snack time and to play a few games, including a camp favorite "Don't eat pete".  

Last week I text my friend Tiffany who lives 5 houses down and said, "I am going to throw all my kids toys away! I can't take the mess anymore!" She text back and said, "i'll be right over." This was actually a random picture not meant to be taken, but its a good indication of what she was starting with. 

A friend in our ward at church came by a week earlier and said she had a few toys that her girls grew out of and if we wanted them she would bring them to us instead of giving them to Good Will. I went out to her van to grab what I thought would be a few little things, but it was three dora houses with furniture and figurines, three my little pony play toys and a Disney Princess Kitchen. Wow! It was SO MUCH stuff. That's when the mess got really bad. Anyway, Tiffany brought her 4 kids with her, including Kyah, (her oldest a 10 year old who is really going on 30 she is so smart and mature) to hold Grace while she went to work. She had two trash bags full of broken or worthless toys and sent me to the store to get storage containers. I came back with 15 bins and she used everyone and labeled them. 

So much better! I was so thrilled to come upstairs after making dinner for everyone to see this. Tiffany is the best! She loves organizing and cleaning so of course it's uber organized and lovely. It's been a week and it's STILL organized. Thats how I know she did a great job. It is easy for the kids to clean up after themselves when playing. It is more functional and makes me smile when I walk by the toy area. 

Maylee hi-jacked the camera and caught me chatting with Grace. I just put her down to do the dishes and she kept giving me smiles. I'll take smiles from the little lady anyday :) 

Maylee's selfie.

Emma has done so well potty training. Shes even had three dry nights in a row, so I've called it, she's potty trained. She is such a happy girl now that she is trained. I always forget about the wailing and knashing of teeth that happens when potty training because they hold it and don't want to go in the potty. But that is over now and she's back to her busy, crazy self and loving her "Frozen" themed undies. 

As the girls were getting ready for bed tonight, Maylee ran upstairs to brush her teeth she yelled, "Race you Emma!" Then Emma took off running and yelled over her shoulder, "Race you Gracie!" Matt and I got a good laugh. It wont be long though before Grace is down for a race. She gets tummy time and spins in circles but hasn't rolled over yet, we're not super anxious for it though. 

Being home with just the girls is a big difference, but I am adjusting. Lunches are difficult, since Ty always made his own and made lunch for Maylee. He just made her what he was having, so she didn't really get an opinion. Well, with out Ty she has an opinion and it is usually requested that I give her a treat or an unhealthy snack instead of lunch. Today she finally convinced me that Nutella Toast would be yummy and nutritous. She quickly ate all her toast and so did Emma. Their faces were so perfect I just had to take a picture. 

Ty has to finish his homework in order to get play time on the iPad. I got a new app today "kid doctor". Ty liked it a TON. All the kids gathered round, and I thought it was cute so of course, gotta get a picture. 

We're looking forward to Thanksgiving down in Medford. As usual it will be busy spending time with family and we can't wait to see everyone.