Christmas Holidays!

I'm back!! 

Ok I took about 1000 pictures (literally) over Christmas so I will have to pick and choose wisely here!

We went down south for 10 days to my sister Britt's in Cardston and then spent a few days in Taber. It was so much fun, I miss my sisters so much! I hate how far we all live from each other. We had a blast and did so much! I don't even know where to start. Let's start with the biggest announcement of Christmas.
Can you guess what it was??
A present showed up at the door to the family so my parents opened it, since it said open now, and in the bottom was a RING box! It said,

"I'm engaged! Love Steph!" 

To say I was shocked is putting it lightly!! After all i've never met this guy! But I hear he is awesome and they've been dating ever since she moved to Portland in the summer. His name is Kevin Bird and he is actually my sister Kristy's husband (Brandon), it's his cousin! So Kristy and Steph are going to have the same last name! What are the chances. Kristy did set them up though! After the idea set in I was super happy for her. That is all 3 of my sisters who got engaged to guys I never knew! I may be a bit of a protective sister...
So they are getting married in Portland on May 5th, and i'm the maid/matron of honor! I'm so beyond excited to help plan the wedding. I believe deep down I am an event planner so I love doing this stuff! I've actually thought of doing it as a career before, but probably wouldn't get far with that where I live. Maybe one day! Oh also, that will be all 4 of us married at the age of 18! CRA-ZY!
To tell my grandparents my dad came up with the idea to fool her thinking one of us announced we were pregnant. So we went to their house with pillows shoved under our coats and all 3 of us stood in their livingroom and we said, "guess who is pregnant?!" She guessed all three of us, ha. Then Steph said, "None of them! I'm engaged!" ha could you imagine if all of us were pregnant. No. Something always gets announced at our Christmas's. Last time Krist and Britt announced they were pregnant, and the time before that it was Kristy and ME who announced (with the twins). I guess when you have 4 girls someone is always pregnant or getting married at some point.

Opening the "gift"

The Bride! So weird.

Telling the grandparentals. Love this pic of us. If only I looked like that for real when i'm pregnant! Just a "bump" ha i'm not one of those lucky ones.

It was fun though and we are really excited for her! Congrats Steph and Kevin!

Onto Christmas stuff.

Christmas eve was fun. We spent it half at my grandparents and half at Britt's since the kids needed to go to bed and we were all staying there. Santa showed up to my grandparents house! It was the funnest thing, I cried because of how excited my girls were! They ran up to him and gave him a big hug! I was one of "those" moms. There is something about seeing the excitement in your children. He even brought them all little presents! It was great. 

Britt and Grandma had a pinata so we had one for the kids and one for the adults. Kyla smashed the snowman pinata in half! She is one strong kid! It was hilarious. Then the adult one we all took a turn but we were in a small living room so we had to go easy. Well then grandma gets the stick and swings and it slipped out of her hand and hit Presley in the face! ha. Grandma's turn was over. And we were worried about the guys!! So we came out of the pinata's with a broken decor bowl and an slightly injured twin. Not too bad.

We had our white elephant exchange, one for the kids and one for the adults and we also opened pjs! We did all the kids stuff at grandma's and the adult stuff at Britt's. We put out the reindeer food and I forgot to have the girls put out the milk and cookies! It's so much to remember! I felt sad so I did it myself for them because they were passed out by the time I remembered. My aunt and cousins also came out and it was so fun, it felt like we were kids again spending Christmas eve together. My dad also set up fireworks for all of us! It was awesome!

Here are all those things meshed into pics. I'm not organizing because this is taking long enough.

 you know it.

Cousins!!

Lets pause,

and take a look of the many excited faces of Christmas morning. Mostly Kyla. Which are the best thing i've seen in a long time...

enjoy.

 

So hilarious!

At least we know we are doing our job in making our kids happy! ha

Now onto Christmas morning and day.

Everyone got spoiled and we had tons of fun! It took us until noon to open presents. Then we had waffles for breakfast. Here we go...

Laken's smile here kills me.

That's just me changing Laken's diaper in the above photo, I just noticed that...

 

 Family Picture time!

 

We can't help it.

 

 

 

 Dustin loves the Goonies. So Steph got a picture of the Goonie rock since they live so close to it and developed it for him! He loved it!

We also celebrated Kristy's birthday which is Jan 4th but we always so something for her when we get together for Christmas! Happy Birthday to my gorgeous sister!!

 After Britt's we headed out to Taber for a few days. It was a lot more low key there but we got to take the kids out on their quad. Dustin was in heaven and our girls LOVED it. So it's a good thing the first thing we are buying after a house is a quad. Looks like Dustin got his "boys" after all. ;)
 

The weather was amazing the entire trip, all above zero! No snow! It didn't even feel like Christmas really. It was super windy in Taber but the last day it wasn't too bad so I was happy because I wanted to take some outdoor pics. I'm getting ansy not being able to do many photos outside. So I took my new lens out and took a few pics of the quadding. Nothing special but this lens is amazing! I love it. These are just fun, un-edited photos but I still love them. :)

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

The girls checkin out Grandma's bus

And I think that's all folks. I did it. That sucked a little and only took me two days to do!

I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas holidays and i'm looking forward to this new year. We have a lot of new years goals. I don't like to call them resolutions because I'm always setting goals all year round, so I just count these in as those! My list is kind of long for this year though! I'm pretty sure we can do it. :)

Merry Christmas!!!

 Heading South a day early for Christmas in the morning!! Hope everyone has an awesome Christmas! I know I will because i'm spending it with my favorite people in the world, my family!! Love you all!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!!

 

 

: )!

Busy

What's a better word than busy? Because that's what i've been!

I'm on the Enrichment committee and I got put in charge of the craft for the Christmas Activity so we did the wood letters. Well they got ordered under someone else's name who had to leave out of town the day before the activity for a family emergency, and they came that day. So I went to get them but I wasn't her so they wouldn't let me pick them up. Luckily someone worked at the pharmacy right beside the post office they knew so she got them for us!! Lucky! Well then, I got home and saw the box and knew that it wasn't big enough. Turns out we were missing 2 more boxes. Needless to say it was chaos trying to get them for that night and we ended up only getting one more. Oh well it worked out and ladies had fun making what orders we did have. We scheduled a second night to finish them this last Thursday and we were still missing some letters but over all it worked out. We just had to re order some words. I'm so grateful for the patient ladies in our ward and how supportive and helpful they were through it all. I was a little stressed out at first because I always want everything perfect, so it sucked there was nothing I could do about it.

Can you believe how awesome this Santa picture is? It's a picture on my phone of the actual photo so it's blurry. But they photographer couldn't believe them and how they were all looking and smiling! He also wanted me and Dust in the picture. Maybe next year. Or porbably not. I was in the one last year, which will not be shown, because I was fat and pregnant and it is not cute. Yes i'm selfish and care about me in that situation. ha.




Next. This is the second time i've typed this out, I wanted to add one picture from my iphone and it deleted the majority of my post. Sucky.
Ok I was in charge of the decorations for our ward Christmas party. I got the idea to get glass bottles and spray paint them and roll them in epsom salts from online. It looks like snow. Cute. Then I wanted to get stick from the woods and spray paint them silver and glue leaves all over them cut from old books. Then we put them on doilies on silver table cloths, the bottles were all different sizes and in the center of the tables we did two bottles, one big and one small and then we got Christmas decoration balls in silver, white and two different shades of purple and put them at the base. It looked so awesome. It was classic and vintage. I had so much help from Becky, and Jill came to help set up. Thanks girls! I couldn't have done it without them!
I also got so many compliments on it so it was totally worth it! It looked way better in person!

 

  

 

 

 

 

The last picture is proof I don't always get cooperative children. Laken is ticked we took her bottle away for a picture. Ha. Plus the twins smiles lately are so awesome, but they sure practice them!

So I have 3 dentist appts for myself this week. I don't want to talk about it. I also need to post Kyla's Christmas concert which got deleted from this post. But right now i'm going to eat some cheesecake pumpkin pie. So good.

Me time!

So this past year i've been putting a lot of effort into getting some ME time, without kids, responsibilities or anything of the sort! I have found it to be really important for me to have this and I'm pretty sure that is how I stay sane. I used to feel selfish if I thought that way, but you HAVE to be. Mom's deserve to have fun too! For a long time i've been wanting to get into a dance class and I wanted to take hip hop but they didn't offer that class anymore at the college dance academy, they offer it I think at the other two studios in town but lets just say, the classes at the college at $550 and they were the cheapest! Ya crazy eh? Hence why Kyla is the only one in ballet! ha.

Anyways, Becky and I decided to try something different out for fun and we heard they had belly dancing classes here so we signed up! It was 10 classes and tons of fun! It was once a week on wednesday nights, and I LOVED getting that time to myself once a week. I'm serious if I had some good advice for moms out there, this would be it. Do something for yourself!!

So last night we performed at a restaurant with some other students and it was so much fun! The class started out with like 8 student, and there was another class too with a few students, but by the end the only ones who would perform were Becky and I! We obviously are beginners and I was SO nervous at first, but then once we started everyone was so happy and cheering for us and so we just had fun! I did video it but I think Becky would kill me if I posted it! ha.

Me and Becky before!

And this ones for Dustin...

So we are probably going to continue with it and maybe try out different styles, they have swords, canes, Gypsy and more! I think the Gypsy would be so fun!

ps: i'm getting my hair done on Thursday, what should I do?? Nothing drastic though.

Rootbeer Cookies

You're probably thinking, rootbeer what??
Yup Rootbeer cookies, and they are delicious!!

I can't take credit for the recipe since I got it from my sister Britt, who got it from her sister in laws Michelle and Nikki. 
I've made them twice lately and everyone loves them, including me because I eat them all. I make them in bite size so I don't feel as guilty eating lots! ha
The only catch is, you can't get rootbeer extract in Canada. So get some connections and get a bunch of bottles because one batch of cookies and icing uses up half the bottle. So good.

These are crappy pictures because they are the left overs from last nights enrichment so they aren't super pretty but this is how I make them.

 Rootbeer Cookies

1 C Butter

2 C Brown Sugar

2 Eggs

2 tsp Rootbeer extract

3 1/2 C Flour

1 tsp Baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/4 C water

Roll into 1 1/2 inch balls. Bake at 350F 6-8 mins.

Icing

1 1/4 C Butter

3 1/4 C Icing sugar

2 tsp Rootbeer extract

3 tbsp water

Love them.