Christmas Day 2018

The kiddo's went to be about 9:30pm on Christmas Eve. They wanted to go to bed early to make sure Santa would come. A little after 11pm I was woken up to the worse sounds ever! Kylie was throwing up. Ughhhh..... After a quick bath, change of clothes, change of sheets she climbed back into bed ready for Santa to come. She puked 3 more times in that hour. I finally had just sat at the end of the bed waiting for that next moment. Being already awake I kept checking my phones for texts. My sister in law Miranda had been admitted to the hospital the previous day (23rd) due to complications in her pregnancy. Baby didn't come on the 23rd and they were hoping to have her on Christmas Eve. A little bit before midnight I got a text saying the doctor had been called and Miranda was about ready to start to push. So exciting! And then nothing until almost after 3am. I new something had gone wrong!

Baby Jayne was born at 12:53 am on Christmas Morning. But she wasn't breathing and remained unresponsive for about 45 minutes. For several minutes she did not have a heart beat and the nurses were performing cpr on her. How scary! With the help of amazing doctors, nurses and many many prayers Baby Jayne began breathing again. Baby will probably remain in the NICU for the next week or two but we are all praying and hoping that she will recover quickly from the lack of oxygen and be a normal baby girl!

7am came awfully early for me!

So excited for a battery operated toothbrush. 

All this girl wanted was a mini skateboard. 

 Maddie's been sewing lately and wanted her own tools. 

Poor baby girl! 

Hunter was pretty stoked about the Alexa Santa brought him. 

With a sick little girl our family stuck to ourselves and had a quiet and relaxing Christmas Day!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve with Grandma and Grandpa 2018

Christmas Eve early afternoon we decided to take the kids to the "cheap" theater and see Small Foot. The boys refused to let me take their picture! 

When we got home I started making our pizza dough that we would need later. I puposely made extra so the we could have a cinnamon roll wreath for breakfast morning. 

This cutie pie was a great help. We keep teasing her that all she wants for Christmas this year is her 2 front teeth!

 It's going to be yummy!

Last year we invited Grandpa and Grandma Heaton to spend Christmas Eve with us. The kids had so much fun last year with them that we did it again.

 Everyone was able to make their very own mini pizza. 

After dinner someone knocked on our door. 

This has never happened to us before... It was Santa!

Apparently Santa is a close friend to Grandma Heaton. 

The little kids could hard believe that Santa had come to our house. 

After Santa left we made our Graham Cracker Natitvity scenes. Uncle Kirk was visiting Grandma and Grandpa so he came along too. 

Maddie's final project. 

Emily's 

Hunter's 

Brayden's

The toothpicks started out representing the arrows that were shot at Samuel the Lamanite. Then it quickly turned into a porqupine on the roof there to protect baby Jesus from the soliders sent to kill every baby. 

Kylie's

We had Grandma and Grandpa open our gifts to them. We gave Grandma a plaque that said "I choose Joy". Grandpa got a box of shotgun shells and .22 bullets. 

We sure enjoy our one on one time with Grandma and Grandpa. It's nice having them living in Cedar City. Just a little bit closer to us. 

We ended our night opening our new matching p.j's (a request by Maddie) 

and wathcing the 4th Wise Man together.

Before going to bed the kids made sure to leave treats our for Santa and his reindeer with a little note.

This Christmas Season has been so less hectic than years past. I think we've all enjoyed the season a little bit better. I have learned this year that less is more, especially during the December month.

 Merry Christmas!

Decemeber 2018 Shenanigans

Seems like I blinked and December was over.  We've taken a bit of a break from working on the house and it has been so nice! I just wanted to enjoy the Christmas Season. Last year was such a fiasco I did NOT want a repeat of that. And so I didn't overplan, didn't commit ourselves to every party invite and didn't worry about the house being perfect! I just enjoyed being "us". 

Last year during the Spring the girls and I were at JC Penny when we saw these sweatshirts on clearance. They were both under $4 a piece. I knew Kylies would fit her this winter but I warned Maddie the size 12 would be to small afterall you are 14 and wear some14/16 and womens small. Emily wasn't interested in it and Maddie didn't care. She said she'd wear it anyways. It would just be a 3/4 sleeve sweater and so it was! Anyways they were so excited when the temperatures finally dropped and they could wear their matching sweaters. 

Uncle Rich has been sending us a Christmas Book every year since we lived in Arizona. It's a package the kids anxiously await for. It's something they know they can open that night and read as a family. I love our little Christmas Book tradition. All of our Christmas Books are wrapped and placed in a wire basket near the tree. Each night starting about the night we decorate the tree till Christmas the kiddo's get to pick one to open and we read it as a family. 

I helped in Kylies Christmas Party at school. We got to decorate a gingerbread house. 

Every month since school started Brayden has brought home a bag of groceries about once a month.  After asking several questions and calling the school I discovered that these bags are from the Food Bank. The Food Bank comes once a month and the kids are given the opportunity to fill a bag full of food they like to bring home. Kory and I both have explained to him that this food is for kids who don't have food at home. Kids that don't have a mom or dad at home at night to fix them meals. It's for the kids that go without. Most of the food he brings home is stuff we don't eat anyways. It's canned ravioli, spagehettio's, chicken noodle soup, hamburger helper. Sometimes he's brought a box of cereal or two or a box of apple sauce squeezes. Last month was the 3rd bag he brought home. I got after him and told him to stop, no more! He's opened those cans of "nastiness" to eat them and doesn't like it. So it's fed to the chickens. Our family just isn't use to eating those kinds of things. So essentially he's wasting food that could have gone to another little boy or girl that may have gone without becuase he brought it home. After a long talk he said he wouldn't bring it home anymore. To my astonishment he got off the bus carrying another bag of food this month. What the heck? The second he got into the van he said, "Mom, don't get mad! I can explain!" And so he proceeds to tell me that the "man" giving away the food told everyone at school that he had lots and so he wanted one kid from every family to come get a bag. Brayden says, " So it's o.k that we aren't poor. We still get one." And so I start to repeat our conversation we've had several times now about how we don't eat that kind of food. It's still wasting it. Brayden pipes up and says, "You know....I'm just trying to help with the 2nd coming!". I'm like what???? He then tells me this food is for our food storage when it's the 2nd coming. It's for when I can't go buy fresh fruit and vegetables and feed our family. It's for when we have to eat out of our cans that we have downstairs. He's just helping supply those cans we'll need when the grocery stores are empty. "I'm just trying to help you Mom!" How the heck am I suppose to respond to that?  

The youth in our ward was asked to help with the city's 1st Nativity this year. Not very many kids from the ward wanted to participate and so I forced my kids to do it. It will be good for them right? 

Emily was an angel.

Maddie played Mary. Anthony Ballard from our ward was Joseph. 

Hunter, reluctantly was a shepard. 

They all did great, it was only one night. No one had to speak. They just followed the narrative that was playing in the background. 

One tradition that the girls look forward to each year is helping with Kony Coins for Kids. In the past the boys have come along too. However, Hunter's church group had planned to go shooting that night. Kory had been invited to come along and was able to take Brayden. And so the girls went shopping and the boys went shooting. 

The next morning the Maddie and Emily skipped school to help me wrap some of those gifts that had been purchased the night before.

They usually have their sign out front that say's Kony Coins for Kids but we couldn't find this year to take our picture in front of it. 

We were still plenty busy this month even though we cut back and didn't attend every single function we were invited to. Hunter and Emily both had a orchestra concert on different nights and Maddie had a Jazz Band and her regular Band Christmas concerts on 2 different nights too. We also attended our Wards Christmas Party. All these events kept us plenty busy but we also had some awesome relaxing nights at home with just our little family. It's been a great month so far!

Ice Skating with Cousins

Saturday, Dec 17th we spent the whole day with our Christensen Family. We started our day off in Cedar for some ice skating.  

Brayden was a little worried about this new sport but fell in love pretty quickly! He was so good. By the time we left he was jumping in the air. 

Kory's broken collarbone is healing pretty nicely. He didn't want to take the chance of hurting it and so he chose to stand on the sides and run my camera.  

Hunter! For reals??? You photo bombed my train picture!

Maddie hanging onto Carlaya who's hanging onto Aunt Christina, Me and Kylie!

Uncle Jonathan and Emily. 

Jonathan and Matthew

Emily and Carlaya

Mya and Kylie

Emily, Maddie and Carlaya

After a few hours our bodies were worn out!

We headed back home to Grandma's house for some hot soup and dinner rolls. 

I of course left my camera at home. 

Following dinner we opened the gifts Grandma and Grandpa Christensen bought everyone from their Alaska Vacation a few months ago. This year my siblings and I decided to provide an experience for all the kids instead of buying gifts. Hence the ice skating day. I loved it! 

Aunt Christina holding Ariel, Maddie, Carlaya, Kylie, Mya, Emily, Uncle Travis

Jamie, Elena, Brayden.

When the gifts were opened and the garbage picked up we played a game Kory and I were introduced to a few years ago. It's called the Left, Right & Center game. Everyone was asked to bring 3, one dollar bills that wanted to play. So everyone starts off with 3 one dollar bills. They then roll the 3 dice or the same amount of dice as dollars left in the there hand. The then follow the instructions per the dice. Pass a dollar to the right, left, keep it or put it in the center. 

It doesn't take too long before the pile of dollars in the center starts to pile up.

You may loose all 3 dollars on your first roll but your still in the game. Because your neighbor may have to give you one of theirs! 

It doesn't hurt quite as bad to give your dollar to your spouse. 

At least you hope it stays in the "family"! 

Who was our lucky winner??

Grandma!

WooHoo! 

Grandma won all $60 one dollar bills!