Merry Christmas

A very merry Christmas from our home to yours!

Christmas Times in Pictures

We decked the halls and trimmed the tree.

 We had school Christmas parties. Fun!

Nina had a Ballet/Tap class Christmas party. 

The girls all went to a local production of The Nutcracker and it was great! We hope this becomes a girls tradition.

We made Christmas goody plates for our friends and neighbors.

Adrian and I went to West Side Story for our December 21st anniversary (it's not our real anniversary, but our first kiss anniversary - I know we are goobers for celebrating it every year :)). Adrian and I have officially been going steady for 15 years. West Side Story was fantastic!!

I hope that you are having fun Christmasy times with your family. Merry Christmas!!

My Sweet Boy

Have I told you lately how much I love this boy of mine? He is the sweetest kid you will ever meet. Really. And that's not just because I'm his mom. He is so kind to others and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. Ben is turning 8 soon and getting baptized in January. He is excited to be baptized and is taking the step really seriously. We were driving in the car the other day and he said, out of the blue, "Mom, I'm ready to be baptized because I know the Plan of Salvation really well." He went on to tell me about The Plan pausing only to ask me if we are judged before or after the Resurrection. It was a precious moment for me. I am so happy that he wants to be baptized and understands what this step means in his eternal progression. I am strengthened by his pure child's faith. Thanks for being you Ben.

Happenings Wrap Up

I can't believe it's already December and I haven't written about any of the stuff that has been happening. Feel free to skim, because I have to catch up!

I'm finally blogging about Jann's and Cami's visit! It was wonderful and I loved having them here. I miss you guys! The Saturday before the So You Think You Can Dance concert, Jenny, Cami, Jann, and I went to the Molly Brown House in Denver for some local fun. The tour was actually quite hilarious with a tour-guide who spoke in a very, hmmm how do you put this... dramatic way. Very dramatic. The try to hide your giggles kind of dramatic. The tour was a bit boring, because it was a lot longer than it probably should have been, but it was also fascinating to me because I didn't know a whole lot about Molly Brown. I've never even seen The Unsinkable Molly Brown. What wrong with me? I need to get on that. That weekend we also had some yummy food and Zombie Flux times (that game rocks). Then on Monday the concert was amazing as always and so much fun. We saw Mandy Moore, the SYTYCD choreographer not the singer, at the concert and it was so weird. Maybe she's from Denver? I don't know, but it was cool. I got to see the Circus Dance which was one of my favorites from the season. Fun fun night!

Then on November 17th I went to the midnight showing of Breaking Dawn with Jenny and beforehand a Breaking Dawn party at our friend Tracy's. That party was SO awesome. We had tomato curry soup in styrofoam cups (you know Bella and the blood drinking), Twilight themed cupcakes and all manner of yummy treats. Tracy went all out. Then for party favors we got Twilight journals, bubbles with "just married" on them to blow during the wedding scene of the movie, and Twilight bookmarks and candies. It was amazing. Then off to the movie we went. We did a double feature with Eclipse at 9:30pm and then Breaking Dawn at midnight. Did I love the movie? Yes! How can I not?!! Did I think it was cheesy and the wolfy parts were horrible? Yes! But that's okay. I'm just happy to be in Forks. Wow, the honeymoon was steamy, but I didn't mind.:) And I thought the special effects to make Bella emaciated were quite cool and oh how wonderfully gory and disgusting that birth was. I'm a weirdo. I like those things. So for me the movie was great and I do look forward to the next one in a year when Bella is a red eyed vampire. Fun!

Thanksgiving came next. It was a lovely day. We teamed up with our friends Christine and Devin and their kids for the dinner and had it at our house. It was great not to have to cook everything and it was so nice to have friends to talk with during dinner. The food was super good. Adrian made a great turkey, brining is the key. I made some rocking Pioneer Woman mashed potatoes with 2 sticks of butter, cream cheese, and cream. Oh my. So good. There was also deviled eggs, rolls, salad, sparkling cider, cranberry sauce, and of course pie. Christine made a fabulous coconut cream pie that I inhaled. Yum. And the kids all loved the easiest chocolate pudding pie the best. The time you spend cooking something has absolutely no affect on my children. They would love it if we had chocolate pudding pie for every holiday and totally ignore the pumpkin pie that I made from scratch. I'm trying not to be bitter. After the wonderfulness of dinner we chatted some more and then went to The Muppets Movie. Wow, that was a blast from the past. It was great, the kids loved it, and I got "Mahna Mahna" stuck in my head all night. Fun times.

Whew, I'm caught up. Thanks for reading (or skimming through) all that!:)

Halloween 2011

 The end of October was quite crazy with a lot of stuff going on. My good friends Cami and Jann came here to Denver so we could go to the So You Think You Can Dance concert together and it was so fun. I loved having them here and the concert was awesome. (Hopefully I'll cover this better in a separate post once I get/steal some pics from Cami and Jann.) Then I hosted a book club, helped with our ward's Trunk or Treat, and then hosted a murder mystery couples party with the ladies from my former primary presidency and their husbands. It was our second murder mystery party as a group and it was hilarious! The costumes were great this year. I was a gothic novelist, Connika Gothica!, (do you think I was type-casted?) so I got to wear a red and black wig and do some Cleopatra/Siouxie and the Banshees eyes. Nice. Adrian was more sedately dressed as a lawyer. It was a fun night!

For Halloween I went to Ben's and Nina's class parties, which was a lot of fun. We had our traditional chili dinner and Ben and Nina trick or treated with Adrian, while Sophie for the first time trick or treated with friends. She is getting so old! Oh I need to talk about costumes... Adrian and I only dressed up for the Trunk or Treat and we were Arthur and the Killer Bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (reusing costumes from 6 years ago). We won the "Nerdiest Costume" award. Awesome. Sophie was Katniss from The Hunger Games (a seriously easy costume and she loved it). Ben was Draco Malfoy for the 2nd year - he loves being Draco and I am all for reusing costumes! Nina was a witch and if you asked her what kind of witch she was she said she was a bad witch. Ha! While the kids trick or treated I passed out candy - one of my favorite parts of Halloween. I love seeing all the little cuties in their adorable costumes. In between answering the door I watched Twilight on TV (not exactly scary, but Halloweeny) and munched on candy. I need to learn to resist fun size candy bars. They are my weakness. The kids all came home happy and tired and we watched Scared Shrekless together while they enjoyed their candy. I love Halloween! Hope your Halloween was great!

 Yes, that is a Holy Hand Grenade around my neck. :)

Halloweenish Denver

Last weekend Adrian and I decided some season fun was in order. I am a sucker for anything Halloweenish. So we went on a haunted Denver bus tour. It was the quirkiest tour EVER. The tour was in a bus that looked like a Hill Billy shack (pitched roof and wood paneling on the sides!), which was appropriate since it was a Banjo Billy Bus Tour. Inside this refurbished school bus had couches, arm chairs, and even a saddle for people to sit on, we sat on an upholstered bench, and the roof was draped with crazy fabric and twinkle lights. Seriously awesome. The tour was all on the bus and as the tour guide drove around he told us funny Denver history tidbits as well as ghost stories. We stopped in front a quite a few different locations like the Molly Brown House, Cheesman Park (which is actually a cemetery), an old fire station, the Brown Palace, and the State Capitol Building and got to hear some fun ghost stories about each place.

It was a very tame tour - none of the stories were very scary - and so neat. I loved hearing about Denver and how wild and western it used to be. And Molly Brown was a seriously amazing woman. Of all the places Cheesman Park was definitely the creepiest. It started out as a cemetery, then they wanted to move all the bodies, but that didn't work out, so they just took all the gravestones down, re-landscaped it, called it a park, and tried to forget it was an actual cemetery. That is weird people. And creepy. My favorite part, here comes the cheese, was spending time with Adrian and feeling like we were on a real thought-out date, rather than our usual dinner and a movie. It's nice to switch things up every now and then. After the tour we had some amazingly good sandwiches. I think my French dip was better than La Madeline's. It was that good. All and all it was tons-o-spooky (and yummy with the sandwiches) fun.

The tour started in front of my favorite Denver Blue Bear (aka I See What You Mean) outside the Denver Convention Center. Isn't he cute?!

... but not snow.:) I saw this on a crafting blog and it made me happy. Bring on Halloween, pumpkin treats, and hoodie weather.