Christmas 2011

dear journal,
this is what christmas of 2011 looked like...

 chris and erica drove up from corona for christmas eve. i made her the snuggie ;)

we had dinner with the hansen family christmas eve. nathan fell asleep on the way home. we woke him up long enough to feed santas reindeer.

 

 and put cookies out for santa. oops! they're slipping!

and now they're gone! shoot!

oh well, santa won't notice ;)

cheese mom!

before bed mimi vacuumed and we watch, "it's a wonderful life". lol.

christmas morning jaren and i woke up around 715am. we couldn't take the suspense! we had to wake up nathan around 8am.

santa brought him a bike!

(he may have still been a little sleepy, lol)

here's nathan's loot... imaginext t-rex from aunt andrea (he LOVES it!), triceratops pillow pet. dinosaur pillowcase made by mom. camping chair. comforter for your soon to be big boy (twin size) bed.

nerf guns (that are already hidden since his aim is HORRIBLE!), 3 dinosaur train interactive dinos (to go with the 3 he already has), lightning mcqueen ballpit from uncle matt, books, puzzles, new toothbrush, hot wheels, tonka trucks, rc truck, lacing blocks, flashcards, mini dinosaurs

jaren's loot... tool box with 182 piece tool set, rapid charger for his rc car battery, beard trimmer, new hat

kathryn's loot... slice-o-matic (like a mandolin slicer), cookie scoop, cupcake scoop, lint roller, glittered toms, chocolate covered caramels w/ sea salt, big pack of gum, hot chocolate mug, new slippers, decorative cupcake liners, christmas pancake pan and a mini tripod

i've been asking for glittered toms since um, forever? he really surprised me with these! (i didn't give him enough money to buy them, LOL.) which means he's been saving his allowance. which means i married a pretty remarkably amazing man!

and here's are giftcard loot :) we can have a day out starting with breakfast at ihop, then a trip to sears, then lunch at chilis , followed by a trip to michaels, then dinner at olive garden and dewars for dessert. sweet!

forgot to mention a gift... i bought him a headlamp flashlight, and i got one too! mine's for crocheting at night or anything with black yarn. his is for, ummm, he just wanted one?

nathan thought they were pretty funny too ;)

oh and last week i got box of meat (and desserts) packed in dry ice from omaha steaks from my sister andrea :)

but the gift of the season was for my dad! my sister andrea (seriously, she's pretty amazing with her gift giving skills), bought my dad a tur-duc-ken! for those that don't know, it's a chicken stuffed inside of a duck that's stuffed inside of a turkey. mmmm?!?!?!

after all the gifts were opened, the boys went outside with their cars.

then we had breakfast. again, mom and jaren in the kitchen :)

another gift i got from jaren, was this incredibly soft wonderful comfy blanket that him and nathan cuddled up in after breakfast.

the night ended with a meat and cheese platter (didn't feel like cooking) and an ice cream cake. time for bed! we're all pretty tired now!

Ornament for 2011

Here are my ornaments for 2011 from jaren :) He tries to get an ornament that would remind me of that particular year. So these grinch ornaments are perfect! Nathan loves the cartoon and jim carrey version! one day he was playing and we heard him humming the "fa who for aze" song. It was so stinkin cute!

my nephew asked for money for christmas. so of course i had to give it to him in singles, rolled up. read the note, LOL.

don-lyn gifts

when i was pregnant with nathan, jaren's boss and his wife lyn gave us a TON of gifts!
nathan's first christmas, they gave us a TON of gifts! so their tradition is still alive on giving nathan a lot of gifts! this year he got a frog minky blanket, a veggie tale christmas book, a disney cars 2 book with 350 stickers, this e-reader sort of thing with disney books in it and a box of classic learning toys (lacing and tying shoes, a clock and abacus.)

so a big thank you to them! he loves them all!

aprons with hotpads

i kind of threw together a couple of different patterns to make these.

they make this kind of batting called insul-bright for making hot pads.

2011 Santa's!

nathan has seen santa 3 times this year! the first was the santa when we went to BARC.

the second was when my friend melissa had a fundraiser for next years relay for life. click here to donate :)

with your donation you would get a picture with santa, make a craft and write a letter to santa. here are nathan's pictures from that event. i LOVE them!

then earlier today we had a knock at the door from this santa....

(it's our bishop)

see what i mean! i think he's worked a deal out with him for extra gifts this year ;)

we cleaned out bugsys box of clothes (yes yes, i use to dress him up). nathan thought his triceritops outfit was for him. he wore it most the day. weird kid.

future grandchildren...

your grandma was a tad OCD.

nathan has been sick since sunday.

last night (tuesday), he snuck out of bed around 8:15pm while i was in my room talking to jaren and curled up with mimi. 5 minutes later he was asleep :) it's 10:07am on wednesday and he's STILL asleep!

2011 Relief Society Christmas Dinner/Program

i LOVE serving on the relief society committee! i love planning gatherings! wendy came up with the theme this year and we just rolled with it.

as you entered the room, we had the programs sitting out and also brown paper bags for the ladies that forgot to wrap their ornaments that we asked them to bring for an exchange.

wendys mom had made a beautiful wise men still seek him sign that looked great on the piano with christmas lights.

remember how i mentioned we were at the church the night before until 1am? it was because wendy's husband mark hung lights for us. our cultural hall has that itchy carpeting wall all the way to the ceiling. so he had to use screws (shh) in the wall, then strung hanging wire overhead, then he twisted the lights around them to make sure they didn't droop on us. then wendy added some paper lanterns she bought last year for another party.  

our centerpieces may look familiar ;) years ago when i threw my parents an anniversary party, i did the same thing. i took the glass and backing out of a frame and printed a picture on vellum. then glued 3 frames together and added a votive tealight in the middle to illuminate it.

for dinner we served pita and (homemade) hummus as an appetizer. then had cream cheese chicken over rice, greek salad (mmm... feta), and orange slices.

(stolen picture) for dessert we had brownies that looked pretty similar to these. except we couldn't get the candy canes in! we had baked the brownies in round cake pans, so we could get nice and neat triangles when we sliced them. but what i think happened is the edges started to get crispy before the middle was finished :/ so we just tossed that idea and just set the candy cane on the plate.

our program was short and sweet. just how we like it ;) we had our bishop read, "the crippled lamb". it is now one of my fav christmas books! definitly check it out!

then we had a sister read, "santa's birthday gift." also a great story. the author wrote it after reading the nativity story to her grandchild and at the end he/she said, "but where's santa?" so this is a cute rhyming story that combines the 2.

i found this picture online and framed it to have on display.

we had each sister bring an ornament for an exchange. we sat in a circle and a sister read, "twas the night after christmas." and when she said the word AND, your ornament got passed to the left. and when she said the word THE, your ornament got passed to the right. so that was fun to see all of us get confused.

and lastly our handout...

*phew* you have no idea the kind of sort of headache these caused! when it came time to buy the clear ornaments, i could NOT find them anywhere without pay a TON! but finally i found a  website and thanks to the quantity i ordered, i got boxes of 6 ornaments for $1.19/each! then came the vinyl, originally she quoted me for 75 cents/piece. i needed 100! i sent her a message back letting her know that was out of price range. she then asked how much we could pay. i told her $15. AND SHE ACCEPTED IT! LOL!  the lady i ordered from on etsy (i believe i was her first ever customer), took FOREVER to get them to me!  some were brown, some where black. she didn't have transfer paper on them. it was just, ugh, a mess! and i should've had them in time to assemble them at our next committee meeting. of course i didn't! so thankfully wendy and willow came over late one night and we whipped them up and just chit chatted. we stuck the vinyl on a piece of transparency paper (which thankfully a sister used her silhouette to cut), then rolled the transparency tight enough to fit it through the top of the ornament. when we let it go, it unrolled and we just had to straighten it up a bit. then we glued a glittered bow to the top and i found a cute scroll ornament hooks at the dollar tree that we used. it's hard to tell in this picture, but the nativity looks like it's floating inside the ornament.