Christmas fun!

We were able to stay just over a week down in Boise for Christmas (Yay for paid vacation!) We were worried about the weather in the mountains, but it was clear pavement for both the drive down and the drive back. We felt very blessed for the nice weather! We arrived in Boise late Tuesday night, which worked out well for us because my mom is a night owl :) This also gave me a couple days before Christmas to finish up some much needed Christmas shopping. Anybody who knows me or Moses Lake realizes the lack of shopping. Evie had such a fun time playing with her cousins. This is part of the reason it's so hard to be away from family - she plays so well with her cousins. Anyway, Christmas Eve day and night and Christmas morning was spent with Owen's family. We had a lovely (and I'm sure expensive) lunch with the family on Christmas Eve afternoon. Owen's parents are so kind and generous to treat us all. It's a tradition that we do lunch, draw names and pick out a $5 gift for the names we get.

The whole group...minus Owen's parents. His dad was taking the picture and apparently his mom didn't quite cut it (just kidding Annette :)

Daddy reading Evie the nativity story.

Evie was so excited about her stocking. This kid sleeps late. We had to wake her up at 8:30am in order to open her gifts and get to church by 10:00 am. She was half asleep while opening her gifts and wasn't QUITE as excited as I thought she would be. She still loved her presents!

Evie with Grandma and Grandpa Johnston after church.

A failed attempt at a family picture.........seems like a running theme :)

Evie opening her new pillowcase that Grandma Johnston made. She loved it! The little dress she is wearing was in a dress up trunk that Santa brought her. She LOVED that as well :)

We celebrated Christmas with my family later during the day.

Grandma and Grandpa Ogden gave all of the little girls the princess baby dolls. They loved them. Evie got Belle. I attempted a picture with all of the girls and their dolls....that was not happening. This was the best shot I got!

My sister had Owen's name this year and got him an awesome video game chair. It has the speakers built in and everything. He was pretty excited. He had been asking me for one back at Thanksgiving time and my response was...."well, I will go get you a banana chair from DI if you want." Poor guy....he has such a loving wife ;) The little girls loved this chair. They were climbing all over it or whoever was on it!

Made a trip to Chuck E Cheese. Evie had a blast playing air hockey.....

riding rides....

and playing the games!

Reading books with Grandpa the night before we left.

Once grandpa was finished, Aunt Charity took a turn.

These cousins played so well the night before we left. Evie shared her dress up clothes and Felicity shared her princess barbie dolls - almost unheard of for 2 year olds!

I can't believe another Christmas has come and gone. We have lived in Washington for a year now. It is crazy how fast time goes. Before you know it, next Christmas will be here. I hope everyone reading this had a great holiday season!

Christmas time is here...

I love the Christmas season. It is especially fun now that Evie is old enough to get excited about all of the lights and decorations! I love the star on our tree. I got that back when Owen and I were first married. I went to the dollar store in Rexburg, having this EXACT style of star in mind...and what do you know? They had one! I love a good find :)
Evie LOVED helping decorate this year!! My big tote was open with everything everywhere! She was sooo excited to put the ornaments on the tree - and put the star on top, with daddy's help :)

Earlier that day I set out to make the ornament wreath that I have been so excited about! This is a picture of all of the balls! They were everywhere!

Busy at work- we chose to glue each ornament around a foam wreath.

All of us ladies with our finished wreathes. I love how each one turned out different. We started at 1:30 pm and ended about 6:00 pm. There were short break sessions for bathroom, food and some chit chat. But we were pretty much busy the whole time!

Here is my finished product up for display! I got this mirror at goodwill for $4.99 and just spray painted it black. I love how it turned out as well. I am going to make a shelf to go under it sometime coming up :) I wanted to make stockings this year. Probably won't end up happening...maybe next year.

I usually have my pears in this glass/vase thing. I love the look of the multi colored balls in it! My sister in-law did something similar to this a couple years back, but she had hers in a basket, at any rate - I loved the simplicity of the idea and the pretty results :)

At the end of November most of my time was spent on this little project. My extremely talented friend made one of these last year, so the rest of us thought it would be fun to make one. It's an advent calendar with 24 pockets. Each morning "the elf on the shelf" has delivered something to the pocket for that day. Mine haven't been numbered yet. I think I will probably use this next year when Evie can understand the concept of the calendar. Right now, she just likes how fun it looks!

Instead of sewing individual things on each pocket - I came up with the magnificent idea (at least I thought it was) of buying stickers used for card making and putting them on. Worked great and turned out much cuter than if I had tried to hand stitch anything :)

I got these christmas present boxes at Goodwill for like $.99 - I like how they add a little fun to the decorations :)

Our little Christmas corner. The main area in this place is no where close to what it was at our old house. We were afraid the tree wouldn't even fit. BUT - we made it work! I think it looks lovely :)

With all of the lights, decorations and present buying I feel like we sometimes forget the true meaning of Christmas. I am so grateful for the Savior and his birth. So grateful for the knowledge of the gospel and eternal families. So grateful for the opportunity to teach my children these truths. I hope I can keep Christ in Christmas and remember the true reason for the season :)

This is what happens when you try to get your husband and 2 year old to take a picture of your pregnant belly.....

sideways shot?!

There's Evie.....where's mommy? Directly behind her :)

Ok, Evie...move please!!!

um...getting closer.....

Ok. this will do! I love how she is standing just like me in this pic!! She is always touching her belly and telling me that she has a baby in her tummy :) She is such a funny little gal!

So I opted to take the picture myself....with the great invention of the self timer thing on the camera :) Works like a charm! This is me at a full 16 weeks. Definitely starting to show more! I think I was 16 weeks pregnant with Evie when I started to show..... I had another appointment on Nov. 30th and was hoping to get a date set for my 20 week ultrasound. In Boise you have to get it set up a couple months in advance or you can't get in. Apparently up here it's very different. My next appointment is on the 3rd of January and I will be 20 weeks then...they said they will schedule it sometime after that. I'm guessing a couple days after my appointment. Hmmm..small towns - not really used to the way they do things still~ I guess. I'm sure the next month will fly by! This pregnancy seems to be going so much faster than it did with Evie. Guess when you are chasing a 2 1/2 year old around you don't have much time to think about this baby as much!

Evie loves puzzles! They have a bunch at the gym that she always likes to do. We were at Goodwill a couple months ago and got a pack of 3 older puzzles, the really heavy duty ones, that she really loves doing! She is really good at them too :)

I love this picture. Evie loves her daddy so much!! One of my favorite things in life is to watch Owen be a daddy :) He is so patient and loving and kind. I'm so lucky I won this guy over - almost 7 years ago!

Thanksgiving

We were very fortunate to have nice roads and weather for our trip down and back for Thanksgiving this year. We celebrated with both families - mine on Thursday and Owen's on Friday. It sure is nice to have both of our families close in distance from each other. The holiday season began on Tuesday with the the birth of my sister's 3rd child. A cuter than cute little boy named Archie Benjamin. Welcome to the world little guy! I am kind of hoping for a little boy so that they can be the best of friends!! But, I will be happy with a little girl as well :) At this point, I am pretty open to either!

Evie loves cousin Keegan. They had fun playing Wed. morning together :)

No trip is ever complete with out books read by grandma and grandpa. Evie loves books :)

Evie loves to "hide" under her blankets. She is such a silly little girl :)

We took Evie bowling. I think this was her first time. Or at least her first time being able to actually participate - and she LOVED it!

Every time the ball would roll down the lane she would put her arms up - like in the above picture - yell and jump around saying "yay! yay! yay! I did it! yay! yay! yay!" If you have ever been bowling with me, you know how excited I get! She must have gotten it from me...like mother like daughter :)

Evie and her cousin Felicity spent lots of time together this trip and they had lots of fun together! Actually, she spent lots of time with all of her cousins! We miss our family but know that we will move back some day! I'm grateful for our fun and safe trip. See everyone at Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like winter

I made Evie close her eyes for a "BIG SURPRISE"....... She loves yelling "surprise!" so I thought this would be fun for her.

She opened her eyes and saw..........

Our first snowfall of the year!!! She loved it :) After this picture we went inside to get her coat....she refused to come back in. I think she could have stayed out there for quite awhile, even though there really wasn't that much snow!!

My friends roped me into doing The Moses Lake 5k Turkey Trot. I started running a few months before I got pregnant and have been able to keep up on it pretty well, so I didn't think it would be too hard! Besides for the fact that it was FREEZING, I think I did well for being in my 15th week of pregnancy. I ran the whole thing in close to 33 or 34 min. I haven't gotten the recorded time yet, but it was good enough for me! The above picture is proof of my husbands picture taking skills.....give me a heads up, Owen!! My face says it all..............."what are you doing? Wait! I'm not ready yet!"

Our little group! I'm grateful for friends that motivate me and worry about me :) I didn't go to the gym for 2 days in a row and I wasn't texting back or calling back as quickly or as normally as I usually do (2 sleepless nights in a row made me feel incredibly sick and yucky) They were afraid something had happend to me! I heart them :) On a side note - I'm grateful for a healthy body that functions normally, most of the time :) This is the first 5k I have ran since my high school cross country years which was a long time ago! I'm also proud of myself, because as of a couple months ago, I can do a real push up - like 3 sets of 10 reps, no problem!! It feels good to see your self getting stronger!

The day before the race I decided to try my hand at cinnamon rolls. My mom has the most amazing recipe and Owen absolutely loves them~ plus we were going to have them after the race with hot cocoa! I decided to double the recipe....oh my! What an idea! There was dough and flour every where. It was like a scene out of "I Love Lucy"

That is just a glimpse of the mess that hit my kitchen that day!!!!

Once the dough raised and I rolled it out, it was the most beautiful dough I have ever seen - mainly because I slaved so hard over making it :)

The finished product! I need to practice making frosting still. I don't make it that often, so I'm not that good at it. Everyone thought they were really good! I had a second batch that I put in the oven just before work on Friday night. I set the timer and asked Owen to PLEASE take them out when it went off.....I get home and they are dark brown, burnt! I was so mad! *Side note: don't ever ask Owen to take anything out of the oven unless I am there to supervise, in which case it would just be better if I did it!* Oh, well. This turned out to be plenty!

I feel silly that in my post about motherhood, I failed to mention my own amazing mother. I learn so much from her. I am very close to my mother and it is very rare to go more than a couple days with out talking to her! I'm grateful for her love and support and for her strong testimony of the gospel. I feel extremely blessed to have a mother in-law as loving and kind as she is. She also has a very strong testimony and feel blessed to have that background in both mine and Owen's life. Both are always thinking of others, especially their children and grand children. I hope to someday be as wonderful of a mother as these two special ladies are :) Love you guys!