A Season for Family

Our family had a wonderful holiday season. We went to Mac's parents house a watched "Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus" the Sunday before Christmas. I found an idea on line and made these penguins out of olives and cream cheese to take with me. My army of penguins turned out so cute!



On Christmas Eve we just stayed at the house mostly. Mac had his gallbladder removed on the 23rd so he wasn't really up to doing anything. We did go over to his parents for a bit and the kids opened their traditional Christmas Eve pjs.
On Christmas the kids got up and opened their Santa presents. They were all quite happy with the guy in reds choice of gifts. All of them got a game a movie and one big present. Bobby was excited to finally get his Thomas the Train track set with the bridge and waterfall. He has been asking for this train set for a year now. He saw it in a toy book. He would carry the picture around saying I really want this mom. I think he looked at the picture almost everyday for a month. Eliza got a laptop and has pretty much played on it nonstop since she got it. Taylor got an MP3 player and a hair coloring toy.





After the kids had opened all their Santa gifts and we had set up Bobby's new train set we had out traditional breakfast of crepes with blackberry and cream cheese filling. Yummy! Mac's parents came over and so did my brother and his wife. MY brother stayed for a while and played with the kids. They gave Bobby a motorcycle that drives by itself and his ninja turtles fit on it. Bobby thought this was a best day ever!


After they left we opened all the presents under the tree. I embroidered the kids names on towels. They liked them. I picked out bright towels that were the kids favorite colors. This gift was for me as much as for them. Now I won't have to wash three loads of towels every week.




Mac and I gave Eliza a necklace shaped like a lady bug. She really likes lady bugs, this is probably because I have called her my little lady bug since she was born. We gave Taylor a snow globe with a ballerina inside it. She started to cry to when she opened it.



All the kids got some new boots. Here they are styling in the front room. Bobby is wearing his Christmas Sponge Bob feetsie pajamas.



In the afternoon we went to Mac's parents for Christmas dinner. Dinner was awesome, ham, twice baked potatoes, green bean casserole, jello salad, and rolls! It was all fabulous, unfortunately for Mac he could only eat about a cup of food. Poor guy! He was feeling miserable and had this big bag of ice on his belly. He looked silly with the pot belly.



Bobby got a Bumblebee Transformer costume and loved it. He had to put it on immediately, did not take it off until he went to bed and then put it on about 10 seconds after he woke up. He has worn it everyday since Christmas. When he has it on if you call him Bobby he says, "I'm not Bobby I'm Bumblebee."





The Sunday after Christmas we went to Salt Lake with all of Mac's family to see his dad's parents. We had a nice visit and another Christmas feast Mac couldn't really enjoy. Papa and Nana's dog Jack thought Eliza smelled good. He kept licking her hair. They became fast friends.
The holiday was very nice. We spent a lot of time with family and that made our holiday great.

A sassy Six year old

Eliza had her birthday; she is now six years old! I can hardly believe it. Since her birthday was the same week as the Nutcracker we celebrated it on Sunday. She was a good sport about having to celebrate her birthday three days later. I don't know many kids that would be so patient and never even ask to open a present on their actual birthday. She had a good birthday. The whole family came over to the house for cake and ice cream. We had quite the full basement. Eliza wanted a Tinker Bell cake so I made her a cake that looked like Tinker Bell's house from the new movie. Tink's house is a teapot with a leaf roof. I decided to make it fallish since it definitely wasn't summer outside. She loved it and all the gifts she got. She has fairly simple taste. I think her favorite present was the big bag of skittles she got.

Busy, Busy, Worth it!

The kids just participated in their dance schools annual production of the Nutcracker. I love Idaho Ballet Theatre ! This year Eliza was a sneaky mouse and a butterscotch princess. She made such a lovely princess. Taylor was a soldier with the most awesome beautiful straight legs ever. She was also a black licorice princess in overture and (real quick costume change) a mademoiselle. The mademoiselle dance is a lot of fun. It is the dance where the girls come out from under the skirt of the really tall woman. The show turned out great. The Utah Regional Ballet company comes up and performs with the kids from the school. Of course the show is not all fun and games. Every Saturday for the entire month of November the girls had Saturday practices. Since Taylor was in three parts she was the dance studio for 3 hours. Then the week of the performance they had tech rehearsal on Tuesday to get the feel of doing their dances on the stage, then dress rehearsal on Wednesday and Thursday night for Taylor and Thursday night for Eliza. Taylor and Eliza danced at the matinee they put on for local schools and then Taylor performed Friday night. Eliza and Taylor both danced on Saturday night. They got to be in Overture together which is the first number of the second act. The curtain goes up and there are 75 girls on stage in glittering tutus and tiaras. At the matinee the entire audience of second graders gasped as the curtain rose. Taylor got to be in the center of Eliza's class and help lead them in the dance. That was fun. I helped out backstage as a chaperon and crazy fast costume changing assistant. It is a lot of work herding all those little girls around and making sure that they all have on their complete costume and are in their proper lines ready to go on stage but it is well worth it. I love going and sitting and just watching the show. After a week of being at the Colonial theatre from 4 to 9:30 and feeling busy busy busy, it is so worth it to see the beautiful performance my children put on.






I love this picture of Taylor in her Soldier costume!

Always an Adventure!

We went and got our Christmas Tree the day after Thanksgiving. Last year we went up to Fall Creek by Palisades. This year Mac was out hunting up past Mud Lake and said he saw a bunch of good Christmas trees. Mac's sister and her family wanted to go cut a tree down too so we all went together. Mac had a general idea of where we were going. He had been hunting at Deer Canyon and we found it on his atlas. There was a gravel road on the map that went from the highway straight to Deer Canyon. So we jump in the car and take off. It is a little over an hour drive to get where we were headed. We know the general area, we go camping there every year. So we take the whole family including the dogs. We drive straight there, just past the gravel pit is a gravel road. This road is a faint and in ill repair but it is there none the less. So we turn off the main road and head out across the sage brush. The road is bumpy and rutted. We crawl along at an average pace of 7 to 12 miles per hour. After driving for about 30 mins I tell Mac I'm surprised that we haven't come to the creek yet. He says, "What creek?" I tell him Birch creek runs on this side of the highway until after the campground. We camp and fish on the creek. I tell him the map shows the road crossing the creek. About five minutes later we come to the creek. There is no bridge the road just goes straight through. Mac and his sister's husband get out and asses the situation. After careful consideration (okay more like 4.3 seconds of discussion) they decide we just bomb through it. I got out and snapped a picture first. It was a lovely snow scene.

So onward with our adventure and we bomb through. Really no harm done the bank of the creek was a little steep. I think Mac's sister's truck dipped into the creek before the tires got to the bottom of the bank. So we are off again. Suddenly right before us the expanse of open sagebrush ends abruptly at a paved road marked highway 22. Mac looks at me and says "Is this highway on the map." Well as a some what competent navigator "I say yep it's right here. The road crosses it." In theory the road crossed the highway, at least on the map it did. But it reality the road simply ended. So we have now spent 50 minutes driving on a jarring dirt path to come out on a highway that connects us back to the highway we turned off of. So we head back to the highway and in 5 mins back track what took us almost an hour.

Mac knows they turned off onto a better road and then drove along side the mountain for a while but it was five am when he came and he wasn't driving. So we head up the highway and sure enough come to a road sign that lists, Big Dry Canyon, Byington Canyon, and Deer Canyon. We decide we should probably turn here. This is another gravel road and smoother than the first but still quite bumpy. So we are flying down this road at 15 to 20 miles per hour and suddenly Penny, our dog, gets car sick and just starts throwing up. Fantastic! We are in Mac's truck he does not have a stash of restaurant napkins collected in his glove box like I do in my van. He does have about a fourth of a roll of toilet paper. I used the entire roll to clean up all three piles of the doggy puke. YUCK! About this same time Mac's low fuel light comes on. I ask him so how many miles can you go when your low light comes on. He is very reassuring and tells me that "he doesn't know he always fills up about 30 miles after his light comes on, but I guess we'll find out!"

By this time it is about an hour away from being dark, our low fuel light is on, we have yet to reach the base of the mountain or even see a tree that isn't sagebrush. We finally reach the mountain. It is not Deer Canyon but we have about 30 mins before it is dark. We park the car and jump out. Up the side of the hill we trudge to see if we can find a tree. My four year old niece tells her mom she wants the forty foot tall pine tree. We look around and I finally spot a tree that is fairly full and doesn't have any other trees growing in it or right next to it. I ask Mac what he thinks. He tells me yeah it is a fuller tree am I sure that is the one. I tell him yep. Mac goes up and in about 10 seconds has the tree cut down. He is holding it above his head and carrying it with one hand down the hill. He bring it down and sets it in front of me. The tree is about as tall as my enormous 5'6" frame. I was standing down hill from the tree and it looked considerably taller. I tell Mac, "It's shorter than I thought it was." He tells me too bad there is no putting it back.

It was all good. We got home with no problems. We had to stop in Mud Lake to get gas. We placed the tree stand on cinder blocks to give it a six inch lift. The kids decorated the tree and it looks great. Every time I look at it I have to smile because I know it is always an adventure in our family!

Gobble Gobble Giggle!

We had a wonderful and fairly relaxing Thanksgiving. We went to my sisters house with my family that lives here in town. We had all the the fixings. Everyone ate way too much and then they all piled on Mac and took a nap. We really did have a nice day. It was very relaxing. The boys watched some football and I went to Michael's with my mom and sisters. After that we ate some pie and ice cream (way way too much pie and ice cream). And then we played some games before we went home. It was just a perfect example of all the things I have in my life to be thankful for. I have a great family, plenty to eat and a nice warm place to stay. I believe my family is truly blessed and I deeply give thanks for all that we have.
I taught the kids a song that they performed on Thanksgiving for the family. Here it is, wishing you a happy holiday straight from our hearts!

Fuzzy Dogs Don't Share

Bobby loves dogs. More than any of our other children, Bobby says these are my dogs. He likes to go outside and play with them. Bobby and Emma play fetch quite a bit. She is really good about bringing the ball back and dropping it at Bobby's feet because she wants to keep playing.

The other day Bobby was at my mom's house while I was at work. While we were driving home he told me "Mom, fuzzy dogs don't share." I honestly had no idea what he had said so I replied "oh really they do." He got mad and told me "no they don't share!" So I asked him again what he had said. He replied, "fuzzy dogs, like daisy" this is my mom's golden retriever, "don't share with me." Daisy is very stubborn and while she wants to play fetch with you she also doesn't want to give up her toy. So she will just follow you around with a stick or ball in her mouth whining but she will not drop it so you can throw it for her. I guess Bobby had tried to pick up a stick that she had dropped and Daisy snatched it back up nipping Bobby in the process. He then tried to pull it out her mouth. This is an almost impossible task. So he decided that Fuzzy Dogs don't share and he won't try and play ball with her . Despite Daisys selfish nature, Bobby loves to go outside and attempt to play with her.

A lot of Memories

My Grandma Turnbow passed away recently. Her funeral was the Friday before Halloween.  It was a very nice tribute to her life. All nine of her children were that with all of their children. Needless to say it was quite a full house. It was nice to get to see all of my cousins. I haven't seen some of them in ten years. My mom wanted a picture of her family since we were all together.  

My Grandmother was an amazing woman and a lot of people were there to pay their respects. I loved her very very much and I am proud to be her granddaughter. I have a lot of memories with my Grandma and I wanted to jot a few down. As a kid I remember going with her and Grandpa to Skippers. Sometimes we'd be over there and she'd pull out the sheet of coupons and say, "Okay decide what you are having now." That was always a special treat for us. I remember getting gifts for Christmas that she had sewn like a bathrobe and a nightgown. She always came to my choir concerts. She was always with us for birthdays and Christmas. More recently, I have a very clear memory of going over to help out in Grandma's flower beds. It was summer and we were planting petunias and it was hot outside. I had all the kids with me.  They were helping Grandma put weeds in the wagon. She told them they had worked hard and deserved a popsicle. I can still see her sitting on the back step with Taylor and Eliza on either side of her eating a posicle.

Too Much Fun and Candy

We had a busy Halloween. It started on Thursday when we went to the kids school carnival. They got to play a bunch of games. While Bobby was standing in line for the inflatable jumper he was standing behind a little boy dressed up like Batman. Bobby was dressed up like Spiderman. The two little boys kept waving at each other. I asked Bobby if that was his friend. He told me "yeah mom, he's a super hero just like me!" 
Then on Friday we went to a Halloween carnival at the technical college just up the road from our house. The kids went trunk or treating and then played some games in the cafeteria. All of them did the fishing pond and the cake walk. Taylor won a cupcake her second time around the walk. Bobby won a cupcake his fourth time around the cake walk. But poor Eliza, she went around the cake walk over 20 times before she finally won her cupcake.  After we got done at the carnival we went out to my parents house and carved pumpkins. Mac helped Bobby and Taylor and I helped Eliza and carved my own. Eliza picked out a picture of Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Bobby wanted a picture of Thomas, his was cute. Taylor picked out a rather difficult picture of three wolves. Can you guess who my pumpkin looked like?
Then, it was actually Halloween! We had a party at Mac's parents house. They had put together a spook alley. Taylor didn't even make it to the stair door before she started crying and said she wouldn't go through it. Eliza made it to the bottom of the stairs and then dashed back upstairs crying. Bobby thought it was fun, as long as the lights were on. Bobby has been asking me if we could get a pinata. So we made some for the party. We made a pumpkin and a ghost. We probably had ten pounds of candy in the ghost. After the party we went home a took a nap.  Later, we went trick or treating around my mom's house.  That night we watched a Halloween movie while we ate dinner. It was a busy three days and I know the kids got way too much candy!