Still Here....

One last look at my beloved gingerbread house
Grandma Kimmy makde these hats and scarfs for the kids so cute! And perfect timing for the weather! Thanks grandma.

Barbie princesses' Annie was in heaven

Coco finally got that American Girl Doll, Samantha, she loves it. Now, all she wants for Christmas next year? The rest of the collection!

Careful, Bartel's got his eye on you with his new super duper magnifying glass!! He wanted one so bad, along with books, a watch, parmesean cheese, and $$$. 50's and 100's were supposedly acceptable.

Waiting for mom to get ready with her camera and cocoa in their new jammies.

Tarzan girl. This is just for fun...

I know it's been awhile. And I do love blogging, but I have been so lazy about it lately. I always have something else to do like, lunch, dinner, laundry... I'm getting into that "nesting" stage and so I think all my free time has to go into cleaning and organizing. Even though it doesn't always work out that way, sometimes those thoughts of being productive are enough to wipe me out and they end in a nap. And that's just the truth.

So to back up a bit.... Christmas was good. Christmas eve was spent at home relaxing..sort of. I baked cookies for santa and for the kids to decorate, while Bart who can't sit still, worked on the house. He put up a towel rack in our downstairs bathroom...I've been waiting 5 years. Then this one is a real treat, a toilet paper holder in my bathroom...Also 5 years of waiting. I'm so happy. Then he decided to sand down our back doors that haven't been painted yet and were suffering from water damage. My house was then full of dust...Not too thrilled about that one. But whatever. Maybe he was counting these acts of service as part of my Christmas gifts? That would explain a lot...I don't want to talk about it.....

SO I made our tradition of Chili and corn bread, again. I guess that's why it's called a tradition. It's my familys' tradition, but for some reason Bart is stuck on it. So we do it every year. Next year I'm making it ahead of time and freezing it like my mom did so my christmas eve will be all the more relaxing. So at night we decorated cookies and ate way too many, and then we played a few rounds of "Go fish" and a few matches of our favorite "connect four". Then we opened one present, of P.J.'s another tradition, and it was off to bed to await the big guys arrival..

Grandma Deb and Opa were hear bright and early to see the kids get up and open gifts. I of course made everyone wait until I was finished making homemade cocoa and had my camera ready. There are just some things worth waiting for. And my cocoa is. The kids were good sports, so patient.

Later that night we went to Opa's for a prime rib christmas dinner..very yummy. We did our gift exchange and I got some really nice things from Barts Family. It was a very nice day indeed..

New Years was busy we had all the youth over for the first presidency message. That ended at 8pm. Then we actually had a party to go to. It was my first New Years Party. I was totally surprised that I lasted until midnight. It was fun though that's probably why. We played this game where you wrote down something about yourself that no one knew, and then three people were called up and the story was read and one of the people actually wrote it and we were all asked questions and you had to lie and pretend it was yours, and get people to vote for you. So somehow, I convinced everyone that I went skinny dipping with boys at youth confrence. And won that round. When really my secret that no one knew couldn't have been more opposite, I will share it...As a teenage I could not say my prayers unless I had my bra on, I just didn't feel worthy. If I went to bed and forgot to pray, I would hop back out of bed throw on my bra, pray, and then take it off again. It was this way until I was married...Everyone thought thatt that was funny and weird, especially since I convinced everyone I went skinny dipping with boys! So this is all for now, I'll post some pics more later, I will try to keep up with the world of blogging.