Christmas card

For those who didn't get it, these were the pictures on our Christmas card this year- with the words Silent Night!

I hear it was quite a year for this sort of picture.  Well it definitely fit after the original shoot in front of the tree!  Max was not cooperating!  

This year, instead of a letter we did Kress Family Awards and made it like the Oscars.  I made movie titles and descriptions for things that happened in 2012 under each category:

Action/Adventure

German Style

An exciting ride when a military family learns their next duty station will be Stuttgart, Germany

Drama

Like a Boss

The making and breaking of child athletes and the politics of children's sports

Comedy

Our Life

A raucous portrayal of a military family of 6 from Disney world, to Thesis's, from Christmas card mishaps- way too big(the cards were way too big for the envelopes I had already printed out and stamped!  In the end, I just folded them in half.) - to first time loves- It's life at it's best!

Tragedy

Sadly our beautiful niece and cousin, Monica died suddenly and without explanation on the 2nd of March.  She is sorely missed!

Suspense/Thriller

Drive by

A harrowing story of Emma getting her driver's license

Mystery

Rhythms

After the death in the family, the children were all tested for heart rhythm defects.   Samuel was found to have one, but we have yet to find a name or cause for it or how to treat it.

Documentary

Life before the Zombie Apocalypse

A serious look at the preparations for the coming apocalypse.  How many guns and exactly how much ammo does one family need? (This was all just silliness!  I needed another category and Rob and a friend we run with were calculating it one day for fun!)

We also sent a picture titled German style!  It was a fun holiday shoot!

20 Years!

We just celebrated our 20th anniversary.  I have now been married longer than I was single.  It seems like such a long time, but I can't remember much without my husband in it, now.

 I am so glad that our religion teaches that marriages are forever.  I have a friend who just got engaged to the father of her baby.  I asked her if she was excited, because she hasn't always said the best things about this guy.  She said, "yeah,  you know we won't get married for a year at least.  We are just going to try and see how it goes and if we mesh with our parenting style and stuff."  I thought that was the saddest things I had ever heard.  If you don't go into a marriage saying, "This is my forever guy!"  what hope do you have? There have been plenty of times we just didn't like each other, times we didn't agree on things, times that we just weren't nice to each other.  How easy it would have been, if we had started out saying, "Let's see how this plays out," to say, "to heck with this!"  When you start out saying, "this is forever"  "to heck with this" doesn't come up too often!
We were suppose to be in Utah while Mom and Dad watched the kids and we went to the Anniversary Inn.  I even had the room picked out- Ok, narrowed down.  We had also talked about a cruise or something.  In the end, we were at Wolf lodge making up for the kids lost trip to see their Grandparents and cousins.  Then we drove home and I went to a YM/YW party.  The next day Rob did offer to take me out to dinner.  While we were there, he surprised me with this beautiful ring.

It is a blue diamond and it's actually bigger than my wedding ring.  The silly flash made the other diamond look yellow.  He said, it was so I could choose what I wanted to wear that day, to match my outfit!  It is getting sized right now.  Emma tells me I have bony fingers.  I always thought they were long and elegant looking- well if I had nice fingernails to go with them, which I don't!
I am so happy to be married to this guy!  He is definitely my forever guy!

Holiday Fun

We didn't put all the Christmas up this year, since we are going visiting.  The kids kept asking why we were even putting up any of it.  Besides the fact that we are going to be here 1/2 of December, I also needed to go through it to see what I was getting rid of before we moved.  One of the things we didn't put up was the advent calendar that I made out of mittens.  Despite that, we have done a lot of the things from it.  We have read Christmas stories- The Littlest Angel, how I hate you.  Every year you make me cry while I am trying to read you to my children.  And since my children are mostly boys, they make fun of me!  We watched Christmas movies.  

We decorated the house.

I went to the annual YW/mother's Gingerbread decorating night.  I didn't participate- I just took pictures.

I took this photo because I thought it was so cool that she brought a blow torch.  This was just before she burned her daughters hand!

Emma was at driving school.  (She is now done with the class time.  Now all she has to do is 2 more driving days of 2 hours each with the instructor, turn 16 and take the test!)  I had fun talking with all the ladies and looking at all the gingerbread houses.

We took our Christmas photos- Here are the outtakes.

That's me, pretending to spank Max

Looks like a lot of fun, hu?  Right!!!

We went to look at lights and found our favorite house and gave them a prize.  This year's house had it's own radio station and had set the lights to the music. 

There was so much stuff going on and off, it was crazy!  When we talked to them, they said that the man was still working on two more pieces to go in the yard.  I have no idea where he will put them!

We did recitals.

Everyone loved Sam's Emperor's theme from Star wars.

Emma and Sam both did really well.

Emma went with theMia Maids and made up gifts for the Elder's

 and I went caroling with the Laurels.

Cookie day was sugar cookie reindeer.

We are working on our cards- I know, it's getting late, finishing our shopping and wrapping, baking lots of goodies and are now trying to decide if we are actually going visiting or not.  Rob is going nuts with his thesis for his Master's and doesn't think he can finish in time if we go.  As usual it's been a whirlwind!

November on Speed

We had a birthday- yeah, Rob loves getting older!!  I wonder how long he will live past 451.

We had friends visit from Virginia.

We made Thanksgiving and ate it on Wednesday.

Yep, Wednesday.

 I worked my first 12 hour night shift since Colorado on Thanksgiving night and Jodi had to be back to work on Friday Morning, so it was just easier!  I loved it!  It made Thanksgiving totally relaxing for me, instead of running around trying to finish all the last minute things I needed to!  Instead, I went to the Turkey Bowl with everyone else!  And I actually played the last 3 downs!  They had 2 big kid games going

and one little kid game going.

I loved how Joseph was in charge of the huddle!

Rob actually got to be the quarterback a couple times

and I stripped the ball from Emma like a pro!  One time when Rob was trying to scoop up a fallen ball, Sam came up to him and did the best wrestling take down move I have ever seen!  Everyone was impressed with that- Even the guys from the other game saw it!  I got to go in, because old men were straining hamstrings and achilles tendons all over the place!  You've got to wonder about men and their idea that they can not exercise all year long and then come out on the field on Thanksgiving and relive their glory days!!

We tried a fresh turkey this year- the guy at the grocery store convinced us and we are all about new experiences!  It was sort of gross to see the feathers they hadn't gotten out, though!

We had a Wii tournament-

 Girls won- thank you very much!

We stretched a quilt onto a frame. 

This is my third quilt and the third time I am doing something different.  This time I am going to try to hand quilt at least some of it.  I go to a quilting group and they were all impressed that I decided to try something new, again.  It inspired at least one of the group to get out of her comfort zone and try something different next time.  One of these times I will do the same thing more than once, so I can get good at it, but where's the fun in that?

We played Fusball with our little friends.

We played at the park and everyone went down the long slide.

Some of us used the wax paper to make us go faster

and some of us just wanted to go slow.

We wrestled.

We shot ourselves with rubber bands while trying to shoot off helicopter thingies!

We made the traditional pies, 

rainbow jello and turkeys.  Nobody really likes gum drops, so this year we used sour gummy fruit for the wings and gummi bears for slipper feet! 

We also did cookie/chocolate turkeys-

 yummers!  Little Max couldn't wait and took a bite of his immediately!

And yes, I worked 12 hours at night and was able to drive the 20 minutes home without falling asleep!  I even had enough energy to go black friday shopping, but decided against it.  I went to bed and the kids all went with Rob bowling.  The next day all the sales were still on and we got everything we wanted without the lines and the rude people!

And now we are going through boxes and putting up Christmas, planning our move and Emma's 16th birthday (It's got to be big, people!)  Of course that's just what we say for fun.  It's actually going to be pretty simple.  We decided against the invite the whole seminary and all your school friends and blah, blah, blah party!  That's just work and stress for everyone involved!  Still, in my mind it's going to be big- a big deal!  Only 2 more years with our Princess!  :(

Sam gave his second talk in Sacrament and did a great job.  He told everyone that Rob was the spiritual leader of the family and the one you go to for advice and then he said that I was the one that made everyone love each other, because even when you don't do anything wrong she makes you apologize.  Nice!

Thank you for joining us for November on Speed.  See you again in December!