Essentials of Christmas

Essential parts of our Christmas season:

1. Two trees- one with Mom and Dad's wedding ornaments and carefully picked out ornaments that match and another with homemade, silly and fun gifted ornaments.  Can you tell which one this is?

 2.  Celebration of St. Nicholas day.  He comes on the night of the 5th and fills your shoe with wonderful stuff.  

3.  Yummy treats- super essential!

 This one was made by a nurse in my ED.  Super cute and yummy

 This one was made by me!  This was my first year of success with old fashioned fudge.  I got some awesome pointers from our fabulous cook, Carolyn, and it finally worked out.  Who knew the secret was to not stir it?

4.  Cuteness in all it's many forms.  Poor puppy!

5. The reading of and acting out of the First Nativity.  Emma is usually Mary and Joseph is usually Joseph, but it has varied.  Our sheep has run off at this point.

6. Christmas morning round up.  They must all sit on the stairs and look pretty in the morning until I get a picture and start the video camera.  Yes it is always me, so you will never see me in the Christmas morning round up.  Aren't they so cute, even as big as they are?

Thanksgiving Friday

I had to work Thanksgiving in order to get out working Christmas or New Years when Emma was home.

That morning we went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast and then the boys went on a hike up the Sandias while I worked.  

The next day we enjoyed our Thanksgiving lunch!

 I made apple, pumpkin cream cheese and a mixed berry pies.  They were all delicious!

King Robert

King Robert got a little bit older this year.  We love him with all our hearts!

At some point getting older stops being fun and starts sucking.  I'm not sure what that age is, but Rob has passed it.  He is dealing with it well though.  He still works out, but he has changed the way he does it so he doesn't keep getting hurt.  He has bought about 4 pairs of reading glasses and now remembers to bring them with him wherever he goes.  He uses creams and lotions and sunscreen at all times.  He works out his mind constantly- continuing his German studies and his physics studies.  He is currently teaching Sunday school for the adults so he is also studying the scriptures intensely.  One of the fun games his friends play at church is "where will Rob go with this lesson?"  I can't even guess half the time! 

 It's a pretty sweet deal living with this guy!  I sure love him!

Happy Birthday, Christmas, Easter, 4th of July Mom and Dad

We had a family reunion!  I know, right?  We have only had one of those that I can remember, other than this one.  It's hard when you drop your kids off all over the country and when 2 of them marry military men themselves and some just need an attitude adjustment!  But hey, we did it and plenty of people came!

Finishing the binding on the quilt on the trip up to Mom and Dad's!

Mom came up with the theme of celebrating all the holiday's that they miss celebrating with all their kids and grandkids because everyone is so spread out.

We had 4th of July with sparklers and pool and slip and slide time,

We had Christmas presents- white elephant gifts,

We had birthday celebration complete with mini cakes to frost and decorate,

The book has pictures of all the kids and grandkids.  The quilt was a representation of each family.  They chose the main color.  I chose the square that would represent the family.  We have green and a hunters star since Rob is Army and we move a lot and we own a lot of guns.  Karl's is red- I assume for Arizona State and his is Wheel of fortune, because he is in the finance game.  Mike's is maroon, I assume for Texas A&M and his is Sister's choice, since they have a lot of girls in their family.  Cindy's is robins egg blue (not sure why.  Probably because she likes that color) and is a windmill- they live in Washington state and were Air Force, so it seemed to fit.  Dan's is.... I can't remember!  It was birds in flight though.  Was it blue???  Anyway, him and his wife both work for the airlines, so that's why the pattern.  Lise's was purple, because that fits her and the pattern was bento box, because she loves anime.  Tim's was a pattern that just looked digital to me, because he is into everything digital and it was grey, because he likes things plain.

We had Easter with the only two littles left that would participate in an egg hunt. 

We went on a treasure hunt of places that Mom knew growing up.

I can't tell you now what any of these places are, but we went there and checked them off our list!

We went to the temple and did baptisms for our dead ancestors.  

We visited with Great Grandma Keck

We played games and we chatted

What a great fun family reunion Mom and Dad planned!  It was so good to see everyone that came.  I haven't seen my sister in years and I had never met the two littles.  Gretchen and Dan were a blast.  I love people who aren't afraid to get into the fun even if it means getting soaking wet! 

 Until next time family!  Love you all!

Independent Celebration

Not much traveling has gone on since we left Europe.  Travel isn't as easy in the states.  Everything is so darn expensive and so....far...a...way! But for the 4th of July weekend we decided to get away.  We only made it an hour or so north, but it was away!  

We visited Santa Fe and went to their pancake breakfast and old fashion car show.

We visited Los Alamos and saw how middle of nowhere it really is!

 No wonder all those wives were going absolutely bonkers while their husband's did secret work that they couldn't discuss during World War 2!  

We had fun at the casino- well kind of- everything was closed for the holiday and they didn't heat their water in the swimming pools at all.  I guess the hotel part was not really used to being used.  Who closes their restaurants on a holiday??  

Nice little holiday.

Samuel turns 18

Summer birthday's are hard, especially when your summer birthday happens to land on a major holiday weekend.  Not many people around.  Poor Sam hasn't had many parties.  But he seems to be Ok with it.  For his birthday we went to a trampoline park,

 Out to eat and then to the movies.

We also had cake!  Why he is half naked to eat his cake is anyone's guess! We realized how badly we were singing "Happy Birthday" so sped up the song at the end- you're welcome!

A New Mexico Easter

Here we are in our new Easter outfits.  

I swear I look like I am in pain, but I believe it was just the sun hitting my eyes.  Or maybe I'm just getting old and it shows more when I smile. But I wanted to show my whole dress.  All of that is embroidery!  It comes from a new website that I was introduced to by a friend called eshakti.  They customize your dress for you.  You can change the neck, the sleeves, the length and give them your measurements and they make the dress for you.  Super excited about it!

We had a super low key Easter, but a nice one.  One where we laughed together and enjoyed each others company.  

I taught my class and did the eggs with objects in each one that represent the story of Christ's last time on the earth.  I have changed it a little to focus on the things I think should be focused on more.

My version:

1. Matt 26:26-28 (sacrament cup)  This is the Last supper and the institution of the sacrament

2. Matt 26:14-15 (3 pennies wrapped in tin foil) The 30 pieces of silver

3. Matt 26:36-45 (Olive oil) representing the Garden of Gethesemane

4. Matt 27:1-2 (rope) Jesus is bound

5. Matt 27:18-24 (soap) Pilate washes his hands

6. Matt 27:35 (dice) casting lots

7. Matt 27:50-54 (rocks) the earthquakes, ending with the soldiers believing that Jesus was the son of God

8. Matt 27:57-60 (white linen) burial

9. Matt 27:62-66 (large rock) stone sealed on tomb

10. Mark 16:1 (cloves) to anoint the body

11. John 20:2-9 (small roll of gauze) seeing the empty tomb 

12. Matt 28:6 (empty) he is not here but is risen

I would like to tweak it a little more and put in the part about Mary seeing Jesus.  More than anything I wanted to focus on the fact that he had risen and not so much about the death.  The death is in there, but it's not the main focus.  

What I found was 1. 8 year olds, even my smartie pants kids, have trouble reading long scriptures.

2. They don't understand how scriptures are laid out or are written down on a paper.  They kept saying Matt- what does Matt mean?  I had to tell them more than a couple times that Matt was short for Matthew.  Then they would say 26 dot dot 26 dash 28.  3. They really can't find scriptures.  I had to go around showing them every single time, even though we stayed in the same 2 chapters most of the time.  I had to say, "don't turn your page, don't turn your page.  Stay where you are" almost every single time and then come around and point to the right verse.  So that took our whole lesson!  But at least we talked of Christ and the real reason for Easter AND we learned a little about how to find scriptures!

St. Patrick's day

As per tradition, we had to have green pancakes for St. Patrick's day.

I sent Emma this cute scarf and got one for myself, too so that we wouldn't be pinched due to lack of green!

Happy something-we-don't-even-know-why-we-celebrate day!

Birthday fun

I had a sweet friend set up a birthday lunch for me.  It was nice to have people come and say we like you enough to show up for lunch.  I have had a hard time in this ward feeling wanted, needed, relevant, or having anything at all in common with any of them.  I was looking out at the ward leaving from sacrament meeting one Sunday and Robert asked me, "what are you thinking (or feeling maybe?)" and I said, "I'm just depressed."   That's what I feel almost every Sunday now, depressed!   Luckily, there are some people that  help make it better and these ladies definitely help.

Besides a lovely lunch, my family took me to the Cheesecake factory.  We all ordered different cheesecakes and I got to try each one.  Sam refused to get anything interesting and only got the plain. It was my least favorite.  Rob actually got my favorite and I ate more of his than any others!  Joe really didn't want cheesecake, but he was forced to order one.  He got the Hershey's and it was actually quite good.

 Nice pose Sam!  Check out Max just checking out the cheesecake- it's his favorite too!

All those yummy cheesecakes in a bag!

For Emma and my birthday I had a friend send a bunch of chocolate from Germany, too. 

I sent some up to Emma, but she definitely didn't get the mother load that we got!  Yummmmmmm

Well anyway, Happy out of your teen years Birthday to our beautiful daughter!