December Doings

First and foremost, I finally got around to making our stockings which is both good and bad. Good because yay for cute, new stockings, but bad because once I make one for our next baby I'm worried I won't remember all the steps since I pretty much just figured it out on my own as I went. Raylene helped me with the pattern and talked me through a few steps. We were supposed to get together to make them so she could walk me through all of it, but time got away from us and I wanted them done before December came so I ended up doing it on my own. I'm pretty proud of myself for figuring it out. There's definite flaws, but I don't consider myself a very good, knowledgeable sewer so it makes me feel accomplished when I look at them! I especially love our names on them and they're on the back side too so that they can hang either direction.

 Decorating the Christmas tree for FHE.

 Gingerbread houses at Grandma's and Grandpa's house. The girls and I shared a house and Nick did his own. His plan was for me to do the finishing details, but once he handed over the house to me there was literally nothing left to decorate.

 Shasta's and Shelby's house.

 Nick's house. This is what it looked like when he handed it to me to "finish". Anyone see anything else for me to add? Because I didn't do anything to it; it was all him.

 Christmas Eve. The presents under the tree are their Christmas Eve Jammies. We also like to do a movie night tradition, but we went to Kaleena's house for dinner and knew we would get home too late to start a movie. Plus we had plenty of things to get done before we left for Arizona in the morning so we decided to do a movie afternoon. Our tradition is to order pizza, unwrap a Christmas movie and movie treats, have a picnic in front of the tv and eat popcorn and treats. But this year instead of doing it for dinner, we did it for lunch and it all worked out nicely because we still got to see some of Nick's family for the holiday since we didn't get to see them Christmas day due to traveling to Arizona.

 They were SO excited for their Christmas Eve jammies. Shasta was slightly disappointed at first because she saw Shelby's before she got hers out of the box and saw that Shelby's was Elsa and Ana. Then when she saw the color of her own she assumed it was Elsa, but to her dismay it was Ariel instead. It took a little bit of reminding her how cool Ariel is for her to be okay with it (blasted Elsa has taken over the Magical Kingdom and put all other princesses to shame).

 Then after the girls went to bed we got busy setting up for Christmas morning and packing for our trip.

I managed to not get a single picture on Christmas morning, but we have it on video! For the sake of remembering what the girls got when i'm trying to remember next year...
Shasta: Marbleworks run, high heel shoes, a dominoes game from Shelby, Trouble, and a giant floor puzzle, plus stocking stuffers and Santa's present.
Shelby: Aurora baby doll with matching dress-up dress, a bat girl cape, fishing bath toys, a play kitchen ice cream set from Shasta, and Hungry Hungry Hippos, plus stocking stuffers and Santa's present.

We woke the girls up at about 5:30 on Christmas morning because we wanted to be on the road by 8 at the latest since it's a 14 hour drive to my parent's house. The drive itself wasn't bad aside from the awful snowy weather and the girls were superstars as usual. We stopped in Nephi for brunch since we only did car snacks for breakfast. Thankfully there was a Denny's open and it was surprisingly packed with people. On our way out I was carrying Shasta because she was wearing her new high heels and I didn't want them to have water marks on them from the snow. Well a few steps out the door I slipped on snow and fell straight back. Since I was holding Shasta, the only thing to break my fall was my head. I hit the concrete so hard that I blacked out for a second... at least I think I did. Nick was about 10 feet in front of me carrying Shelby and he later told me that the reason he knew I had fallen was because he heard my head hit the ground. Good times.

I laid there for about 5 minutes trying to decide if I was really alright and trying to remember all of my surroundings from when I first walked out. I could remember that there were 2 people talking off to the right as we came out and there were at least 2 people straight ahead working under the hood of their car in the parking lot. I kept trying to remember if I actually saw all of those people because I thought it was strange that I was flat on my back in the middle of a snow storm and nobody was coming to my aide. Obviously Nick came to me, and Shasta was crying because she got hurt in the fall when I more than likely landed on her foot. Finally, I heard the employee that was off to the right chatting when I came out (ironically enough he was out shoveling snow when he stopped to talk with someone) ask if I was alright and I decided I needed to get up before it caused a scene. I told him I was fine, picked up Shasta and we started walking to the car again, We weren't parked super close because there were so many people there and about halfway to the car I slipped and fell AGAIN. At this point Shasta was wailing and I burst into tears because I was so frustrated that I kept falling. Thankfully the second fall was just straight down to my bum, but I just stayed there until Nick came back and rescued me from carrying Shasta.

For the next hour of the drive I cried off and on because I kept thinking about all the extreme possibilities of what outcomes could come from that event. I really debated whether or not I needed to go to the hospital, but I was pretty sure I didn't have a concussion amazingly enough. Aside from my inability to control my emotions, I never felt like puking, was able to carry normal conversation, and surprisingly didn't even have much of a headache. I was just extremely tired which was probably mostly due to going to bed late, waking up far too early, just finishing a full meal, and crying. And after I slept I felt much better. But there was definitely a stretch when I felt pretty scared about what had happened. At least now if ever I do stupid things I can blame it on my TBI!

Thankful Tree

Halloween Happenings

Ward Halloween Party. The girls wore their costumes, but at some point Shelby ditched her dress and refused to put it back on.

Halloween dinner! It's no secret that I LOVE doing a festive dinner on Halloween. This year we got to spend it in Arizona with my family because my childhood best friend got married the following weekend. So for dinner we made homemade nachos. Even the chips were homemade and cut out in fun Halloween shapes. Then we had fruit cups designed to look like candy corns, and for dessert we had left over Halloween cupcakes that Lacey brought from Tucker's birthday party.

Trick-or-Treating. Shasta and Shelby both went as princesses. Shasta told everyone she was Aurora, but really the girls just wore dress-ups from their dress-up bin. I've been really cheap about Halloween so far because our budget is always tight. But they still looked cute. And bonus... they wear their costumes year round.

 I love this picture of all the younger cousins (minus Shane because he wouldn't stand with the kids, and Braden because he didn't come with us since he's a newborn). What a fun memory.

And of course the first house on the list is Grammy's and Papa's. They give out full size candy bars every year, but of course my kids picked the suckers. Which they typically did at every house that had them. At least now I know for next year to do some pre-Halloween drills on how to select good candy!

The kids had it made for trick-or-treating. There were 4 adults pushing strollers that gave all seven kids a place to sit so none of them had to walk if they didn't want to. And we trick-or-treated through an entire neighborhood so there was plenty of walking. By the time we got home our kids were loaded with candy. And not the crappy candy they usually get from our poor, college student, young family neighbors. This was legit candy! The bags that Shasta and Shelby are carrying were three fourths full once they were done. And by the time we got back to Utah a week later every last piece was gone!

Choosing and Carving Pumpkins

I LOVE going to the pumpkin patch to let the girls pick out their own pumpkins. This is only the second year we've done it, but it's definitely a tradition we'll keep doing. Can these girls be any cuter?!

 Carving pumpkins was interesting this year. Both girls could help a little more, but carving is still too hard for them so Nick and I did most of theirs, Shelby loved gutting the pumpkins. Each time she pulled her hand out filled with pumpkin guts she would say, "Eww!" as she dropped it into the garbage back. Writing it down doesn't do the sound of her voice justice. It was seriously SO cute! Shasta on the other hand didn't enjoy getting her hands dirty. She got up to wash them every 30 seconds until she finally sucked it up and dealt with it until it was done. After Shelby's pumpkin was all cleaned out, she played with the guts in the garbage bag for a long time. She even tasted it (her idea) and chewed on a few pumpkin seeds. Then once her pumpkin was all carved she filled it up with the pumpkin guts from the bag. What a hoot!

Also, while we carved pumpkins we watched Ernest Scared Stupid which was a little too scary for the girls. I was worried Shasta would have bad dreams, but if she did she never climbed into bed with me. After that movie was over we started watching Nightmare Before Christmas, but we didn't finish it before we were done with pumpkins.

 Mine is the witch and Shelby's is the face. Her eyes once had eyeballs, but she cut them off while Nick and I were carving our pumpkins!

 Shasta's is the flamingo by the palm tree and Nick's is the superhero.

 A closeup of Shelby's to better see the teeth. What a pain. It's shaved instead of carved and after 10 seconds of trying I handed it over for Nick to finish because it was obnoxious! 

And a closeup of mine because it was hard to see the spider in the other picture and that's my favorite part!