A Blessing & Santa

A couple of weekends ago, we went up to Idaho for the weekend.  Marshall's sister and husband were blessing their new baby Cleah, who was born in October.  Luckily the roads were clear which always has me worried this time of year.


On Saturday we went with Chris & Natalie and their kids to see Santa at the mall.  The kids were so excited and had prepared what they were wanting to ask for.  Chandler has been wanting the big Vtech Switch and Go Dino and as soon as we got there, he informed Santa that he wanted a remote control helicopter.  Gotta love that kids change their mind, especially when they've already expressed for weeks what they want.  Rowan told Santa about his blue transformer that he wants.  Then we got a picture of the kids on Santa's lap.  I'm always amazed at how much they try to charge for pictures at the mall.  If they'd charge $5-10 for pictures, I'd probably buy, but the cheapest package is always like $20 and you only get like 3 pictures.  We took our own pictures, but I think the workers there weren't very happy about it.

We also got a picture of all of the kids with Santa.

After pictures with Santa, we went to write letters at Macys.

Saturday night, we went to a Christmas jazz concert that my brother in law AJ was playing in at BYU-Idaho.  It was so much fun and really geared towards the kids.  They had the grinch, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman and Santa there.  There was a special parade where the kids got to ring bells, and the characters went around throwing out candy.  The music was also really wonderful!

On Sunday, we hung around for most of the day until the baby blessing.  It was wonderful to be with family and celebrate this new little one.  I have to admit that she makes me very baby hungry!  She has got the thickest hair, chubby cheeks and that fresh baby smell.  Below is my sister in law Natalie with Cleah.

Here are Ashely & AJ after the blessing, congrats to them!!

Thanksgiving 2012

We had to stay close to home this Thanksgiving.  I was on call at the hospital for a 24 hour period.  I was debating if it was worth it to go up to my sister's or not.  I finally decided that I wanted to go with Marshall and the boys.  We were able to be there for 3 hours before I got called in and I was so grateful to have that time with our family!  My sister made cute place settings and name tags for everyone as well as a menu.  We ate until we were stuffed and then ate some more.  The next day, we went up to Idaho for Thanksgiving part 2 with Marshall's family.  I had been at the hospital most of the night before we left, so I didn't take my camera and didn't get any pictures while we were up there.  It was a wonderful day though and I'm so glad that we were able to spend it with family.

Chandler's Party

We had a small party for Chandler with some of our neighborhood friends.  We had a Chuggington theme.  It was funny because I had some Chuggington Party supplies laying around from a review and he was excited about doing a Chuggington party even though Rowan is more into the trains nowadays than Chan.

We decorated with red and blue, and put all of the supplies out.  Marshall set up a couple of the big train sets for the guests to play with as they came.

 After they played trains and watched a Chuggington episode, we headed outside to play some games.  We played don't pop the balloon, Chugga Chugga Choo, and Conductor says.

  Then it was time to come in to blow out candles, open presents and have cake and ice cream.

 Chandler soaked in all of the attention and had a fabulous 7th birthday!