Happy 1st Birthday Gracie!

So I know I am a little behind, but I figured better late than never!  Last Sunday, January 6th, we headed to Ogden after church to celebrate our cousin Gracie's First Birthday!  She is such a cute happy girl and it was a lot of fun celebrating!  We had a yummy dinner of Cafe Rio Pork Salads and then did presents and cake!  I also took her 1 year pictures that day (using my cool new photo light kit!).  Here are some pictures of the fun!

Random Cell Phone Pictures

So I have been trying to get better about unloading the random pictures off of my phone.  Sometimes I don't have a camera with me, so my cell phone is the next best thing.  I also will post on FB the pictures since it is so easy, but not always blog about it.  So here are a handful of pictures that I have taken over the last 2 months.  The first is of birds...tons of birds.  They hung out in our neighborhood for the whole month of November it seemed.  Black crows I think they were.  There were just a ton of them!  

 I got a great recipe from my neighbor Deb for applecrisp.  It is SO yummy...I have made this several times.  We serve it warm with ice cream and it is delicious!!

 Since Hostess went out of business we found a great deal at walmart one day on the last crate of their twinkies and 100 calorie packs for only $2 each, so we stocked up that day! :)  The girls thought it was so funny that I buried them in the cart!

 Another random shopping trip at walmart and the girls found some cute glasses to try on, so I had to take a picture!

 I don't even remember when this was, but it was some night that we spent just watching tv, and the kids wanted to get the foot massager out so bad, so we did, and they spoiled dad with a pedicure!

 We had Mayci and Cooper stay with us and I had gone to the RS Dinner that night, and this is what I found when I got home.  Nick had gotten all the kids in their PJ's and they were having chocolate milk before bed.  What a great dad!!!

 Silly livy and her mess making abilities....ugh!!!

 Ooo...my new light kit I ordered myself for christmas! So excited!!

 The cookie dough that I threw away after not being able to get it to roll out for sugar cookies...what a mess!

 How does Kmart even stay in business....makes me wonder.

 Oh, and by the way UPS....maybe when you train your employees...explain what Fragile means please.  (Do you see that big footprint on that box!??!)

 Lastly...cute Sister Allen who played along with Lindseys fun truth or consequence game on Sunday.  It is Lindsey's last week as chorister since she has been called to the RS Presidency.  So sad, we will miss her!  She was so fun!!!

Home Show!

Saturday Nick only worked and was home by 11, so we ate lunch and all headed down to the home show in Sandy at the Southtowne expo center.  It was SO crazy!  They also had a gun show there that day as well, so the parking was ridiculous!  Nick dropped me and the kids off and then found a place to park across the street.  We found a few fun things there.  Like a cool window squeegee, some bed sheets, and some wiggle cars (That Alivia and Kaylee are getting for their Bday!).  The kids did like the cool rock display they had built.  But it wasn't as good or as fun as I thought it would be.  Just a lot of vendors that I had no use for.  I wanted more decorating ideas, but they only had one designer booth, and it wasn't anything helpful.  We are wanting to redo our front room, but not sure where to start or what we want to do and I was hoping for some ideas.  So we went to a few furniture stores after the home show, but they didn't have anything I liked.  We ate dinner at Fazoli's since we were in the area of just one of two fazoli's left in UT.  We love that place and my kids ate great!  But after we were done with dinner, Nick and I were both so tired to do anything more, so we headed home.  We spent the rest of the evening just watching tv and going to bed early!  

It was really nice on Sunday though.  Our ward doesn't start until 11 AM now, so we kind of got to sleep in a bit!  I loved it!!!!

Ear Pictures!

So I had posted about my ear surgery last week, but I just wanted to post some pictures from the surgery.  They aren't the most flattering pictures, but I want to remember what I went through.  When I woke up it was so hard to open my eyes, they felt like they were swollen, and I think they kind of were since they put so much fluid in me because of the anesthesia.  I seriously gained 7 lbs overnight after I hadn't eaten the whole day of surgery.  How does that happen?  Must be the fluids!  I was just so swollen!  And I had this cool ear muff to sport!  I slept with it the first two nights and then was able to take it off.  Check out my cool strips that they used to put my ear back onto my head.  The last picture is of how my ear looked from the front.  It was so swollen it poked out and was just not looking very symmetrical on my head! 

It has been painful the past few weeks, but I think that I am over the worst of it and every day I am feeling more normal.  I started working out again yesterday, so that was good.  I also lost the 7 lbs I had gained, phew!  All I can say is that I hope I don't have to do that again, ever!

A new year!

Well a new year has started and it has been good so far!  Nick picked up the older kids on New years eve from being in Holden and on their way home they picked up some fireworks to light of that night for our New Years Celebration!  So while they were gone I hung out with Preston and got some good smiles out of him!  He is such a cutie! 

I sure missed the kids and were so glad to have them home!  We got pizza from pizza hut and then waited for it to get dark and did some fireworks!  It has been SO cold.  Like the highs are in the 20's during the day, so when the sun goes down, it can get into the single digits, but also below zero in some parts of Utah.  So I took a few pics, but mostly watched from inside.  The kids braved it though and watched from the porch.  I think the kids enjoyed it!  We stayed up long enough to watch the ball drop in NY (Yes...we celebrated EST).  So by 10:15 we were all in bed and asleep.  It was a LONG day!

 The next day we just hung out.  We did make a little run to RC Willey to check out couches but didn't find anything.  I had gotten these super cute hats on clearance at Smith's.  They all came with cute matching gloves.  The kids love them!  They spent quite a bit of time sledding over Christmas break, and only had one hat, so this will be good to have one more so they can use one if the other is still wet.

 I just have to add these cute pictures of Livy.  She LOVES her own designated job of putting a soap pack in the dishwasher.  She is such a good helper and this is just one of the many things she does with me to help out.  I love her!!

She is so smart.  Yesterday, while teaching piano lessons, Carson took her into my room to watch tv and she said "Blues Clues" clear as day to let him know that is what she wanted to watch.  So last night at dinner she said it for us and it was so cute!  She is also getting better at saying names and other phrases, like "all done".  It is fun!