Christas Gifts

Our family is doing a little activity during these final two weeks before Christmas. We are each choosing something we can do as a gift for Jesus. We've talked about it for a few days and yesterday we each chose our "gift", wrote it on a paper, and we're putting it under the tree. I will report our "gifts" later, after they have taken place. :)

We feel as though we've just received an early Christmas gift though! The gift of "family" and the gift of "time". Just put those two together! :) Ryan has been offered a promotion in his company that will allow him to be on a more family-friendly schedule. It will make so many things easier for us! We will have weekends together for piano recitals and trips to the beach, Friday nights available for dates and ward activities, and most weeknights we'll have dinner together and Ryan will get to tuck his girls in bed.

His current shift, which he has had for years, has been really nice in some ways and it has been the best option he's had for the position he's in. It gave him 3 and 4 day weekends every week, he commuted less, and received OT every workday. But for the 3 or 4 days that he worked, he didn't see his girls at all. He would leave before they woke up and come home after they went to bed. And the only day he and Cadi BOTH had off from work or school was Sunday since Ryan worked every Saturday. That has made it difficult for us to have much family time.

We are very grateful for this opportunity for Ryan to grow in his company and also for us to spend more time together as a family! Congratulations, Ryan... so, when are you taking me out? ;)

Do you feel lucky?... Well, do you, Punk?

I never win anything. Okay, I can't say "never"... but I rarely win things. So when I saw a commercial a few weeks ago that said we could go onto Nickelodeon's website and enter a "Singing In the Ring" sweepstakes to win a Backyardigan's toy, I went ahead and entered but didn't give it another thought after that.

When I got home tonight, I had a phone message saying that a package had been delivered to the wrong address. I was surprised because I wasn't expecting a package but then, this is the Holiday season and we do have a couple loved ones who send us gifts ;), perhaps it was from one of them. My neighbor brought over the package and I opened it up, curious because I didn't recognize the return address at all! Did I order something a long time ago and forgot? Did someone order something for me/us and had it sent directly to our house from the store?

Inside the box was a Backyardigan's Musical Circus Adventure and a note that said, "Congratulations, you are a first prize winner in Nickelodeon's "Singing In The Ring" Sweepstakes. Thanks for being such a great fan and watching Nickelodeon, the place where only kids win!"

SWEET! Let me just tell you, Rori LOVES the Backyardigans!!! We watch it every single day - at least once! lol She is going to LOVE this!

Well it's about time!

Look, I take A LOT of pictures!  And when you take so many pictures, it takes awhile to edit and upload them all!  Thank goodness Photobucket has a bulk uploader now! lol

Unfortunately, I'm simply not going to be able to recap our trip to Sacramento.  (Well, I may do a brief - VERY BRIEF - recap.)  But I will put up links to see all our pics.  A warning though... I was a little sloppy as I uploaded the pics, they are not in chronological order.  :(  Currently, they are not even titled but I will try to get to that since some of the pictures could use some explaining. lol

Our trip down was pretty good.  We even have a few pics.

We started in Lincoln, visiting my friend Heather.  Heather is pretty darn amazing and I'm lucky to have a friend like her.  She and her husband are slightly insane though.  We joke that they've lost their minds but that their hearts are big enough to make up the difference.  They adopted 3 children in the last year and just added four more to their family!  If all goes well, these will all be adopted too!  Pics from visiting with Heather.

The next day, we arrived in Sacramento.  We stayed with my sister and her family which was a lot of fun.  The kids were really cute playing together.  I even did a little bit of stamping for the first time in a couple of years!  Here are pics from staying at Ruth's house. (I especially love Rori trying to play the piano with her feet! lol  I have NO IDEA where she got that idea but it CRACKS ME UP!!!)

On Wednesday, we took the kids to the park to meet with some of my sister's kids' playgroup.  Playing at the park pics.

Thanksgiving was busy!  We started the day with Ryan's family doing the Run to Feed the Hungry.  We love participating in this each year and had a really nice time.  We didn't exactly "run" this year, but it was still fun to participate!  Ryan made sure to notice that while last year he was beat by a power walker, this year he was beat by a paraplegic. lol  Run to Feed the Hungry pics.

After we took our showers and cleaned up, we headed over to one of my other sister's house to have dinner with my family.  While we were there, we met my dad's fiancee.  She seems really nice and it was good to visit with her.  Unfortunately, dinner was delayed and then someone placed the meat thermometer in the wrong spot so it read inaccurately, delaying it even more.  When all was said and done, we needed to go back to Ryan's mom's house before we got to eat dinner.  That was a bummer but there are worse things.  Thanksgiving isn't really about the food anyway, right? :)  We had a nice visit with everyone though - both at my sister's and at Ryan's mom's.  Here are pictures of us hanging out on Thanksgiving Day.  Again, the pics are out of order, sorry!

On Friday, we went up to the Sacramento Temple with the girls and walked around taking pictures while some of my family were inside.  Ryan and I had planned on going through a session with them, but someone (we won't mention names but his name starts with a "R", ends with an "N", and has "YA" in the middle!) forgot his recommend in Vancouver!  We still had a really nice time and got some really nice pictures with the girls there.  Pics at the Sacramento Temple.

After the temple, my family headed to Fairy Tale Town.  It is a little park that has a Nursery Rhyme Theme.  The kids had a BLAST!  In fact, I suspect most of the adults did, too. ;)  Fairy Tale Town pics.

We spent all of Saturday with Ryan's mom.  We went to the RailRoad Museum which was really fun!  They had some extra displays for the holidays that we really enjoyed!  Then we took the train ride and believe it or not, Santa was on the train with us!!! It was probably the best trip to the RailRoad Museum that I've ever had! :)  RR Museum pics.

And here are some other pics from when we were with Ryan's parents.  These are from a few different days.
Sunday we went to church with my family and had dinner with them.  And on Monday, Ryan and Cadi visited one last time with his mom while I stayed with Rori during a nap, packed up, and stamped with my sister.  We left the next day and had a very uneventful ride home. :)

I'm sorry that it took so long to post this and I'm sorry that I'm cheating and making you go look at the pics instead of just posting them myself.  If I posted the pics myself, I wouldn't be able to do it now and that means this blog would be even later.  So, I think this is a good compromise. ;)  I hope you enjoy them!

Coming soon to a blog near you...

I really have been wanting to blog about our trip and all the fun stuff going on right now but it has been CRAZY! (Isn't it always?)

We had a really nice trip to Sacramento for Thanksgiving and just got back earlier this week. Since then we've been decorating for Christmas and trying to recover from being gone for so long.

I have A LOT of pictures to share... but they need to be uploaded first. I will get to it soon.

In the meantime... it's snowing today! :) Since it's my youngest brother's birthday today and he loves the cold, I REALLY wish he was here for it! It isn't a lot of snow and most of it won't even stick, plus after the snow we're supposed to get rain so whatever does stick will get washed away very soon. But it is still fun to have the first snow of the season! :)

Today I'm watching my friend's kids. She is always so generous in watching mine, this is long overdue! They are good kids and everyone is playing really well together. They are loving the snow and playing with the children's nativities that I have down for them. There are random Christmas songs playing from various areas of the house due to all the Christmas toys. lol This is a great way to kick start December! :)

From one crazy week to the next!

This past week has been C.R.A.Z.Y.!!!

We're getting ready for our trip down to Sacramento for Thanksgiving - so much to do! I also (for some crazy reason) decided to book a PartyLite show for during this week. I'm so smart. ;) In a way it was great because that MADE me have the house clean earlier than I would have. So that got one thing out of the way. Plus the show was fun and I got lots of good stuff for hosting it. :)

Also on my list of things I needed to do - Finish Christmas shopping, go grocery shopping, pay bills, wrap presents, wash the dog, make agendas and calendars/newsletters for church since I won't be here next week, get caught up on laundry, pack, and keep the house clean. Those things HAD to be done. I also WANTED to burn dvds of all the home movies we had taken over the last 3 years, make the annual dvd that we give to our grandparents and immediate family, and decorate for Christmas - all before we leave.

HA HA!!

I am please to say that I have gotten all that I NEED to have done, done. Except I'm still packing but that's okay. I had begun burning dvds and all went well until one night the computer decided to update itself while I was running my program and ever since then, I have not been able to burn anymore discs. SO NOT COOL! I've tried uninstalling the softward and reinstalling it. No good. Ryan thinks we need to dump everything on here and wipe the entire computer clean, reload everything, and then hopefully all will run smoother. That will be fun. *sarcasm*

So, I will not have the annual dvd anytime soon. This is going to be a big project. I was really late getting them out last year (They didn't go out until earlier this year! lol) so I guess it's okay if I have to be late again. Bummer though.

And since I've been devoting so much time to TRYING to do the dvds, I'm now left with no time to decorate. That's okay. Most people would think I was crazy if I had decorated this early anyway. I just like having Christmas up immediately after Thanksgiving and since we won't be here immediately after Thanksgiving, it is fun to come home to Christmas when we get home. I'll just have to decorate the week we get home. :)

Now, because my life wasn't crazy/interesting enough, about mid-week I got a phone call from my dad. My parents are recently divorced and it was finalized in August. Well, this week my dad told me that he is engaged! I didn't exactly see that coming! lol Of course, he's able to make his choices and if this is something that is right for him then I am fine with that. It was a bit of a shock though! It looks like we'll be meeting his fiancee on Thanksgiving and it will be nice to meet her and get to know her a little.

So, I'm pretty close to being ready to leave. Today we need to finish packing, go to church, load up the car, have our Home Teachers over, get some rest and then wake up at some insane hour to hit the road. After such a crazy week, I'm just glad that I have the things that I NEED done, finished.

Of course, this upcoming week will be nearly as crazy! Though, hopefully less stressful! lol We will visit with my best friend, Heather and her family, meeting the four new children that have just come to their home and who they plan on adopting. And if having 9 kids in one home for 24 hours isn't crazy enough, the REAL craziness will begin when we get to Sacramento and start the family juggle. Visiting with everyone will be fun though and we are looking forward to all of it, craziness and all! :)

When was the last time you saw a miracle?

After last week, I have been reminded that everytime I look at my daughters, I am seeing miracles.  :)

But let me share with you my friend's little miracle.  I am just so happy and inspired by them!  If you want to read something that will make you smile, read Stacey's blog about Scarlett.  I think it's neat that Stacey still has her ticker on the top of her blog.  A week ago, she went into labor and was hospitalized.  They stopped her labor for a couple of days but on Thursday, Nov 1st, her water broke and it was time for Scarlett to arrive, at only 29 weeks pregnant.  Scary, I know!  But this story has a happy ending, so go read about her and see her beautiful pics, I'm sure they will inspire you, just like they inspire me. :)

Because we're such cool parents...

We decided to celebrate the Patriot win over the Colts by letting Cadi stay home from school to party!

Okay, not quite.

Cadi is actually staying home from school because she's a sick-o! She was home from church yesterday too. (Ryan stayed with her and kept Rori so I went to church alone.) It's an odd bug because she doesn't feel sick and doesn't act sick but she has a very convincing symptom that is impossible to fake of manipulate. It's also something that makes it hard for her to go anywhere because she needs to be very close to a bathroom at all times. (TMI, I'm sure.)

So she is killing Storm Troopers today. I'm hoping that she will get to go back to school tomorrow. At least she's not miserable and at least I didn't have anything I needed to do today, just work around the house. :)