Christmas wrap up

It's a new year. A new sacrament meeting time. I love our 9am start time; not sure how the rest of the ward feels. My kids weren't especially thrilled about having to get up earlier this morning.

Christmas break is one of my favorites. No schedule. No real meal time. Sleep in. Stay up late. Watch a ton of movies (like Star Wars; seriously who hasn't seen the new Star Wars yet. Oh ya. Me. I went to The Good Dinosaur with Alex and Ash and fell asleep only a few times). Board games. Reading. No yard work calling to me (other than shoveling snow). I love it and use the time to catch up on some organizing and getting ready for a new year.

This Christmas was a pretty low key. That boy that asked for a calculator just to scratch it out and say never mind . . . well, he got one anyway. Turns out the one he found wasn't working.

Ash spent a few days coloring the annual Tooele Transcript coloring book in hopes of winning various prizes at the local stores. One day we got a call from Mountain West pediatrics. Ash had won first prize in the older age group. That coloring paid off to the tune of $30.

I worked feverishly for 2 days finishing up another blog book. That 40% off was quite alluring. But I did it and didn't even let myself peak at the finished product until Christmas morning.

For one of our family home evening activities we did a love language quiz. Erik's language of love is predominately gifts. So when his bottom retainer finally showed up in the mail a few days before Christmas, I took the liberty of showering him with love and wrapped it up. He may be smiling but I don't think he found it that hilarious.


Kiersten helped her friend Hannah ask cousin Scott to the "Snow Ball" coming up in a few weeks.

We caught up with our old friends the Goldens at both of our favorite: Texas Roadhouse. It was even Sharon's birthday and she was such a good sport to ride the saddle. Carroll is a big time scouter and made Erik promise him that he would get his eagle. I don't know why I haven't sicced Carroll on Erik before now.

And tomorrow starts a whole 'nother round of school and work.

Projects completed

I have found that with myself if I have things going on I tend to accomplish more. When life slows down, I slow down with it.

November and December can be two of my busiest times of the year (Oh, don't let me forget the month of May).

With Christmas looming, I had two BIG projects I wanted to complete. First was my blog book which I started two years ago. I finished that up the end of November and got to open it today and enjoy it.

I guess I wasn't the only one interested in it. Kiersten literally read it cover to cover, skipping some of the longer posts.

I was so happy with how it turned out and am starting another year which hopefully won't take two years to complete. This has become my new scrapbooking which I hated to do anyway. I love that Blurb has a copy of my book and I can print it again any time I want.

My second project was a slide show I wanted to do for Christmas Eve, starting a new tradition. That entailed getting a year's worth of photos organized which normally I do, but for some reason this year I fell seriously behind. I had so much fun putting Tyler's birthday slide show together that I decided to do the same with all our photos from this year. Early in the month I asked for everyone's favorite song. And of course they all wanted to know why. It took me up to the 23rd to get it done, but I did. After our Christmas Eve festivities at grandma's house, we came home and watched 2013 in Review. I actually added last Christmas Eve and Christmas Day photos at the beginning to get them excited about Christmas morning.

Again, I was so please with how this particular project turned out. Everyone was in agreement that we have a new Christmas Eve tradition.

* * * * *

As I'm writing this post, Alex came up to me and said, "Mom, it's nice to be home." I looked at him and asked if he liked home because I had absolutely no idea where that came from. Then he clarified, "Dusty says that all the time."

Oh boy! We're quoting movies now. His favorite movie right now is Planes. He could watch that over and over and sometimes does. Another favorite quote of his: "You make joke? You leave me no choice."

My first blog book

Monday, December 2
I've been working on turning this fun little blog into a book that will hopefully get looked at more than just by me. It's only taken me two years to get the year 2011 completed. When I began this seemingly minute project in 2012, I thought I would work backwards until I had every year completed. What I quickly realized is I started with the biggest year that had the most posts. So it's taken me awhile.

But what should have been completed a year ago is finally . . . 

off to the printer. I'm so excited for it to come back.

Friday, December 6
Wow! They are timely. When I sent it off, the estimate for having it back to me was around the 12th of December. It is here and I'm so excited for Christmas morning to see how it turned out. This is my gift to my family this Christmas season. They may not appreciate it as much as me, but one day it will be invaluable.
Christmas morning can't come soon enough.