Christmas Break

A lot of Christmas break was spent with someone in the family being sick.  We got struck with some awful cold that was in our house for more then 10 days.  It was miserable. I was miserable.  We were able to enjoy ourselves none the less.

This is my new sweater that JulieAnne Fisher got me for Christmas

When I went to see Les Mis with the girls Ella and Tyler went to my friend Marissa's house.  They were such nice kids or her.  At lease that is what she told me.

My cute new slippers.

Us sickies enjoying a movie

Ella finally got the chance to ride her bike outside!

I love that Ella still likes to play with boxes.

It is such a nice day in Alaska.  It was sweater weather.  32 degrees!

Mustache's Mustache's everywhere! Yes!



As most of you know I have a thing for mustache's. And boy does that pay off. I got a ton of mustache things for Christmas! I do have mustache rules and here they are

1. You are only allowed to have a mustache if

a. you are older then 50

b. It is attached to a beard or goatee

2. You must keep said mustache well groomed. No letting it grow over you lip

3. You must clean it after every meal. It is not a food storage unit. You are not saving anything for later.

4. It is still not cool to have one only for "mustache march, mustache may, or movember" These are not real celebrations. I don't care that you can grow it out for 1 whole month and not shave it. If you are going to do that then dang it grow a beard too.

5. You will look like Chester the Molester if you use mustache wax to make your mustache curl up. Is that what you want? Do you want me cross to the other side of the road and whisper to my kids to not make eye contact with the pedophile? Because I will.
Here are some fun ways to enjoy a mustache...

also note that mustache rub on's are fun as well as nail decals.

There are many other fun ways to take advantage of the mustache thing.  These are just suggestions!

Christmas Day 2012

The missionaries not only got to celebrate Christmas Eve with us they also got to celebrate Christmas morning with us too.  They promised me that they would be here at 7 am on the dot.  They lied.  Of course they weren't far behind but when you have people waiting for you on Skype and 4 kids wanting to open presents then every minute seems like forever.  When in actuality they were only 5 minutes late.  We did the traditional picture upstairs before heading down. 

Ella really, really wanted a bike this year for Christmas.  She even wrote to Santa for one which was silly because she doesn't believe in Santa anymore. 

We had to have all of the presents opened and had to eat breakfast by 9 am.  Which was when the missionaries were going to call their families.  It all seemed too rushed for me and before you know it all of the presents were opened.  We just opened them whenever we wanted to. I didn't get to see anyone reactions.  I was a little bummed about it. 

I did see Nichole's.  It was great.  She opened a present with Socks in it.  She started bouncing and getting louder and louder. "It's Socks!  I got Socks!  I love Socks"!!! It wasn't even a sarcastic reaction either.  She truly loves socks!

For Christmas this year Nate got...

3 text books for spring semester

a juicer

money

an amazon gift card

2 ties

and an otter box for his phone

Natalie got

a flat iron

an old navy gift card

money

a new backpack

expo markers

a bracelet

and clothes

Nichole got

an old navy gift card

new bedding

boots

clothes

a bracelet

and a gift card to famous footwear

Tyler got

an instrument

a watch

6 boxes of brownie mix

church shirt and tie

clothes

and a skylander

Ella got

 a bike

clothes

skylander giants game

boots

and books

I got

mustache stuff galore

money

2 mustache aprons

cupcake items

a body pillow

a target gift card

2 amazon cards

and a deep fryer.

It was a great Christmas.  After the missionaries talked to their families.  We hung out as a family and watched movies, played games and tried out all of our gifts.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to go to after Christmas sales.  We went to Target to get new Christmas wrapping paper.  Then to Home Depot where we got a new tree.  We went to Old Navy to spend our gift certificates, and lastly to famous footwear where both Nichole and Natalie got

new shoes.  Nate had to work at 10 so he didn't get to go to all of those places with us this year.

The next day Natalie, Nichole, and I went to see Les Miserables at the movies.  It was amazing!  So far we have had a great Christmas break.  I will be forever more sad when the kids go back to school.  At least it is half way done for the school year.



Christmas Eve

I love this time of year.  I love getting ready for Christmas and all of the fun food, decorations, parties, and memories that goes along with it.  This year we were lucky enough to have Christmas Eve dinner with the Missionaries. It happened to fall on a "P" day so I got to see them early in the morning and then again for dinner.

We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of Ham and the fixins.  Usually I make Pie for dinner but no one wanted pie so I made Coconut bread instead.  The dinner of course was delicious!  I love holiday meals.

We only had the missionaries for 2 hours so we made the best of the time.  We had our dinner then went downstairs and watched the movie "Joy to the World". It is a movie about Christ's birth and life here on earth. 

After that movie was over we all opened our Christmas Eve pajama's.  I even got some for the missionaries although they couldn't try them on for us.  Everyone seemed to like their pajama's except for Tyler's shirt wasn't his favorite.  The missionaries also got us a present to open on which was a really cute ornament.

After the missionaries left we watched our Christmas Eve movie.  The movie this year was Arthur Christmas.  We ate Christmas cookies and coconut bread.  We also had hot chocolate to help it all go down with. I think we all liked the movie.

Because there is a house full of non believers here we came up with a new tradition of drawing names and stuffing each others stockings.  It went over really well with everyone. We will be doing that again.  We also drew names to buy presents for each other.  We divided up into teams Nichole and Ella were on my team and we shopped for people on Nate's team which were Tyler and Natalie.

I really liked how it turned out and the kids had a fun time buying for each other.

The end of the world

Natalie and Nichole invited some friends over to celebrate the end of the world.  Luckily for use it didn't end.  The girls friends came over around 6 and they had pizza and played on the wii.  They danced to music and watched movies.  

Kylee Russell (plaid shirt) Myranda Baily (Orange Shirt) Cheyenne Estes (black shirt)
Kaitlynn Estes (pink Shirt) and Lynette Meyer (white shirt)