2008 was great

2008 was very good to us and I look back to count my many blessings.

I love my husband and best friend so much and am so thankful for "us."

I am so blessed to have 3 amazing kids who are all very different but bless my life in their own special ways. This is just a random picture of Brendan and Allison taken on Christmas Eve but I love how it captures their fun yet tender relationship.

I am so thankful for being born to the best parents in the whole world and though I have missed them terribly, I'm thankful for their example and for their faith to serve a mission at this time and anxiously anticipate their return this summer.

My life would not be complete without the special bond that I share with my closest friends. I am especially grateful this year for the closeness we have all gained by praying for and serving my friend Michele's beautiful baby Gracie. Her life is a modern day miracle and our lives will forever be changed by her story. We continue to pray for little miracles everyday and for a successful 2nd heart surgery coming up.

Our extended family on both sides are a huge part of our lives and all of our 22 nieces and nephews are "our babies!"

We live in a very special little heaven on earth. Our neighbors and ward family are incredible people and examples and we are blessed to be among them.

We are grateful for the opportunity that we have had to re read the Book of Mormon as a family this year. We started a few months ago and look forward to finishing in a few months. We are so blessed to have the knowledge of the gospel and a testimony of our Savior. We pray for His light to lead and guide our actions as we embark on a new journey for 2009!

Christmas in a nutshell, a large nutshell

Well, it's almost January, but better late than never to document Christmas 2008.

Christmas Eve Family Photo..........Let's try that again...Jordan!

The festivities started on the 20th when Carlos, Julie, Gavin, and Taylor made it here from California. I say it started then because we stayed up late watching a movie and playing games every single night through the whole Christmas Break. Sometimes with my side of the family, sometimes with Brendan's, and sometimes just "us." One night we called it quits just after midnight and then the kids decided that they just had to watch one more movie. Allison woke up around 4 am a few nights to find herself abandoned on the family room floor. Apparently everyone else was too tired to wake her up when they all went to bed.

Christmas Eve was a double header for us. We started out at Brendan's parents' house where we had his mom's famous chimichangas! YUMMY

His mom surprised us all by giving us each a quilt that she made and tied herself. She made one for everybody in the whole family. That's 39 total including in-laws and grandkids! Wow! What a labor of love. Thank you!!!!

Speaking of labor, we had a little scare thinking that Lauren was in premature labor on Christmas Eve after falling on the ice. She and Brian spent a day and a half in the hospital, but all is good and the baby should be here in a few weeks.

With mommy and daddy in the hospital, little Jack spent Christmas Eve glued to Jake. He wouldn't go to anyone else. Jake has a very special place in his heart for all of his little cousins.

Here are the cousins on Brendan's side minus 7 more who live far away in Florida and Minnesota. We missed you guys! Currently there are 20...10 boys and 10 girls with 2 on the way this coming year.

We headed out a little early to catch some time to spend with my brothers and their families at Ed's house. We played our traditional white elephant game where Allison opened a portable urinal. Nice!!

Taya was the big winner in our other traditional "money game." My parents called from Colombia and it was SO GREAT to be able to talk to them and have ALL of their kids and grandkids together to each take a turn. We missed them so much. Brendan, Jordan, Allison, and Noah all played some Christmas songs on the piano and then we opened up cousin gifts.

The cutest was when Ian saw the Star Wars packaging when Gavin opened his gift. He ran over to him with lightning speed and yelled, "What The!" There is something magical between little boys and Star Wars! We got home just as the snow began to fall...and fall....and fall...and fall! By morning we had over a foot and it didn't stop all day. But what better day to be snowed in than on Christmas!

I know I'm always commenting about being bummed that my kids are all grown up, but when we get to sleep in until 9:45 on Christmas morning....I like teenagers very much! I think we did a good job in surprising the kids this year.

Jordan got an I-pod (his 4th one thanks to his bad luck in having them stolen), a digital camera to document his senior year and for his upcoming mission, a few video games and some clothes.

Jake got his much anticipated new basketball and knee-high socks, but was very surprised to find a Wii with all the trimmings under the tree. This is how we have spent way too much time since Christmas...

Allison got some boots and several pairs of shoes because a girl can NEVER have enough shoes, some games, clothes, jewelry, a Taylor Swift CD from Jordan and new slippers from Jake. The highlight of her Christmas came the next night...a newly decorated room. More on that on a later post.

I was very surprised to get a purple I-pod complete with an I-Home from Brendan. Now I can finally feel like I'm living in the 21st century. I spent several hours with Jordan on the computer picking out songs from his I-tunes library. I've yet to figure out how to download my own music. That will be lesson #2. Brendan just got a bunch of much needed clothes so his worst part of the day can stop being when he picks out what to wear for the day.

I had to spend part of my Christmas week preparing to teach a Relief Society lesson that I got asked to sub. Very scary and intimidating, but I got a lot of help from my good friends who were very gracious in being guest speakers during the lesson.

Brendan took the kids skiing on the 27th. They froze but had fun...even though Allison crashed and her braces cut her lip and her ski left a C-shaped bruise on her cheek for a week!

We've had an incredible time with each other and with extended family which is what we always love about this time of year.

Our Teddy Bear Tree

The first Christmas we were married, Brendan's sister Jessica gave us a giant christmas bear. The following year, for Jordan's first Christmas, my mom made a cute teddy bear ornament in his honor. So those were the beginnings of our Teddy Bear tree. Twenty years later we have continued adding a new teddy bear ornament every year. Sometimes we have just bought a cute little stuffed bear, sometimes my mom has found one for us.

This is also the tree that we put all of our cherished ornaments that kids have made through the years...so fun to see the ones with their pictures on them, many of which they have missing teeth. So while we enjoy our nice big tree in the front room, it's our little Teddy Bear tree that holds the memories that mean the most to us.

Family to Family

Last Monday we invited the Bunkers and Sehestedts over for Family Home Evening/games and dessert. Between us we have 12 kids (13 including Nicole) and a whole lot of fun!

We played Taboo, had cheesecake and cheered on Bo as he took Jordan down in a wrestling match.

As I type this, I'm thinking about all of our wonderful friends that we have shared special moments with throughout the year. We don't always take photos and we don't always blog about every event, but you know who you are. I love my friends and my kids' friends so much and consider them a part of our family. I'm so thankful for all the many wonderful memories that we have been able to create and also for the struggles in our lives that have brought us closer together as we serve and love and support each other.

December Girl's Night Out

Every December our scrapbook/project night group of friends put away the paper and trimmers and go out to dinner and shopping at Gardner's Village. There's nothing quite like the ambience found in all the little village shops. We had fun browsing through the Christmas General Store and of course, dinner at Archibald's is the best! We had just finished shopping and been seated at our table when Kristen and I both got that awful feeling you get when you find something that you REALLY like and have been looking for, but didn't get it. For her it was a purse and for me it was a charm-type necklace. Both were at the same store so we excused ourselves and ran back just in time to find the door locked and a closed sign. It was 8:01! There were people still inside, but the dumb clerk lady refused to acknowledge us and let us in. We were determined though. We waited and froze till one of the customers came out. We peeked in and promised that we didn't want to browse and knew exactly what we wanted and were ready to buy it and be out of her hair in 2 minutes. She must have had a date or something because she was not very gracious but let us in! Whew! We felt much better. We had a fun gift exchange after dinner and talked, talked, talked, all the way home! I love these girls!

I have a new name

These last few weeks I haven't enjoyed the title of "Mom" very much. It's usually said with a whine or a complaint or an urgent demand. I don't get the "I love you so much mommy" moments anymore.

But I got a good payback last night. Jake was playing basketball with a couple friends when he texted me to see if he could go late night bowling with them and their parents. He promised parents are staying and there are no girls coming :). After hesitating a bit, Brendan and I figured that he's with great boys and we love their parents too so I replied an "ok."

I think I'll keep his text back to me in my phone for a long time. It said, "Thanks! You're the freaking best mom ever! You're the Bomb.com!" I didn't know that was the lastest lingo but I guess being the "bomb.com" is pretty cool. I'll take what I can get.

Festival of Trees 2008

Allison is absolutely loving dancing with Colleen. She has picked up on her fast paced choreography and her technique is improving a little each time. I have to keep telling myself that we knew what we were getting into as I start out on our 35 minute drive to Timpview twice (sometimes 3 times) a week for her lessons! I have so many incredible memories from my teen years dancing in Colleen's studio. I see Allison creating some for herself already. There just isn't anything out there that comes close to the quality of instruction and the genuine love that Colleen and Collette give their students. She already had her 3 performances including The Festival of Trees this past Saturday.

You know Twilight is huge when there is a gingerbread house entitled Twilight complete with the red truck, a Forks City sign, and Edward looking through the top window.

We had fun seeing all the trees as a family and then sat down to enjoy a great show (even though I will admit it was “Colleen Standard Time" – very long!)

Moving on with Senior Life

We enjoyed a wonderful post season football banquet with Jordan and his teammates a few weeks ago. I was able to get some autograph balls for the seniors and had them printed with the Lehi school logo. They loved them, which is all that matters. Jordan received honors from his coaches for being "The Academic Team Player of the year," "Academic All-Region", and a nominee for "Academic All-State." He was also nominated to participate in the UHSAA Region Sportsmanship Summit Luncheon this last Friday at Timpanogos High School. It's quite an honor as only 10 athletes (including all sports) from each school got to go.

He had an MRI on his knee for pain, but it's just bad tendinitis. Lot's of physical therapy and time off from football should do the trick...except that now he starts basketball. "The Naughty Pirates" are a hilarious basketball team full of football players TRYING to play basketball.

He (and I) finally finished all the many hours of paperwork and computer work for his college applications. His plan (for now anyway) is to major in Finance. He applied to BYU, Utah State, University of Utah (even though he says now that it’s one of the last places on earth he’d want to go – too much cougar blue blood running through his veins), and Northern Arizona State. We have heard back from every school except for BYU. He has been accepted to all of them and has been offered a partial scholarship to Utah State. Of course, BYU is his number one choice, but we won’t know their admission decision until the end of February…His GPA says yes, but his ACT score says maybe. Keep your fingers crossed!

Twilight

We finally saw Twilight last weekend. We were at a party celebrating Mac McGuire's 50th birthday and started chatting with Emily Peden (our friend's cute 14 year old daughter). She started on how incredible Twilight was and told us she had seen it 4 times. It was 9:15 pm and we got in our spontaneous mood and said, "lets go see the 10 pm showing of Twilight." We invited Emily to come along and she was jumping up and down at the chance to see Edward for the 5th time! Allison was ecstatic! I have debated about her being able to read the books, and have decided against it because they're just too mature for her right now. So don't ask me why it was no big deal for us to make it a family trip to the movies. Anyway, long story short...She loved it...she loved Edward...she loved Bella...but what else would you expect from a pre-teen girl? Brendan and the boys said it was good and gave it a thumbs up. Me? Not so sure. I've never really liked the character of Bella...I'm much more like the Alice character and loved how she was portrayed. Anyway, I thought it was just ok. Twilight is my least favorite of the 4 books and I am very much looking forward to the sequels coming up! I missed all the lead up to the Prom and remembered Jacob being more of a prominent character. Many people have told me it's much better the second time so maybe we'll give it a try sometime again soon.

Coming up for air

I have received several phone calls from my cute friends and family wondering if I was still alive. Well, I am...just barely. I've missed my blogging world and will try to catch up on everyone's new posts this week. I haven't even allowed myself to turn on the computer most days because I know that hours would be sucked out of my day without having accomplished anything! We haven't done too many exciting things, but have just been extremely busy with all the little things in life.

Brendan is paying the price for overdoing it last week. He put up lights on our house and then he put up our 12 foot christmas tree and put lights on that.

He got up early on Thanksgiving Day to go play in our ward's Turkey Bowl which is really the Smith Boys vs. the Biggs Boys (all in good fun though). He single handedly cooked and basted two turkeys for thanksgiving (up and down our basement stairs all morning).

He came with me for the 2nd leg of my Black Friday shopping extravaganza in the afternoon.........and now his knee is swollen like he just had surgery! He's had it wrapped and on ice for the last few days and he says it's feeling a little better. I'm crossing my fingers because a 6th knee surgery is not what we want for Christmas. He loves projects and I love that he works so hard on everything, but that was a lot to do on a bad knee over a weekend.

What have I been up to? Oh, just mainly driving and more driving. I am SO HAPPY that gas prices are down. I never thought we'd see prices under $2 again! I also just wrapped up my busy season for bows so I spent many hours surrounded by ribbon and hot glue, but I was able to catch up on all my DVR'd shows. I got up at 6 am to try to get a few deals on Black Friday. I just couldn't bring myself to go at 4 am when many stores opened so I didn't get everything on my list but it was still fun. I usually don’t buy much all year, but I go crazy at Christmas time. Once my head stops spinning with sale prices and comes back to earth, I usually sort through my piles and return a lot of it. That way I can sleep on it for a few days and make sure what it is that I really want to keep vs. what the sales said I had to have. I AM IN LOVE with the new Smith's Marketplace that just opened up by our house. I have stocked up on the many grocery sales they've had. Great produce prices and quality and they have cute clothes and shoes for Allison's age.

We had Thanksgiving at our house with Brendan's family and my brother Ed's family. I think we ended up with 14 adults and 11 kids! We had a big table in the family room in addition to our kitchen table. Everyone brought something so that made it much easier. I’m bummed I forgot to take pictures of the cute peanut butter acorns that Jake made. We got the recipe from Studio 5 and all the kids loved them. Everything turned out great!

It was so cute to see Jake be the Pied Piper in the backyard with all the little boys playing football.

Allison led the little girls (the boys joined in later) in a fun game of hide n seek for hours. All the big boys (over 13) went to see the new James Bond movie. Our boys gave it a thumbs down. The girls stayed home to clean up, watch the little kids and chat. I think next year it will be our turn to go out! We all really had fun hanging out and everything was delish! My “thankful for” list will have to wait for another post since I just can’t wrap my brain around serious stuff right now. So much more to write…so little time. I’ll try to catch up later this week and I promise to check out everyone else’s blogs and get in a few comments. Love to all my blogging pals!