New Years Eve

This year we got to brave the weather and head to Idaho. After both of my sisters had to fight the snowdrifts to get home only 2 days before we headed there, I was a little worried. But the day we left was GORGEOUS and the roads were dry except for a few wetter areas. But no ice or snow drifts!

We had a fun time playing at my sister's house the morning of New Year's Eve. The kids played, we talked and then refereed when it was needed.

This is my Aunt Jennie. I had the opportunity to go up and visit my Grandma and visit with her and Jennie for an hour or so. I was fun to see them. I got to help make dinner and wash the dishes, etc for her. That may seem silly that I was so excited but 1. I have ALWAYS loved doing dishes at my Grandma's house for her and 2. It brought back so many memories because she has the same dishes and cups that she did when I was a little girl! Everything was in the same place and it was fun to help out.

After that, we headed off to my brother's house for New Years Eve. We had LOTS of food and fun. Everything was so good and it was nice to relax and hang out with my brother and sister and their families and let the kids play.

Gavin knew where the good stuff was! He loved to climb up(along with every other kid there!) and enjoy the crackers and dips and the other yummy stuff. Did I mention the food was good? :)

Ethan fell asleep around 9:00 and didn't wake up until I took him home at 12:30!! It was nice that he could sleep so well. Even with 15 or so cousins running around. :)

I was upstairs waiting for my mom and dad to get home(they had another activity they had to be to but spent an hour with us at my brother's first) and when I finally went down to go to bed, this is what I found. Everyone was asleep with the light on! So I figured it was a good time to get a picture. Sleep on my little ones! And big one...

I was sad when it ended and it was time to leave because we enjoyed our time there. We had a yummy New Years Day dinner with the family and helped my mom and dad take down their Christmas decorations(first time in 9 years I've been there to put them up and take them down in the same year!). We watched No Reservations which my dad was a good little chick flick. :) Not sure what that meant but hey, it was!

We were going to leave a little later on Friday or possibly Saturday but my dad saw the nastiness of the storm headed our way and told us to take off. We quickly packed and headed out. These pictures were taken on a highway we used instead of going over Sweetzer(5600 ft or so). It was raining like mad where we were but would have been nasty going up and over! The clouds and snow were so pretty and I loved the drive! Except for the nice potholes at the beginning... but we got over those and enjoyed the rest of the trip.

Merry Christmas! A few weeks late...

I was wanting to do this a few weeks ago but thought I had no pictures of Christmas. Plus I didn't want to go over on texts sending pictures from my phone. So that's why New Year's will wait one more day. :) I did however, find a few pictures from Christmas, so here we go!

This Christmas we decided to go to St. George and spend it with Steve's parents and family. It was the first time we'd spent it with them that wasn't at my house and I wanted to be on their turf to learn some of their traditions. So while I was sad not to be with my family, I was excited for a new experience.

We decided to leave a day early because a major storm was heading our way. We were very glad we did! While everyone got dumped on up here, we got a nice rain and 36-42 degree weather down south. :)

We spent one night with Steve's parents because our hotel wasn't booked for us that night(as we went early). Gavin stayed in the living room with his siblings for the first time! He did awesome and had lots of fun... he's getting too big!

The next day we got everything packed up and hung out with cousins for the morning. We then went to our hotel room and got everything unpacked. I LOVED the colors they used in the room and can't wait to use them at my house. ;) We were going to do a birthday party for Steve's brother but his poor daughter wasn't feeling well so we had a small dinner, did a few errands and hung out at the hotel. The kids fell asleep well that night. Jakob and Andy cuddled up (unknowingly), and Gavin only fell off the bed three times during the night. :)

The next day we had some breakfast continental style before heading over to the grandparent's house. The kids enjoyed more time spent with cousins and then we went to Target to get Ashley's dress and a sweater for my dad. We had lunch at a yummy restaurant called The Mandarin and filled ourself with chinese and mongolian barbecue. YUMMY!

We went back to the hotel and watched part of the BSU vs TCU game at the hotel. At halftime we headed back to G'ma and G'pa Weists for dinner and for me to make a cheesecake as a reward for the contest I'd had to find something to remove the ink marks my Gavin so lovingly had drawn on our walls. We got done really late but they turned out looking and smelling very good! That night we also slept well after watching a little White Christmas.

Christmas Eve we got up early, ate our breakfast and headed off to Susan's house for some good snow time. Like I said, it was 42 degrees or so there which meant we had to head up into the mountains. After having fallen in love with Pine Valley, we went up a little further and the kids played in the snow. The older kids (cousins, not ours!) went on the 4 wheelers and we played until we froze - which in 19 degree weather it didn't take too long! I have gorgeous pictures but they're on my video camera...

We went to G'ma and G'pa Weists for a few hours afterwards before heading back to our hotel to get ready for the Christmas Eve festivities. We had yummy vegetable soup and bean soup that was one of their biggest traditions. It was SO good! Gavin even gulped it all up!!!

We had a wonderful time on Christmas Eve with excellent food(i.e. my cheesecake...among all the others) and then a fun program with music. Grandpa Weist talked about Christmas which was really nice to hear. The grandkids all sang I Am a Child of Godwhile standin around Grandpa(its his favorite song). Then it was time for gifts. We did the exchanges for the grandparents to the grandchildren and then Santa came! Each of the cousins bought something as an exchange and Santa handed them out. It was a lot of fun and the kids were excited for their gifts! They were all worn out by the time it got done and were happy to hop in bed that night so Santa could come.

Santa got to come to our hotel room (I talked about that in the last blog) and enjoyed some cheesecake and milk. Good thing he's not lactose intolerant... Jakob woke up first around 6:40 and looked around before I told him to hop back in bed. It wasn't long before everyone else was awake and we watched the kids look in their stockings before we opened gifts. It was the first time ever that it was just our little family so it was a fun, new experience. We went in order from youngest to oldest and then Steve and I opened ours.

We headed to Susan's for a yummy breakfast and the kids played with each other's toys and visited for a few hours. The rest of the vacation was spent playing with the new gadgets and sleeping and lots of playing with cousins!

We left a day later than what we'd planned because of weather but had great roads so I was glad we waited. We had plenty of shovelling to do when we got home. Here I am shovelling just so we could get the kids in before Steve shovelled the back. I couldnt even see the sidewalk steps to our house!!! We hope everyone had a fun Christmas!!!

Teaching Moments...

Last night we were driving from my sister-in-law's house back to our hotel and remembered we didn't have milk for Santa. We decided to stop by Harmon's and grab some milk from there. I forgot that on Christmas Eve everyone closes early!! So we sat in the parking lot trying to figure out who might be open for milk. I suggested the little shop ("In a Pinch") in our hotel but it was REALLY expensive. Jakob piped up from the backseat that we could just go to Grandma's and get some from there. Steve and I hadn't even thought of that!!

We started driving towards their house and I was praising Jakob about thinking of such a good idea and he told me got it from me. I tried to remember the conversation to think of what I might have said that made him think of his grandparents.

Finally he reminded me of what happened a month ago. We'd been at Red Balloon letting the kids pick out gifts for each other and were hungry. We'd been trying to figure out what to have for dinner and Steve suggested Cafe Rio. I was all for it! But we both knew we should just go home. On our way out of the shopping center parking lot, I told Steve I was REALLY wanting some Cafe Rio so we turned around and went back into the parking lot. I sat there debating whether to take the kids in or leave them out in the car with Steve while I lugged 6 meals out to the car. Finally my good reason won and I told Steve we should just go home and eat there. Now, for me that's a big thing because I love to eat out. But I knew I needed to be a good example and back away from something that we really didn't "need". We went home, had dinner (chili), went to bed and that was the end.... I just didn't realize at the time that I'd taught my son the importance of saving money!! It made my night and I just hope I can continue teaching him the important things he needs to know in life.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and everyone is safe!!! We had a fantastic Christmas and its been fun spending time with Steve's family. :)

Blackmail Material

Poor Gavin. He sure loves his sister's princess room. He can name all the Disney Princesses and wants the pink cup at meals. Ethan needs to grow up fast so Gavin will play HIM! In the meantime we'll enjoy some of the great photos this provides! our camera is blurry because he likes to move instead of standing still for photos but they're still worth keeping!

Wow, I love the pretty shoes! This is Ashley's church shoe and halloween shoe. The bandaid on his eye was from stitches he got while at a yard sale...

Yes, those are little butterfly clips in his hair. I wish he would have let us take one while he was looking at the camera because with his big blue eyes framed in long lashes he was really pretty. ;) He's a sweet boy with plenty of fight. I guess its good that Ashley has SOMEONE to play with!

Gingerbread Men

I decided to try something new this year for goodies. I usually do a lot of candy but I wanted to try cookies. So I got a recipe off Food Network and started on it. After having a rough start from not finding my ginger (kind of important for gingerbread!), I got to cut all the men and trees out and bake them. They came out rather crunchy. The three older kids LOVE them and Gavin tolerates them.

For Family Home Evening we did our cleaning of the toys and got rid of a bunch (yay!) and then started our decorating. We had red(well, pink) and green frosting and I let the kids do it. Ashley had fun making dots all over and Andy and Jakob got creative. I just let Gavin squish the bag while I held it. Ethan just hung out and watched everything happening. It was a fun night and we had some yummy cookies to show for it! We even hung some on our tree afterwards!

Andy's working really hard on his! He actually did a pretty good job with the designing and you could tell he was concentrating on getting the eyes and buttons just right! He sure enjoyed eating them too. :)

I didn't quite trust Gavin with the frosting so I decided to do it for him. He did squeeze it like I said before but I did the actual frosting! He promptly licked all the frosting off and left the cookies on the table! Do you like my bow in my hair? :)

He's sure proud of his cookie though! He just loved the frosting even more. Mmm pure sugar!

Jakob had a fun time making his cookie look crazy. He and Andy were both laughing pretty hard at how they were decorating!

Ashley loved her cookie and wanted to keep decorating - so she could eat them!

And here's Steve's. He was holding Ethan and helping make sure that no frosting ended up on tables or floors. Jakob decorated two for Steve and two for himself. It was a great night! My next attempt will be to make a gingerbread house! Wish me luck!

I just went back and reread my post. Man, do I like exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MmmmYummy Crackers!

Ethan was chewing on everything he could find yesterday(and as he was on my lap and has only so much arm length, it was generally my arm or hand...). So I found him a graham cracker which he gnawed to pieces. I realized that as it was a honey cracker it probably wasn' the best so I gave him a teething biscuit (for babies not dogs...) and he went crazy on that one too. Here is the aftermath of the whole cracker meal. A great big mess!!

Thanksgiving 2008 - One For the History Books

This was one crazy but very fun Thanksgiving for me and mine. We had the opportunity to go to Idaho for the first time in 8 years. Mostly because I've been selfish and kept Christmas with my family(as in my parents and siblings and our 22 kids) to myself instead of sharing our family with Steve's family. :) So this year we decided to reverse the visiting.

We left early Wednesday morning and had an uneventful trip to Idaho. I did get to stop in Ogden to pick up a package for Kristen but otherwise it was pretty quick. Steve slept through the trip and most of Wednesday since he had to work the night before.

Thursday started bright and early at 4:30 when my sister brought my little Andy in to change out of wet clothes(always fun). He was also nice and toasty with a fever and had a croupy cough! What a wonderful thing to wake up to! I gave him tylenol, got him settled and went back to sleep. The poor boy slept most of Thanksgiving and only ate a few bites of Thanksgiving dinner. Gavin was also coughing by that time. GREAT.

We did have a VERY enjoyable, VERY delicious meal. Nothing beats my moms noodles n' gravy!!! You think gravy on potatoes is good? You have no idea until you try my mom's noodles and gravy! Everything else was fantastic and I ate WAY more than I'd planned. But hey, it was Thanksgiving right? The others ate well. Gavin especially enjoyed the corn and stuffing. We got to have my aunt, uncle, Grandma and my brother-in-law's grandma all have dinner with us. It lively and fun to be with everyone.

My uncle took this picture. Yes, there are three tables just to try and fit us all. And that's not even all of us!

We had more family come over and then put all the kids down for naps. I had quite a nice nap myself! We enjoyed Kung Fu Panda as a family and then of course had our pie - pumpkin, cherry and apple oh my! There was blueberry too. MMMMM!!!!!

I tried to get to bed early that night but it didn't quite work out that way. I had just closed my eyes when I remembered I had made the extra trip to my sisters to get the humidifier so I should probalby use it(and I'm glad I did). Plus, I forgot the motrin and vaporub for my boys. So I finally got to bed only to wake up at 2:45 and then again at 4:45 with Ethan. By that time I just got up and went and did the whole Black Friday thing. I got a few of the things I'd hoped to get and 4 hours later I made my way back home.

My dad put up the millions of Christmas lights while I went from helping my mom with decorations throughout the house to checking on my poor Andy. By afternoon his fever had broken and he was getting back to his normal goofy self. We decided to take him and Gavin in to make sure they didn't have strep. We got in pretty quick and they gave us medicine to get rid of whatever it was they had. (I WISH they had swabbed them for strep instead of just giving them the meds because now I'm pretty sure it was just a virus...). We rushed over to Guadalajaras for some delicious Mexican food. So among fighting a whiny Gavin, upset Ashley, Crying Ethan and spilled Root Beer, I had a most delicious meal. Typical family meal. :)

By Saturday morning Steve was feeling a cold coming on so we took ourselves to Smiths for medicine for us too and headed on to Twin Falls to get our sicko family away from everyone else for a few hours. Gavin and Andy had been going crazy staying in one room. But hey, when you have 30 people in one house, you gotta do something! So I took Steve to a few landmarks we'd never been to before. Well, I had. But he hadn't. We looked down into the Snake River Canyon and then headed over to Shoshone Falls. The wind was COLD so we ran the kids over to the stairs, let them look and then ran them back to the car. Steve and Jakob went to another place and got this fun picture.

We then headed over to the mall and checked out some of the stores. We found a few cool deals at JC Penney and then I distracted the kids while Steve went back to get a gift we found. I thought it would be fun to get pictures with Santa. It wasn't until oh, 3 days later that I realized I shared the very germs I was trying to keep away from my family with Santa!!! Hopefully he's better by Christmas Eve. :)

We finally returned to Grandma and Grandpa's house and got to help decorate the tree and have egg nog milkshakes. We also let the kids dress up in the clothes that my sisters and I dressed up in when we were young! The kids had a BLAST.

Sunday was a nice day at church. We enjoyed the lessons, the kids enjoyed nursery and primary and then we got to see our sweet little niece be blessed. We had dinner over at their house before heading back home.

It was a crazy weekend but it was so much fun! I just hope that among all Thanksgivingness of the holiday, we didn't "give" the gift of strep to everyone else!

Thanksgiving Leftover Recipe

Hey,
So Steve and I did our usual pre-Thanksgiving turkey this weekend. We got a small one because we are going to go enjoy our REAL Thanksgiving dinner with my family in Idaho. YAY! Anyway, We came up with the idea after that dinner to try a new recipe. Its chimichangas turkey style. Not greatly original but SO good! Here's the recipe as far as I can remember:

2 cups ground up or shredded turkey(we used both white and dark, deboned once you've decided that it is a leftover)
1 cup turkey juice (ours had gellified because we used it the next day. you can use gravy too)
2 cups rice
1 can refried beans
1 cup grated cheese
1/2 cup salsa (or to taste)
1/4 cup green onions
tortilla shells

Because the turkey juices were gellified(new word), we put it on medium heat on the stove until it melted back into juices. We then added the rice, beans, salsa, cheese and turkey. Heat it through until its all warm and then add the green onions. While this is heating, turn your skillet on to medium.

Scoop some of the filling into the middle (about 1/2 cup or so) and the fold the top and bottom of the tortilla and then the two sides. Warm on the skillet until brown and then flip and brown the other side. If you're making a lot, you can keep them warm in the oven. The amount we used ended up making about 12 chimichangas. You can serve it with more salsa, sour cream, or whatever you'd like. We ran out of sour cream, so we had to use salsa.

Anyway, just wanted to share our tasty leftover ideas! Hope you enjoy!

My Baby is 6 Months Old!!

Ok, has anyone seen the last 6 months because I'm looking for them!!! I know time goes fast but this is insane.

Ethan's getting so big and doing all sorts of new little firsts all the time. He rolls over, smiles, laughs, grabs and plays with his binky - or anything near him, spits out food I try to feed him, and I'd like to say he sleeps through the night but that's just not happening. :) He's getting close though!

So on this momentous occasion of my little one turning 6 months, I decided to look back and past pictures - to actually prove that time did exist between May 22, 2008 and now - November 22, 2008!

Here is my sweet little boy only a few hours old. I didn't want to put him down! He reminded me so much of Ashley and Gavin when he was born.

Here is Ethan when he was 1 month old. He's so tiny but still has nice, chubby legs. :)

Again in the bouncer, he is now 2 months old. He is the best little stretcher! He apparently decided that was the most comfy position for sleep at the time.


Ethan was having fun at Grandpa and Grandma Weist's house when he was 3 months old. He was a good little boy all weekend while we were there visiting! He got to meet his cousins from California and all kinds of other fun things while we were there!

Daddy and Ethan (and I) had fun at the BYU football game against Wyoming. We enjoyed watching Wyoming get stomped... kinda like Utah did to BYU today... but we won't go there... I might cry!

Ethan is now 5 months old in this picture. Maybe I should find another place for him to hang out. But he loves the bouncer and I sure love having somewhere he enjoys laying down in so I can get stuff done!

And here is my chubby little Ethan at 6 months old. The game (sniff) and 4 wild siblings tired him out. Actually, sitting on my lap watching me type this tired him out. :) But I'm sure the rest of the excitement of the day helped! What happy sweet little boy he is! We are so blessed to have him in our lives and I can't wait to see all the other milestones he goes through as he gets bigger! I know he will enjoy playing with Gavin as he gets older - he already laughs hysterically at Gavin no matter what he's doing!!

Halloween

We did all kinds of fun things this year for Halloween. We skipped Steve's work Halloween party as I figured something bad might happen to his boss if I were to enter into that building. But that's a whole different story we won't get into!

We woke up and dyed Andy's hair green with kool-aid. Don't worry, it was out by Sunday. Or at least it was a fluorescent yellow instead of green... We got everyone else ready, took a picture and headed for school.

Aren't we cute! Steve was taking the picture... He was Space Ghost for the night

Here's my dear Stitch - I mean Jakob. It was a looooong parade but it was fun to see all the different costumes.

No, that's not moldy mac and cheese. But it is dyed mac and cheese! I put some blue food coloring in and had yummy "brains" for lunch. The kids giggled and then ate it all up!


Here are our pumpkins... mabye we should have taken the picture inside first...

We were going to go to the Trunk or Treat but I was making last minute touches for each of the costumes. Steve's belt needed fixed, Ashley and I needed headbands, etc. So we got there when there were only four people left. Steve went trick-or-treating with the boys down a couple streets before coming home so I could take them the rest of the way. My kids were AWESOME! Ethan stayed home with Daddy and helped with candy. I took my kids down several blocks and got TONS of candy. We're talking a gallon ziploc bag for each of them - plus an overflow bag for Steve and I to share! It was rainy but warm so we had a lot of fun!!


After a rather disastrous church volleyball tournament, I wanted to blow off some steam. And what better way to do that than go - to a volleyball game...? We went to Provo for a trick-or-treat with Cosmo. It was so much fun! We met athletes from every sport(except football since they were playing at the time in Colorado...) and the kids got to do different activities. Gavin and Ashley were waiting in line to play tennis.

Andy threw the ball and hit the cups every time! This was with the Men's baseball team. They were pretty impressed!


Jakob and many of the other kids were enjoying watching Cosmo (aka Batman) shoot some hoops!

Andy's trying his hand at tennis.

Ashley enjoyed attempting to bounce the ball on the tennis racquet. She had a harder time but the guy was very patient with her.


Jakob hit the ball as hard as he could at the net. It went really high before coming down!

Between the trick or treating and game we decided to go to dinner. We went to the Brick Oven(a rule if you're going to a volleyball game at BYU I think...) and enjoyed yummy pizza. There was a balloon guy there that made amazing balloons figures! Ashley got a pink elephant with purple husks, Andy got a two sided light saber(Darth Maul's), Jakob got a monkey and Gavin got a twisty sword. He wanted a pink parrot... I said no!

And to end our Halloween weekend, here is the Volleyball game. Unfortunately, they lost to New Mexico but it was still a really fun game to watch. The kids had fun climbing the chairs and watching the scoreboard make funny pictures. And using the restroom about 3 times each. Next time maybe we won't get them refills at dinner... Steve and I enjoyed some good volleyball - well, except that they lost... If you look closely, you'll see that Cosmo is riding a unicycle in the picture... He did all kinds of fun things. Gavin kept calling him Baby Jaguar(from Diego) and at one point when he couldn't see him, he announced that Baby Jaguar is going to the potty.... What a great Halloween week we had! And now we're zooming ahead to a great Thanksgiving...