Random December Happenings

December is always so crazy busy that keeping up with blogging is never a high priority. Here's a recap of some of our month leading up to our vacation.

Bridget loved decorating the tree this year. Felicity loved removing the decorations but was unable to put them back on by herself. Even with all of the undecorating and redecorating, it held up pretty well for the month.

Bridget wanted to pose like this under the tree because there's an ornament with her picture as a newborn under the tree. Five years later, she's just a wee bit bigger. ;-)

The finished tree looks so much prettier all lit up.

For a family night treat, I made these peanut butter reindeer cookies. Bridget thought they were great and enjoyed helping put on all of the decorations.

For the first time in a few years, we actually made it down to Temple Square to look at the Christmas lights. We went just before all the frigid weather set in, so it was nice to enjoy it with just a slight chill in the air. We met up with Megan one evening after she got off work and also walked through the new City Creek Mall. Sadly, the kids didn't get to see Santa there as we'd planned because they were only letting people with dogs see him that night. Lame!

This is a picture of the primary kids during the live nativity they did as part of our church Christmas party. There's a bunch of animals off to the right that you can't see. We had pretty nice weather earlier this month until this particular weekend. It was so cold outside, so the kids had to bundle up hiding their shepherd and angel costumes. Bridget's in the middle of the front row dressed as an angel. They sang a couple of songs and then we hurried inside to get warm.

As a side note, I should mention that tons of people in our ward got sick the Sunday night after the ward Christmas party. I know of at least 50 people that got sick, including me, Nate, and Felicity, and there were probably a bunch more I didn't know about. We're pretty sure it was some type of food poisoning and not a stomach bug because Bridget never did get it. All I can say is taking care of a puking toddler when both Nate and I were puking our guts out was horrible. I'm just grateful Bridget didn't get it because I think I would have starting crying if we'd had to try and take care of her too. Luckily she was able to take care of us the best a 5-year-old can.

Felicity thought this present of hers made a great little chair, and we thought it made a cute picture.



Megan and I teamed up for Bakefest 2012 to spend an entire day making tons of delicious Christmas goodies to share with our friends and neighbors. The treats included heath bars, sugar cookies, spritz cookies, 2 types of fudge, ginger crinkles, white chocolate and chocolate dipped pretzels, mini monster cookies, chcolate mint cookies, and peppermint bark popcorn.

Sadly, I was unable to get any pictures of our kids with Santa this year. I mentioned how City Creek didn't work out, which I was a little bummed by, but my backup plan was to go to a local bakery/restaurant where they were doing a breakfast for dinner with Santa a few days later. As luck would have it, that didn't work out either because it was the night after the food poisoning incident, so we were in no condition to leave our home or eat normal food. My plan C was to take the girls to the mall or some other place nearby before we left to go out of town, but Felicity was really sick that whole week right up until we left with some weird GI thing. Sitting on Santa's lap just wasn't meant to be for them this year. I was a little disappointed because I really wanted to see Felicity's reaction to him.

Becoming Grown-Ups

Last week, Nate and I finally decided on our Christmas present to each other. We only got each other a couple of little things to open on Christmas because we decided we'd rather get something bigger that we could both enjoy. After agreeing on bedroom furniture, we set out of find something we both liked. Such a major decision couldn't be made quickly, so we didn't actually decide and order something until a couple of days after Christmas. And here's what should be arriving at our house sometime in February: We both love Craftsman/Mission style furniture, and I fell in love with this bed. We're also getting the nightstand (better picture below). We're not getting either of the dressers pictured here, but instead the dresser below.

We opted not to get the mirror, and I'll admit I don't love the hardware but I loved the bed and couldn't find anything else I liked better. Maybe someday we'll swap out the hardware for something I like better.

And we're getting 2 of these nightstands.

So now we feel like real grown-ups; no more mismatched hand-me-down bedroom furniture for us (well, at least after it's delivered)!

Honestly, these pictures just don't do the furniture justice; it's so much prettier in person. I'll be sure to post more pictures after it actually arrives.

Merry Christmas!

This year our friend Emily designed our Christmas card/birth announcement. We love it and it perfectly highlights our feelings this Christmas. We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

The Perfect Christmas Present

Kimberly and I have finally finished our Christmas card/birth announcement (with the design expertise of our friend Emily) so we can post some pictures that we used for that. Here's the first (and my favorite).


Isn't she just adorable?

Our First Christmas Tree

Even though this is our second Christmas since we've been married, we finished putting up our first Christmas tree yesterday. We didn't spend Christmas here last year, so we didn't bother to get a tree, but since we'll be enjoying the holidays here with the best present ever (Bridget), we just had to have a tree. Okay, really I just had to have a tree...Nate's not much of a holiday person. That's why I was so surprised that he wanted to put it up right after Thanksgiving. I'm just glad it got finished before the horrible day we had today (see previous post).