Merry Christmas

I hope you all had a nice Christmas. We had a very nice time with Mark's family. We partied at his grandma's house on Christmas Eve and went to his parents' house for breakfast on Christmas morning. It was all very nice but I did miss my family. Too bad my parents live 3.5 hours away and we can't spend time with both families on the same day!
Anyway here are some pictures of Mark's family from last Sunday when Mark and I had them all over for dinner to enjoy my new table from Mark.

Mark's brother Jared and his wife Katie (their two daughters were upstairs playing with Millie):
His sister Julia with her husband Ryan and son Cooper:
His brother Brad with wife Diane, son Jaden and daughter Elyse:
And my fabulous table that extends to comfortably seat 10 (but we could squeeze 12!). He spent about 50 hours building it and gave it to me as a late-birthday, early Christmas present. I absolutely love it. Thanks Mark! Now he plans to make chairs to match, but I think that will take another 50 hours. Maybe next Christmas :)

Holiday Treats

Wow, I am so behind on blogging! We have just been so busy with Christmas stuff and I'm going to have even more things to blog about tomorrow with Christmas and all. I guess I should just be grateful that I have been out doing blog-worthy things, instead of having time to blog and nothing to blog about.
So instead of telling you all about our schedule, I'll just tell you about all the yummy things we made for our neighbors: Gingerbread men, candy-cane cookies, chocolate pistachio Christmas Tree cutouts, and two kinds of fudge (five minute fudge - the only cut corner). Anyway, I made everything but the candy-cane cookies (Mark made those) and we did it all in two days (I like treats to be fresh!). Anyway, I seriously wanted to give a plate to everyone I know, but I limited it to our immediate neighbors and to Mark's home teaching families (I gave my visiting teaching sisters treats earlier in the month). So even if you didn't get to taste these treats I hope you enjoy them and know that I wanted to share. Loves to you all and a very merry Christmas.

¡Mi Arbolito!

¡Mi árbolito! ¡Mi árbolito!

Qué bello y brillante.

In high school my Spanish class learned Christmas songs and went caroling to the Spanish-speaking community. It was a lot of fun and I still remember the words to some of the songs. Mi árbolito translates to my little tree, sung to the tune of "Oh, Christmas Tree." I sing it whenever I see my (not-so-little) Christmas tree. The (artificial) tree is so tall in fact that there is only one place for it in our house: the two-story tall entry way!
Another problem with having such a large tree is the need for lots of ornaments! I so wish I would have bought more of those over-sized red and orange balls our first Christmas, but now I just have to make the most of them. I put them all on the front of the tree and let Millie decorate the backside with all the other random ornaments we have collected. This year I did splurge and added these to the front of the tree.

Sometimes I miss the smell of a real tree, but I don't miss the messy needles, the endless fight to make it stand up straight, the watering, or the lighting. So, pretty much I love our artificial tree. Even if it's too tall to put in front of a window :)

Ivy's 1!

We celebrated Ivy's first birthday this past week. It's hard to believe that an entire year has gone by since I gave birth to her and found out I had another daughter. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from the party.
The woman in the black and white photo on the table is my great-grandmother Josephine Weaver -- Ivy Josephine's namesake. The framed photo was Ivy's birthday gift from my mother.
Ivy got this headband from her Aunt Katie and the stuffed kitty from her sister Millie.

I love my little Ivy girl. I'm so glad that she's part of our family. Thanks to all those who helped make her birthday special.

Ba humbug

So since I got a digital camera you all thought I'd be blogging a lot more often right? Wrong! I have lots of great picture that I've tried to post, but a bad combination of slow Internet and large digital files has made blogging painstakingly slow -- to the point that I just gave up for a little while. But have no fear; I will return.
We downgraded to dial-up (gasp!) a few weeks ago to save a little money. It was Mark's idea of course and I don't know how he ever got me to agree. Anyway, it doesn't take much longer to upload a scanned photo, but the digital files are quite a bit larger and I haven't had the time to figure out how to shrink them. So if any of you have the answer that would be wonderful.
I also have this great video of Millie to post -- which I'm sure is impossible to upload on dial-up -- but luckily my sister helped me out with her DSL.
Anyway, I'll do my best to get things up and running again.

Saturday night was our ward's Christmas party. At the very end there was a special visitor :) I was glad I had my digital camera handy.

Millie asked Santa for an Ariel doll, which she will be getting ;) Seeing things through Millie's eyes has really made Christmas fun again. Here is some great footage of Millie and her friend Hailey as Santa enters the room. Enjoy :)

Out to Lunch

I have been blogging for more than a year now and I've decided it's pretty cool. I've learned a lot of new computer skills, my family and friends stay in-the-know, and I have a great online scrapbook/journal! But one of the best things about my blog is that it has put me in touch with long lost friends! I absolutely love it when people find my blog and leave me a comment so I can find their blog. Then we get chatting and catch up on each others' lives. It's beautiful! Anyway, this very thing happened with a couple of girls I grew up with, who both happened to be going home for Thanksgiving, so we decided to meet up for lunch. It was so much fun.

Aren't they beautiful.
Anyway, I really noticed that conversation has changed since high school. From school, dances and ballgames to weddings, husbands, and babies. I guess in 10 years the conversation will go back to the school, dances and ballgames of our teenagers! And 10 years after that it will be the weddings, husbands, pregnancy and babies of our children! Now I feel old and it hasn't even happened yet :)

Marcee and Katie it was so fun to hang out with you! Let's do it again soon. And I hope more long lost friends will find my blog and say 'hi.'

Picture This!

While we were in Manti for Thanksgiving my mom had a mini-birthday party for everyone with a winter birthday. She gave me my very first digital camera! It's a purple (that's important) Kodak EasyShare M893 IS (I don't know what any of that means, but I thought some of you might). Millie wasn't very excited as you can see, but I sure was.
Yesterday was my real birthday. I have officially been alive for a quarter of a century! We went to lunch at the Iron Gate Grill with Mark's parents. Do any of you remember that I wanted to eat there last year for my birthday but it was closed because it was Monday??? Anyway, the food was really good and I had such a nice time.

Later I blew out candles, put Ivy to bed and left Millie with Aunt Mandie while Mark and I went to a movie (Twilight). It's been a long time since we've gone to a movie. Mark said it felt weird not to have kids with us. Thanks Mandie.

After the movie Mark and I ate birthday cake and ice cream in bed :) Don't tell Millie; she isn't allowed to eat food outside the kitchen. Happy Birthday to Me!

Thanksgiving Mayhem

Only read this if you are really bored. It is from a super long email I wrote to my sister-in-law.

Mark and I went to Manti for Thanksgiving this year. Ivy got a fever Wednesday night as soon as we got to Manti. And was only worse by Friday so I took her into an IHC clinic in Ephraim. My mom came with me since Mark was helping my brother pour cement. Millie stayed at my parent's house and played (that was nice!) Anyway, we waited forever at the clinic and then when we finally saw the doctor she seemed to be more interested in Ivy's small size than her fever! Anyhow she thought it looked like another ear infection and prescribed more antibiotics. And since I didn't have my insurance information I ended up paying $20 for the prescription! But what do you do when your child is sick? Say 'No, I won't pay for it'? Anyway, now the meds have given her a rash and suppressed her already non-existent appetite. And she is still pretty lethargic and sleeps a ton. Poor baby. I hope she's feeling better for her birthday next week.

Other than all that, we had a good Thanksgiving. The food was delicious and surprisingly Millie stayed at the table long enough to eat some of it :) During dinner I invited my family to celebrate Thanksgiving at my house in two years (I didn't want to do it on Barbara's year because I like going to her house). They all agreed to come. That will be fun to get out all my flatware and extend my new table (which is only 3-coats of lacquer away from being finished). Now if I only had 12 matching plates, napkins and place mats!

On Friday after taking Ivy to the doctor I went to lunch with a couple of girls from high school (girls who found my blog and wanted to meet up). I left Millie and Ivy with my mom and just enjoyed myself.

We drove home on Saturday morning, but had to backtrack after Mark realized he'd left Ivy's $20-bottle of medicine in my Grandma Nora's fridge. Then we stopped and had lunch at Roy's pizza in Ephraim before heading out again.

We got home around 3:30 p.m. and headed over to Mark's parent's house for a second round of Turkey dinner. That was fun and yum!

Sunday morning, Mark stayed home from church with Ivy, because she was too sick to go. I had to speak in Sacrament Meeting so I was glad that Barbara could sit with Millie. I only had a week to prepare my talk, but since it was a busy week I didn't spend much time on it. I chose to talk about Elder Perry's conference talk about simplifying your life. It went well and I was glad the other speakers chose different talks to talk on.