Tabernacle Choir Christmas Party

This past Tuesday Michael and I attended the annual Tabernacle Choir Christmas Party at the Grand America Hotel.  It was so much fun!  Once again this year we assembled all 1345 name tags for the event.  It's a lot of work, but fun to be apart of the planning of the big event. 

Michael took the day off so I could go down and help with the day of setup.  Then he met me that night for the party.  The food was delicious, especially the desserts!  I enjoyed being able to get a new outfit (my tradition for the event) but this year it was harder to find something being pregnant.  Of course I found something at the last store I went to.  I don't think the pictures do the black dress justice.  It's really cute, I think, and I was happy to find it.

The life size gingerbread house was amazing!  Every year the Grand has a really cool one on display, but this year's was huge!  (Stats above in the last picture.)  Michael keeps telling me that one of these years we will stay overnight after the party at the Grand.  That would be so fun!   And until next year, all those name tags are back in storage in our garage.  :-)

Landon's birthday party

Landon had a pretty fun birthday bash last week.  Thanks to all our family who came to celebrate with us.  I really can't believe this kid is two already.  He really likes Elmo and so he had Elmo plates, cups, etc. and some Elmo balloons.  He really liked them!  I thought about making an Elmo cake but decided against it and went with the football field/game cake.  It really wasn't too hard, just time consuming.

Kayleigh was a great help all day as we prepared to have people over.  We did laundry, cleaned, made the cake, went to the store to pick up balloons and ate a few meals in there too.  I was super tired by the end of the day and I've decided being pregnant and doing all that is hard work! 

Landon loved being sang to and he liked blowing out his candles.  He got to eat the football off the cake and he thought that was neat, as well as the football players.  He's been enjoying his new cars, Lego's and toys he got.  It's always nice when they have something new to entertain themselves with. 

The day after his birthday I took him to the doctor for his 2 year check-up.  He is growing like a weed!  He is 34lbs. (96%tile) and 37 in. (97%tile).  He wears a size 4T, crazy kid.  Happy Birthday, bud!

26 wk. photos

Just to document

Happy Birthday Landon!

I can't believe that my little guy is two today!  I feel like he was just born.  His delivery and first few days of life were quite eventful and still pretty vivid in my memory. 

We are so grateful for him in our family and that he is a healthy, growing boy.  No one would really know he was 7 weeks premature!  Landon has such a cute smile and it's a good thing because some days he's a little crazy! 

I am excited for him to have a little brother and I think he'll be a great big brother.  I love that he has my brown eyes, I just really wanted one child with brown eyes.  Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and have another one with brown eyes. 

Happy 2nd Birthday, Landon!  We love you so much!  (And he can start having two vitamins today, he's looking forward to that.  He's very jealous everyday that his sister gets two and he only gets one.)

Happy St. Nicholas Day

Kayleigh was very excited to set her shoe out last night and she helped Landon to set his out as well. It was cute to watch him carry his little shoe out by the tree just because we told him to. Like he had any idea why we were doing that.

Celebrating St. Nicholas Day has been such a fun tradition to celebrate. I loved it growing up and Kayleigh loves it now. I'm sure by next year Landon will pick up on it as well.

This morning Kayleigh ran out to the tree and then ran back to my room to tell me that he'd come and left each of us something. Before unwrapping hers she commented that St. Nicholas had sure done a good job wrapping it. She was thrilled with what she got, as was Landon. He looked thru each page of his new book and especially liked the cats and dogs and the baby he saw.

Awe, I love Christmas time. 

The wind storm

 Kayleigh on the roof helping to assess the damage.

 Our car ready to go to the temporary dump.

 Temporary dump set up in west Kaysville.

 A tree in our neighborhood that fell right on the house.

 Blown over tree at the school.

Big pines trees now missing that used to line Main Street.

Wholly cow! Last Thursday's weather sure was eventful. We fared rather well, though, as I've seen things on t.v. and heard stories. I am grateful that we were safe and had minimal damage done to our home.

We were only without power for about 4 hours. I was glad we own a gas stove because I was able to heat up water to warm Landon's bottle for him. Luckily we just headed down to my mom's, who had power, to get ready so I could go to work and eat a warm lunch.

Five panels or sections of our wood fence fell down and will have to be replaced.  Because the ground is so hard right now we are going to wait until spring when we can dig a little easier to cement new posts in.  We also have a few less shingles that hopefully Michael will be able to replace this Saturday.  Problem is they don't make our same size of shingle any more so he will have to cut the ones he bought at Home Depot (the very last ones they had in the color we needed) to fit. 

Sunday following the storm our church was cut short.  We were literally called into the chapel a little over half way through Primary (we have Sacrament last) and told that the rest of church would be cancelled.  The member of our bishopric told us to go home, end our fasts early, and those of us that were physically able to be back up to the church at 11:00 to go out and help clear debris before the next storm. 

I was a little sad I couldn't go out and help, but obviously I can't do much with the baby belly.  Michael took our car and lined it with our tarp and off he went.  He said he had a great time helping.  He said it was fun and neat to see everyone helping each other.  What a great event.  Nothing like this has ever happened on a Sunday that I can remember.  Stuff out of the ordinary like this is kind of exciting to me.  But as I stated earlier, we fared well from the first storm and were very blessed. 

Luckily, the second storm was not as bad as they predicted and really nothing blew too bad on Sunday night.  Weather is amazing.  I can't believe what wind alone can do!  Hopefully we don't have another  storm like this in a long, long time.

Thanksgiving

 Me and Kay waiting for the Nutcracker to start.

 Landon making his turkey.

 Kay with her turkey.

 Landon's very tooth picked turkeys.

 Brooke and Kayleigh ready for their turkey dinner!

 The rolls I made.

 Just chillin on Thanksgiving evening.

 A big cheeser from Landon!

My sis, Mom, Dad and me with our treats. Pardon our jammies!

 YUM!

 Chocolate with peppermint, it was delicious!

Poor Kayleigh, so tired, just fell asleep when we got home on Friday. 

Our Thanksgiving week was full of surprises and lots of fun.  The week started out Sunday night with our furnace not working.  It was kind of that dreaded "oh great" feeling of owning a home and knowing you are the one that's going to have to take care of it.  After a lot of bids and workers at our house, we decided it was best to replace our 15 yr. old furnace and not put any more money into repairing it.

The day before Thanksgiving we had a new furnace installed.  Thanks to my parent's space heaters, we didn't get too cold the 2 previous nights.  I say too cold meaning it was about 60 degrees when we woke up in the morning.  With how cold it has been this week at night I am very grateful we have a furnace that's working good!

Second surprise of the week came on Tuesday.  Michael had previously interviewed for a new job with Coram Health.  On Tuesday he was offered the job.  This came with a lot of stressful decision making to do.  I wasn't really happy about having it basically constantly on my mind over the holiday but it was nice to have plenty of time to think it over. 

After a lot of praying and thinking and weighing pros and cons, Michael accepted the job.  He will start on Dec. 30th.  I am sad that he will be leaving Huntsman.  They have been so good to him and he's made a lot of great friendships there and helped a lot of people.  (And did I mention that their health insurance was amazing?!)

He is excited to start his new job.  He will be a salesman for Coram, owned by Apria Health care.  His area will be from Salt Lake City to Logan.   We are hoping that this will be a good "in" into the sales world and give him the experience he needs to be able to move up in a year or two.  He would eventually like to find a job selling medical devices.  So, we shall see where this road takes us...it's kind of scary venturing out.  I never handle change very well, but I know it will work out. 

On Wednesday I got to go with the girls of the family to see the Nutcracker.  My brother-in-law plays in the orchestra for Ballet West and they were having a matinee dress rehearsal that day that we went to.  I was excited to take Kayleigh to it!  She stayed very interested and asked a lot of questions for the first half.  After intermission she started to get tired and a little bored.  It was the perfect setting to take her in though because a lot of other kids were there too. 

After the Nutcracker, later that day, we helped the kids make apple turkeys for Thanksgiving.  It was a fun activity.  Watching Landon do his was hilarious.  First of all he pulled himself right onto the table to get to the treats.  Then he became quite fascinated with the toothpicks and putting those in the apple.  Kayleigh was very methodical about hers and worked the longest out of all the kids on hers.  They all turned out cute!

Turkey Day brought a little sleeping in for me, thanks to Michael.  Then I got our rolls in the oven and cut up fruit.  After getting everyone ready we headed to Michael's parent's house for the big meal.  Michael's mom really didn't want to cook and have all the cleanup of dinner so this year it was all made by Harmon's.  Besides some of the portion sizes being a little off, it was really pretty good food and worked out good. 

The cousins had fun playing together in the basement and the adults even got to sneak in a card game upstairs.  Late that night we headed back to my parent's to sleep over.  Since my sis was there with her family we thought we'd join in on the fun.

Friday was nice as we relaxed at my mom's.  One of the fun things we tried out was to dip pretzels and marshmallows in chocolate and caramel.  The caramel didn't cooperate too well as it would harden too quickly.  But thanks to my dad who very patiently warmed it up at the stove and dipped most of the caramel we have some caramel things to enjoy. 

The kids stayed entertained for a little bit with that, but the parents finished it up.  Our family has enjoyed eating our treats over the past week.  We amazingly still have some left!!

Friday night we got home to a pretty dirty house due to insulation from the attic from the furnace installation all over our house.  After getting things cleaned up we started to pull all our Christmas things out.  Time went by too fast though and we didn't get to the tree till Saturday and finally finished decorating it on Sunday.  Kayleigh was a big help and Landon has done pretty good at not ruining any of our decorations yet. 

Back at the first of November came our first good snow fall of the winter. It was a Saturday morning and Michael took the kids out to play and make their first snowman of the season. Kayleigh loved it!  (As a heads up, my kids do own snow pants and Landon does have gloves, but Michael couldn't find them. I have since shown him. )

That night the snow man fell over because of the afternoon sun and Kayleigh was so sad!  I reassured her that it will snow again and we'll be able to build another one.  I felt so bad for her though, it was sad for me, too!!