new year's eve fun

12.31.2010
We spent New Year's Eve at Nicole & Jeff's with their family and my parents. We started the night with dinner together, then we took the kids to see the Festival of Lights. The guys stayed home while us girls took the kids so that we could all be in one car together. It was so fun to see the kids get excited.

After we got home, the rest of our group arrived. Shawn had tricked us and told us he had to work, so we thought Abby was coming over alone. So when Shawn walked in too, we were all surprised and glad he made it! The kids played with Uncle Shawn, then we watched Shawn & Abby open their Christmas gifts from our side of the family.

Once the kids were in bed, we pulled out Abby's gift - a Kinect sports game - and played that all night. It was so fun to play and funnier to watch. (I'm sad I didn't get any pics of Trav playing. He was awesome!) Can you guess what sport we're playing?

It was so awesome to spend the night celebrating with family. 

Happy New Year!

sisters

Kapria and Mila love playing together. They read together, share toys, help each other, laugh a lot, and take turns pushing each other around in the doll stroller. They're learning to love each other, and they're learning to forgive too. Like when Kapria tries to pick Mila up (which is pretty much all the time), or when Mila takes the toys Kapria is playing with and runs away. Kapria is also learning to be patient with her sister: she wants Mila to play princesses with her all the time and gets frustrated when Mila just wants to play by herself. But then ten minutes later, Mila wants to play and Kapria wants to be left alone. But every day they have fun together, and that's the best bit to see.

favorite faces: december 2010: kapria

favorite faces: december 2010: mila

christmas with nonny & grampa

Thursday 12.30.2010

Trav's family drove home to Arizona. We met them at Wendy's on their way out of town to give hugs and say goodbye. I'll spare the ugly pictures of us all eating food and you can get this fun one of Trav and his mom freezing outside together.

Then we spent the day over at Nicole & Jeff's. The first order of business: to open Christmas presents with Nonny Kare and Grampa Dan. Instead of opening everything on Christmas day, we had saved the gifts we got for each other to open when we were together. So the girls had a lot of fun opening up their new dollhouse. It was a hit with Weston and Tave too. AND Kapria got princess dress-ups. Everyone wanted to wear them, but I only caught a few of the kids on camera.

The kids all get along so well together now! It's so fun to be with them. Kapria was in heaven because she misses Weston and Tave so much and asks about seeing them all the time when we're home in CA. So it  was a week of awesomeness for her (and all of us).

whoo whoo

Kjerstin made the girls these adorable owls for Christmas, and they love them! I was so excited to see how perfectly they match these word blocks in their room. The pink owl sits on top of their bookshelf, and the blue one sits on top of their dresser. And every day Mila talks to them. She says, "owl!" and points. Then "whoo whoo."

yaya and papa family

We had so much fun with Trav's family. Somehow the only pictures I ever managed to take were in the hotel. Oh! That's because the girls were sick a lot of the time in Utah. So we made sure to give them their naps each day. AND it was freeeeezing cold. Like so cold that playing in the snow wasn't really an option for us because the girls were so sick and most the snow was frozen anyway.

Mila was so shy around men (again). I thought she'd gotten over it, but she didn't want any of her uncles or grandpas to hold her. Except for Kimball. The girls always love playing with Uncle Kimball. Mila did eventually warm up to everyone else, usually after a bit of coaxing. And of course they all loved rolling down the hallway with Yaya in the office chairs. Who can resist that?

surprise moments

Sunday 12.26.2010 and Monday 12.27.2010

Since Trav and I had lived with Grandma for a few years after we were married, we also attended the same ward together. There are so many wonderful people there, and I'm lucky to have worked with several amazing women when I served in the young women's organization. I haven't been the best at keeping in touch with all of them, though.

So it was such a great surprise to see one of them (Betsy!) talking on Sunday when we attended Grandma's ward meetings. Her talk was inspiring and it reminded me of all the reasons I love Betsy.

Then, it was such a great surprise to see one of them (Shay!) serving the food at the family luncheon after the funeral on Monday. We talked and I remembered how much I miss her and how much I love Shay.

And in the case of both of these women, seeing them again after four (really...that many?!) years reminded me how much I appreciate the time we did get to be neighbors and see each other every week and talk and serve together. And how much I learned from them. And that even though we can't keep up in each other's lives regularly, we still care about each other and want the best for each other. And I love that we have lots to discuss each time our paths cross. I just love happy surprise moments like that.

what the girls did while we were at the funeral

My family was so awesome and took care of the girls so that Trav and I could attend Grandma's funeral without children interrupting. Nicole picked up the girls and they went to her house to play. Then Mom and Dad took all the oldest grandkids-- Kapria, Syanne, and Weston-- out to the movies. They saw The Gaurdians of Ga'hoole. Kapria loved going on a special date with Nonny and Grampa and her oldest cousins. And she loves owls ever since she met her friend Jane, so it was doubly exciting.

After the funeral, Nicole brought the girls back to the church so they could have lunch with the family. You'll notice in the pics that we all had on purple. Grandma's favorite color is purple, so everyone in the family wore it. See -- another reason it was pretty much an awesome day of celebrating Grandma.

Thanks, family, for taking care of us on a hard and good day.

gigi's funeral

Grandma's funeral was just like her: glamour lovely*. She lived such a passionate life. She was excited about everything she did and shared that excitement with us. She loved geneology and family history and worked diligently to do the temple work for as many of her family and friends as possible. She believed in God, prayer, angels, and love. She had a faith in God and her purpose in life that strengthened my own faith and helped me understand my purpose here on earth, too. Each of her kids spoke at the funeral, and I think they did a good job of showing these aspects of Grandma.

She was also a huge BYU Cougars fan. For over 40 years she made fudge and/or toffee for the football players each week during the season. She was known as The Fudge Lady. She attended the games up through last year, at age 88. So it was perfectly awesome and glamorous when we all sang the BYU Fight song as they wheeled her casket out of the chapel.

Travis was asked to paint the metal pieces of her casket blue, and then he got several BYU decals to place on there, too. My favorite part of the whole day, though, was when each of her kids, grandkids, great grandkids, and close friends signed her casket. It was beautiful and unconventional and just what she loved, I'm sure.

We miss her. I miss our talks. I miss her laugh. I miss holding her soft soft hand. Kapria misses her, too. Trav more than both of us, I'm sure. I'm so glad we have a part of her in our girls' strong-willed personalities (however hard that has been and will be) and that Mila has her loved family name of Grace. I can hear Grandma tellilng us, "Nothing is an accident." She's right, of course. Life is not an accident. The hard, good, happy, disappointing, exillerating, heart-wrenching bits of it are all for us. And so are the goodbyes.

Goodbye, Gigi. You've left us with so much. So so much.

*If you ever called her cell phone, the message you'd hear said: "This is glamour-lovely Derelys."

at this moment

We are currently staying in a hotel in Utah. At this moment I'm sitting on the bed. Mila's asleep in the playpen in the bathroom. (Sidenote: this hotel room has the toilet in its own room and the shower in a separate room. The playpen fits nicely in the shower room, so now she has her own space for our stay here.)

Trav and Kapria recently came in from dinner and fun with the family. He helped her get ready for bed. Then they climbed onto the bed so they're right next to me. I'm typing and listening to them talk.

Trav: "I'm falling apart!" (after his feet have been hurting for days...turns out from a staf infection)
Kapria: "I don't want you to fall apart Daddy!"
Gives big hug.
Kapria: "We'll put you back together."

christmas day

We had a great time opening gifts with Trav's family. We all  kept it really simple this year, though somehow the girls still ended up with a lot of toys. All Kapria wanted from Santa was a Rapunzel doll, so you can see how excited she was to open it. Mila loves Mr. Potato Head, so she got some potato head kids that she loves.  I made cinammon rolls (not from scratch...I need to learn how to do that one day), but forgot about the first batch and burned them. So instead of the house smelling nice and cinammony and warm and cozy, it smelled like burnt food. Oh well.

My only regret from the day was that somehow I missed taking a single pic of Kyndra or Dad! I wasn't paying attention to taking pictures at all and just snagged a few of the girls. I'm sorry Dad and Kyndra - I promise next time I'll do better (and I'll be posting some others of you on the trip :).

We loved being all together as family. That made it an awesome day.

christmas eve

Well, our Christmas plans changed a little when Grandma Anthony passed away on Friday, December 17. We were planning to spend the holidays in Arizona with Trav's parents and all his siblings (a first ever since we've been married. We've never spent Christmas with Jeff and Kjerstin). We all decided to move the celebration to Utah so that we could be together for the holiday and attend Grandma's funeral. Mom was already in Utah from having been with Grandma in the hospital, so we all met her up there throughout the week.

We spent all day Wednesday, December 23rd driving. It was a loooong drive. Kapria did great. Mila had a hard time of it. She will watch a little bit of a movie, then get bored. She'll play with toys for awhile, then get bored. She just wanted to get out and move. So she cried and was whiny a lot, but we made it in town around 2am.

Turns out maybe Mila's sadness wasn't all from the drive. She threw up that night in her crib and was kind of sick the whole time we were in Utah. But we still had a good time. We decided since our Christmas break was supposed to be spent with Trav's family that we would make the time they were in Utah our time exclusively with them. We didn't see any other friends or family during that week.

And we had a really great time celebrating the Savior, celebrating Grandma, and celebrating being together. On Christmas Eve we all went to Eric and Linda's for dinner and the traditional reading of the Christmas story, which always includes acting out the nativity. I love that Trav's family does this because it's a tradition my family did as well (though we haven't quite kept it up as adults) and I love that we get to do this every year.

Kapria was thrilled to be an angel and wear wings. McKay didn't want to participate until he saw that Uncle Kimball was carrying a staff as a shephard. Then he was all about getting that staff. Cousins Wyatt, Thomas, and Taylor were the wisemen, with Trevor as Joseph, Haleigh as Mary, and Evileigh as Baby Jesus.

After we got back to the hotel and put the girls to bed (with his dad watching them), Trav and I headed over to Shawn & Abby's. They were out of town for the holiday (in Arizona...where we had planned to hook up had we been there), so they let us have free reign at their apartment. Since they had a Christmas tree, we decided to open gifts there. Trav and I spent late Christmas Eve wrapping the girls' gifts, making everything pretty around the tree, and finishing those gift tags I told you about. It was a fun night. I love making Christmas fun for our kids!

christmas dinner with grandpa keith

We went down to Kjerstin and Jeff's for a Christmas dinner with Trav's dad (Grandpa Keith to the girls). Kapria and McKay had so much fun playing together. Mila had a great time, too...until she fell. I didn't realize she'd hit her head until I picked her up and there was a huge knot on her forehead. Poor baby! It was the biggest bump either of my kids have had. We iced it, then put the bumps & bruises ointment on it when we got home. Have you ever used this? It's pretty much awesome - we use it for every bruise and it really helps the swelling and pain relief.

Despite the head bump, it was still a great night.

playgroup at our house

Right after we moved into the ward, Kapria was invited to join a playgroup with several other three-year-olds from her nursery class. Every Friday she goes to one of the kids' houses for two hours to play and learn. We rotate houses, and whoever's house it's at gives a short lesson on a number and animal and letter. This was one of the days at our house. It's been so good for Kapria to get to know other kids and I think made it easier for her to go to nursery class on Sundays.

what do you do for fun?

mila's turn

Mila loves doing everything Kapria does. Since my luggage has become Kapria's car, Mila decided it needed to be hers as well. She even brought along some friends.

amazon mom

I just found out from my friend that if you're a mom, dad, or grandparent, you can sign up for Amazon Mom. With it you can get special discounts at Amazon.com and you get three months of free two-day shipping. How perfect for the next week of online Christmas shopping!

So click here to go sign up.

christmas fun: parties and houses

The past few years in Utah we had a tradition of a white elephant gift exchange with some of our closest friends and their kids. Last year we also made gingerbread houses with them. So this year when it came time to celebrate the holidays, I knew we had to keep up those traditions.

First, we threw a Christmas party on Friday the tenth with some friends in our new ward. When all was figured out amongst us, we ended up making it an adults-only gift exchange/birthday celebration with about twelve other couples. It was a lot of fun, and we went home with a pretty awesome item that I stole to give to my dad. I'll have to get a picture of it because it was pretty much the coolest/weirdest/freakiest/goofiest knife ever. And I really do mean all of those combined.

I still wanted to do a family thing with the girls, so we invited some friends over for a Sunday evening of making those graham cracker houses. And the S family turned out to be some serious house-builders. It was so much fun!

I love that we were able to continue on with some of our Christmas traditions in this new place. Thanks for helping us celebrate, friends!

oh christmas tree

We spent the evening decorating our tiny little tree. This about as big as would fit in our house, and we got a fake one since we were headed out of state for the holiday anyway. The girls of course loved decorating and wanted to play with every ornament, which is why I mostly just decorate with bells anand a few other non-breakables. Small and sweet and cute. The girls loved that it was just their size.

our first disney day

We had so much fun at Disneyland with Nonny Kare and Grampa Dan. Kapria was so scared to meet all the people, even though she'd been talking about meeting princesses for days before the trip. But when she met Belle, it really was magical. She ran right up to her and couldn't stop staring at her dress and touching her cheeks. It was so cute to watch her face. She was entranced.

The Christmas parade was really fun to watch. Of course Kapria loved when all the princesses came dancing by. Next time I'll have to get that on video. She loves pirates, but was a little scared of Pirates of the Caribbean. Trav took her on the Madehorn (sp?) and she said she liked it, but since then has talked about the Abominable Snowman and how scary he was. She keeps asking if he's going to come to our house. I explained that he's a statue that growls when he's turned on and can't do anything when he's turned off, like turning the lights on and off. She spent about a week repeating that back to me, "I turn it on, he growls, I turn it off, he sleeps. Right mom? He can't move his legs to walk here?" Poor girl! Next time we'll have to avoid anything too scary.

We were lucky to get free passes from the "Give a day, Get a Disney day" (thanks to my mom who used all her recycling to earn those!). Trav and I decided to trade them in and get annual passes as our Christmas gift to each other. Since we live so close, we can make an afternoon of it easily. We're so excited! And we're hoping to go on a few Disneyland dates, too. 

christmas ideas: friend gifting

My friend Jenny has a tradition of taking her kids to the dollar store to pick out their gifts for friends and family. I love this! Jenny says it's one of her most fun traditions.

It's great because the kids really think about what they want to get people since they're the ones picking, and it's affordable. Some of the best gifts we've found for friends' birthdays have come from the dollar store. And it helps kids focus on others rather than on the toys and gifts they want to receive.

Love it!

christmas ideas: daily book

Another friend Stephanie recently shared a great book tradition. She gathered all her Christmas books, wrapped them, then put them under the tree. Her boys get to open one book a day until Christmas.

I love this for so many reasons: It makes reading exciting. Kids love opening gifts and now they can have a little bit of that fun every day for a month. And after a year break from reading the books, they will be excited to find some old friends, with maybe some new ones mixed in.

I had already pulled out all our Christmas/winter books and put them in a basket about a week ago, but we haven't read them all yet. I'm going to get some paper today to wrap them up. Kapria and Mila will have so much fun. Thanks, Steph!

christmas ideas: gift tags

My friend Stephanie comes up with lots of great ideas for celebrating holidays, special occasions, and every days. One of my favorites is her personalized gift tags. She created these for her family:

What's so great is that even kids who can't read can recognize which gifts under the tree are for them. I know this will be really exciting for Kapria.

Trav is about to start drawing some pics of our family so I can make some. I can't wait to see what he comes up with!

christmas ideas: gift-giving

Oh the holidays. I could just buy and buy and buy for everyone around me, especially my family. I love giving gifts. If I had the money, I'd be getting gifts for everyone I know. But I don't, and really my girls don't need tons and tons of things.  And as we recently heard in conference, we need to simplify.

A few years back my sister came across this awesome gift giving guide that we both now use for our families.

It's simple and refreshing. Each person gets: 

Something you want.
Something you need.
Something to wear.
And something to read.

For the girls I add in:
Something from your sister.
And something to hang on the tree.

And of course, Santa's in charge of stockings (+ 1 gift.)

No matter how many good deals I find, if I've already covered the bases for each person, I can't buy anything else. I love it.

meliss and doug

I love these wooden toy sets and with Amazon's Deal of the Day TODAY you can get several for 50% off. Go check it out here!

They're perfect for Christmas presents.

december lists

December already? How am I supposed to get caught up with my blog within the year when it's already December?

There are so many things I want to do and need to do this month, so here's my December list:

1. Christmas cards
2. Christmas celebration
3. Fun holiday activities with the girls - at least one a week
4. Fun holiday crafts with the girls - at least one a week
5. Update blog for 2010 within 2010 (that means January, February, March, June, July, August...oh you get the idea)
6. Decorate my house
7. Figure out gifts for our loved ones
8. Create and/or order those gifts
9. Do the budget to accomplish all of the above
10. Apply for Medi-Cal and Food Stamps (Yes, we need help. I'm not ashamed to admit it. And it's stressing me out.)
11. Enjoy!

So, to start with number 1: Shutterfly is having a 50 free promo where you get 50 free prints if you post about it on your blog.

Fifty? Free?
How can anyone pass that up?

I admit I was skeptical about ordering my cards online. Usually I just create my own. But how can I pass up free prints and a major timesaver? I'd way rather be accomplishing numbers 3 and 4 on my list.

So check out their holiday collection. I bet you'll love it!
I'm off to cross out number 1 now. 

yummy

December 2, 2010

bedtime fun

Nighttime at our house can get a little crazy.

December 1, 2010

sunny day

We are loving the warm December weather and head to the park every chance we get. We met up with our new friend Marisa and her daughter. Jenna and Mila are close to the same age (2 months apart), so it's fun finding a friend for her.

Mila is a little scared of swings right now. We have to make sure to only do small pushes or she gets scared and wants off right away. Kapria, on the other hand, can't get enough and just wants to go higher. "Higher!"

And Jenna loved sitting in the big swing! She is all smiles, but I couldn't catch one on camera.

Fun days with friends!

December 1, 2010