Christmas is coming

and if you can't tell, this little girl is just a tinsy bit excited!!!

(Feel free to skip this next part, it is just my random thoughts and things I want to remember. I'm sure it is really boring for the rest of you!)

This is such a fun time of year, especially when you are a kid (or mom!)  We have been doing lots of fun Christmas stuff lately and it is all exciting and fun.  

One of my favorite things is listening to Addy sing christmas songs.  Her favorite is Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  When it comes on the radio she always says, 'Yipee, my favorite!" and tries to sing along.  Here are two links since I can't get the videos to upload on blogger. The first is her practice try but I thought it was too funny.  This one is a little bit better!

I also love that she isn't afraid of Santa (it could be the fact that she gets a candy cane).  She's gone a couple times to sit on his lap and she just walks right up and tells him she wants a pink bear and once it was a pink barbie.  Hopefully she doesn't come up with anything else because I'm all done shopping.  

This year I've also started a tradition of reading a christmas story by the tree every night and then we take off a day on our advent calendar.  Tonight Addy turned to me as I was reading and said, "this story is too long."  I think she was ready for her treat in the calendar.

We've also gone on a couple drives looking at christmas lights around town.  It is one of my favorite things and I'm glad Addy loves it too because then it is easier to convince the hubby.  Since we are just going slow through the neighborhoods, we don't make Addy sit in her chair.  So she goes back and forth from window to window looking at all the lights and saying, "ohh I love that one", "let me see, let me see", "this is sooo much fun", "more lights", "i love this", etc.  On one of our drives we saw a house with a blow up Grinch and for the rest of the time in the car she kept asking to go back to the "winch house".  

 Lastly, the other day Addy had a friend over to play and I was upstairs tidying up my bathroom and bedroom when I hear Addy telling her friend about Mary, Joseph, the Wisemen and the baby Jesus.  I really wish that I would've written down what she was saying because it was so cute but I didn't and now I can't remember. So sad.

Well I think that is all I can remember for the moment.

Till next time.

11-11-11

At 11:11 on 11-11-11' we celebrated with a little last minute brunch.  Complete with a hot chocolate toast to this once in a lifetime day!  

Mitch only worked for about an hour in the morning and so after our celebratory feast, he spent the day checking things off his honey-do-list.  It was a great day!

Halloween the final chapter

On Halloween day, I took Addy and one of her friends to the library for a special story time and trick or treating. Sadly, I didn't have my camera so no pictures.  It was a good little practice for Addy to learn to say 'trick or treat' to get a candy and then thank you.

Later in the afternoon, we went over to the church for our big neighborhood trunker treat.

 It is so nice to have friends that dress up with us!

After the trunker treat, I had Addy take our traditional Halloween picture with the pumpkins.  Too bad this year's pumpkin is a little wilted and moldy.

 Then we went over to a neighbors for some pizza and mingling.  It was kind of weird not to be at our house handing out candy because I'm one of those crazy people who actually enjoy seeing all the kids dressed up.  But it was also fun to socialize and Addy had fun playing with all the kids.

I'm not going to say much about these next two pictures, accept it wouldn't be Halloween without a little trickery!!!

Cookies

The Sunday before Halloween, I'd made some sugar cookies for my YW as part of my lesson.  With the left over dough, we made some halloween cookies.  After dinner we had fun decorating them.

Addy sort of ate as she decorated.  She would frost a cookie and then eat it. No sense in wasting time.

 Don't these look professional!  

We made quite a team. I would frost them and Mitch would add all the extra faces and such.

Addy really wanted me to take pictures of her silly faces while she held her cookies.  

This one is her cat.

 And this one is a bat.

Adam's Canyon

While we were down in Utah for the weekend, I convinced Mitch to hike up Adam's Canyon with me and my mom.  He really didn't want to go because there was a BYU football game on in the early afternoon and he didn't think we would make it back in time for kickoff. I promised we would hurry so we could make it back.  

 So we started out and I'd totally forgotten just how steep that beginning part of the trail was.  We were panting from the get go while my mom was running up the switch backs.

 It was so pretty this time of year with all the changing colors.

 The bridge marks the half way point! 

 I'd totally forgotten just how steep and rocky some of those places are on the trail.

 Hooray!!! We made it to the waterfall.  Since we were in a hurry to get back, we literally took a couple of pictures and off we went back down the trail.

 Taking one quick break.

This man was a serious trooper. 

We didn't quite make it back in time for kickoff and it was a little more strenuous of a hike than I remembered.  So I'm not sure he is going to trust me and my choice of hikes for awhile.  I'm just glad that we were able to get out and enjoy the fall colors and scenery.

Halloween Party

It is the annual family Halloween party!!  

This year we came as Peter Pan, Wendy and Tinkerbell.

I'd say we are pretty dang cute.

Here we have a blind referee, mulan and two witches.

Two little pumpkins.  

These costumes were also handmade and they turned out so cute.

A zombie and a very dapper young man.

Two big booty teachers.  They also gave out stickers if you were good!

And this is everyone on my side of the family.  

Pretty scary family photo!

My mom loves to be creepy and scary on Halloween.

For the party we mingled and mauled the baby.

Ate lots of delicious food and played bunko.

 Had our donuts on a string competition.

Just as a side note.  I told Addy she couldn't use her hands when started the round.  So she decided to get a head start by taking an early bite.

Then the first thing she does when we say go, she grabs her donut and just starts chowing down.

And we also sang Happy Birthday to my dear brother.  

Check out the cool spider cake I made for him.  It looks really tilted in this picture but that could be because we drove three hours with it sitting on the floor of the car.  I was pretty amazed to just have it standing.

Like every year, we had lots of fun.  It is always nice to see some of the extended family that we don't get to see too often. And it is always nice to have something else to wear our costumes to.