Ryan's Birthday

At the beginning of December Ryan turned 31 years old. (old I know.)


We gave him a few fun gifts and celebrated a little.


Brooklynn loves picking out gifts for Ryan. Especially stuff she can do with him.


In the morning Ryan went mountain biking with a friend. (This is the 3rd year in a row that he has gotten to mountain bike on his birthday.) He hopes to do it every year. Later that night we left the kids with Ryan's parents and we went out to dinner alone. It was nice.

Christmas 2010

We decided this year to make Santa S'mores cupcakes. They were delicious. I think Santa liked them too cause he ate them right up.


We had a busy Christmas Eve this year. We first went to my dad's for lunch and some gifts. It was nice to spend time with my Dad, his wife and my grandpa Dennis. We love the book he got us signed by the artist Al Rounds.


After that we headed over to my mom's to hang out then we had a nice dinner and opened some gifts. The kids got spoiled and had a blast.


We then headed to Ryan's parents to open gifts, read the nativity, opened up jammies and some dessert. This year we made matching pj's for all the kids. (Well I should say Danielle, Allyson and Nanci made the jammies. I was there, but only sewed a few parts. Good job ladies.) So it was fun, but has been decided that from now on we will buy the pj's. The kids were running wild, but it was fun. After a very long, exhausting, fun day. We finally made it home by 10pm.


Wow, it is always a fun sight to wake up and see what Santa left. I love that Santa wraps all the gifts in white. Sometimes though he has to borrow a few blankets of ours to cover the big gifts. But we don't mind.


The kids got a lot of fun toys. These are all the toys from Santa, mom and dad, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. Too many presents. We really scaled down this year, but after all the gifts from family put together, I think we will scale down a little more. What do you think?


This year was hard for me to get something for Ryan. First I was going to get him a nice gift card to his running store. The very day I was going to go there, Ryan informed me he was going there. Then I got him an MP3 player since he lost his and mine. Well come to find out the day before Christmas I find out he found his. Man this boy is hard. Well I ended up having him pick out new running sunglasses. Ryan did so good though. He got me a Kindle. I started looking into them a few days after Thanksgiving when I saw that everyone was buying Nooks and Kindles. I decided that I would save some money and buy one after Christmas when I got all my christmas money. Come to find out I opened one on Christmas. Even better that Ryan bought it before I was even looking at them. Good job honey. I love all the free books you can get on it and I even bought a couple. Now that I got my kindle I had $300 saved and we got nice new carpet for our living room. What a great Christmas.


Some of the kids favorite gifts were...
Brooklynn- Doll house, barbies, MP3 player, Goldilicous (she has pink and purple and really wanted Gold), Nickolodien's Wii fit for kids, Scooby Doo Haunted House, Tangled Leapster game
Cameron- Bike, Curious George movie, Wii Elmo game, Toy Story figures and Train set
McKenna- Swing (mom's favorite too), magic wand, baby block and books and teddy bear
The kids also got Toy Story 1,2 and 3.


Some of our favorite gifts were...
Ryan- XBox game, badly needed t-shirts, car washing stuff and he does like the MP3 player (it is better than his old one.)
Dani- Kindle, Wii Biggest Loser, some new shirts and fun new board and card games (and my new lush carpet. I will get a picture soon.)

It was a great Christmas to spend at home and with family. Always nice to remember the true meaning of Christmas. I love that Brooklynn understands and it is important to her.

Holiday Happenings

So it's been awhile. Here are some things we have been up to lately... Ryan and the kids decorating our tree. The kids colored the paper to make our Christmas countdown. Then we put service things that Brooklynn and Cameron had to do each day as they ripped off the link. (some of the things were... color a picture for someone special, call someone on the phone and tell them you love them, sweep the floor, Do something special for someone and so on...) The kids told me some things they wanted and through out the last month or so I was saving ads. Brooklynn helped cut them out and glued them on their papers. We did see Santa and showed him, but he let us take the lists home to save. Nice guy. Each year Ryan and I have been married we get a new book for Christmas. We are up to 10 books. (even though we have more Christmas books we only have 10 official christmas books.) So the kids got to open a book to add to our collection. This year we opened two. Last week we made a gingerbread house. It is one of Ryan's favorite things to do for Christmas. Cameron kept eating all the candy, but Brooklynn took the project very seriously. As she does most artsy things. It was fun and messy and a great tradition. Our ward does a Christmas breakfast every year and Santa always comes to visit. Brooklynn is always DEATHLY afraid of him. This year she said that she would at least go talk to him, but she wouldn't even be in the same room. So Cameron and McKenna went with out her. I was surprised that Cameron wasn't nervous. He just sat on his lap and jabbered to him. We have also spent a lot of time reading our Christmas books and almost every night we have watched a new Christmas movie or 30 minute show. It has been a fun year so far.