Our California Christmas

So I know this has been really delayed, I apologize. Life has been crazy busy lately. But I guess we have only been back from California for like 2 weeks now, so its not THAT bad. Plus, I was sick most of last week, so I was not really "here" I was more off in lala land somewhere.
Anyway, I will tell all who are interested about our wonderfully long trip back home. Well, to my home anyway. We got there in the afternoon on Wednesday the 23rd, I would highly recommend afternoon flights, I loved it! Cody and I got to play with the kids most of the day. They were really excited to have us finally right there, and we were just as excited to see them! Little Porter has grown SOO much in just that short time since we had seen him; Rhett had as well. We thought they might be a little put off at us since they weren't that familiar to them, but they realized really quickly that they knew us, and suddenly it was like we had always been there. It was great!
Christmas Eve we helped my mom finish things up for the family. And we played some more with the kids. For the evening our Christmas Eve tradition is going over to my sister Kelly's house for homemade soup and reading the Christmas story. The kids really enjoy it, and the adults will take any excuse to get together. One more thing we do on Christmas eve is opening a brand new pair of jammies. Kelly made all of the kids matching pants this year, they turned out really cute. Here are Porter and Rhett after they got changed into their cute new pjs.

And all of the kids together next to Auntie Kelly's Christmas tree. Rhett, Emery, Fallon and

Porter. They have such a blast together, and we love them SO much!

The next morning wasn't too exciting for us. Cody and I got to take our time doing whatever we wanted in the morning. We slept in until about 9:30am and hung out as we waited for the kids and my siblings to arrive and open presents. Santa spoils these ones, he visits each of them at their home, and then again at Noni & Papa's house. Watching them get into it was a lot of fun. Their excitement is something else, it brings back a lot of fond memories. The kids made out like bandits once again.

Santa brought Rhett this really cool train. Kelly is helping him push the foot petals to get it to go around the track. Cody was way jealous. He would have loved to have one of these growing up. Rhett hasn't quite gotten the hang of pushing the petals to go, so we duct taped it down for him and he went around that track for like 30 minutes straight as content as can be.

Santa brought both of the girls some rollerblades this year, among other things. Their faces lit up as they peeled off the paper. I think I heard some squeals of excitement as well. They had to get outside and try them out right away. Though this picture does not depict it, Emery was pretty quick to get the hang of it. Jeff had to do a little bit of catching though.

Fallon was a natural. Though her speed wasn't quite as fast as Emery, she got the hang of it pretty quick. Pretty much the rest of the time we were there, they would take any chance they got to go outside and skate. Cody was nice enough to take them quite a ways a couple of times. I think he won some MAJOR points with that.

Rhett likes to see what the girls are up to. He loves his cousins so much. Here he is taking a break from his toys with his Papa. He has made up his own language, so he is probably telling Papa everything that is going on in his own special words. :)

We spent a lot of time with the family. I think I saw Porter, Emery, Fallon and Erin every single day I was home, which was nice. Randy and Kelly were home with sick little Rhett from New Years day. So we still saw a lot of them, but not as much as we would have liked to, but its more than we usually see, so we are very grateful.

During most of our trip we were able to take the kids to the park, hit the awesome Camarillo Outlets right in my hometown (reminded me of a lot of things I used to do, and stupid things I used to buy, haha ), take warm drives with the windows down, get REAL Mexican food, yummy salsa, go to DISNEYLAND, the wonderful possibilities were endless...Yes, I do miss living there, especially when its cold and snowing here in good ol Utah, ugh...

New Years was fun. We went to an adult party over at Randy's sisters house with some friends and a few family members as well. The kids were all hidden watching a movie and falling asleep in Nick & Heather's room, so we didn't see much of them. We just played games and ate some really good food, and wait to ring in the new year. It was nice to see a lot of people I had not seen in quite a while. Happy 2010!

Before we left we went to see the Christmas lights at the Los Angeles temple. It reminded me of being in the youth program, because we used to decorate the grounds every year in November as youth. It makes you appreciate all of the work that goes into it. :) But we go to enjoy it with our family this year. It was the first time we had been able to walk the grounds there since we had been married, so that was quite special as well. And it was nice that it was not too long after to our anniversary.

I am so glad we were married here in "my temple". So beautiful isn't it? The palm trees don't hurt either ;)

Here is Uncle Cody hangin out with Porter as they walk the temple grounds. Cody had a lot of fun helping with the kids. It seemed pretty dang easy to him to keep track of 4 little ones instead of the 15 in his awesome fam. Porter was a big fan of Codes, liked to watch every move he made, as well as mine. It was super cute!

Here is my new buddy Porter and I hanging out! This kid is so loving and calm, its wonderful. But with two crazy sisters that are loud and fun, you would have to be. This kid's face lights up if he recognizes any of the people around him, its priceless. Love this boy!

The kids got a bit tired after the drive to LA, and all of the walking, as you can see. So naturally we stopped at Yogurtland and got some yummy frozen yogurt!

It was an awesome, fun filled trip, with so many things going on its hard to mention it all. To all of those we did not see, we hope to see you on an upcoming trip, which we are hoping might become more often and longer, and you are always welcome to come visit us up here in snow country! Hope everyone's 2010 is going great!

ps. Cody and I suck at documenting things with pictures. So that is one thing we have decided to do better at this year. I stole all of these from my sister! ;) Love you Erin!

Update

Alright party people, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. I will do a post later about our wonderful and long trip to California for those of you that are interested. Anyway, about the house. We have had second thoughts about this house in particular, but we know we are getting close to "the one".
Seriously, its like the steps to getting married all over again. You see this house and you think its cute, esthetically pleasing, just wonderful to think about it, and you know you could be very happy with it... Then it comes down to the decision, and something is off, and you just can't take that next step. Now you are looking for the one that is all of those things, but then it surprises you and ends up being everything you have been looking for, and feels just so right, and like yours, like it was made exactly for you! (Do you see the correlation now?)
We actually tweaked our location a little bit too. We decided to look in the town I have wanted to live in since day one of talking about it, a place I already know, and felt like somewhat was a little piece of home...Bountiful. We have found quite a few awesome options and reviewing the options with our realtor. Cody just feels so good about it now, I have always felt good about it, but I needed him to feel that way as well before we could move forward. I couldnt just force it on him and say, hey, I feel good about it, so lets just do it, it will grow on you...
So here we are, continueing our adventure, and wow are we excited. I cannot wait to have a home, an actual home. Not somewhere where I will have to share walls with anyone, or my floor is someone else's ceiling or whatever. I can listen to my music loud, I can jump up and down when we are playing the wii, or when Cody and I have dance party in our family room, ya its crazy fun. And we will have our own space where no one knows our life history because they knew a member of the family or something, they will get to know us for us, not just because he is so-and-so's brother, or went to high school with their son...ugh...I can't wait.
We are feeling pretty good, and know that its right there within arms reach, we just have to find it and make it our own.
Keep you guys posted! Pray for us that we find the right one, and the place where we need to be! We know we will be!

Happy Holidays

Possibly the best Santa picture ever taken. This is my nephew Rhett meeting Santa....I think he made a good impression on the little guy. Enjoy. :) And yes, his dad and everyone else is laughing.

We will be spending Christmas in California this year (Cody's first away from home, besides the mission, that doesn't really count). I am looking forward to spending time with the kids, my sisters, my parents, and since we will be there a bit longer than usual, hopefully some friends as well! I will check back and let you know how it goes, we will be there for New Years as well! :)

Our First

Well, as most of you know, Cody and I had the opportunity to celebrate our 1st anniversary this past weekend. And we were talking about all that was happening just one year before. We just can't avoid, when think back on that particular time, that we are reminded of the protesting and the uproar that was going on at that time. Particularly in front of the very temple in which we were sealed for time and all eternity. I remember the protesters being outside the grounds when we were coming out from my endowment, and how we were praying, wishing and hoping that it would all settle down in the 3 days remaining. There was an anthrax scare the night before, and they weren't sure they would open the temple on the morning of Friday, November 14th, and we had been waiting for the call to make other arrangements. There was actually a protest scheduled (yes, they schedule these types of things) for our wedding day, but miraculously, no one decided to show up that day, and they decided late Thursday night that all was well, and they would be able to move forward the next day. So we are very aware of the Lord's hand in our lives and working to bring us together, and making it possible for us to be married in the temple. I thank him very much for helping me begrudgingly move to Utah after a lot of prayer (I mean ALOT, I really didn't want to), so that I would be able to meet the wonderful man I was blessed enough to marry. We also think its pretty cool that we have an event in the history of our country to reference what was going on when we got married so we can tell our children and grandchildren. Not only that, but kind of stand up for we believe in, and were married as man & wife in the face of the debate. (I just think thats cool, because my grandparents met right after WW2, and I always thought that was interesting).
For our anniversary we decided to go back to where it all began and spend a couple hours doing sealings in the temple. Although we weren't being sealed to eachother, it was awesome to spend that day kneeling across from my husband again. It brought back alot of the memories, and we were able to be reminded of all the promises we had made and that were made to us based on our worthiness. Very cool to hear those very words again as we knelt together.
Tangent, I know, but we had decided we had wanted to start some sort of tradition for our anniversary. We had initially decided we would take a "honeymoon" every year and go on a cruise every year. However, a friend decided to do the same thing, and we wanted to do something that was our very own. So we decided to wait until summer to go on another cruise, and find something better to do for our anniversaries (not that cruises aren't great). So we decided we wanted to do sealings every year in the temple, and try to visit a different temple every year. :) Sounds like fun to us, so that is just what we are doing, wish us luck!
Back on track, we had originally decided to go to the Manti temple to kick off our new tradition, because neither one of us had been there, and we thought it would be cool. But it decided to snow when we were making our final plans. So instead of possibly getting stuck in the snow, we decided to maybe try that in fairer weather.
So considering everything with us started in North Salt Lake, and we went to the Bountiful temple almost every Saturday to do baptisms when we were dating, we thought that would be a good place for us to go this year. We met a really cute ward that had come down from Kaysville, and they thanked us for spending our special day with them, and congratulated us on our "feat" over and over. It was really cute.
After all of that, it was quite late, and we were starving!!!! So we decided to visit the scene of the crime (our first date) and we went to Applebees, and coincidentally, we were seated right across from the very booth we sat at that first night. :) We thought it was pretty cool. And a lot of fun, remembering that awkward night, when we were thinking "I'm not sure this is going to go to a second date...", little did we know.
We had made dinner plans, but by the time it rolled around, we still weren't hungry. So we are doing an IOU, and we will probably go this weekend instead.
We exchanged our gifts, being that the theme for one year is "time", we both stepped out of the box and didn't get eachother a watch, or a clock or anything like that...we got creative. Cody remembered what sealers always talk about in the ceremony before the couple exchanges rings "the ring is one eternal round, just like temple marriage is eternal", so Cody bought me a beautiful ring. I got him a cute camcorder, so he will be able to document our time, and hopefully we will be able to look back at the good times we spent together, and one day as a family! :) So I would say we did a pretty good job this year, we both went an unexpected direction. Can't wait to see what we come up with next year!
Hope all is well with you all, and that you may have or find traditions of your own to share. What temple should we visit next year???

Primary Program

So, I do remember that I had promised a post about how the Primary Program went this past Sunday. Needless to say, I haven't been so excited for something to be OVER!
The kids were especially squirmy this week. No one would stay quiet and everyone needed to be moving constantly it seemed. Thankfully they calmed down a little bit for Sacrament. Whew! They pulled it together and they sat pretty well on the stand, for the most part.
I was very impressed at some of the children who had memorized their parts. Every year they ask that the speaking parts be memorized, but usually no one does. We had 6 kids with memorized parts, I would call that a success! When it came to the songs though, I knew it wasn't going to be that great. Usually during singing time, the kids don't care, they don't want to pay attention, they chit-chat, and the last thing they want to do is sing meaningful songs. They would rather sing "Popcorn Poppping", "Once There Was A Snowman", "Hinges", etc. So as soon as they have a theme of "Acion", we will be set.
I kind of felt like a failure of a chorister, because really, they didn't know as much as they should have. I tried my best, sang the songs with them every week, made up actions (though, I wasn't fond of the actions during the program, its kind of distracting), gave them incentive, played games with them....ugh. But a wonderfully sweet person brought it to my attention, that I can only do so much in 20 minutes a week. By the next week, they have forgotten most of what I had taught them the previous week.
We had made a CD of all the songs on the program for each child to take home. That way they could listen to the songs at home, and maybe that would help them retain the information. However, we would ask them, "Whose Mom & Dad played their CD for them this week?", I think about 3 would raise their hands. So really, next year, we really need to stress that we need the support of the parents to pull it off.
It made me think of the things I would like to do with my children as a parent. I would like to sing the songs with my children, and I hope they remember them with the fondness that I do. I didn't really need a refresher course on the songs when I was called, I have been singing them all my life. I even credit "I Love to See the Temple" with my desire to be married in the temple since I was a child, and I have achieved that. If their parents would stop and listen to the principals the wonderful Primary Songs teach, I think they would be more likely to pop those CDs in! Because out of all of the things people remember, I would say songs rank up there pretty high. People remember cute little songs, just like when the cute little annoying jingles from commercials get stuck in your head. So hopefully when I do decide to have children, that I will be able to help my kids while they are small to sing the songs, cause lets face it, besides teaching them prinicpals, its just plain cute! :)