I am officially loosing my mind

How was your Christmas? Did you eat too much and spend way too much time in the kitchen? Do you think Back to School is a beautiful term? Are you ready for a long awaited break yourself? If you answered yes to any of the above, you are not alone. School doesn't start until tomorrow, but you can bet I'll be doing a Happy-Dance once they are out the door. Not that I don't love them and enjoy their laughter. It's just that over the last week, namely since Christmas has been done, they've been fighting a lot. "Santa's watching you" isn't working anymore for some reason. If I hear one more whiny, "Mom! She's looking at me!", I think I will throw a fit myself.

Enough negativity. It's a new year and with it comes new goals and trying not to feel bad about the ones you might not have accomplished last year. I try not to dwell on those, because then I become Ticked-Off Mommy, and the kids don't like her very much. I don't either, for that matter. So I like to focus on what I'm going to do right this year, and for once, I don't have a list a mile long. I've decided to focus on two areas and that's all. The rest can be worked on if I have the time or energy. And frankly, I kind-of doubt I will have either, so then I won't feel guilty for even more things. Does that make sense? I haven't had much adult interaction over the last few weeks, so forgive me if it doesn't.

We had a great Christmas, by the way. I would post pictures, but I can't find the camera and am frankly feeling too tired to go look for it right now. I'll post more later, as well as my Top 10 (or close to it) things I learned, discovered, etc. in 2009.

December is flying by

We've been keeping busy, as I'm sure all of you are, too. We've baked a ton of cookies, gone to fun parties and loved getting Christmas cards in the mail. We've shopped and danced to our favorite holiday tunes in a kitchen that can actually fit us all!
Trent started basketball and he's on the Bull's. They've had a rough start to the season, but we're hoping it gets better after the break.

He's in the blue shorts.

Elise turned 7 on the ninth, and unfortunately came home from school early not feeling so well. Here's how we started the day, with her opening presents:

Here's how we ended the day, with her cake:

I took her to the doctor the next day and she had strep throat. She was miserable, and I was so happy the antibiotics started working right away. I am always so thankful for modern medicine when my kids are sick. I don't know how those pioneer women did it.
Here we are baking gingerbread men on Sunday. I've tried lots of new recipes this Christmas, some winners and some 'thanks, but don't make those again, mom.' I think we'll pass on these next year, but the kids had a great time. Rachel just thought it was playdough. Hailey was at a youth activity, so she missed all the fun.

I'm excited for my brother Kristopher to come down on Thursday and spend Christmas with us. It will just be us this year, which is a little weird, but it'll be good. To say the kids are looking forward to Christmas morning is a huge understatement, and I can't wait to see their faces that morning.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, and I hope you enjoy your holiday, like I know I will mine.

And here's a little extra I had to throw in. Rachel has been coming up with the best fashion statements lately, and here is what she treated us to tonight:

Halloween '09

Hailey looked at me in shock when I said I hadn't posted our Halloween pictures, so I'm being a good mom and getting them up, finally.

Greg and I were invited to an awesome couples party and we had to come as a famous TV or movie couple. We had a blast that night!

Group shot before they all took off.

Our UPS Driver. Can you see who the package is going to?

The best Transformer money can buy, Bumblebee.

Our pretty ballerina.

Cuter than Christian Bale.

Pablo the Backyardigan. She was supposed to be Cinderella but freaked out when I put the dress on her. Luckily Elise suggested Seth's old costume, and she was very happy. She loves the Backyardigans! Her favorite phrase is now, "I go trick or treat with Daddy! I Pablo! I like candy!", said in the cutest voice you've ever heard.

It was a Beautiful Day

I haven't posted in a month, and I'm sorry, Mom! Life has been insane and there is a lot I need to record, so I'll just get to it.
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October 23rd will now be known as U2 Day in our home. That is the day Greg and I went to see them in Vegas and there will never be another concert to top it. Our friends Ken and Katie Craig live in Vegas, so after meeting up with them, we headed to Sam Boyd Stadium. Our new best friend Jason had been waiting in line for all of us since noon. We had general admission tickets, so when the gates finally opened at 6 pm, it was mayhem, everyone running across the field, trying to get the best positions. This is the set up of the stage. Click on it to appreciate how massive it was.

Well, we ended up in the inner circle, about ten rows of people in front of us, and three behind us. On the picture above, see the person on the left side of the screen, inside the circle? We were a little bit closer than that. Perfect!

This is Ken. He and Greg have been friends since their freshman year at BYU. They had seen U2 in Vegas in '92, fresh off their missions; they had a lot of fun rehashing that night and complaining about how old they've gotten.

The Black Eyed Peas opened the show, and they were good. Not really my kind of music, but compared to most opening acts, they didn't suck. That Fergie can sing, even when she is singing about blankets.

The lights went out and the spectacle began. We were treated to songs from their new album, as well as classics. They played for 2 hours and they were amazing. There were two bridges that rotated, allowing the band to reach the outer circle. When the bridge stopped, where were we?

Yes, that is Bono. (It's not the best recording, but you can see how close we were.) The Edge also played a solo on 'End of the World', right above us. We could see the bracelets on his arms, the insane way his hands moved as he played. When we turned around to face the outer circle, you felt like you could reach out and touch them. Larry played bongo drums around the circle and it was great to see him out from behind the drums. Bono's commentary was great and they even incorporated bits of Coldplay and The Killers songs into theirs, as both Chris Martin and Brandon Flowers were there that night. Bono also pulled up a teenager from the audience, running around the circle with him and giving him his sunglasses afterwards. Talk about a memory that kid will have forever! By the end of the night I had no voice, and we couldn't hear properly for three days afterwards.

There are not enough adjectives to describe this show.Two nights afterwards they had their live YouTube show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. It was the same show we saw. If you didn't see it, here is a link to the highlights of that show. (Though they left off some of my fav live ones; Mysterious Ways and Elevation, to name a few.) But it gives you an idea of the scope of it.

http://www.u2.com/news/title/rrrtest#

This pretty much sums it up.

Translation: "I'm so happy!"

Misc.

*I love the way Rachel throws her arms around my neck to give me a hug. It is so full of love, and she squeals when she does it. Sometimes it's like she's taken all the energy she has and throws it out at once, and I'm the lucky recipient.

*We have been here long enough now to say that we love our new ward. It's full of nice-fun-crazy people with problems, just like us!

*It's supposed to be 80 degrees today.

*Even though it's part of their daily chores, some of my kids still freak out when I ask them to unload their portion of the dishwasher. I have this conversation at least once a day: "Do you realize that if you just did it, you'd be done in a minute; instead of throwing yourself on the ground and causing a scene, which takes about five minutes to get over, and just makes me mad." (My portion of the conversation is usually said at a high volume to be heard over the wailing.)

* "It's not rocket science anymore, hon." -Greg
"What isn't?" -Me
"Figuring you out." -Greg

The Big 1-3

Well, even though I asked her not to, Hailey went ahead and turned 13 last Saturday. What's a mom to do? Throw her a surprise 13th birthday party, I guess! Since we went to see the Jonas Brothers in concert in August, it was understood that she wouldn't be having a party or presents this year. She was OK with that, and she knew that was the deal when we bought the tickets. But as her b-day grew closer, I started feeling bad. This is 1-3. A big one. So Elise suggested on the 13th that we throw her a surprise party and it was chaos from that moment on.

I figured this was the last year I could get away with a big theme, and so I decided to go with Project Runway. Hailey loves fashion design, and even wants to major in it in college. So I bought a bunch of fabric, and on the invitations I asked each girl to bring an old piece of clothing that they could redesign. Here's what the family room looked like. (It was 1 am when I did the poster, and you can tell! It had glitter all over it, you can't see it in the photo.)

So the day had been pretty boring for Hailey. She didn't complain, but I know she was going a little crazy. Greg took her to get a treat at 4 pm, and I then went crazy trying to get everything decorated before her friends arrived at 5:30 pm. The plan was for me to stand near the garage door and when she walked in I'd say "Hi hon!", and then they'd jump out. Her friends were so cute, totally excited to be surprising her. She walked in the door and she says she saw the streamers I'd hung up and thought "Oh that's nice." And then everyone jumped out, and she screamed "AHHH!" and ran and hugged one of the girls. It was so fun to see her totally surprised. Here's right afterwards, I forgot to have the camera out when she first got there:

l to r (back): Kenzie, Miranda, Raquel,Becca
front: Abby (her cousin), Hailey

I explained to her what we were doing and she was so excited. Everyone worked on their clothes while we had the Jonas Brothers playing, of course, and while we let the hot glue dry we had dinner. Since she didn't know about the party, she had picked Yoshida chicken and rice for dinner. Not wanting to tell her that really isn't party food, and she's not a big fan of pizza, we went ahead and made a big batch.

Kenzie, Miranda, Becca and Raquel

Abby checking out the fabric; hot gluing their clothes

After dinner we opened presents. Her friends said it was easy to buy for her, with her JoBros obsession. She scored!

Miranda's cute wrapping paper; Jonas flip flops

Two Jonas bags! How is she going to choose???

She also got a gift certificate for a manicure, some yummy popcorn and soda and a cute necklace Abby made for her. After presents, it was time for the fashion show. The girls got on their clothes, and accessorized with hats, shoes and bags. I asked my neighbor Sherie to come be one of our celebrity judges, and Greg had to ham it up as the other judge, of course.

He was in full-on 'designer' mode, if you know what I mean. He was hilarious! Each of the girls came down the runway and modeled their outfits, and they then came out together. Greg asked each of them about their outfits, what their motivations were, and basically just made them laugh. We had three categories for prizes: wearability, creativity and overall look.

Miranda and Becca

Raquel and Kenzie

The back of Abby and Hailey

The winners were Kenzie (wearability), Miranda (creativity) and Abby (overall). They wanted to pick Hailey for wearability, but since it was her party, they decided not to.
After this we ate eclair squares and it was time to go home. I'm glad Hailey has found a nice group of girls to hang out with here. She misses her friends in Lehi so much, but is getting more and more acclamated to life down south.
It was fun to surprise her with this party, and she swears she had no idea. Later that night she started piecing clues together saying, "So when you told me you were delivering stuff for scouts, was that when you took the invitations around?" etc. And then we laughed at how many times the secret was almost blown.
I am so lucky to be her mom, and I hope this year brings her great joy. She brings it to me each day, just by being herself. Thanks Hailey, for being such an amazing daughter.

A teenager is coming

I am going to have a teenager on Saturday. How did that happen? I just found out I was pregnant with her a few months back. Six weeks ago I felt her kick for the first time . I found out she was a girl last month. A couple of weeks ago she kicked my sciatic nerve and made me fall down the stairs. And just yesterday they placed her in my arms. So why does she keep saying she's turning 13?