Lucky You

Lucky you!
The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It'll be done this year. (might be a little while)
4- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
6- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.
The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!
Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

A Big Scare

Brecken decided to freak us out a little last night. He was fine all day and we put the boys to bed just like normal. We ended up going to bed early cause I was so tired. (some days I just can't nap because I lay in bed thinking of all the things I should do, need to do, and want to do). At 11:30 Brecken started whining.

So I went to check on him and felt his forehead. It was sooo hot. So I got him up and he started screaming. I stripped him out of his jammies and took his temp.- him still screaming the whole time. I just took his temp in his armpit and it said 104.2. Yikes, so it was probably closer to 105.

I took Brecken to wake Branson up (still screaming quite loudly). We filled the tub with cool water and put him in. We weren't sure if there was anything else we should do or if we should take him in to the ER. So I called 911 but they wouldn't give any medical advice, so nix that. Then I called his pediatric clinic hoping they would have an on call doctor.

They did, yay. He reassured us that Brecken would be ok. As long as he was still coherent we could just give him medicine and watch it. Thank goodness for on call Dr's. Branson gave him a blessing and told him his body would handle it and he would be ok.

Brecken was still pretty upset (didn't really like the cold bath) and was still shaking and crying- but at least the screaming had stopped. Good ol' Caden slept through it all. We got some jammies on him and all snuggled in our bed watching Bugs Bunny til we were calmed down a little. We finally got back to bed at about 1 am. Whew.

He woke up happy and just fine this morning. Just a real low fever. I don't know why these freakishly scary things happen in the middle night but "there you go".

Our little Rock Band

So, for Christmas we got Rock Band 2 for our Playstation, and thought it was going to be something fun for mom and dad, and maybe guests when they came over. Little did we know how into it the boys would get. They love to play as much and as often as we do! They, don't really understand how to play yet, but they still like it.

So, within Rock Band, you can either just sit down and play the music, or, you can create your own band and play "gigs" and take your band online and play around the world. We play regularly with Branson's cousin Jeremy who lives in North Carolina. The boys have now decided that they want to be official members of the band. So, they had us create characters for each of them.

Here is our band, Cosmo & Gang. Leah is off to the far left. Caden is second. Notice all the red...someone's favorite color. Branson is third. Caden helped with the creation of his character. Again, notice all the red. Finally, Brecky's character is on the right (he almost had red hair too but when Brans reminded him it's supposed to be Brecken he said yellow for the hair). Brecken picked the all blue clothes since blue is his favorite color.

This is our band, rocking out.

A Fun Sat.

We got up a little earlier than usual this morning. We were planning on going with our friends the Clarks to play today. The daddy's were going to ski and the rest of us go to the Children's Treehouse Museum up in Ogden.

I had to go in and wake the boys up at about 6:40. Brecken stretched, grinned, and said Good Morning Mom. Caden groaned, then said I need to sleep. I told him it was time to get up. So he crawled to the end of the bed pulled the blinds away from the window and said, "Look Mom, it's still dark, it's time for me to be sleeping." What a funny bunny, totally made me laugh.

We headed out at about 7:30 and followed the Clarks to Sandy so we could borrow their in-laws minivan. That's when we heard it was pouring raining up on the mountain. So, the poor daddies had to skip out on skiing. They came with us up to the Treehouse Museum. It was so fun! It's a huge building with fun stuff for kids: trains, a firetruck to climb on, a drum room, a school house, etc. (I'll have to post pics later). The kids had a blast, and so did the adults, actually. The drum room was our favorite. It has drums and percussion instruments from all over the world and you can play on all of them. The boys also really liked to play knock down the giant chess set.

Then we finished the trip up with a visit to the Pie, and bought perhaps the largest pizza we've ever seen in our lives. It fed both families, parents and kids included, with plenty of leftovers for all.

By the way, we thought it was pretty funny today when we were driving, out of the blue Brecken suddenly yelled, "Legendary!" (think Jack Black). It was pretty funny. I have no idea where it came from, or why. But we think most of what that kid does is solely for our entertainment. Seriously, he's funny.

Temple Square

On Nana & Grandpa's last night with us we decided to go see the lights at Temple Square for our FHE. It was a bit of a drive with having to stop at Branson's work to pick him up, but well worth it. We lucked out and it wasn't too cold although we were surprised at how many people there were. Nana was the photographer for all of these pictures.

The boys wanted to stand by the statue:

I thought this was a beautiful shot (way to go mom):

Preggers Leah decked out to stay warm:

Another pretty shot of "our" temple (as Caden calls it- for some reason the Salt Lake Temple is ours, as in our family):

Sledding with Nana & Grandpa

On the Sat. after Christmas we convinced Grandpa (after much coaxing) and Nana to come sledding with us. We wanted to try out the new tube Grandm & pa West gave to Brecken. Getting ready took a little longer than usual because it took an hour to blow up the tube. Branson and Grandpa were taking turns using a foot pump and it was much larger than we anticipated. Well worth it though, we had a great time.

Brecken took a couple rides down the hill with Grandpa:

My little snuggle buddy- please don't grow out of this (yeah I know he will):

There was a little jump built on the hill, Branson and Caden took it together the first time. Then we sent Caden down by himself, he flew off and got a face full of snow. It took him a few more times down the hill before he dared taking the jump again and then only with daddy:

Woohoo, here goes Caden down the hill backward. The little people just didn't have quite enough weight to them:

We were all done sledding here. Branson capooped out at the bottom of the hill and Brecken decided to jump on him and relax since he was capoopered out too:
We love having a sledding hill so close to home!

Christmas Morning

At about 7:30 am Caden came into our room and asked if Santa had come and if he was still here.  We told him to go look downstairs and see if he had come but that he wouldn't still be here since he had so many other kids houses to go to also.  He dashed downstairs and then ran back up and told us he had been here and there are lots of presents downstairs.  We debated waiting for Brecken to wake up or waking him up.  After about 5 min we decided we couldn't wait anymore so we went and woke him up.  

We went downstairs and looked at stocking for a few minutes and then sent the boys in to wake up Nana & Grandpa.  Here is the video of the boys checking it all out first thing:

Sadly, these are a little out of order.  I'm having a little trouble with the browser I am using.  Here is Brecken playing with Caden's Handy Manny Tool Kit.  The boys actually were really good about sharing their new toys with eachother:

I think Nana & Grandpa had fun watching and documenting Christmas morning.  It was sure fun for us having them at our house!

Daddy finally got his quilt he's heard me talking about for the last month.  It fits nicely on our bed and I was able to get 20 old t-shirts out of our closet!

The boys played with their toys for a good hour and then Caden looked up and asked to play Rock Band, so daddy got it out and set it up.  Caden had known Rock Band was up in our closet for the previous two months and had asked every single day to play it.  He was pretty excited to actually get to play it here.  Grandpa really got into the drumming!

Branson rocking out!  He now plays everything on expert level:

Brecken wasn't quite sure what this was but Caden showed him it's for a Dr. and how to use each of the tools.

Caden loved his Handy Manny toolset even though he had forgotten he had asked for it:

Caden opening a big present:

We had such a nice morning.  We spent a few hours playing with all the new toys.  Then we had our traditional Christmas morning breakfast: blueberry pancakes, sausages, and eggs fried in the sausage grease.  Definitely a low fat meal, yum!

I loved just playing around the house all day not having to get dressed or set foot outside the front door.  We had Christmas dinner at about 3pm.  We had ham, potatoes, rolls (the first time I succesfully made them all by myself), green bean casserole, corn and of course eggnog to drink.  Overall it was a very nice Christmas!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve Day was a little busier than usual, but lots of fun. We started out at Grandma & Grandpa West's home since we had spent the night. At about 10:30 am we let the boys go wake up Uncles Mo & Tay and Aunt Dawna so we could exchange presents. We got some wonderful gifts, Caden got his very own child-proof digital camer, Brecken got a tube for sledding, and we got a whole bunch of food storage (thank you soo much!).

Then we headed out to the airport to pick up Nana & Grandpa Steve who flew in from Oregon to spend Christmas with us. After several loops around the airport we found them and piled in to head to a party at my Aunt Mel's. It was fun seeing all of my relatives that we hadn't seen in a while.

We finally made it home to our own house at about 6pm. We ate a small "Bethlehem Supper" (cheese, crackers, meat, and fruit). Then began our Christmas Eve festivities. The boys get to open two presents. First they opened their pajamas- lighting McQueen of course (daddy picked them out). Next they got a new ornament to put on the tree.

Here is Brecken trying on his stocking, silly boy didn't know you don't where these ones:

Here they are in their cute matching McQueen pajammies:

Here is the fam with our new ornaments. Dad's is a utah jazz ornament, mine is a pink baby rattle in celebration of our having a baby girl in a few more months, the boys got balls filled with candy:

Nana and Grandpa enjoyed the show, and the boys did put on a good show. They were pretty excited:

After ornaments it was time for the nativity story. Caden helped daddy put it on in puppet format. They are wearing shepherds headbands:


Brecken was a great audience, he only got up a few times to come check out the puppets and hold up the star:



I thought this video was cute. Oh the excitment:

Christmas Vacation Begins!

We were lucky enough that Daddy had all of Christmas week off (except for Friday) from work. Monday turned out to be an awesome snowday. We went sledding for a little while then came back and played in the front yard. Here is Caden enjoying a snowball fight with Dad:

I thought this was a beautiful series of pics. Brans winding up and then burying Caden in snow. Poor little guy, he took it well though:

Brecken was a little tired and cold by this time. He just sat in the sled and watched the rest of us play:

Here is our cute little snowman. We had to run in and get another carrot because Caden ate the entire first one (unpeeled and unwashed) while we were building the snowman:

This was a great way to start our Christmas festivities. We loved having a white Christmas!