Christmas Traditions

I love Christmas. There are some traditions that I get very excited about every December. One of them is the Christmas tree. It's been 2 years since I've put up the tree. Last year I was 9 months pregnant with a 15 month old so I didn't have the energy to do the tree last year. This made me all the more excited to put it up this year, even though I now have 2 little boys that can play with the tree. One thing I love about it is the ornaments. I remember putting up the tree growing up and my mom would pull out all the ornaments and we would get to put them on the tree. She had so many that had stories behind them or special meaning. I am the same way with my ornaments. Most all of them have meaning, or a story behind them. Here are just a few of my favorites...(the pictures didn't turn out that well but I will put them on here anyway)

This is Blake's ornament for this year...it says baby's first.
Here is our First Christmas Together ornament
Every year my mom gets us new ornaments and this one is from 2008..the year we started our family when Nathan was born.
This one says "Christmas in the Mission Field 2003" (it's hard to see it)My mother-in-law gave my these cute little shoes last year when I was pregnant with my little boy...Blake was born 3 weeks later.

This one says "Sister Nelson Urbana Ward 2003" I got this in my first area on my mission from the student Ward RS. I loved that Ward!
A snowflake that says "Nauvoo" - One of my favorite places!!
This is a homemade ornament from my Grammie. On the back it says, Merry Christmas, love Grammie and Papa. When they were alive, it was a tradition that we would get ornaments from them as well.
I have lots more but that is all I will share. I have a first Christmas for Nathan as well but it's a little snow globe and I couldn't take a good picture of it (I tried :)

Another memory I have of Christmas growing up is making a white chocolate Nativity with my Grammie. I have been looking for the molds for a while and my Grandma that lives here in St. George had them! I was so excited that she let me use them this year so this last weekend, we made a white chocolate Nativity. Nathan keeps asking if he can eat it. He has already licked Joseph so that one is his :)

Thanksgiving week pt 2

We spent some time with Wes's family while we were in SL and here are a few pictures from that too.
Nathan and Nana were making a cute little nativity out of candy and marshmallows and of course, Nathan was just eating it all :)

Every year we make holiday plates with Wes's sister and her family. Here we are making our plates.


It was fun to spend time with both families. We'll be back to do it all again in 4 weeks!

Thanksgiving weekend

This year for Thanksgiving we were able to go to Salt Lake and spend time with our families. For the last 2 years, Wes has had to work on Thanksgiving day. With his new job, he gets holidays off!
While my mom and I worked in the kitchen, Nathan was out in the shop with his Grandpa making a tool box. He was excited to make it because he loves using tools.Nathan and Blake playing with a new toy that Grammie and Grandpa got them.

It was a fun weekend!

Family Pictures

We got our family pictures taken last month and I just got them back. Here are a few of the good ones. Just thought I'd share :)

Halloween

We had a trunk-or-treat ward party on Thursday night that we went to. Wes and I were bunches of grapes and then we had our blue crayon and little monkey. We had a lot of fun and Nathan loved that people gave him candy!


Then on Friday, we went to Wes's work, SkyWest and went trick-or-treating to all the offices and cubicles. Wes was dressed as a zoo keeper because his dept dressed up as different animals and he was the zoo keeper. It was fun for the kids to see where dad works and of course, the candy was great! :)
(I obviously did not dress up for this one)

Piano Lessons

Well, I don't think anyone that lives in St. George looks at my blog but if you know anyone that lives here and wants to take piano lessons...I'm teaching. I've always wanted to teach piano. I need to make a little money and I don't want to leave my kids if I don't have to.
I am opening up 3 afternoons a week. I already have one student! yay! I need a few more so spread the word!

Requested recipes

This is kind of fun for me :) I love sharing recipes. I've added some of the requested recipes to my kitchen blog. If anyone wants any more just let me know and if they aren't on my other blog already, I will add them for you.

*The link is on the top right of this blog :)

** The Brown sugar pork ribs recipe is already on there, you can click on "crock-pot" on the side or "pork" and you'll find it.

Anymore requests or questions...let me know!

If you have any favorite recipes...send them my way, I always need more ideas!

Menus

I really enjoy cooking and I don't mind making dinner every night but I just hate coming up with the idea. I like to make menus so when it's time to make dinner I can just look at the menu and see what's on the list. It makes grocery shopping much easier and cooking much easier. I usually just do 1-2 weeks at a time and lately I have been a slacker on making my menus.
Yesterday I finally just sat down and went through all my recipes and made a giant list and then I have a little note pad that has all the day of the week on it so I went through and assigned a meal to a day and as of right now I have all my meals planned until November 12th. And really since I have no repeat meals I could just repeat everything once and now I have 2 months! Awesome!
I get pretty excited about it. It makes me feel good to plan out that much.
Anyway, here is my list of meals. If it helps you get some more ideas for dinner then I'm glad I shared it. I should say that I do have some leftover nights planned in there after some big meals and on Sunday's we usually have breakfast for dinner so I didn't include that. Some Sunday's I threw in a real meal just for a break.

Meat Loaf and Baked Potatoes
Brown Sugar Pork Ribs
Beef Stroganoff over noodles
Big Burritos
Parmesan Ranch chicken, brown rice
Greek Vermicelli
Homemade Egg rolls, Teriyaki chicken
Roast with mashed potatoes
Broccoli cheese soup
Crisp Chicken burritos
Potato ham soup
Chicken cordon bleu
Lasagna casserole
Breakfast Burritos
Homemade macaroni and cheese, honey glazed sweet potatoes
Spaghetti with meatballs*
Enchiladas
Homemade pot pie
Chicken Stir Fry
Corn Chowder
Chicken Tacos
Beef Stew, cornbread
Stuffed Shells
Peanut Chicken

Nothing fancy. If you want any clarification of what these are or recipes...let me know and I would love to share.
If nothing else, now you know what we will be eating for the next month...or two :)

*I've never made meatballs with spaghetti so my goal is to find a good recipe before then. If you know of any let me know!

Lucy

I flew to SL the other week, just for the day, so we could hang out with my parents and mostly so they could play with the kids. Nathan loves my dad's dog, Lucy and still talks about how he gave Lucy a treat while he was there. He gets so excited to see Lucy any time we go to their house. This time while we were there, Blake got to play with Lucy too and he loved her as well! We got a few pictures of that.

What I miss about work...

Let me start this post by saying that I love being a stay at home mom. I really do. I am happy that I get to stay home with them and watch them learn and grow. I wouldn't want to do anything else at this time in my life.
Sometimes though, I miss working. I don't miss all of the demands that I had at work or the politics of management and such but there are a few things that I do miss. I miss being good at something. I worked in banking for several years and I became pretty good at my job. I enjoyed what I did and I was able to move around and learn lots of different jobs. I even got to train several people on how to do the job. People trusted that I knew what I was doing when it came to handling their money. I was good and people told me I was good. It gave me a confidence that I had something I could do well. Sometimes people ask..."what do you do" I could say this is what I do, and I am well trained in it. I don't really get that at home. I mean, I am pretty good at changing diapers and wiping noses. I can fold laundry pretty well and wash dishes, clean up toys and make sound effects of several different things like animals, trucks, planes and trains. But it's just not the same :) I also miss talking to people at work. I loved talking with all the clients that would come in and I was always friends with those that I worked with. Conversations with a two year old and a 9 month old just aren't the same. I also miss having a reason to dress up. All my dress pants don't get much wear these days (who knows if they would even fit me after 2 kids) Once in a while I wear some jewelry or even a skirt to feel cute but Blake just pulls on my jewelry and I get snot and drool on my clothes every day so it's not really worth it.
I don't mean to sound sad because I'm not and again, I wouldn't want things any other way but I'm just saying some days I just miss some things about being a working girl. Does anyone ever feel that way?

Perfection

I read this the other day and I really liked it so I'm sharing it here. Read it if you would like...

Caramel recipe

Here is the link to the recipe that I used for the caramel apples. It's so good, we ate the leftovers with a spoon!


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chewy-Caramel/Detail.aspx

What I love about Fall

I found an apple orchard in Sprindale and last week the boys and I went out to pick some apples. We had a lot of fun and the apples were delicious!

I usually can a lot every year but this year I didn't do that much. I did, however, make a batch of salsa with tomatoes and peppers from my mom and dad's garden. I love salsa so I was pretty excited.

Wes and I made caramel apples with some of the apples we picked. I found the best homemade caramel recipe last year so we used that and it made them oh so yummy! It didn't take long for us to finish them off :)

I love this time of year...although, living in St George has been a little different because even though I'm doing all of these fall things, it's still so hot outside! I guess we will get used to that soon enough. I love this time of year and am getting excited for all the holidays coming up!

pics

Here are pictures of Blake standing up on everything. He's cute but he sure is making a mess!

What am I going to do...

Blake started crawling last week!
He started crawling about Thursday...he turned 8 months on Saturday and this week, he has figured out how to pull himself up to standing by holding on to just about anything! He even started crawling up the stairs yesterday. This is going so fast! I don't know that I'm ready. He's not too steady on his feet yet so a lot of times he will be standing while holding on to something (the couch, ottoman, table, Nathan's little chairs) and then he falls over and crashes. He already has a big bruise on his forehead.

Now that he can crawl around, Blake loves to crawl over to Nathan and play with him and whatever he is playing with but Nathan hates it. I have such a big fear that they aren't going to be good friends because Nathan is so annoyed with him right now. I'm not sure what to do about that.
Also, I can't keep my house clean now. Between the two of them, not only do I have toys all over the place, but also every mixing bowl and measuring cup and whatever else they can find in my kitchen. I have a feeling it's only going to get worse.
Thank goodness for nap time!

My birthday and other fun things...

I'm officially 29 now. I had a really fun birthday this year. Usually by the time we get to my birthday it's like we are worn out of celebrating. We have Wes's birthday the end of July, then our Anniversary on the 15th of Aug, Nathan's birthday on the 22nd and we finish the month with my birthday on the 30th. I've learned that as I get older, the more birthday's aren't as exciting as they were when I was little. That's okay though, because we had so much fun celebrating Nathan's birthday this year and I'm sure it will be that way for years to come.
Anyway, this year was pretty awesome though. First, Wes decorated all of downstairs. He cut out a bunch of letter A's and put them all over and then hung up our happy birthday signs. I decided not to do any cleaning or unnecessary things like laundry and such and instead just played with the kids all day. It was a beautiful day so we went and found a new park that we hadn't been to and played for a while. Then for lunch we went to Iceberg. They give you a free shake on your birthday! Awesome! And Nathan had to get some fries too. Then that night I got to open my presents. I got some clothes, a necklace, and a new crock pot! yea! It was a fun day all around!
Here are some cute pictures of Blake lately. I feel like I don't take nearly as many pictures of Blake as I did Nathan so I'm trying to be better. He is almost 8 months old and just getting so big. He is so close to crawling. I give him maybe another week to figure it out. We just got him a new car seat so he is now out of the baby carrier. He's not a baby anymore!
He's finally getting some hair! Here he is with a cute little hair do after bath time.
And finally, we are in transition of trying to get the boys to share a room. Here is Wes and Nathan taking apart the crib so we could move it over to Nathan's room. So far it's going okay, but not great. We're working on it. I just thought this was cute with Nathan trying to be just like his dad and help out.

The birthday party

Nathan's birthday was on Sunday so after church we had a little party for Nathan where he opened his presents. He got that table and all the presents on top.


Jess and Josh came to visit for the weekend and to celebrate with us! (This is the only picture we got of them)
Nathan loves to help his dad anytime he gets out his tools so he got his own set of tools for his birthday and he loves them!
He had a lot of fun opening the presents.
The birthday cake. It looked much better in my head but they turned out cute. Wes helped a lot with the decorating. (Can you tell they are big legos?)


I can't believe Nathan is 2! He is getting so big. In fact, he's getting so big that he got size 3T clothes for his birthday and size 9 and 10 size shoes! We had so much fun celebrating his special day! Happy Birthday!