Christmas Cards

So I wanted a way to organize my Christmas cards. I know I should probably just throw them away, but I just can't seem to do it. So I made them into a little book. I wanted something small and simple. Something that would make them easy to look at. So I created this:
I put newsletters on 1 side, and if there was an accompanying picture, it went on the other side. That way, as you read the letter you can see the people who it came from. I also put "loner" pictures on the right side to be space efficient. The pictures were put on the backside of the next newsletter to condense the book. Here's our newsletter and picture. Of course I had to include that one! So if you by chance didn't get to see ours, now is your chance!
Any extra pictures I arranged after the newsletters.
All Christmas cards I cut down to the "essentials" to conserve space.
Then I drilled some holes, strung some ribbon to hold it, added some little touches, and vwala! Our Christmas card book. I was so happy with how it turned out. It was exactly what I wanted. It was so simple too - it only took me about 1 1/2. Awesome!

Strep, Strep, Go AWAY!!!!

Strep, strep, go away, and don't come back another day!

Here's a little bit of deja vu or irony
2 months ago, we had a weekend trip planned to go see my sister Natalie, and her new little baby. I had professional development day on Friday, but was feeling sick that day. Ended up not going on weekend trip due to sickness.
This weekend we planned a trip to go to my Natalie and Mark's baby blessing and visit my new nieces. I had professional development day on Friday, but didn't go because I was feeling sick. Ended up not going on weekend trip due to sickness.
See the pattern? I better not plan any more trips close to professional development days! Or to see Natalie, but of course I'll keep planning those.

I don't know how people do bedrest. I've been in bed since Thursday afternoon, and I'm so ready to be up doing stuff. I ache just from lying down! The best part is though, the worth is done, and I can only go up from here! That's reassuring!

CARIBBEAN!!!!

WE'RE GOING TO THE CARIBBEAN!!!! WE ARE SO SUPER EXCITED!!!

WE WILL BE GOING FEBRUARY 27-MARCH 9!!! WE'RE GOING ON A CRUISE! WE FOUND PLANE TICKETS TO FLY TO MIAMI FOR $230 PER PERSON - CAN'T BEAT THAT!

ANYONE WANT TO JOIN US? WE'D LOVE TO HAVE COMPANY IF YOU'RE GAME (AND AVAILABLE) LET US KNOW!

Family Videos

About a month ago I was looking at what I would do for my mom for Christmas. One of her favorite movies is an old Cinderella. We have it on VHS, but I thought it would be great to get her the DVD. Well, the DVD is no longer made and would cost $100 to buy. Yikes! Matthew found a place that would transfer it to DVD. As I got looking at things, I found some software that I could buy to transfer VHS to DVD on my own. Then I had this great idea that I would transfer all my parents' family videos to DVDs for their Christmas present. Then I thought it would be great to do that for Matthew's parents as well.
I did not know what I was getting myself into!!! It turned into a HUGE project that I will be working on through this next year. It is a lot of work! My parents had about 10 VHS tapes, but they also had about 8 VHSC tapes. The VHSC tapes fit into a VHS for playback. My parents don't know where their VHS tape is, so they couldn't even watch those home videos! They only have 1 VCR player in the house, which doesn't make it very convenient to watch VHS tapes.
Matthew's family had about 18 VHS tapes and about 10 DV tapes. While I was working on this project, the last VCR in their house broke, so now they have tons of VHS tapes they can't even watch.
The first VHS tape transfer was the most difficult. I was learning how the software worked, the VCR I was using broke, the DVD wouldn't burn, etc. etc. It seemed like everything was working against me to keep me from completing the project. For 3 weeks it seemed like all I was doing was working on transfering VHS tapes.
I'm still not done with it, but all I can say is:

I AM SO GLAD I DID IT!!!!

It's totally been worth it! It's definitely been a lot of work and some days were really frustrating with it. It can be a long process, but on good days, you can have the computer do the work and come back later to make sure it's doing it's job. I was more excited for our parents to open their gifts from us than I was to open my gifts. I gave 8 DVDs to Rick and Jeannine, and I gave about 10 DVDs to my parents. It was so fun to see how excited Rick and Jeannine were to receive their home video DVDs. They saw me working on my parents and kept saying what a great gift it was. So they were ecstatic and surprised when they received their own home videos. My parents loved theirs as well. At first they thought I had someone else do it, but then they found out I had done all the work with them. My mom says she can't wait to watch the videos when we're over for Sunday dinners. They are so fun to watch! It is so nice having them on DVD. I set them up so there are chapters for every event, so you can skip to the events you want to see instead of having to fast forward to them. The funny thing I found out was my parents were going to have this done, and they were going to give us the DVDs for Christmas, but I beat them to the punch! Hee hee. We now have over 50 hours of home videos we can watch. My plan is to give copies to our siblings this year for their birthday presents. Perfect! So if you or you know of someone who wants their VHS transfered into DVDs, then I'll be happy to do it for them for a small fee. Matthew says I should make a business out of it....maybe I will.....

These are all the DVDs I did for my parentsThese are all the VHS and VHSC tapes I transferred. The other nice thing about these DVDs are they take up way less space than than the VHS tapes

These are all the VHS I've done for the Henages. I have yet to do their DV tapes though, that's still to come
Yipee for me!

New Year's Eve

We had so much fun for New Year's Eve! We had a FULL HOUSE! And I loved every minute of it! Jeremy and Therese came down from Boise. (I went skiing with Jeremy at Solitude the day before - AWESOME! It was such a fun ski day!) We got to meet our cute new nieces. Jeremy and Therese adopted 3 little girls on December 11. Hera, Zarian, and Jesse. It was so fun to get to know them and spend some time with them. What cute girls! It's a little different for our family to have girls around - so far we have only had boy grandkids in the family. Mike brought Miriam, a girl he's currently dating, and she brought her two girls, Shelby and Shanille. Dustin and Alicia had their two boys, JJ and Cameron. Lots of kiddos! It was so fun! We ate some yummy, yummy food, opened presents, watched some home videos and hung out. Then we came over to the Henage's house and played some games in the racquetball court, had some pizza, and talked. Everyone had other plans for New Years, but it was sure fun to spend time with everyone. Our family is growing! It's so fun!
Here's TJ holding Cameron
TJ and JJ
Shelby was hiding from the camera
Shanille was happy to smile for me
TJ trying out his skills on the organ
Therese and Jesse and Mike and Miriam doing some puzzling
US!!!
Jeremy and Cameron
Jer and TJ
Dustin and Cameron
The bigger Schick family - Zarian, Therese, Hera, Jer, TJ, and Jesse
Hera LOVED holding Cameron, she did so well with holding him!
The Schick family got nativity costumes to dress up in for Christmas. We had to try it out. The kids all looked so cute in them! They loved trying on all the different ones.
Zarian especially loved the wings on her angel costume
Shanille and Shelby - I got Shelby to at least look at me this time - hee hee
It was so fun being with family! The day went so fast - too fast! I wish those days would last longer, but they are sure great when we get them!

Christmas with the Schicks

We celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas day with my family. I love spending time with family! It's the best! One of my family's favorite Christmas traditions is the Christmas box. When my two older brothers were just little, my parents were struggling financially. One Christmas they received a visit from Santa who brought pajamas and toys for my brothers, a dinner and some money for my parents. Once my parents could afford to it, they started their own Christmas box. Every year we find a family in need. We all go to the store, pick out and buy food for a Christmas dinner. We wrap a box and fill the box up with the food. My parents include a money envelope. We then all crowd into the car to go to our destination. One person carries the box, but we all walk up to the house, ring the doorbell and run! It's so fun with everyone doing it. I love it! There have been many fun experiences through the years and funny stories from it. We then all climb back in the car, and drive by to make sure the people got our package. We all love it! Christmas Eve was great with a delicious dinner made by my mom followed by a Christmas program organized by my dad. The program usually contains the Christmas story, maybe some other stories, some songs, some Christmas memories, etc. It's always a great time to remember the Savior and reflect on his birth and life.
My parents' house always looks so fun and festive at Christmastime. It's always fun to drive up to their house and see this:
My mom always decorates the inside of the house so beautifully. I love all their fun decorations in their house. Here's their little Christmas tree forest
I love Christmastime!!! Christmas is not Christmas without family, and I am so grateful for the time we got to spend with our families. How I love them!

Merry Christmas!!

The weekend before Christmas we celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas with the Henage family. Rick and Jeannine were going to Israel the day after Christmas, so we decided to do Henage Christmas early, so they could then focus on their trip. It was a great idea! We got to have almost everyone in the Henage family there to celebrate. We didn't have to choose between 2 families. It was so fun to spend time with the family! I loved it! We did the Henage tradition of reading the Christmas story by candlelight and playing with the wax. Always a favorite. We also all sung Christmas songs around the piano which was tons of fun. The next morning we opened presents and played with family the whole day. Such fun! I got a new yoga mat. Matthew and I got a new deep fat frier - we can't wait to make sushi with it! We both got wireless headphones. Brittany made me a way cute purse - I love it! I'll have to post a picture of me with it later. It was kind of weird celebrating Christmas early the way we did, because it felt like we had already had Christmas. I kept forgetting that Christmas was still coming up.
Here's our tower of presents:
Matthew's wild, wild hair -
Matthew was in desperate need of some pajama bottoms - as you can see
Good thing Matthew was a good boy, so Santa could bring him some new ones.So here's the story behind those lovely looking pajama bottoms. I wanted to make him some for Christmas. I made tons of pajama bottoms in high school, so I thought I could do them in no time flat. Or so I thought....The first obstacle was finding some material that would be Matthew worthy - 3 stores later we finally found some that I liked. We (My mom and I) thought we got more than enough material to make them, but when we laid them out, we didn't have enough to make them long enough. No big deal, we would just add some at the bottom. After we had them all cut out we realized the words in the front were upside down. I busted up laughing! How funny is that?! This is about how all my sewing projects go - DISASTROUS! I was not going to buy more material or lay them out again. He'll just have to deal with it. Besides, the fabric is busy enough that you really wouldn't be able to tell unless you were looking for it. As we continued to make them I kept thinking they looked HUGE! I wanted them to be big and cumfy, but not ginormous! It seemed like there were other things that just weren't going our way, and they took WAY longer than I had anticipated....but I finished them, and Matthew loves them! He said he likes the words upside down, because it's easier for him to know which side is the front, and he can read the words when he sits down. He's so cute. I knew he would love them no matter how they turned out. I have such a great man! Maybe I'll look into taking a sewing class, so I can learn more and become more experienced with sewing. Then maybe I'll even enjoy doing it!Alisha had her Christmas dance the day we were celebrating Christmas. It's always fun helping her get ready. We all loved taking pictures and sending her off that night. Isn't she gorgeous!!!! She and her grandma made her dress. I love it! The slinky was a big hit with the kids