Jen's Christmas Party

Jen's Christmas Party seems to get better each year! Good food, great friends and guaranteed laughs! The white elephant gift exchange gets more creative every year and I find myself looking forward to seeing what people came up with.


Last year, someone brought a huge doll that looked like a street walker! Our friends, the Madsens, ended up with it.
The night before we left on our Hawaiian cruise, "Natalie" was left on our doorstep with a funny little note about bringing her along.

We like to think we have a good sense of humor...

And to help Jason get over his fear of "little people", he got to be Natalie's escort! I'm sure people thought we were nuts! We were somewhere between embarrassed and thinking the whole thing was hilarious! We had some good laughs.

We ditched the fish net stocking, let her hair down, gave her a shell necklace, and packaged her back up for the white elephant gift exchange this year. She came with a photo album of her trip and instructions to take her along on their next trip or outing and add to the album.Rod was the lucky winner!

Jason saying good bye

Jason opened a crab this year! You should have seen him jump!

The Edward cut out was a hit! All the ladies wanted it!

Shelley ended up with a New Year's pack that had silly string. Jen LOVES a clean house almost to the point where it is an obsession. So, Shelley having the fun sense of humor that she does, got into a silly sting fight in the living room!

Jen, being the good sport that she is, played along... I think she won too!

It was such a fun night and left us all with smiles on our faces
and good memories with our friends. I can't wait for next year!

December Update

I feel like it must have been December forever! We have done so much in just a few weeks!

Here is a quick update:

We finished our garage last year and are finally putting it to good use. We love having our friends over and having a place just for the kids to play. Here are the before pictures:

typical unfinished garage (and little Ashlyn)

Jason painting the garage

We had a wall put in to separate the kids side from the storage side. Here is the storage side... almost a year ago...when it was first done... you don't want to see it now! Not so clean and organized anymore!

I haven't taken any "after" pictures of the kids side because I still feel like it is a work in progress, but here it is full of kids! The garage has been put to good use this month!

We spent some time out at the Ranch riding dirt bikes and had friends over to watch a football game.

Ashlyn and Jason spent some time fixing the kids computer

I got strep throat for week.

We survived planning another ward party. We decided to have a more casual morning party so we weren't competing with all of the evening December activities. We had breakfast with Santa and had the ward come in their jammies. The event actually went really well and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. We were just so happy to have made it through! (The person assigned to get in touch with Santa still had not the day before the party! Luckily, a new committee member had a jolly disposition and was willing to help out.)

Here are the girls with Santa

Jessica

Lauren

Here was Ashlyn's reaction to Santa! ... classicShe wanted nothing to do with Santa. She later told me that she didn't like Santa and she didn't want him to come to her house!

Our book club took a break over the summer and had a hard time getting started again in the fall. Jen finally got us all together and we are excited to start reading again and getting together for our monthly lunch and discussion group.

We went to the BYU vs Fresno State basketball game

We had planned on just going with the adults, but the boys REALLY wanted to go, so we brought them along. It was fun to see them so excited about the game. I can't believe how fast they are growing up!
Garrett, Zack, Austin

We decorated for Christmas. Jason had a work party. I went to an ornament exchange party. the kids had class parties, Christmas performances and secret Santa. We went to Jen's annual Christmas party (post to come). Caught a mouse in the garage!!! (Keep your fingers crossed for the post to come! It's Jason's story and we will see if I can get him to post. It's too funny to miss!) Austin and Jessica started playing basketball. Busy, busy, busy....

Another Book!

I just finished Ashlyn's book from her first year! Click HERE to check it out! Keep your fingers crossed that it gets here by Christmas!

Family Pictures

We had our family pictures taken last week and it actually went pretty well! I wasn't sure how it was going to work out. Ashlyn has been impossible to get dressed these days. She gets out of the shower and wants to wear her pajamas or her "princess skirt" (see Thanksgiving pictures). Every once in a while I can get her into something else but, it never lasts long. I will find her in her diaper or crying because she managed to get some pajamas on, but they are on backwards and she can't get them turned around.

Jason and I were talking about it the night before. He just laughed and said, "Well, we might just have family pictures with our 2 year old in Dora pajamas!" I love his laugh and I'm glad he has a good sense of humor. It actually made me think it wouldn't be so bad and it could actually be kind of funny. It would be an honest picture.

Ashlyn woke up with a terrible rash on face! Both eyes were swollen and half of her face was red! I thought she might have had an allergic reaction to something, but I didn't know what. It didn't seem to bother her so we got everyone ready. My mom came over to help out with the last few details with the big girls. Austin agreed to let me put moose in his hair but no gel. He hates having his hair look "done". The moose helped...gel would have been better. Ashlyn and Jason had a heart to heart about wearing shoes that weren't princess shoes, and had a bit of a wrestling match to get her into her clothes. It was close, but in the end, Jason won, but not without a good bribe. He promised her we would go see the puppies when we were done. The big kids were promised donuts if they would smile and not complain about taking pictures.

It worked!! Shelley VanWagenen took our pictures and she did a great job! Jen came and was a huge help getting Ashlyn to smile. I'm getting pretty good with Photoshop, so I could clean up Ashlyn's face in most of the pictures, but I had to call Janelle for one of the pictures. She is SO amazing with Photoshop! I can't wait until she comes in a few weeks! She added some cool effects to our family pictures and even taught me how to do it myself! :-) I love how they came out!

When we were done, we went and got donuts and headed over to Petsmart to see the puppies. All of the kids have been asking for a puppy for Christmas. I don't think this will be the year. Maybe next year.

As soon as we got home, Ashlyn was out of her clothes and back into pajamas!