Happy Birthday Jennifer!

My little sister is seven-friggin-teen today! What?!? When did it become okay for little sisters to grow up?

In honor of her birthday, I'm posting some pictures of her art.







Yeah. I know. Request your signed copies now, because she'll be famous someday!

I love you Jen! Happy Birthday!

3 more Christmas pics...(that's it! I promise)

Here are some more pictures from Christmas week. They are random and don't really belong in any catergory, but I felt that I should post them anyway.

This post is mainly for this picture.

This is Kate with her great-grandpa Welker. We saw him on the 23rd, when we had our pre-Christmas Eve party with the Watson's.


Before our Christmas trip, my little brothers had a little too much fun "Kate-ify-ing" (babyproofing) the house.
They put outlet covers on the outlets by the countertop! Why would Kate be up there? I thought it was really funny, so I put Kate up on the counter and took a picture.

On Saturday we got together to eat pizza and play games. We played Pictionary Man. While Paul was drawing I thought that everyone looked like they should be the happy family on the cover of the box, so I took a picture.
If you look closely, you can see Kate trying to play.

Okay, I think that's the last of the Christmas posts! I hope everyone had a great one! I know we did!

Kate was VERY good this year!

I took so many pictures of Kate opening her gifts, that I decided to create a post just for her! These aren't even all the pictures. I condensed it. A lot.

This is our gift to her. At first she didn't understand and would just crawl away.

But with a little help from mommy, she got it open.


Blocks! Alex tried to show her how to play with them, but he tried to put the X shaped block through the star hole.

These are Grandma Foree's gifts to Kate. She got her wooden toys from Rosie Hippo and they are really cool!




At Grandma Watson's house, she received a baby doll and a stoller!
We put it together when we got home, and she loves it! She pulled herself up on it right away and started walking with it.



Geez, this girl is growing up way too fast! I might have to put this toy away because I'm not ready for her to start walking yet!

Christmas Afternoon

After Christmas with my family was done, we headed up to Pinetop to spend some time with Dustin's. I love that both of our families live close to one another. We get two Christmases every year!

We drew names amongst us "kids" as well. I had Scott, I got him a Wii points card and a HD converter cable thingie for his tv. Dustin had Bethany, he got her a pro-photographer photoshop book. Scott had Dustin, and he gave him the New Super Mario Brother Wii. It's a great game! We love it Scott! We've already beat it! haha. Bethany had me, I got a really cute diaper bag, some lotion, and Julie and Julia. (I later exchanged the one Dustin gave me for Harry Potter 6.)

From Dustin's parents we got tickets to Sea World, the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park! We are sooo excited for this trip! We loved it when we went last January, and it'll be so much fun with all the family and kids! The boys also got a round of golf (which they'll be using on New Years) and us girls got tickets to Mary Poppins! YAY!

I'm a loser and didn't get pictures of any of that. But I did get some pictures of the grandkids.


Kate loves Jaylee! She recognizes her now, and gets so excited every time she sees her.

Bethany found this wooden train rocking horse at a garage sale! Isn't it so cool? Maddock just LOVES trains, and he thought this was the coolest thing ever. When he sat on it he said "I'm riding on a train, NO WAY!" haha. I love that kid.


Kate liked it too.

Maddock also got a Cars bike from Grandma and Grandpa.


And yes, Kate did get gifts this year! I knew you were all wondering that right? She did. She got a lot! So much, that she is getting her own post which will be the next installment of the Christmas posts.

Thanks again everyone! Christmas was awesome this year!!!

Christmas with the Foree's

On Christmas morning, I dressed Kate up in this cute Santa outfit...

...and then used her to wake up my brothers and sister.


The stockings.

Inside each of our stockings were lots and lots of candy, little cars that were powered by balloons, and stuffed snowballs! Yep. They were like stuffed animals, but...snowballs. We each got two in our stockings, and had SO MUCH FUN throwing them at eachother. I think it's safe to say that the snowball fight was never really over...

After opening our stockings, it was time for the grandest tradition of them all. SUGAR CAKE and hot chocolate. This sugar cake is what I live all year for. It's so good, and is definitely my favorite Christmas tradition. This year I learned that this tradition goes back a lot longer than I thought. This is actually my great-grandmother Schmuhl (sorry, I should know how to spell that)'s recipe, and she made it when she lived in Germany. The tradition was then brought over when she and her family immigrated to New York when my grandmother was just a little girl. It was then carried on by my grandma, and now my mom makes it every Christmas!


By the way Mom, could you email me this recipe so I can make it and post it on my cooking blog?

You should all be very excited.

See how excited everyone is? haha.

After stuffing ourselves with sugar cake, it was time to exchange gifts. This year we all drew names.

Dustin had Jared. He got him this monkey we found at the Tempe Festival of the Arts a couple weeks ago. It's entirely made out of metal. The picture doesn't do it justice. It's actually very cool.
Andy had Jen. He got her this Taylor Lautner poster. She's blushing with excitement here.
He also got her a decorative box from Hobby Lobby, and I filled it with hair bows that I made.

I had Andy. I bought him a winter coat from Old Navy. Poor guy lives in Provo and doesn't have anything warm!
Alex had Dustin. I'm not sure how to describe his gift... it's like a cube of magnetic balls that can be shaped into anything. Kinda like playdoh-but magnetic balls. There. That's the best I can do.

My mom had me. She made me a very cute apron, and even made a little one for Kate! She also got me a box a cake decorating supplies, which I am very VERY excited about. I've always wanted to learn how to decorate cakes, and my grandma used to do it for a living, so it's gotta be in the genes right?
Jen had dad. She got him some socks, a snickers bar, and framed some of her art for him to hang in his office.

Jared had mom. He got her an archaeology book.

Did I forget anyone?

Then Dustin and I exchanged the gifts we got eachother. I bought him Gladiator on DVD (his favorite movie, but it's on VHS so he never watches it) and The Dark Crystal (also one of his faves, but it was stolen when our car got broken into about 5 years ago). He bought me Julie and Julia! I love this movie! And he also got me mommy-and-me aprons. Hahaha. I guess everyone knows where I've been spending my time lately!
Christmas was AWESOME this year! We had so much fun spending so much time with family. I'm not even close to being done posting about it, so stay tuned!

What is this stuff?

We were blessed to spend an entire week for Christmas this year with family.

While we were there, it snowed! I bundled up Kate, and we took her outside to experience her first snowfall.


We placed her on a plastic bag, so that her little bum and legs wouldn't get wet.




In the end, she decided that she didn't like the stuff.

8 months already?!?

Today I learned a few things:

its hard to get Kate to look at the camera


it's hard to get Kate to smile for the camera


I need to sweep my porch


my baby is 8 months old, and is growing up way to fast.