HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

after a lovely christmas break we have made it home in time for the new year. i dont have our christmas pictures together yet but here are a few pre activities we did. happy new year!

we are on the activities committee in our ward and were put in charge of the talent show. which also meant we had to be the mc's, by us i mean mik, but we both dressed up and made it fun!

we asked a girl to take our picture and this is what happened.....needless to say we had to do a retake!

the tuesday before christmas we had miks family over for dinner and a gift swap, it was nice to get together and we had a fun night!

tyler and brandon

ashley

we decided to make a bunch of different cookies for dessert. it was a fun idea but definitely time consuming! we made gingersnaps, chocolate thumbprints, mexican wedding cookies, and hazelnut chocolate sandwiches; which we'd never tried before but were SO GOOD! (courtesy of williams sonoma baking cookbook if you're interested!)

pretty much the whole family went to the jazz game monday night. we had a blast and it was such a good game, winning made it even better! go jazz!

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 right now i should be working on my christmas present for mik (its a quilt, he never looks at this so i feel pretty safe about spilling the beans, ill have to post a picture later), or cleaning the house (miks family is coming over tonight for a christmas dinner) but instead im procrastinating everything and posting on this blog! our camera is still missing so these pictures are taken with my camera phone, theyre not the best but theyll have to do!

we are spending most of the next couple weeks up with my family in deer valley. last night we all went to the deer valley lodge to the seafood buffet...YUM! we all stuffed our stomachs to the max, it was definitely worth it!

we kept going back for more and more desserts!

we have been collecting a few decorations here and there the last month, here are a few...

every house has to have a nutcracker

we followed my families tradition with the stockings. believe it or not my crafty husband put our names on those stockings! AND believe it or not it was my dad who taught him how!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

well ill start off by saying my mom is super mom, she's so amazing! she's very crafty and creative, she's always working on multiple quilts along with scrapbooks, crocheting, and cross stitches. on top of that she home schools the kids and is always thinking of fun new ways to teach them, and fun things for them to do. she's completely selfless (i mean you have to be with 12 kids!!!) and always willing to lend a helping hand. as you can tell she's also one of the most fun moms youll ever meet! she's such a great mom to all twelve of us kids (13 counting mik!) i couldnt ask for anyone better, and i highly recommend her! I LOVE YOU MOM!

BODY WORLDS!

we had a funfilled busy weekend! i only have some pictures of what we did because our camera seems to have gone MIA so more pictures will be posted once its located! friday morning we went to Salt Lake to the Leonardo to see Body Worlds with Kyler and Bryn. for those of you who dont know what it is basically it was a museum full of real preserved bodies and body parts. im not very good at explaining but they had stuff in glass cases like real hearts, livers, intestines, blood vessels, etc. and then full on bodies with all their muscles and everything! gross i know, but it was actually really interesting. the only part i had a hard time with was the room with the fetus' and babies, i got so sick i had to leave the room. we werent allowed to take pictures in the museum so we got a few where we could.

so excited because he's powering the christmas lights with the bike!

the picture behind mik is seriously exactly what the bodies looked like in the museum

OH CHRISTMAS TREE OH CHRISTMAS TREE!

here are some pictures of us actually getting our cute little tree. we went with my family and had quite the experience! lets just say we are happy we actually got a tree!

Thursday morning i took the little kids to gardners village to give my mom a break. it was our first time going during christmas and it was actually really fun! they have elves and christmas decorations up all over the place, and the shops had such cute christmas stuff!  we walked around with papers for a scavenger hunt and at the end they got to trade it in for a candy stick!

karson wasnt so sure about the elves

karson LOVED the ducks! he chased them all over the place and kept trying to grab them, luckily they were pretty nice and didnt try to bite!

DECK THE HALLS!

we had a week full of christmas! we started it off by going and getting christmas trees with my family (those pictures are on my phone so ill have to post them later). we went to target and had a blast picking out our very own ornaments! here are a few pictures of our first tree!

mik putting the star on our little charlie brown tree

Tuesday we went to the opening night of the festival of trees. we didnt bid on any but had fun checking out all the amazing trees!

here are a couple of our favorite trees. this one was made out of wood and had balls that went up through it and dropped down through pipes and jumps and stuff...

this one was our favorite! it was made completely out of hand blown glass! we wanted to bid on it but the starting bid was $25,000!!!

i was babysitting on thursday and most of you probably didnt notice but it snowed for about 3 minutes. karter was so excited he ran outside so of course karson followed. by the time i got them both in some warm clothes it had already stopped snowing! bummer! ok snow its december we are ready for you!