Party Central

We have had a party-ful Christmas week. It has been really fun.

Wyatt in Playmobile heaven




Yeah, these are some of Coopers legos that Cade put together for him. It was actually pretty complicated, Cade did a good job.



Of course we had the Christmas eve and Day get togethers, then Saturday we had a DeRusha mexican food lunch party. It was really fun. Bri and I cooked all the enchiladas and rice, I think we did a fabulous job! My sisters and I sang a cool arrangement of Silent Night for everybody, and my Aunt Del and my 2 cute cousins came over for a little while which was fun to catch up with them.

2 of my Cute sisters

Grandmas always bring the coolest presents!

This hook board is what my dad made me for Christmas. It is a real pieceof distressed barn siding. Mark put it up in the hallway by the laundry room for the kids to put their backpacks and jackets on after school. I covered the magnet board with fabric and will use it to help us be more organized on school days. YAY! Soon hopefully it will have a bench underneath it with cubbies for shoes.

My sister Bri was so sweet to set up her massage table and give all the kids real massages. It was a real treat for them. Then after we opened our awesome presents and ate dessert some of us adults went to see Valkyrie. Then my dad was so nice to take Cade and Dayton to Thatcher with him for the week. It Dayton was so excited to be a big kid and go without mommy on a trip. He really insisted that he would be fine and not miss me too much or cry. It has been so wierd without the little DeetDog around here. It has been cool to see Wyatt and Cooper spend some nice peaceful time together too.

Dayton all packed up and ready to hit the road with Grandpa. Fun times!

Sunday night we had Marks cousin Scottie and his wife over with their 2 cute little guys, Jones and Maine. I got to give Jones his first hair cut. We are so excited for them to move to AZ in the spring.

I've been working a lot too on top of it all, thank goodness. I will be really looking forward to New Years Eve and the rest of the week up at my parents where I don't have to do very many chores :D


HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

Movie Review-Despereaux,7 pounds and Valkyrie

Tis the season for great movies!! We have started a new tradition of taking the kids to a show on Christmas eve. It gives us something to look forward to, and it gives the kids a welcome distraction on the looooongest day of the year! And I get a chance to relax on a day that would be easy for me to work way too hard. This years choice was the Tale of Despereaux. It was really cute. I loved the little mouse faces. The humans reminded me of the people from the Last Unicorn movie. It was good. Cade said is was completely different from the book. He's read it 4 times so he should know. He thought it was good though.

At some point we went and saw 7 pounds. I seriously cannot remember what day that was. But either way, it was really good too. It was one of those where the first 20 minutes or so I was thinking "OK, this all better make sense later on because I am totally lost right now". Luckily, it certainly does all come together in the end. It was a very quiet movie, Mark thought it had some boring parts, but it was certainbly worth getting through. Bring Kleenex. Lots of Kleenex. I kept crying after the movie. I guess I was really invested in it.


Tonight my parents and 2 of my sisters and BIL and I went to Valkyrie. I liked it, it was kind of depressing though. It was also very suspenseful, especially for a story that we already know the ultimate outcome. I'd heard poor reviews for Tom Cruise but I thought he was fine. I wish they hadn't used the f word, seriously, did they even say that in those days in Germany?? I don't think so. There was nothing else in it, although a little violent. Sad. But still good and engrossing.

Movies coming up that I am looking forward to, Defiance and Wolverine. I will be looking forward to droooooling over Hugh Jackman. He so yummy and MANly. Leiv Shreiber is no slouch either and he is in both of them.

And I am watching Sleepless in Seattle right now, how great is that movie?? I just love it. LOVE it.

More Christmas posts coming soon :D We still are not done partying!

Awwwwww, its over :(

Another Christmas come and gone. We had such a fun time. Everybody loved thier presents, the food turned out good (except my rolls, dang it. stupid yeast) and it was pretty peaceful. Of course the kids were totally wired and spazzy but I got through it. Mark did have to work all evening, which was terrible but we survived it. He was home before midnight and spent all of Christmas day at home so it was good. We all got nerf guns and had a big nerf war Christmas morning and then since it was raining Cade had some of his friends over (who had nerf guns) and had another nerf war. My house was totally demolished!! It was fun though. My MIL put together one of Coopers Lego star wars ships and the little boys were busy all day making martians with Martian Matter. Sadie got bedding for her room and a cell phone so she was busy and played at the neighbors house for most of the day. I got the biggest present of all, a LAPTOP! This is my first laptop post!! Itwill be so nice now I won't have to go upstairs to the office to log on, I can just have it here downstairs and with me. The best part is that it has a DVD burner which our desktop did not have, so now I can download all the video I've been filming on little disks all year. And I love that I can transfer over everything that I want and have it all organized and backed up. Oh boy I am going to be busy on this thing. Now I can ignore my kids while I watch TV and play on the computer, instead of just ignoring them up in the office. There are all sorts of bad habits to start up now!! LOL just kidding.

Cooper taking a break from Lego making

Making Martians with the neighbors

Daytons Jungle playset from Santa

Christmas Eve Jammies. The Robes were a huge hit!

We still have one more big Christmas party to do here on Saturday, all my side of the family with an aunt and some cousins I haven't seen in a long time so that will be really fun. Plus my sister is here from HI who I haven't seen yet so it will be a fun party. Luckily my parents are having that catered so I'm off the hook there! :D I have to add that the kids were SO sweet and conciencious about always remembering Jesus and his birthday all the time we were celebrating the last few days. It was really cute and I was so proud of them!

I hope everyone had as wonderful a Christmas as we had! I'll post more pictures soon.

Merry Christmas!