Christmas potpourri

Enough already! I give in to you nagging bloggers who keep bugging me about updating! Man, are you a pesky bunch. Some random pics from our joyous holiday. Mom, Jerry, and Alyssa came to visit (I have no pictures of mom or Jerry--oops). I have a good excuse--I was quite flat-on-my-back-under-the-weather over Christmas Eve/Christmas day, and so on, so I wasn't much in a picture-taking mood. Just took some of the kids so I could remember what Christmas day looked like after I came out of my fever-induced fog!!!

Anyway, here's what I remember about those couple of days: Nanna (mom) and uncle Jerry and Auntie Lyssa arrived (extremely late in the day on Christmas eve, mind you), and we had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of baked, stuffed shrimp (oh so NOT good for you), french fries, and caesar salad. On Christmas Eve, the 3 bigger kids put on a very short play for us--headed up by the oldest, who made sure everyone got together every day the prior week for "dress" rehearsals. Very cute, but lots of yelling on her part. Don't know where she picked up such behavior.

Christmas morning, we awoke VERY early to see what Santa brought, rifled through the stockings, then had our big Christmas morning breakfast before opening the rest of the gifts. The rest of the day is pretty much a blur.

One highlight: On Christmas Eve, in true last-minute-husband form, Scott brings out a giant box wrapped in plain brown paper with my name written across it in very large, all-cap lettering. Classic guy wrapping job!!! See pic.

Now, I end this post in hopes that I've satisfied you crazies who have been harassing me to no end about updating my blog! Done! Now I don't want to hear it for another 2 weeks---at least!!

Purely Gratuitous Post

There's no reason for this post, really. I'm insanely busy right now with school "holiday" events o'plenty and church parties and choir performances and hosting playgroup and just plain getting ready for Christmas. But with all that's going on, nothing's really going on. Nothing YOU want to hear about anyway. Nevertheless, our token Baptist, aka Kristi S., seems to think it's time for me to update my blog. Some random photos with no particular meaning or purpose:



Look at the boy in the Santa hat!! He's cute. Nuff said.

The girls had a tumbling class...er...recital recently. They did a great job. Can't explain the big pink hat on my oldest, though.

Now if this isn't the dang cutest face and the dang bluest eyes you've ever seen...too bad he's a little DEVIL! Tiffany, this one's for you, babe. I told you I wouldn't put this pic up from playgroup if you went to the Christmas Cantata to hear me sing. Guess who didn't go to the Cantata! Now everyone visit Tiffany's blog and tell her how cute she looks on MY blog! (o:
Another pic from playgroup. l-r, Polly, me, Angie, Tiffany. Like the giant pitcher in the left foreground? Makes you wonder what we DO at a 10:30 a.m. playgroup, doesn't it? (smoothies, people---it's full of smoothie!!!) Interesting how, with approximately 8 kids at this session of playgroup, you don't really see any of them around. They play. We eat and tell them to go play. It's that simple.

Happy Birthday, Polly!!!!

It's a special day! It's my real friend, Polly's birthday! (Ok, well, technically, YESTERDAY was a special day--I'm slightly behind). Nevertheless, this quick little post is just my way of telling Polly I love 'er and hope she had a wonderful, relaxing, made-Matt-do-everything kind of birthday. If you don't know Polly, here's a snippet: She is a hoola-hooping champ (see photo--yes, she actually won the contest), master cake decorator, skinny little gym instructor, primary prez extraordinaire, absolutely fab photographer, scrapping princess, super mom, and the kind of friend everybody wants to have. She's rather sickening, actually. But it's her birthday--we won't go there--for at least a day or two. Love ya, President Lund!

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT POLLY'S WOG BLOG AND SEE A SMALL SAMPLING OF HER PHOTOGRAPHING TALENTS (STARRING OUR FAMILY!)

15 Minutes of Fame...DENIED!

So we headed up to Mesa this weekend to see all the family. Had a great time. One of our adventures was a trip to see all the purty lights at the temple. (side note: If you can possibly avoid taking a group of 15 people--7 of them small children--to see the temple lights on the night they turn them on, DO SO. Unbelievably crowded and nearly impossible to move. But I digress). So anyway, out of approximately 13 million people who visited the grounds that night, my sister and my two girls were singled out by a channel 3 camera man to be interviewed about their experience (see pic above). They did such a great job and the girls were so cute! He told us to watch that night at 10pm and they'd be on. Well, we went home and watched with much anticipation. JILTED! JIPPED! I guess they made the cutting room floor. Oh boo hoo. At any rate, I was glad I made the quick trip there and was able to spend a little time with my beautiful sisters whom I love so much and don't get to see very often. I love you, girls! You're the best! (Jerry, love you, too, but you don't live in another state!) Moving on...

Since I've not posted in a while, there are oh so many tales to tell and pictures to share, but alas, not enough room to share them (let me esplain. NO, there is too much, lemme sum up). So the short of it is that we had an early Thanksgiving with S's family and had a nice time and ate way too much. Also got Grandma Nancy to climb in a giant box, which was the peak of the day as far as I'm concerned!!! Took the kids to a children's holiday party at the community center, also very crowded. They got to see Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Very cool. While in Mesa, we all put on our brown shirts and got family pictures taken. Also very cool. Then went out to eat at our favorite trough: Rosa's. When we returned from Mesa yesterday, we had a wonderful surprise--snow in the mountains (top left corner pic)! Our first this season! I think that about covers all the photos here. Don't worry, though, with the holidays upon us, you know I'll be posting lots more soon!

(no, I didn't purposely leave daddy out of most of these pictures--he was working and wasn't around for all of the fun stuff! Poor daddy)