25 Christmas Questions

Just ended a very busy day and feel I deserve to spend some "not so productive" time on this :)

1. Eggnog or Hot Chocolate?  Hot Chocolate for sure.  I tried eggnog on a dare with my cousin when we were young and we thought it was disgusting.  I'm sure my taste buds have changed since then but I'll just stick to hot chocolate.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Both
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? White on the house, colored on the tree.
4. Do you hang mistletoe? No
5. When do you start decorating? Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving or the Monday night after if we've been out of town.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Sweet Potatoes
7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? Decorating sugar cookies and delivering them, gathering together in the wee hours of the morning to wait until the time we could wake up mom and dad, and the Nielson Family Christmas Party.
8. What is on your Christmas wish list? Absolutely dry weather for our drive to and from Utah!
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? No.  We did growing up but Scott's family didn't.  He won that one :)

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? With a bunch of home made ornaments by the kids, Scott's mom and his grandma, and decos that we collect on vacations.  It's very eclectic but I love it.

11. Snow, love it or dread it? I love looking at it, but not from the car when we're driving to Utah!

12. Real tree or fake tree? Fake

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? As a child, a doll with a bunch of doll clothes that my mom spent hours making.   As an adult, an empty water bottle that Heidi made into Mary all on her own and wrapped it up for Scott and I.

14. What's the most important thing about Christmas for you? Trying not to be stressed and remember what's most important and teaching my children to try to focus on Christ.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Either apple Crisp or anything with chocolate & mint

16. What is your favorite tradition? Making and decorating cookies to deliver, still.

17. What tops your tree? A star

18. Do you prefer giving or receiving?  Growing up it might have been more receiving but since having kids, definitely giving!  I get so excited about their gifts that I forget I'm even getting anything.  And, I'm not good at choosing gifts except for when it comes to my kids.  I feel like I do a pretty good job with them.0

19. What is your favorite Christmas song? Oh Holy Night, The First Noel, and All I Want for Christmas is You by Michael Buble,

20. Candy canes, yuck or yum? Yuck.  Maybe a small piece of a mint one after dinner is okay but eating a whole candy cane . . . never!

21. Favorite Christmas movie? While you Were Sleeping.  We watch it every year. AND Mr. Kruger's Christmas.  It makes me cry every single time.  Both of these movies do.

22. What do you leave for Santa? Cookies

23. Do you have a Christmas morning tradition?  Eating the cereal Santa brings.  It depends on where we are.

24. Do you prefer to shop online or at the mall? Neither.  I actually despise shopping online and going to mall.  I would choose Target and Costco to do all my shopping.

25. Christmas letter or Christmas card?  We do one or both every year.  I love getting them from everyone!

Christmas Baking

Here's the goodies we baked today.  We had a good time baking and making deliveries tonight for Family Home Evening.  I took pics because I liked this combination and I want to remember it for next year.  The girls had so much fun decorating the cupcakes and I was so good and let them have complete control of it :)

This is one of the gingerbread houses we made at the school.  We've gone to this activity three years now and have yet to get through it without tears from one of our girls.  Too long of a story to share here.  The houses always turn out cute though :)

December Days

Just wanted to share a short video of Heidi accompanying her school choir on one of their songs last week.  She played twice, once at the mall and once at the school and did a great job both times.  I was very proud of her!  She has a wonderful music teacher at school which we're so grateful for.

November Update

Here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving.  We had an eventful one...if you want to hear about it you'll have to call.  Thankfully, the food was good, the company was even better, and we got a new fridge, too!

Tower building was high on the popularity list when Granny Jo, Grandpa, and Uncle Chris were here.  Here are Nicole, Chris, and Heidi making a run at Scott's record height.

Only three people missing from this picture.  Tyler was sleeping, Shelly was taking the picture, and Granny Jo was sick :(

On Sunday morning we decided to decorate the house a bit for Christmas.  Here are the hard workers.

Thanks to Leone for sending us these beautiful flowers.  We loved them!

Here is a sneak peek at our December.  This is the tree lighting ceremony that our town puts on each year.  Heidi's choir sang and did a great job.  

That's all for now!

Purplicious!

We did a little re-arranging this month!  Tyler moved into the play room and Nicole moved into his room, which her wonderful father spent an entire Saturday painting purple for her :)  She's quite thrilled and actually I am too.  I keep going in there for no reason during the day just to look at it.  I really love the color.  It's called "Perfection".  Heidi didn't get new paint but did get a new bedspread and got mom's help with a major cleaning.  We'll she how long it stays that way!

 This was all done while I did the dishes tonight.  It's pretty much a daily thing around here but whatever entertains him while I get things done I guess.  After I put the camera away he took every dishtowel out of the drawer.  Life with a busy Toddler! 

 This is a picture of Tyler trying to put a shoe on his foot.  If you can't tell what he's doing . . .

It's because this is the shoe.  It belongs to a polly pocket :)  He doesn't give up though.  He keeps trying to put it on pushing it against his big toe with all his might!

October

Here's our Pirate, Skeleton, and Pocohontas.  This is before the Party at the church on Friday night.  Tyler was sick Sun and Mon so didn't really dress up for the actual day.  It was a pretty quiet Halloween this year.

Tyler checking out his friend's head decor.

 

Tyler doing some of his everyday favorite things in these pics below.  Watching the clothes wash, turning on and off lights, playing with the medicine of course, and waiting for breakfast.  He really doesn't like waiting for breakfast though, he usually whines the second he sees me start getting it ready until I'm putting it in his mouth.   I just liked his hair do.

Hawaii!

 To start with, I need to thank my sister Kelly and her husband for making this trip possible for us.  She watched our kids while we were away and did such a great job of helping me not to worry about things at home.  We were very grateful they were willing to do this and it was also very fun to spend a few days with them ourselves before leaving and after getting back.  Too see all the fun they had while we were gone, you'll have to look at her blog.

e 

So our first day in Hawaii we went on a boat tour of the Napali Coast.  It was beautiful but a bit of a rough ride.  Hopefully you can't tell too much from looking at us that we just stepped off the boat and started recovering from our sea sickness!  It was worth it though.  I just want to have the meal they served us on the boat again when I'm feeling good!

 

 This spot, that you can't really see because of the clouds, gets 400-600 inches of rain a year!  

That's wetter than Portland!!

 Most of what I saw was pretty much what I expected but nobody told me there were chickens all over the Island!  They were on the beach, at the canyon, on the mountains, at Wal-Mart.  We didn't really go anywhere that we didn't see them.  The roosters were actually quite pretty and the chicks were cute.

 If you drive North to the end of the road on Kauai and then hike 2 miles, this is what you'll see.

 If you look out our hotel room sliding glass door, this is what you'll see.

 If you're willing to get a little sea sick, this is what you'll see.

 This is my Titanic pose before I got sick and had to sit down with my head firmly against a pole the remainder of the tour.

This duck was around the corner from our hotel room every night looking in the mirror.  I started feeling a little bad for him thinking he didn't have any friends but his mirror image.  Luckily, the last night, he wasn't there so I felt better leaving thinking he made a real friend.

 Scott was one of the lucky audience members chosen to get a little hula lesson at this show.  It was pretty entertaining and I got a beautiful flower to wear in my hair out of it!

 Kayaking down the Wailua River and then walking a ways to Secret Falls.  This was really fun!

 After Secret Falls we Kayaked around the corner to this rope swing.  I didn't brave the cold water of the falls but I couldn't resist this.  It's not every day you get to swing on a rope into the water, and in Hawaii to boot.

 Scott did brave the cold water of the Falls and said it felt like a good massage under there.  I think he was just trying to make me feel bad that I didn't go in :)  It was really fun watching everyone else go in though while eating lunch on my rock in the sun.

 Walking to Secret Falls.

And of course we had to include a picture of the cool car we got to cruise around the Island in!  Who needs a convertible when you can have a Nissan Versa?

More Back to School Pics

Here are some back to school pics taken by my friend Michelle Weinberger.  Tyler got a couple even though he's not going back to school :)  Thank you Michelle!

Double Digits

Heidi is 10 years old!  This has definitely been weird for me, as her mother, having her turn 10.  What adds to the weirdness is the fact that she was born the day before 9/11 and having the ten year anniversary stories all over the news.  It brings back so many memories.  Good memories (of my new baby), horrible memories (of 9/11), and life changing memories (of becoming a mother).  How could ten years have gone by already?  I couldn't ask for a more wonderful child though, so talented and kind.  I'll never forget her first grade teacher complimenting us on how nice Heidi was to the other kids in her class.  She wanted to know how we taught her that, but I don't think we taught her.  She taught us and is still teaching us every day.  All three of our kids do.  They are such a blessing in our lives.

Back to School

Better Late than never!  I've been having blogging technical difficulties lately so the girls are two weeks into school now but here they are on their first day.  They are both thrilled with their teachers and having all their best friends in their classes.  Life is GOOD!

Here's Tyler on the first day of school.  He hasn't seemed to mind the alone time with mom but he's always happy to see the girls when they get home and really likes watching the bus come around the corner.  

I caught Tyler fixing a little something for the baby to eat. 

 

Sneaking a little Kiss :)

Summer Time and the Livin' is Easy

 He really does love the swing and his smile actually gets a lot bigger than this but I never got it on camera.  You'll just have to take my word for it :)

 Tyler walking with his train.  This was his birthday present and he has really loved it.  He gets sturdier every day so maybe one day soon he'll be choo choo'in all on his own!

 Summer wouldn't be summer without getting your face painted at least once.  

 Nicole lost her tooth the day of this picture.  We were all so grateful because it was driving her crazy and causing at least one break down a day.  Plus she had a birthday party to go to on this day too and wasn't going to go unless the tooth was OUT!  Just in the nick of time it came out that morning while she was eating her waffle.

 Tyler's first time at the fountains.  He loved walking in this little man made stream.  It was a very hot day so it felt really good.  Very hot for Oregon at least, 85 degrees or so.

 Tyler's first time swimming!!  He loved it!  His little feet were busily kicking but his expression never changed much.  He was so content in the water though and it was pretty cold.  Heidi and Nicole are doing swimming lessons right now at the high school and learning a lot. 

 He does wave occasionally.

 Nicole and her neighbor friends enjoying the slip and slide that Heidi and Nicole rode their bikes all the way to Fred Meyer to buy with Scott.

 Below is Heidi and the candy she made with the neighbors for their "candy store".  They haven't opened their store yet but the candy was very interesting.  All kinds of combined candy that was melted, stretched, or altered in some way to make a new creation.  They had fun.