New Years Eve

Brandon and I celebrated the New Year with our traditional food smorgasbord/movie trilogy fest.  We had 7 layer dip (YAY), pomegranate seeds, fresh pineapple, pretzels, chocolates, cinnamon raisin bread, veggies, and a mix of apple and grape juice.  It was all very yummy.  

The girls ate dinner with us and loved smashing the 7 layer dip into flat piles on their trays.  Other than that they ate everything.  Lydia especially loved the pomegranate seeds. (Which made me feel better about using her WIC voucher to buy them)

Charlotte enjoyed the pretzels.  After dinner we cleaned the girls off and took them over to our neighbor's New Year's Party.  We hung out there for about an hour until 8:00 when the girls started acting tired.  We came back home and put the girls to bed.

Then we turned on the TV and started watching Mission Impossible 1.  I love that movie. It is one of the few movies that I can watch over and over and over again.  When it was over we put in MI 3.  (We'd watched MI 2 on Friday.)

We enjoy watching trilogies on New Year's because it's a fun way to compare movies.  Of the three movies, MI 2 is the weakest.  I'm not a John Woo fan and I feel that his signature style detracted from the movie rather than enhanced it.  It was like we were watching a checklist instead of a movie.  Dove - check, motercycles - check, guns - check, slow motion - check, etc.  Also I felt that they used the face mask trick a few too many times.  It was almost like this was a sequel to John Woo's "Face Off" than "Mission Impossible."

It's hard to pick a favorite between MI 1 and MI 3 though.  Both have amazing plots, awesome heists, cool dialog, Tom Cruise with short hair . . . I love them both.  MI 3 almost wins in my book because it was directed by JJ Abrams who is my ABSOLUTE favorite director/writer/creative genius.  If I could meet any Hollywood celebrity it would be him.  I love his movies, and I love his commentary on his movies even more.  This guy is amazing.  He is the personification of enthusiasm.      

But I think in the end that MI 1 is still the best of the three.  I love that it is complicated.  And stealing the NOC list from the Black Vault has got to be one of the most intense heists in movie history.

I'll let you know how I think MI 4 (also directed by JJ Abrams!!!!!) stacks up to the other three when I go see it for my birthday.  

Anyway, we were in the middle of an intense scene in MI 3 when it was almost midnight.  We paused the movie and grabbed our goblets of apple/grape juice.  We talked for a minute about 2011 and how it had been a relativity uneventful year (when compared to the life changing roller coaster of 2010) but we'd still learned a lot.  We also talked about some of our hopes for 2012.  Then it was midnight and we toasted the new year.  Lots of people were lighting off aerial fireworks - even though I swear it's dryer outside now than it was in July.  We went out on our patio and watched them.  Then we went back in and finished the movie.

Here is a picture of the girls celebrating the New Year.  Actually they did this a few days ago, but it is so cute. Lydia has been giving me kisses for several months and Charlotte started about a month ago, but they only started kissing each other this week.  They kiss, laugh, then kiss some more.  It's hilarious.  

And what are our goals for 2012?  Nothing spectacular really.  We are going to try to be a little bit more social with our neighbors - outside of church obligations.  I want to started getting up BEFORE the girls wake up so I can have a few minutes to practice my guitar.  I'm also really committing to making dinner a priority every night.  I started this last one this week and I've already discovered that it is going to take some major behavioral changes put it in place on a permanent basis.

Of course these goals are probably only going to be in effect until the first of April.  That's when the real event of 2012 will occur and we'll see what happens after that.

Christmas Day

Our Christmas Day was very nice and relaxing.  I don't like to do a lot on Christmas Day.  For me it should be spent at home, in pajamas, with immediate family, and without any real rules or time constraints.  Here is what we did.  

 The girls had been up late at the party the night before so we actually woke up before they did.  I was excited to go see my gifts (Brandon had gone to bed after me) so we got up and went out to the living room to enjoy Christmas morning by ourselves for a few minutes.  I found my window seat under the window and a guitar under the tree!  Brandon showed me all the features of the window seat (large storage area, hinges, holds two adults, etc) and told me about all the things he did to fix the guitar.

 The girls eventually woke up to the sound of our voices and so we got them up, gave them bottles and set them in front of the tree to see what they would do.  The night before I'd decorated with tree with lots of snow flakes so it would look different.  The girls just stared at the tree.  Then they noticed the dolls that were under the tree and I could see their thought process, "I really want that doll, but I really like my bottle, but I really want that doll."  The dolls eventually won out.

 Then while the girls played with the dolls and wrapped presents, Brandon and I opened our gifts to each other.  Brandon gave me this large colored pencil that was actually a wrapping paper tube that contained toll paint.  (I told you he was an elf)

 We also worked on teaching the girls how to open presents.  In true baby fashion they were more interested in playing with the boxes than anything that they got.

Of course they did like the toys and other gifts too.

They loved the refrigerator magnets that my parents gave them.  They loved them so much they took them off the fridge and carried them all over the house.

 Soon it was time to get ready for church. I'd joked (somewhat seriously) that the girls would be going to church in their pajamas.  But their Christmas Dresses were just too cute.

We were in charge of the sacrament bread so we had to be to church early.  The girls were really good and hung out on the bench with me while Brandon set up the sacrament.  Then my friend Steffani helped watch them while Brandon helped pass the sacrament.  Each girl had a little container of Kix that kept them entertained.  They were so cute sitting on the bench in their big skirts while eating Kix.  When we started singing the opening song Lydia insisted on having her own hymn book and that was even cuter.  By the time we got to the sacrament the self entertaining magic was wearing off.  I'm not sure if anyone around us felt the spirit, but oh well.  The rest of Sacrament meeting went okay.  It was only an hour so it wasn't too hard.  Then we hung around and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.  Everyone seemed really excited that they could just go home and not have to worry about getting ready for the next class.

 At home I changed the girls into regular clothes.  Apparently I didn't do a good enough job for Charlotte.  She found her shirt from the night before and put it around her neck along with her tights.  She walked around the house like that forever.

One of our Christmas traditions is to have a big breakfast on Christmas Day.  This year we decided to do French Toast, sausage, and eggs.  

 It was really really good and I just kept eating.

 Then we all took 2 1/2 hour naps.  When we woke up we had a little dinner of left overs from Christmas Eve.  My sister gave us the movie Tangled so we all watched that.  The girls paid attention for a record 15 minutes.  Then they wandered off to other, more interesting things.  Charlotte discovered the trash bag full of used wrapping paper.  She had a blast with it.

 Lydia pushed this toy around the kitchen.  (She's really into pushing things lately.  On Christmas Eve she spent about an hour pushing my laundry basket from her room to the kitchen and back.)  You can't see them in this picture but she also has a bunch of letter magnets in a little space on the toy.  She would take them out and put them back in.

We got the girls ready for bed, but they didn't seem tired so we just let them play.  They both ended up under the tree laughing.  

 I think they will miss the tree when we take it down in a few days.

Eventually we did put the girls to bed.  This is how Lydia looked in her crib right before I said goodnight. She loves her new doll and gives her a hug every time she sees her.  I love the smile on Lydia's face.  I think it sums up the whole day.

Charlotte loves her doll too.  She loved her from the moment she saw her at DI.  I could hardly get the doll away from her so we could pay for it.  

It was a wonderful Christmas Day - just the way I wanted it.

Use it up - I don't want to store it

If there was any sort of theme to the home made gifts I put together this year it would have to be, "At least I'm not storing it anymore."

My first idea for a gift was to make a patchwork quilt out of the 12 receiving blankets we were given for the girls. Since we are having a boy next I didn't want to hang onto all these pink blankets.  I didn't want to pass them on to anyone because in my opinion receiving blankets are too small to be on any real use for normal size babies.  They worked great for swaddling our preemies, but once the girls were actually newborn size the blankets were too small to be of any use.  

The fact that I really have no idea how to quilt didn't bother me too much.  I figured I learn best by doing so this would just be practise anyway.  The quilts would be for the girls who know less about quilting than I do so they would be happy with whatever the end result would be.  So I dived right in and cut the blankets into 6 inch squares.  

 Surprisingly I was able to cut the squares while Charlotte was awake.  I kept her happy with Kix while I cut away. (If this had been Lydia she would have been on the counter in two seconds.)

Then I laid out the squares in random patterns.  Way back when I was a Mia Maid we had an activity where our advisor showed us how to quilt.  Based on what I remembered from that activity (and what Pinterest and google confirmed) I knew that I needed to sew the quilt blocks together into long strips and then sew those together.  

After two evenings of sewing I ended up with two (sort of) twin size quilt tops.  This is where I stopped for this Christmas.  I wrapped each quilt top up and gave them to the girls for Christmas.  Sometime in the coming year I will make borders, add backs, add batting, tie each quilt with yellow yarn, and bind them.  Then the finished quilts will be the girls presents for next Christmas - just in time for them to move into twin size beds.   

My next Christmas present project was one that I really should have finished YEARS ago.  During my second year of college I embroidered all the lyrics to Lead Kindly Light.  But for some reason I never put the title of the song up at the top.  So for the past 7 years I've had this unfinished project travelling around with me. 

Then I got this picture at the branch's give and take table.  It wasn't anything I wanted to put up in my house, but it was about the same size as my unfinished project.    

So I sat down and FINISHED the dang thing by putting the title on it.  After waiting 7 years took me less than 2 hours to put it on there.  I really don't know why I waited so long.  Then I painted some cardboard to act as a makeshift matting and framed it.  Now it's hanging up in our living room where it really should have been all along.  

 Another Christmas project of the year was something that had been hanging around for only seven months not years.  Back in April I bought some picture frames at DI and planned to make them all cute and give them to my parents with pictures of their grandkids.  That didn't pan out so instead they went to various family members for Christmas.  I painted them and then glued random craft stuff that I had on to them. Some of the stuff has been around forever.  These beads were from a beaded lizard I made my second year of girls camp.

 Here are all the frames.

 I loved this one with mirrors from my wedding.

 And this one had beads from the decorate a hat contest at my dads work this year.  (Contrary to what you may be thinking at this moment I am not THAT bad of a pack rat.  I hang on to useful looking stuff and toss the rest.)

I forgot to get a picture of my final use it up project.  I'd been wracking my brain trying to figure out a gift to make for Brandon.  I couldn't come up with anything until Christmas Eve Eve when I remembered I'd already made his gift.  During the summer I would stay up and scrap book while watching LOST.  I'd put together about 50 pages of things we'd done together during the last 5 years.  They were mostly of memorabilia from planning our wedding and going on our anniversary trips.  I found the box with all the pages and was pleasantly surprised that all the pages were already in sheet protectors and in order.  All I had to do was put them in a binder.  (And he loved the gift and we loved looking at it together.  I'd been so into LOST that I forgot what most of the pages had on them.)  

I married an elf

Those of you who have read this blog for a while know that Brandon is a pretty talented guy.  He cooks, cleans, draws, builds stuff, you name it this guy can do it.  I finally figured out what makes him so amazing.  He's an elf - as in one of Santa's Elves.  Let's look at some examples.  

Brandon has been working very hard lately.  He's been re-roofing the roof for some Sr Missionaries in the Branch.  In his spare time from that project he was out on our patio/shop working on surprises.    

One surprise was a set of DVD shelves for our neighbors.   Several months ago they asked him to design some shelves to hold their collection of around 500 DVD's.  Then life happened and they never gave Brandon the supplies to make the shelves.  Well, we had a bunch of plywood just taking up space on the patio, and these neighbors are the ones who provide the internet that allows me to entertain you all, so making them surprise shelves was the least Brandon could do.  

 Another surprise was also for the same neighbors.  Their son has been asking for a bike for Christmas, but they didn't know how they were going to be able to get one for him.  Years ago a friend gave Brandon two old bikes that Brandon disassembled and saved for just such an occasion. He asked our friends if they would want him to put the bike together for their son.  They immediately said yes, and he immediately went to work.  First he sanded the frame and spray painted it black.  It didn't quite dry all the way outdoors so he hung it up in our bedroom to help it dry the rest of the way.

 I came out of the shower and found the bike frame in my room.  I laughed to myself about what an odd husband I have (and what and understanding wife I am) and went to find the camera so I could document this latest occurrence.  I walked into the kitchen and found Brandon making fudge - with a makeshift double broiler.  There really are no ends to the talents this guy had.

 Anyway here is the bike all finished.  I saw it go together and I can hardly believe it.

 But that is not all Brandon has been up to.  Our dryer started making a horrible squalling, grinding sound.  After taking it a part 3 times, going to the parts store in Murray 2 times, and buying 2 new barrings and a pulley (or something) the dryer is now purring like a kitten.  It is quieter now than it ever has been the whole time we owned it.

I thought that between the re-roofing, the shelves, the bike, and the unexpected dryer emergency that my Christmas gift would be delayed.  However, late Christmas Eve morning, when all the other projects were done, Brandon continued to use his drill and saws.

And Christmas morning I found a window seat waiting for me!  Right now it may look like a coffin (and I keep telling people that Brandon gave me one) but I am so excited!  This means the girls can look out the window all by themselves.  Plus it opens up and we are going to put food storage and emergency preparedness supplies in it.  I'm looking forward to staining it, making a pad, and sewing pillows for it.  

As if that wasn't enough, I came out to the tree on Christmas Morning and found a guitar!  I already had the guitar (it was Brandon's dad's) but it had the wrong type of strings and the bridge was coming off.  Brandon bought the right strings and then fixed the bridge and the warped guitar surface.  I was so surprised and excited.  

So yeah, I married an elf.  I just hope Santa doesn't want him back.

Christmas Eve

Brandon always had a secret wish to marry an orphan.  That way he wouldn't have to worry about figuring out which family to spend Christmas Eve with - it would always be with his family.  Well, I'm certainly not an orphan, but when it comes to Christmas Eve traditions I kind of am.  My family had fun Christmas Eve's but we never did the same thing from year to year.  About the only consistent thing was my mom would always say something like, "This is not what I expected when was a teenager and I envisioned Christmas Eve with my future family."  Six Christmas's ago when Brandon and I were dating he was overjoyed to find out that I had no set plans for Christmas Eve.  I went to his family's annual Christmas Eve party and I haven't stopped going since.  Not even RSV season kept me away last year.      

The night started off with the traditional Christmas Eve dinner.  There was ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, cheese balls, crackers, and Norwegian food.  Usually I don't eat a lot of the kjottkaker, but this year I had like 10 of these little meat cakes.   I think having a little Norwegian boy inside of me was part of the reason.  I also had a lot of dessert - though I still wasn't a fan of the almond flavored sirinakaka cookies.  When I was little my mom had some almond scented lotion so the cookies always taste like lotion to me. (My sister in law, who grew up with the cookies, says that almond lotion always reminds her of cookies.) 

The girls loved all the food and ate and ate and ate.  

After dinner we went down stairs for the program part of the evening.  The kids all put on a little Nativity Scene.  This was a new addition to the usual activities.  I wasn't around the last time everyone tried to do a Nativity Scene, but apparently it was pretty ridiculous because at the time Brandon was the youngest in the family - and it was after his mission.

This time it was cute.  Lydia was the donkey.

 And Charlotte was a sheep

By the time we actually got everyone organised some of the cousins had lost interest in playing their parts.  So this is what we ended up with.  Mary, her very much older husband Joseph, Baby Jesus (played by a one month old), and angel, a cow (who looks like Woody from Toy Story), and two Ninjas/Wisemen.  Pretty good for the first year.  

 Then after a short yet hilarious talent show it was time for the main event - Dancing Around the Tree!  Everyone (who wasn't holding a baby) held hands as we sang Christmas Carols.

The last song we sang is a song in Norwegian about getting ready to go to church on Christmas Morning.  Each verse is something you do on a different day and you act out what you are singing about.  You wash, wring, and iron clothes, scrub the floor and other stuff.  Brandon knows all the words to the song perfectly.  I just mumble my way through it.  The chorus in my version goes something like this.  "So bow bee bow ingar bee bushk, ingar bee bishk, ingar be bushk . . ."  

After dancing around the tree the official part of the party was over, but we all hung around enjoying each others company and eating the rese crem.  It's like rice pudding and cool whip combined with strawberry sauce (that's my favorite part) on top.  It's so good.  Eventually it was time to go home and so we pulled ourselves away, and went back home.  It had been another great Christmas Eve.