Happy Easter!

We had an awesome Easter this year! After church, we all went over to my parent's house where the Easter Bunny usually visits and leaves us a fun basket of goodies. James doesn't really like chocolate so the Easter Bunny made sure to leave him some gummy bears... his favorite treat in the world! The Easter Bunny also knows that I love Cadbury Cream Eggs so he left me plenty of those in our basket too! Somebody must have told the Easter Bunny that we're hoping to adopt because he even left some things for the baby in our basket - a darling picture frame and a stuffed bunny that smells like chocolate!

After we checked out the goods from our basket, James and I were put in charge of hiding all of the eggs for the annual hunt! We hid over 80 eggs in my parents backyard and when my nephews arrived, they couldn't wait to begin exploring!

Little Taylor had a ball trying to find all of the eggs and his brothers even helped him out once they had found plenty for themselves!

After the egg hunt, we had a yummy Easter dinner together!

Saying Goodbye to 2010

We rang in the New Year with James' family this year. We had a ball playing all sorts of fun games and eating yummy food, followed by a silly countdown to the New Year. A few days into the New Year, a bunch of our neighbors got together for a date night out. We love our neighborhood and are super lucky to have made so many awesome friends!

Zoo Lights

My BFF Ashley and her daughter Cameron were in town for Christmas! They live in Baltimore so it was super fun to play together while they were here! The zoo was freezing cold so there weren't many animals out, but it was still a fun adventure!

Christmas Day

Bright and early Christmas morning, we all gathered together in the hallway and waited for Grandpa to give us word if Santa had come... then everybody ran in to see what surprises awaited them!
"Can I go back to sleep yet?"
With all these gifts, I'm surprised that Santa didn't get stuck in the chimney!

Little Gavin showing off one of his favorite toys!

After opening our gifts and eating a scrumptious breakfast, we headed over to see James' family

We exchanged gifts and then ate more yummy food!

Cute Curtis couldn't wait until he got home to play with his new treasure!

We played a few games and then set off to meet up with Heather's family at the movie theatre!

This year's Christmas flick was TRON and it was awesome!

After a fun-filled day, we headed home to see that Santa had visited our house in West Jordan too!

He even remembered to leave a gift for our Lilly! She loves anything with feathers!

She got this cute Christmas collar that she wore just long enough to snap this picture! (her eyes look a little freaky in this pic - yikes)

It's a tradition in both of our families to lay out all of our Christmas gifts to display. Santa sure spoiled us this year...

He even left all kinds of fun presents for our future baby!

Christmas Eve

A New Holiday Tradition

This year we decided to start a new family tradition in memory of James' amazing mom. She was an incredible cook and breakfast foods were her specialty! In her honor, we decided to make yummy breakfast foods for dinner every night this past week. We had fun cooking together while trying to recreate her recipes!

(Photo evidence that James actually DOES know how to cook!)

Yummy German Pancakes

Our new Black Friday toy was a Belgium Waffle Maker!

James' favorite breakfast food is biscuits and gravy so I attempted to recreate his mom's classic recipe and I failed miserably! It turned out alright, but it was nothing like the original!
All hail Paula Deen (she's my fav)! We devoured these egg McMuffin's!

This time of year it has been especially hard to be without James' mom. There are so many Christmas memories with her which made this "cooking week" extra special! Miss you, Mom!

Tis the Season

Since I haven't posted in almost 2 weeks, I'll try to cover everything in this one post! We have been CRAZY busy lately - which is always the case this time of the year! As soon as I finished with our tree for the Festival of Trees, it was time to switch my mode to our house! I love decorating our home for Christmas!

Our Christmas Tree

Once our home was finished with it's holiday transformation, it was time to move my efforts over to work. This time of year I'm super busy with interior design jobs. I have several clients who hire me to design their Christmas trees and so far I've decorated a total of 9 trees. It is definitely one of my favorite things to do as an interior designer!

My next big project was to do the centerpieces for the Ward Christmas Party. I came up with the idea of making the centerpieces edible, by filling them with the dessert. I pitched the idea to my parents (my dad is in charge of the activities for his ward) and they loved the idea! My mom and I got to work and quickly found out that we had bit off a little more than we could chew. After making all of the goodies and assembling one centerpiece, we saw how darling they were and decided that it was worth the effort! My mom basically moved in with me and we worked on them straight for 5 days - 420 treats in total! The work paid off because they were a hit, especially with all of the kids!

Our next Holiday adventure was super exciting. This year, the Dickens Christmas Festival came back to Salt Lake City! I had the awesome opportunity of being in the plays when I was younger and it was a total blast!

The play "Oliver"
The play "Scrooge"

This is the infamous mouse lady! It's been 12 or 13 years since the Dickens Festival was in Salt Lake, but I can totally remember this mouse lady! She makes these little finger puppets of mice - weird, I know! They are actually really darling so we had to buy one for our little nephew Taylor! Going to the Dickens Festival brought back so many memories for me and I'm so excited that it's back in Salt Lake! I hope it comes back for the holidays permanently so that I can share it with our kids one day! As the holidays get under way, I promise to do a better job of posting more frequently!!!

Festival of Trees

Every year my mom and I decorate a Christmas tree to donate to the Festival of Trees. This year, we named our tree "Soda Shoppe Rock!" and we had a blast with it! It's hard to tell from the pictures, but we used 3 different sized trees and filled them with all kinds of fun ornaments: mini pink Chevy's, ice cream sodas, fuzzy dice, and of course records! We added a fun soda bar complete with a jukebox! We also had fun laying out a checkerboard floor to complete our design!!!

The Festival of Trees in an amazing event! In addition to the large trees, people also donate small trees, gingerbread houses, and Christmas wreaths. Everything is auctioned off to the highest bidder and ALL of the proceeds go to Primary Children's Medical Center. The Festival usually raises over a million dollars each year! It's always fun for us decorators to see who buys our tree each year! My mom and I start working on our tree in January and we work on it all year long. It's hard work, but really rewarding because it's for such a great cause! Many people dedicate their tree to a loved one who has passed away. This year, we dedicated our tree to James' awesome mom, Carolyn. It was an incredible opportunity to really reflect on her life and the amazing person that she was! James and his sisters helped us prepare and even came on decorating day to lend a hand! The Festival asks us to write a little story to be placed by our tree so that spectators can read more about it if they so choose. We asked James to write it this year and this was his story:

Take a walk with us down memory lane to a time when our mom and friend, Carolyn, celebrated her teenage years - a time of sock hops, poodle skirts, and soda shoppes! Carolyn loved the music of the 50's and instilled that love of music in each of her 8 children. Carolyn passed away surrounded by her family in March 2010, due to liver failure. We hope you enjoy this tree that was decorated with love in her memory.

We miss you, Mom!

Gobble, Gobble!

We had a fabulous Turkey Day! We started out with a scrumptious feast with James' family... check out my yummy pecan pie! (don't mind our bro-in-law acting crazy in the background)

Next stop was my family's house for round two of feasting!

Dad carving the bird!

It's my family's tradition to hit the movies after our Thanksgiving dinner and this year we saw the much anticipated Harry Potter 7! It was awesome and we can't wait for the final movie!

After the movie, we all went back to my parents house for turkey sandwiches... and it wouldn't be Turkey Day in our family without putting olives on our fingers!

The final activity of Thanksgiving was "Psycho Shopping" as James calls it! Black Friday shopping is a tradition in James' family so we donned our winter gear, braved the freezing temperatures, and scored some major holiday deals!



Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without expressing our gratitude! Here is a list of the TOP 10 things we are thankful for:

1. Our Awesome Families
2. A Warm Home - especially in this blizzard!
3. Friends
4. James' Job
5. Our Health (except for the mighty cold I have right now!)
6. Freedom - thanks to all of the men and women who serve our country!
7. Our Faith
8. The Miracle of Adoption
9. Our Sweet Kitty
10. TiVo (what would we do without it?)

Halloween - Part Two

On Halloween night, we had all of Heather's family over for a fun filled spooky party! The kids had a blast!

The Creepy Specimen Jars Our house was overtaken by mice on Halloween night!

Costumes - take 3!
Heather = cave woman / James = La-Z-Boy (aka... too lazy to wear a costume!)
Heather's Nephew's in their trick-or-treating get ups
A heated game of Bingo
Eating worm filled dirt cups
Musical Chairs set to "Monster Mash"
Decorating Pumpkins
The finished products
The party was super fun and afterward, the kids hit the streets of our neighborhood for some serious trick-or-treating! Same time, next year?




Costumes - Take 4!
Our last party of Halloween 2010 meant one last set of costumes and now our costume box is locked up and put away until 2011! See ya next year on All Hallows Eve!