Christmas 2012

We had ANOTHER great Christmas!!! This year was extra fun since we have a two year old at our house.

Here's a short recap:

Christmas Eve was spent at home baking and visiting with neighbors who brought gifts by.  Brett had to go out and work from about 1:30 to 4:30, but mostly just putting salt down. We went to Brett's parents for dinner, a short game, and a movie about Christ's birth. When we got home we got in our pj's, put cookies and milk out for Santa, and Brooklyn got to open a present -  two new Christmas books, which we read before going to bed.

Christmas morning when Brooklyn got up, which was around 9:00, we saw what santa brought and opened the presents under the tree, then Brett's parents came over. We had Egg Nog French Toast, bacon, grapefruit & raspberries, and homemade hot chocolate, then opened more gifts we got a Vitamix...so excited!!  and my brother and his wife stopped by. After everyone left, Brett and Brooklyn got in the hot tub while I cleaned up a bit then we all took a nice nap! Later we went up to my parents for dinner and more presents. It was a laid back Christmas...which are the kind we like!

We had such a wonderful day and were SO spoiled by our family, but what we enjoyed even more than opening our gifts or watching Brooklyn open hers is that we got to teach her about WHY we celebrate Christmas and WHY it is such a special day.
I love my Savior and am so grateful for the plan that he has for me. I am grateful for his sacrifice and his example and I want to mirror his life to the best of my ability because I know that that is what brings true happiness.

Hope everyone had a Merry Merry Christmas!! Here are some pictures from our holiday.

Christmas Sunday

 This is the first time I curled her hair in ringlets. I couldn't even stand how cute    she looked.

 Christmas Eve

5 days after writing this post I noticed that I didn't explain my outfit in this picture...embarrassing!!
Long story short...I HATE wearing anything tight on my pregnant belly longer than I have to (super uncomfortable) so as soon as I get home I put on my comfy pants :) DON'T JUDGE ME :)

Christmas Day

 Here is a short, very quickly made video of Brooklyn. As long as you don't judge my movie making skills feel free to watch :) She is quite the dancer!!

Willard Bay Lights

Tonight we went to see the lights at Willard Bay. 

Brooklyn loves to drive around our neighborhood and look at all the Christmas lights, especially the house that plays Christmas music while the lights twinkle, 

This is a picture on one of our drives through the neighborhood

 so we thought it would be fun to take her to see the lights on a wagon pulled by the horses and see Santa.

As I expected she wasn't too excited to sit on Santa's lap...until he bribed her with a candy cane. This is the best picture we could get of her, she still wasn't too sure even with the candy cane :) She wouldn't answer any of his questions, but she did give him a high five before we left.
She of course loved the horses and the lights and the music!

Chase & Taylor's Wedding

On Saturday December 15th my brother Chase married a beautiful girl named Taylor, who he met only 8 1/2 months prior. Chase has always been super picky about the girls he dates, but with Taylor it was love at  first site and he has never had any complaints about her so I knew there must be something special about this girl.
It doesn't always work our for some newlywed couples, but for these two the weather turned out perfect! Taylor wanted there to be snow on the ground on her wedding day and it just so happened that the night before the big day it snowed then stopped in the morning then started snowing again that night...amaizing!

We met family & friends at the temple at 10:30am, went to the sealing then took pictures until around 12:15pm after which we met Brett's dad at Sherwood Hills so that he could take Brooklyn to his house so she could take a nap before the reception. Then we went to the luncheon at Elements Restaurant and had a yummy lunch and listened to family and friends tell fun memories and give advice to Chase and Taylor. We were going to go home between the luncheon and the reception but decided to get some Christmas shopping done instead, which worked out really nice, because we about finishished our shopping and we ended up having to take more pictures before the reception. Luckily Brooklyn had woken up and Mark and Jeanie were on their way up with her so she made it for the pictures too. They had a really nice reception and we had a lot of fun sending them on there way.

My mom and dad had to take them to the airport so that they could fly to New Orleans for their cruise and we hadn't had dinner yet so we all met at Pizza Hut in Brigham.

 It was such a fun day and we are so happy for the both of them and happy to have Taylor in our family!

Hot Tub Buddy

One of the things that Brett and I enjoy doing together is getting in our hot tub after Brooklyn goes to bed. This is usually where we have our fun talks or just enjoy each other's company while gazing at the beautiful star filled sky.
Well...since I have been pregnant I haven't been able to have this time with him, for obvious reasons, but he hasn't had to hot tub by his lonesome because for now he has a new cute little hot tub buddy!!

Yes, she hot tubs as she calls it naked snaked

Brooklyn's Mini Christmas Photo Session

Brooklyn was asked to model an adorable outfit and hair accessory from Ruby Blue Inc. over at Etsy.com and in return got some edited Christmas photos..good trade I would say!

Here are my favorites:

Photos were taken by Amanda Laing Photography

What We've Been Up To

 We have been pretty busy around here lately. Here is what we have been up to:

I am the kind of person that either can't fall asleep or am so exhausted that I fall fast asleep then wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep, because I am thinking about things I have to get done or projects I want to do or because I have a bazillion ideas running through my head that have something to do with a party or present that I am working on.
For instance, just recently my phone and my computer have ran out of space on their internal hard drive, which forced me to work on a "new" project that I am really glad I finished (it will never be finished, but at least I am caught up...more about this in a sec), but had no idea how I was going to do it when I first started.
Thanks to my good friend Camille, who I've known since elementary.. just had to throw that in there :) and a few visits at each others houses, I have put all my 2010 and 2011 videos from my camera and my phone onto disks, which play like  dvds with a menu and chapters each month is a chapter, which makes it easier to find a specific video. I am still working on 2012, but will have it finished by the end of the year, which will work out perfect! And I have catagorized all of my pictures from 2009 to 2012 into folders catagorized by months and have also burned them to a cd. I would still like to get an external hard drive and move all of my pictures onto it for back up so that I have even more room on my computer, but we haven't purchased one yet. We are planning on getting one soon!!
I can't even tell you how good it feels to have all of this done and I will feel even better after I get all of 2012 done and can start fresh with a new year.

Here are some pictures of our girls, who are 3 months apart, at one of mine and Camille's get togethers.

Thanks again to Camille!!! I couldn't have done it without her! She was SO nice to take time out of her busy newborn baby days to help me.

Another thing that has consumed my mind lately is sewing. My mom would mend a few things here and there and my aunt was/is an amaizing seamstress, but other than watching these two wonderful ladies now and then I am a self taught sewer. I also have to give a lot of credit to my sewing machine instruction manual, which believe it or not is amazing!

So, with inspiration from pinterest here are my latest sewing projects:

A hooded towl for my friend who just adopted a sweet baby boy

This is the pinterest version of a flannel crib sheet that I also made for the same friend, becaue I forgot to take a picture of mine before I gave it to her, but I will add a picture of mine after I have her send me one of it on her son's crib...it turned out super cute if I may say so myself.

 And this is a carseat swaddle that I made for my friend who just had a baby girl. The first picture is the one that I made and the second picture is the Pinterest version so you could see what it looks like with a baby in it, since I never got one when I went to visit her.

These are in no way perfect, but I have enjoyed learning as I go. Thank you to my poor friends who let me gift my experiments to them haha

I am currently working on a few other sewing projects that I will post pictures of as I finish them. One is for Brooklyn for Christmas and the others are for our baby boy that will be here in March.


 Another thing that we have been doing is decorating for Christmas..YAY!!! I can't believe it's this time of year again, but I LOVE IT!! And I love the feeling that the Christmas tree and lights bring into our home. Plus having a two year old this time of year is like putting a cherry on top of my sundae!

Here is a close up of the wreath I made. I still would like to put some finishing touches on it, but I have to go to Layton to get what I want and honestly I hate running errands, let alone to Layton, unless I have to.

We've been fishing at the fish farm. Brooklyn loved watching the guy feed the fish, but didn't want to touch it when we cought one..can't say I blame her.

Brett is currently having a blast on his yearly pheasant hunting trip to South Dakota with our dog Koda, we really didn't name her after So Dakota...promise :)  The first day was really slow because it was so warm, but it must haved cooled down or something becaue they have gotten a lot of birds and they still have two days left. 

He has been growing his beard since I can't even remember the first of October or something and he almost shaved it before he left because it was getting so long then decided not to and he said that he is glad he didn't. I think it looks pretty sweet in these pictures haha

While Brett was gone, Brooklyn and I took a short road trip to Firth Idaho to visit my good friend who just moved back here from Connecticut. The girls had so much fun playing together! She has a little girl named Adalynn who will be 3 in February and little Lila who is 3 weeks old.

We went to their house for a while then packed a lunch and went to Lauren's parents, who live about 30 minutes from her up in the Blackfoot mountains to go swimming.

Brooklyn couldn't wait to get in and swim

Neither of the girls had naps that day and both were exhausted, as you can tell from Brooklyn's face,  from playing so hard.

 We also did a lot of cuddling this sweet beautiful baby!

We weren't planning on sleeping over, but we were having too much fun then it got dark and was rainy so I decided to stay and I am so glad we did. Lauren and I have known each other FOREVER and it was kind of special to watch our kids play together.

I know this is a super long post, so if you are still with me thank you for sticking around to see what we have been up to!

xoxo

Sadie