New Years Eve

Once again this Morris family braved New Years Eve alone (I know, we need to make some friends).  No, in all honesty, I think we like it like this.  Hang an orange wrapped in ribbon and tinfoil with some yarn from the living room ceiling fan, have a count down at 7:30,  drop the before mentioned orange ever so slowly to the ground, bang pots, play some games with the kids, fireworks courtesy of youtube and Japan and then bedtime as usual at 8:15,  giving dad and mom plenty of time for fireworks of their own before the sick and prego mom heads to bed at her usual 9:00 bedtime.  Wow, way to sneak that in there.  Yes, I'm pregnant or as Seth puts it, preggernant.  Guess there's no better way to announce a pregnancy than to say something potentially inappropriate (especially cause my inlaws read this) and then hurry and cover it up with an announcement that I'm expecting.  Its okay if you missed it.

  And for a huge, ANYWAYS.....hoping the new year will be good.  Cordelle has tonze of ambition for Cedar Weddings....more to come on that.  And once I start feeling better, I'm going to get ambition too.  We'll see if I can get some goals by March. :) More to come...

Walked out of the kitchen and saw this one day

Now there are some angry birds. Funny kid.  Maybe I should get him some friends.

CHRISTMAS DAY!

 These pictures are the only real memory for me of the day.  But I wouldn't have missed it, no matter how sick I was.  

 Seth and Jaq Christmas morning at G and G Morris'.  We're such mean parents, we made them go to church (at 9) before we let them open any presents!

Grandpa helping Seth with one of his Star Wars toys

THE Rupunzel dress and doll coveted for months

Gifts from Grandma (those Russian dolls are the BEST toddler church entertainment btw)

Hotwheels never get old....Grandpa, Dad and Seth did this for hours.

Gifts for Grandma and Grandpa Morris.  Thanks for sharing Christmas with us!

I thought we had more photos of Christmas morning but it looks like they are all videos. So even though these pictures are actually after we got home in front of OUR tree, here is their loot! My mom always had us do this and I love this tradition.  Its so fun to look back on pictures and say, "oh yea, I remember when I got that." That's why we do this.

 

Christmas Day Evening my mom did manage to get us all back at her house for pictures with our pajamas.  Good idea mom.  Who didn't wear they pajamas all day anyways?

 

 The Mason family boys (minus Brett who had left earlier)

 The men

 The little boys

 The women.  (yup, here are those true colors shining through.  If I hadn't been so sick that day i might actually be embarrassed about how ghastly I look.  Love it.

 The little girls.

 The Mason family girls

CHRISTMAS EVENING 2011

 You know what?  Why not just start with the day as well, it is by the way the one "EVE" that is celebrated all DAY long.  So we are back up in South Jordan for our LAST Christmas away from home (yes, we say that every year, but we mean it this time....next year, its a lonely, yet much anticipated Christmas with no traveling :).  I'll keep you updated. We spent the day very lazy.  In the early afternoon we went and walked around the Oquirrh Mountain temple with the kids and the lake at Daybreak.  We fed the ducks and climbed over the bridge.  It was cold but nice, except for one thing, which I will try not to bring up a lot but it became a very memorable part of the whole weekend.....I WAS SICK!  SO SO SO SICK!  I didn't know then, but later became very aware that I had the beginning signs of a very BAD stomach flu.
  But not to distract from the occasion.  We finally got to my sisters house around 4 and the kids started making their cookies for Santa.  We ate dinner and rushed through our nativity act, because Jim and Tallie wanted us to go to Jim's work and talk to Santa over the air plane radio things.  (I guess it would make sense to remind my readers that Jim works as an air traffic controller and on Christmas Eve you can go and see where Santa's sleigh is at that time in the US on this big Air Traffic Controller screen).  So we rushed to make it to our allotted time slot and the kids enjoyed it.  But by this time, I know I am minutes away from losing it.  But I try to hold it together as best I can.  It was fun seeing Jim show off his work and I was glad we went if not to do anything but support him.   It was a quick trip downtown but we finally get back to my sister's around 8 and do the whole cousin present exchange.  It was fun and the kids loved every minute of FINALLY being able to open a present.
  (Side note) This year in lieu of doing Christmas for another family like we usually do instead of getting our brother/sister gifts, we decided to go to my brother Brett's apartment, stock his cupboards with tons of food and clean his apartment really well.  It was so fun!  And he was SO appreciative.  He's been really sick lately and has surgery scheduled to get his gallbladder out next week so it was fun helping him out. 
  Back to Christmas Eve.  We hadn't finished opening pajamas long before the amount of people in the house began to rise the temperature significantly and I knew I had to go.  We made it back to Cordelle's parents house just in time.  However needless to say the rest of my Christmas Eve and the early morning of my Christmas morning was spent puking my brains out (vivid eh?).  So I apologize  if my perception of Christmas is a bit off.  Thank goodness I have an amazing husband and mother/father in laws that helped take care of everything so I could pretty much spend the day zonked out in bed.  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

  And now an overload of pictures that unless you're family you probably will get bored with.  :)

 Check out this stable!!  My sister does NOT mess around!  Seth this year got to be Joseph and little Jaq once again was the darn cutest sheep.

The shepherds came...

And the three wise men

 Angels sang... (Mom, Britlyn, Ensci, the one in the middle is my little brother Mark's girlfriend from Hungary who was here visiting. Then me, and Krista. Tallie was, lets say, in a very impatient, bad mood so she opted not to dress up)

All of us, except for Brett who insisted on just taking pictures (bah humbug) with my Dad. 

And they meet once again...

Remember that line from Despicable Me where it says, "I think he's nice." "And scary." "Yeah. . . Like Santa!"  That about sums up how my kids feel about this ultimate yearly encounter with the big guy.  This year it happened calmly at our ward Christmas party, but both my kids were all business.  Get on the man's lap, don't smile, name only the most important thing you want, grab the candy cane and get the heck out of there.  Jaq was easy but no one could hear her cause she barely whispers when she's nervous.  Her only request: a Rapunzel dress.  Done.  Seth on the other hand whipped out a new one for us, telling Santa he really wants a Darth Vader light saber.  Uh, what?  At this point people, we are COMPLETELY done with Christmas.  So where did this come from?  So I thought I'd just let is slide and shrug it off.  But no, for the next 2 weeks he tells everyone that is the ONE thing he wants for Christmas.  So even though I have already gone over the budgeted amount for him, do I cave or stick to my guns that he has enough? Any thoughts?  Oh come who am I kidding, I know I'll cave.  Even if I have to unwrap something and take it back to replace it. :) It's Christmas, right?

Smiths Grand Re-Opening

 Okay this is random I know.  Who actually blogs about their local grocer's grand RE-opening.  Well Jaq and I made a little date out of it and we had a good time.  We met many life size characters including an Orea cookie, the hostess man, and a Banana.  We got free cinnamon rolls, cupcakes, cookies and many other high fructose snacks and samples while shamelessly trying to win a drawing for an ipad with about 1,000 other people in Cedar City.  Ahh made for a good mommy-daughter date even though we came up empty handed with the ipad (but then I would have just sold it and pocketed the money anyways so Cordelle said I didn't deserve to win).  But then I thought, neither did the old man that when he won asked, "I won a what?  Whats an ipad?"

New Family Pictures

Alright so we had a little, lets call it "drift" from our old photographer.  So Cordelle set up to use his work camera and we went out back in his parking lot, by some old cool buildings and took our own photos this year.  We lucked out and found about one good family one and a couple of the kids. But you certainly can't beat free.  Here they are.

Turkey Trot 2011

So here it was....time was quickly approaching for the turkey trot 2011.  Now I know this is dumb that I stress about this because its really just a 5K with about 20 of Cordelle's employees or their spouses, but this year Cordelle kept making me all nervous telling me there were some wives that were good runners that I'd have to beat to still win it.  (To be honest, I was kind of bugged by the lack of faith he had that I could win... I mean where's the confidence building? :)  Anyways I'm mega competitive so of course I start devising a plan that basically resulted in just booking the whole thing as fast as I could, but you never know if thats going to be enough.  I'm not in great shape but I was optimistic.  Turns out they changed the course so the entire thing was downhill...SCORE!  For a 5K I dont pace myself.  I just book it out in front until I'm far enough ahead (and by that time I am tired) that I slow down.  But by then people are settling into their pace.   So as long as I stay even from there on out I'm golden.  I did'nt have much at the end.  But I stayed pretty neck and neck with a group of guys for the first bit.  Ended up coming in 5th overall and for the 3rd year in a row, 1st in womens!  It felt great.  And I know this all sounds a bit cocky, but I was so happy with my time of 22:12 that for a minute I just wanted to be proud of my accomplishment.  Enough said.
  Their prizes get better every year.  This year I won myself a new pair of $70 ASICS!  And a $25 gift certificate to Sports Authority.  Sweet eh?  I was stoked...hopefully Cordelle will be able to run next year and we could do it together.
 

The DARTH VADER MASK

This has been a LONG time coming.

One day after browsing through the toys section at Walmart with my kids (a very lousy thing to do if you ask me....just results in whining and tears), Seth came across a Darth Vader mask that says Vader phrases and such, anyways he just couldn't put down.  The thing was like $20-25 (I can't remember exactly) but enough that I was like, uh yea, forget about it kid.  But every time we returned to Walmart, he insisted on "checking" on the mask.  So I told him if he could save up his money he could get it.  So we went home and counted his life savings (birthdays since birth, random coins he picks up, money he bums off people like my dad).  Anyways the kid had about $12 which I was actually quite impressed with.  But needless to say he needed about $8 more. (Yea, thats right I think it was $20).  So he would do his "morning jobs" (cleaning his room, getting dressed before school or 8:30, making his bed etc) and get a quarter for everytime he did that. I figured it really would only take him over a month if he did it every day but lets be honest, he's five and it ended up taking us more like 2 and 1/2 months.  But when he finally earned enough money there was nothing greater in his mind that could have happened to him.  And you know what?  I was cool with it.  Even though all that money he earnt was really my loose change anyways, I would much rather get my kid a cool toy that he has worked towards for 2 and 1/2 months than just getting it for him.  He deserved it.  And he knew it.  He wore it pretty much the entire rest of the weekend, which happened to be our first reunion back with Cordelle's parents from the mission.  So they may not have reunited with their grandson Seth, but they sure got a healthy dose of Darth Vader for the weekend.  Anyways here are some pics of him (even with the helmet still in the box at the store.  (even scared a couple of little kids which he thought was funny but got scolded for....it wasn't a year ago, when he himself was scared of the black creepy guy.)  Weird how quickly things change.

Cordelle's parents are home!!!

We just went up to South Jordan again, because Cordelle's parents got home from their mission to Chicago, Illinois.  It was so fun to be back at their house and visit and hang out with them again.  It was nice that my kids weren't even shy about it at all.  We had tried to talk about them often and skype every now and then so that they wouldn't forget who their grandparents were.  We had a good time getting in some alone time with them on Friday before everyone came on Saturday for the big welcome back party.  We met at the church and played games inspired by their mission, ate dinner with pretty much all of Cordelle's extended family that could come and listened to stories and slideshows of their mission experience.  It was really cool to be able to be a part of it. We were so glad we could be there.  We love them and are so excited they are home (but probably not AS excited as Cordelle's mom was to be home.  She was literally bouncing off the walls....so cute).  I can only imagine how hard it was for them to be gone.  I think they missed their oldest grandchild's wedding, the first grandkid missionary farewell, 2 baptisms, and 2 new babies being born.  That's a lot as a grandparent.  But I know they learned so much from it and grew in their faith and dependence in God.  So cool, you can continue progressing even at that stage of your life.  That sounded dumb, I know you can always progress but it just seems like when your kids are grown that you may think that the hardest, most challenging trials that help you be better come might be past, but I guess you never know. 
  Okay, babbling.  Anyways Welcome home Grandma and Grandpa Morris!

Happy Birthday Neal

Here's some random pictures from my little brothers birthday dinner.  He's a dork.  Love it!

Gobble. Gobble.

 Thanksgiving this year was in Ephraim at my uncle Marlin and aunt Cynthia's house.  There house is the perfect house to do it at because its SO big and theres enough room for everyone.  We were excited we got to see Michael and Katelyn and their kids as well as Marlins other kids but we missed seeing Matt and Britney (seems like forever since we saw them).  Neal and Krista had off years with their spouses so they were gone, and Brett and Mark didn't come so it was pretty small in numbers  but the food was SO yummy just the same.  I love Ephraim too, so it made it fun to go back there and visit.  My Grandma came over for lunch too from the assisted living home she lives in, in Ephraim.  It was neat to see her and sit close to her.  I remember childhood memories of hugging and cuddling with my grandma.  She was always a little larger woman but it made for the best cuddling and hugs.  I wouldn't have traded it for anything.  Her skin was always so soft that just sitting by her this weekend made me miss those days growing up with her listening to her spitfire sense of humor, spouting some outlandish comment towards my grandpa and making us all laugh.  She's quieter now and more withdrawn.  She probably misses my Grandpa.  I didn't have much to say to her and I knew her hearing was bad so she couldn't understand me most of the time anyways but I was glad she was there.
  Anyways, all in all, Thanksgiving was great!  Saw some family, ate a BUNCH, and stressed out a little about whether or not to go black Friday shopping.  Didn't.

 This is a hat that Katelyn made that I fell in love with and just had to get for Jaq.  Its so cute!  She is super talented.  It was fun to watch her in action this weekend crocheting her hands off and whipping out these in just a few hours.

 These pictures were actually after Thanksgiving.  I was putting our Christmas lights up on our house, (thats right I PUT THEM UP ALL BY MYSELF THIS YEAR, and didn't fall off the house or the ladder or get electrocuted....) Anyways I made her sit on the grass and watch me so she wouldn't wander up the ladder but she started to get cold and tired....obviously....that when I came down to look for her I found her like this on my kitchen floor.  I think she was sick cause she doesn't normally crash like this, but it did make for a super cute picture.

Friday night after Thanksgiving Cordelle's brother Cameron and his wife Lisa had offered to watch our kids over night so we could go on a over nighter date!  It was so fun!  It was really their Christmas gift to us last year but unfortunately it took us almost a whole year to work out.  The kids LOVED it though.  I am so glad they are able to get to know their family more.  They had a blast. So here is Jaquelle, Michelle, Anne, and Emily jumping in leaves. 

The rest of the weekend was very relaxing.  We sent Tallie to do our Black Friday shopping and she got some great things!  We were able to stop by and see our good friends Dave and Laura and I'll tell you it was way too long since we've seen them. Matter of fact we called them up because Cameron and Lisa live in the same town as they do but come to find out, they moved!  Like a year ago.  Sometimes we are ultra lame with keeping up with friends.  We miss them and it was so fun to catch up and see how big their kids have gotten.