State of Mind

When you're busy doing stuff like this..... And this....
Sometimes, this happens.....

Picture the light golden color we all know as perfect chocolate chip cookies, these were in about twenty minutes instead of ten... The bitten one was Elle's attempt to tell me they weren't so bad, she didn't want the rest as you can see. At least I got all my Christmas cards done! For those of you who've been in my house the stove is maybe only 10-12 feet from the table where I was working, I'm still not quite sure how I let this happen...twice!!! Yup, I ruined an entire package of cookie dough that day. I guess I really can zone things out apparently. Yikes, good thing the house didn't catch on fire, I probably wouldn't have noticed!

I have been getting things on my list done at least! I've completely knocked out my previous list and conquered a few more! I feel like my early fretting is beginning to pay off, I might actually have a couple days to relax! Maybe.... Yesterday I got all Sam's siblings a gift, and got all the gifts that need to be sent home with my brother Kyle wrapped/ready to go. I also got all the gift bags for Audrey's class party ready, (thanks to Andrea for coming over and helping me! It was nice to have the company and extra hands.) last night was the Enrichment dinner/program, - that went off without a hitch, immediately after I had to drive into the city to pick up Kyle so he could stay here and get to the airport early in the a.m., this morning Audrey sang at school, tomorrow, I've got her class party to be in charge of, the ward party later at night, then Sunday my friend Jessica's family party that we're invited to and Tuesday Sam's mom will be here! The good news is, I'm pretty much done with everything else! Yippee!

Merry Christmas Everybody.

Let it Snow!

Hooray!! This morning we woke up to this.....

The kids have been really wanting it to snow, and with the warm fall and winter so far, we were beginning to wonder if the snow would ever come! Come it did.

We of course took advantage of the situation and had a great Saturday full of fun outside, I had to give the kids part of their Christmas presents early though, I found some really great gloves and mittens that are waterproof that I couldn't resist breaking out.. They were really happy to have them!
Sam in his Rastafarian hat.... he actually said it was an old favorite of Grandpa Kienows! He feels like he's carrying on the legacy I guess, if you're looking for me... just look about 17 paces to the side of him.....ha ha!

There may have still been a bit of weeds at the bottom of the hill, but we were having too much fun to notice....

Audrey's Big Night

Here's Elle and Sam, waiting to see the big performance. Audrey has put a lot of practice time in over the last few months. We're so proud of her for sticking with it and not getting tired of practicing four days a week! It was exciting to see all her hard work pay off. I wish the pictures could have been better, with her moving and the room being dark, it was pretty hard to get a decent shot... so here's what we ended up with.

Audrey as Clara, entering the party scene.

Can't see her head in this one but I put it on to show her form! She really did great.

Here she is as a candy cane and the orange one was the sugar plum dance.

Audrey and her Teacher Ms. Sarah, who also performed.

Audrey and the dancer who played the sugar plum fairy.

Some of our cousins made it up to see Audrey too! She really appreciated the support. Also, thanks to our friends who came to see her dance!

After the performance it was out on the town for ice cream. I'm glad she was able to perform, she did beautifuly and I hope it will only continue to build her confidence in herself and what she can accomplish! Way to go sweetie!

It's almost time

Tomorrow, Audrey will get to dance in the nutcracker, so tonight she and I enjoyed a mom and daughter date to Olive Garden and then to the Nutcracker at Capitol Theater. It was of course awesome, and I of course, forgot my camera.... I won't make that mistake tomorrow, for sure. We've got up all of our trees now, including Audrey's, her room is nice and clean due to the gut out we did while moving the bed around. I thought it was cute that Audrey had all three of her tutus hung up for tomorrow, she will be Clara, a candy cane and a sugar plum. She loved seeing the ballet tonight and I noticed her mimicking the hand positions subtly while watching. Pretty cute, she really loves to dance. I wish I would've stuck with it when I was a kid...

The performance is 6:30, Friday at the Rose Springs Elementary Gym. Tickets are one dollar at the door.

Holiday Fun

This was the project a few nights ago, notice the lego men out front having a snowball fight, and Audrey's littlest pets placed around the house... The kids got to do it mostly by themselves this year, I love decorating these so it was tough to step back, but I stayed strong.... and let them have at it. Not too Shabby!

Look at those great old ornaments, they are all wrapped in news paper from 1980 but I think most of them were bought in the 50's or 60's. We had fun going to Grandma's and getting her all set for Christmas. My sister Laura and I went on the first of the month. Grandma really didn't want her picture taken because she wasn't ready for the day yet. You couldn't make Grandma look bad if you tried! She's so cute...

Laura Looking cute as usual!

** Party Time **

Reese woke up to being trapped in his room, we like to put streamers all over the house for the kids' birthdays

This took him about 15 minutes to build, I know I couldn't do it that fast! Thanks to Grandma Nyleen and Grandpa Ladd for this great gift!

The Birthday cake, ready to go. Audrey was still in her pjs and Reese didn't want me taking more pictures...Elle just decided to mimic Reese.

We got two of our cousins and two friends and headed up to the indoor pool in Tooele. They all seemed to have a lot of fun.

Elle, ready to swim with Daddy! The girls enjoyed being lavished with Sam's attention while Reese was busy playing with his buddies..

Classic pool picture, had to get one of these. The boys left to right,

Robbie, (cousin), Reese, Nick,(friend), Jacob, (friend), Dallin, (cousin).

What Cuties!!

After swimming for a couple hours it was back to the house for the rest of the party. Reese wanted chocolate cake, chocolate frosting, and chocolate ice cream. I'm sure he would've wanted chocolate soda if I could get it!

He was so excited to get his Legos! He's been waiting for a long time. In fact, he's been on the Birthday countdown since the day after his birthday last year...

Sam asked Reese what he wanted for his birthday dinner and he said ribs... you can see the disappointment in Sam's eyes over Reese's choice. Any excuse to fire up the bar-b-q!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY REESE

I put the theme song to star wars on the playlist in honor of one of Reese's first loves...

My sweet Reesey boy, it's AMAZING how fast he's grown. It's funny how much smaller his eyes used to look when they were surrounded by all that chub! Reese was born Dec 6th, 2001. I had just finished taking all my finals early because he was due in three more days. After a grueling day of tests, I got home and started a mad obsession with cleanliness and around midnight that night my body started to get rid of anything I had put in it that day. I somehow didn't see this as a sign for much and so continued to stay home, around 5 am I was still unable to sleep and still hurting so I decided to shower (if I was awake anyway), we finally decided we better get ourselves to the hospital when my contractions were less than three minutes apart. There was a huge Logan snowstorm that night and made the drive to the Hospital all the more slow. We got there finally and just a few hours later we were blessed with our baby boy!


Things I love about Reese:


His sensitivity to my feelings, his great attention for details, his obsession with earning money, saving money, and counting money, his inquisitiveness, ( he's always got so many questions for both Sam and I that we just have to try and patiently listen and answer before becoming tired), his laugh, his excitement about life, his silliness, his obedience ( not all the time, but possibly a tad more than the girls...), his sense of right and wrong, his intelligence, his low-maintenance-ness, his glasses, his eyes, and simply being blessed to have a boy in our family!

Cute things : I was reading a story about David and Goliath once and told him that David loved the lord, Reese matter- of- factly told me, "well, I love the Lord!" Reese likes to tell his sisters ( using a song from a kids show on tv that says "there's a party in my tummy, so yummy, so yummy") There's a party in your hair, so ugly so ugly; or there's a party in your nose, so yucky so yucky....I of course immediately tell him to stop but can't help but think it is just a little funny, or creative at least. He also was obsessed with garage sales this summer, he has sold something to nearly everyone of our neighborhood kids. He even asked one of my friend's little girls to make his bed for him and he would pay her five cents! Early signs of an entrepreneur?


He was counting his birthday presents and we have one small gift wrapped for each of his friends that are coming to his party, so when he counted his presents, he counted them all and I said, no, those are for your friends, and he said, yeah but they'll all bring me a present, so that's how many I'm going to have! He's often one step ahead of me.

LOVE YOU REESEY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Where to start?

This is the ending goal... but today I'm sitting here paralyzed

by all the things coming up that need doing by me.

So, I am wasting yet more time sitting in front of the computer.

I figured if :

I gave

myself a list,

I could look back

and be able to check things off.

So, here goes...
I need to :
Put up tree
put up lights outside
get Reese's Birthday

invitations out, get his presents

wrapped put together treat bags
find some token of appreciation for Jessica,

my lovely friend who's birthday is the same day as Reese's
Meet with the enrichment committee and start getting

supplies for the Relief Society Christmas program
Assign other parents jobs for Audrey's Christmas party
get supplies and treat bags for Audrey's Christmas party
take Audrey to the Nutcracker at the Capital Theater
get Audrey to her own performance of the Nutcracker
(on Dec 12 6:30 pm @ Rose Springs Elementary tickets are 1$)
Christmas Shop / send packages in mail / Christmas Cards
Get house ready for Sam's mom to come and spend Christmas
Neighbor gifts
Exersize?
Make dinner

I think that's about it for now, I do wish we could get some snow around here... Maybe that would motivate me, make it feel more like Christmas. Yesterday I did help my Grandma get her tree up and we got our downstairs tree up (at least). One day at a time... that's what I'm going to tell myself! Hope you're all doing great, good luck with the busiest month of the year!