Cord turns 2

I have had my eyes on this Noah's Ark cake at the local grocery store for several months now and HAD to have it for Cord's birthday. We finally celebrated my baby turning two today. His birthday was on the 11th but daddy had finals so we waited until today. We had the missionaries and "the boys" (Travis and Anthony) over for a nice dinner. We served "Cord-on-blue" hahahaha. Then we had cake and presents. Simple yet fun just to be together. All the kids then ended up playing a spirited game of monkey in the middle.





Transfers for the Elders are coming up on thursday. We never know what will happen but Elder Koerper and Mahe both made it through the last transfers so we are expecting someone to leave this week. It was nice to be able to spend one last evening together.

Christmas decor

Whenever I think about my "dream house" there are a couple things I have always wanted: 1) a large front room window where could put my christmas tree and 2) a fireplace to have nice cozy fires and hang the stockings. This house happens to have both so we are loving the christmas decorations.


There is a story behind these stockings. My grandma handmade a stocking for each grandchild so that when we came up to SLC for christmas, we would have presents inside. Then we started to get married. They are so much work that she decided not to make them for spouses, but we would inherit ours. So when I got married I decided to make Mike one. Then I made one for Chelsea, and you get the idea. So everytime I hang up our stockings, I think of my grandma. The kids like them because each one is a little bit different just for them.

Can you believe it's only 10 days away???????

Ward party

Tonight was our ward Christmas Party. The kids really wanted to show off the christmas songs they have been learning and thankfully they were able to squeeze us into the program. Brianna wanted to play "We wish you a Merry Christmas" on the piano. I didn't learn the duet part in time so her piano teacher stepped in. She was really nervous as this was her first piano preformance. Mason was super excited to play "Jingle bells" on the violin. It's also his first preformance, and keep in mind he has only be playing since september :) Chelsea had planned to do a violin/ guitar duet with Elder Koerper, but we had some tunning issues so they didn't get to play. We will have them over later and try to get it worked out.

Decorating the tree

After it snowed on sunday (it was melted by that night) we decided that it was finally time to get out the Christmas decorations. We started our first fire in the fire place, put on a little music, and started to go through the boxes. Our favorite part is unwrapping all our ornaments. Each year the kids get a new ornament, hopefully that reflects something they did that year or that they like. When they get married, they get to take their ornaments with them to put on their first tree. It always brings back good memories. Cord was especially helpful in decorating the tree (or not). We also put a train around the bottom of the tree. They boys have loved playing with it. I am surprised how good Cord is with leaving it alone.


















After all the fun, Mason and I were snuggling on the couch, looking at the tree and watching the fire. He said, "except for the fact that grandma's not here, this is the best christmas ever!"

The blogging Gods are against me

What a weekend! I swear something does not want me to be able to blog. To start off, our computer has caught the virus from facebook (something Chelsea has loved to use). It's like a total zombie. It takes so long to do anything that it's almost painful. Then it will be locked up for hours. Just to get on line I have to restart the whole machine several times and hope to get a small window where I can get on. Then I don't know how much time I'll have before it will totaly freeze up. A friend of Mike's caught the virus on his computer just before finals and it totally killed it. So be careful! Mike is in the middle of finals and doesn't have time to fix our computer right now so I don't have long. I'm using his computer while he is sleeping right now.

Second, I've been unable to get pictures of some fun things we did this weekend. On Friday I took Mason to the museum for a special evening called "Springfield under the stars". They had a lecture first that explained a lot of the stories behind the constilations. It was totally geared toward kids so Mason really enjoyed it. Plus, he got chosen to push the button to run the slides. Then we went up through the museum (which was closed) to get to the planetarium section. I kept looking at all the animal exhibits as we walked by and told mason that they were going to come to life like that movie (Night at the museum). We got to pick out the constilations at the planetarium. Then we headed up to the observation deck to look through their huge telescope to look at the moon. It was so close up that we could see the craters and ridges on the moon. It was a fun night with just Mason and I, but I left the camera on the charging dock so I didn't get any pics of it.

Then Chelsea preformed with her violin group at the Jubilee of Trees on Sunday. I put the camera in my church bag so i could be sure to take video and pics during her concert. But when i got the Jubilee, my camera was nowhere to be found. I tore my car apart but couldn't find it. I was just sick about it the whole time. I have recently found out that someone saw it in the relief society room and gave it to my YW councilor so I should get it tonight. But i was traumatized for a little while thinking i had lost it forever. Chelsea preformed well but she is questioning her desire to continue once we move which makes me really sad. It could have been one of her last preformances and I didn't record any of it. By the way, the jubilee was nothing compared to the event in St. George. Only a few trees and nothing extra special.

On another note, Mike has 3 finals this week and 1 next week. He looks "slightly" stressed in the few brief moments that we get to see him. The downstairs room has been nice because he can lock himself away down there instead of being at the library all the time. That way he can join us for dinner and we can come down and join him for nightly prayers. I think he'll feel better on saturday with 3 down and only one left. Brianna made this sign and hung it up on the door to the downstairs. I laughed and thought it was priceless.



The fine print says: You will face danger. Don't disturb papa bear whenever he is studying and if he doesn't do good you would suffer (no money, live in a box, and die of starvation, and mom will loose her job).

No pressure right?????

Winter Wonderland

And so it begins! This is what we woke up to this morning. There isn't much on the ground but I'm sure more is coming. I guess we are getting ready for our white Christmas.

Just like her father

One thing I loved about Michael when we were dating was that he was an amazing artist. He could draw just about anything and it looked really good. I guess Brianna has picked up the art gene from him because she has always loved drawing and creating works of art. She brought home her portfolio from art today and had some amazing pieces in there. I loved that they are using all types of mediums to create artwork with. It's hard to see all the details that she put into these pictures, but I wanted to share them anyway. I think she is very talented!!


In this piece, she created just one forth of the wheel and then it was printed 3 more times. The center is the top of a ballet shoe. There is also a Christmas tree in there because it's her favorite holiday.

This one has a combination of watercolors and tempera paints. I love the train climbing up the mountain like in polar express!

The assignment for this piece was to take your name and create a world that revolved around something you liked. This her version of a dance world. Her favorite building is the "A" because it's the theater where dances are preformed. There are all kinds of fun details in this one, including the butterfly whose wings are dance shoes.

This is her abstract piece. They had to take a picture and then create it using the complimentary colors. This is a diver (red) swimming under a coral reef (pink and green) with light shining in the water (black).

My little elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

This was a fun way to waste time instead of paying bills or cleaning house :) And I love seeing my children have fun together, even if it is computer generated (hahaha)

Plymouth MA

Saturday was our big thanksgiving trip down to Plymouth plantation. There they have recreated an English village from 1627 and a Wampanoag homesite. They have characters all dressed up and acting the part so we can see what life was like back when the pilgrams first came to this country. First we entered the native American site and went into their traditional "wetu". Inside there are natives discussing their lifestyle. I was surprised how warm it was inside there with the fires burning.







Then we walked over to the english village. There was some kind of wedding taking place (we think) because the villagers were parading up and down banging on pots or sticks while yelling and cheering. They stopped at each house to greet the residents. Inside one house the ladies were roasting a pig for the fiest. It was all very interesting to watch. We didn't ask a lot of questions because the wind was starting to pick up and we were getting cold. Its so hard for me to imagine living that kind of life. I guess I'm a wimp! It was interesting to learn about some of the myths of Thanksgiving, for instance, did you know it was actually a 3 day party?




We drove 3 miles down the road to see the Mayflower II, a recreation of the original boat the pilgrims came to America on. It was so tiny. I just couldn't imagine sailing for 2 months with over 100 people on that thing.



We couldn't go all they way to Plymouth without seeing "the rock". Mason kept asking, "what's the big deal with the rock?" I just wanted to see it. I guess it's really just a myth that the rock is where the pilgrams first set foot on America. It's not meantioned anywhere in the pilgrims journals so we aren't really sure what it's deal is. It was moved to this spot at one time and broke in two. This "pebble" is really only about 1/3 of the top half. But now we can say that we saw it right? It was a good historical trip and it was nice to see the ocean one more time before we leave.