Christmas Eve

What a great day it was!

Our friends the Blacks have been missing one part of their family for a little while. Their Dad Pete has been depolyed in Turkey. He was supposed to be home for Christmas but because of the snow storms back East his flight got delayed. It wasn't looking like he'd make it in time. Some how though at the last minute a miracle was pulled off. He got a flight home on Christmas eve. So we concocted a plan! The kids came over to my house for the day while Jonae went to get Pete from the airport and put together the suprise. They found a Santa suit and a giant box and wrapped Pete up. When I brought the kids home Jonae told them that a big shipment had come and that they could open it up. It was the cutest thing ever!! Pete came popping out of that box yelling Merry Christmas. It just really reminded me of the what Christmas is all about and how lucky I am to have my family all around me tonight. Merry Christmas Black family, I'm so glad you have Dad home with you safe and sound.
When I got home we had cookies and cocoa while watching a movie. We read some Christmas stories and put out cookies for Santa. This year we were all prepared with nothing to have to put together. We had the presents under the tree in 10 minutes! Now it's off to bed so Santa doesn't skip this house.

Christmas Goodies

So you know those people who spend days baking. They revel in the joy of cooking up tasty treats. Treats they will deliver to every person they've made contact with in their lives. I'm not one of those kinda people! My mom did this every year and I remember how fun it was but I still can't bring myself to do it. The thought of trying to accomplish this task nearly sends me over the edge straight to the loony bin.

This year though Alan wanted to take some treats to the families he home teaches. I couldn't bring myself to plan and prepare for it. I saw this post from The Bargain Jargon and thought maybe I could pull this off. It still took me a week to muster up the guts to attempt the goodie making. Not to mention I forced Alan to leave the house with all my children so that I wouldn't loose my mind. You think I'm exaggerating? No....I hate cooking/baking with my kids around, I get all anxiety ridden and start turning into Monster Mom. Believe me you don't want to witness Monster Mom.

Anyway, I pulled it off, treats were made and happily delivered! My kids loved the delivery part of the process just like I did when I was a kid. They don't have to know how my Mom cooked 6 different types of cookies and candy, packaged them all and delivered mass amounts of plates each year all the while filled with the Christmas spirit of love and joy. My kids can just go on thinking my pretzel dipping was an amazing feat of Christmas spirit and not know how sadly lacking I really am in that department.

So I'm sorry if you were expecting goodies from me and did not come through for you. Know that I love you and I'm thinking about bringing you treats. I'm imagining how much you would love pecan snowballs, peanut brittle, dipped oreos and cookie bars. Heck I'm imagining how much I'd like all those things. Do you see them? I can almost taste it, can't you? There that was so much easier than actually doing it. Enjoy your virtual treat from my heart to yours! Merry Christmas!

Emmett, Emmett & Rigtrup

We had the two Emmett clans over today for a quick little Christmas party. The holiday season can be so crazy we don't even see eachother. So we decided to be sure and let the kids party hard together this year. Natalie made some incredibly delicious yet slightly disabled gigerbread men for the kids to decorate. Nena had her Mom with her who is visiting all the way from Dubai, and her sister in law and nephew who are here from Utah. It was wild and crazy as always and tons of fun! Love you guys, thanks for taking the time to trek out to my neck of the woods!

A little house love

I don't know if I've mentioned the barn door around here, but I had big plans for a barn door! It took some convincing for Alan to get on board for this project but I won him over eventually (I always do). So thanks to my favorite website (craigslist) I was able to buy the barn door and track from someone out in Olympia who didn't know what they'd be missing out on when selling this bad boy. Little did they know that if your brave like me you can use a barn door...indoor. Instead of your traditional french doors leading into an office, in our house you get this...




Believe me, I realize that this is not for everyone, but it's sooo me. I'm really very in love with it...can you marry a barn door? No, Alan may have a problem with that.


My other true house love is my new fabulous dining room lights. I can't even put into words the deep joy these bring me...deep joy I tell you! I've wanted/coveted/lusted after these lights for 5 or 6 years now. They are now mine and I stare at them all the time, but then my eyes hurt so I have to look away. Now you may have the pleasure of staring at my beauties...




Just don't judge my crusty table to harshly. I have pictures to take and blogs posts to write, there's no time for scrubbing tables around here!

The poor missionaries...

We had the missionaries over for dinner last night. Alan loves to try and feed them something they wouldn't normally have at a members home. He fed the sister missionaries ribeye steaks last year, needless to say the loved that! When he found out that one of our missionaries had lived in Japan for a few years he decided to make sushi. The hard part is that we have to drive an hour to buy sashimi quality fish for the sushi. Worth it to Alan though. He tends to go overboard on most things and this was no exception. Thankfully we already had a lot of the items he needed like seaweed, shitaki mushrooms and rice. But he still spent around $60 on the ingredients! I'm going to interject here and tell you that there isn't a single person in our house aside from Alan that will touch Sushi with a 10, no make that a 100 foot pole. So he made mass amounts of Sushi and it turns out the other missionary agrees with the rest of my family and was not super excited about the sushi dinner. LOL, he tried one and he seriously turned green! I ended up making him a roast beef sandwich. I felt so bad for him! The sushi didn't go to waste though, amazingly, Alan and Elder Baxter ate ALL of it. Just makes me want to vomit thinking about it!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

Yes, I already have the tree up! Alan gave up years ago trying to convince me not to get a tree so early. I don't really care if it's dead by Christmas, I want to enjoy it as long as possible.
Although one year we were having a Christmas party and the tree was so dead, it was embarrassing. So I went out and bought a new tree, drug it inside, tore down the old one and redecorated the new one all by myself. I knew Alan would never let me do it, so snuck and did it all while he was at work! Mwahaahaa!
Anyway this years tree was up and decorated on Saturday. Another tree rule of mine is that it has to be decorated the same day we buy it. WHY? Because my Scrooge of a Dad would force us to "let the branches rest" before we could decorate it. This would take a day or two in his opinion. It nearly killed me to wait. Really it was just my Dad who needed to rest! He made us all suffer the anticipation of tree decorating, I've never forgotten the torture. I promise never to put my kids through it.
I'm really rambling today, sorry! This was my second year trying not to be a tree Nazi. Which means I let my kids put all the ornaments up without interference from me. Thankfully Taylor is a chip off the old block and she takes care of the Nazi part for me. She moves all the ornaments the boys put on so that the "flow" of ornaments is more uniform. Ahhh, I love that girl!