Up to Christmas Eve

Due to the fact that I feel like crumb today (darn pregnancy is still keeping me down even though I am already 17 weeks along) and I don't have my own computer to work on (thanks to our power cord that decided to die and the replacement one we were sent being the wrong one for our computer) and the fact that I'm sure most of you don't really care anyway, this post is just going to be a brief recap up to the night of Christmas Eve.

Now, with that being said, here I go.

Since we are currently "between jobs" and have nothing holding us down, we decided to head to Salt Lake for Christmas on Monday, which just so happened to be my birthday. My mom and dad were hosting a big party at their house so we decided to have a party with my siblings at my brother Andrew's house.

I just love these 3. Such cute little friends.

 On Christmas Eve we all get to open one present. The little girls got a fun new tree house tent. Right after this picture was taken Madison quickly turned around swiftly knocking her sweet little sister to the ground. I've never seen anything like that before it person. Good think Brooklyn is tough.

 As you can tell by this next picture, Brooklyn has a scab on her nose. She acquired this one when she thought it would be a good idea to go nose to nose with the fire place. I think she learned her lesson...

 Since the little girls are usually the one's making all the messes, they thought they would be nice and help Grandma clean up before our Christmas Eve party with my cousins. Notice Madison is using a window squeegee.

 This little guy has the most adorable and contagious smile of anyone I have ever met. I love that kid.

Per tradition, my Baird cousins came down for a party on Christmas Eve. Everyone had a great time playing with the girls and did a marvelous job at getting them excited for Christmas. At one point in the night, we were sitting in the family room when all of a sudden we heard Jingle Bells ringing outside our window. We even heard him laugh, he was that close. Madison got so excited! She started jumping around telling everyone that Santa was in the neighborhood and that we had to hurry and go to bed so he could come visit our house. It wasn't even her bedtime yet but she ran downstairs to her bed as quickly as she could because she didn't want him to pass her by.

(Thanks Mitch and Melissa for the wonderful performance!)

 Once downstairs she asked her daddy if Santa would wait outside until she was asleep at which he replied that he wouldn't wait he would just move on. He said she was completely out about 30 seconds later.

 Brooklyn wasn't quite as excited but she too hit the sack quickly.

 After our party when the house had calmed down a bit, Santa was finally able to pay a visit. 

 And remember that big ginormous doll Madison asked Santa for 2 weeks before Christmas? Well a few of Santa's elves got busy and were actually able to help Santa deliver.

(Thank You Aunt Linda and Uncle David)

Stay tuned to see just how excited Madison was when she woke up the next morning...

Christmas came early...

...Or at least for our family it did. Since this was all of our years to be away for Christmas, we decided to do Christmas a week early with Karl's family. We did our normal Christmas eve traditions on Friday night...

Soup in bread bowls

Read the nativity story

Opening of our special Christmas PJ's

... to name just a few.

Saturday morning we got to open all of our presents from Nana, Pop Pop, Grandma and our siblings.

 I think it's safe to say that the girls absolutely loved all their new presents. They all got a new baby doll and the older girls (Maddie and Ivy) got princess/fairy dress up clothes and Brooklyn got a fun Toy Story 3 race track.

 I think it's also pretty safe to say that their parents were pretty excited too. One of our favorite gifts from Karl's parents was 24 hour child care and a free hotel stay for the parents. Yay! It's been a while since we've had any time out on our own. 

We all were also pretty excited about this game Steve gave me. It is the Super Mario All Stars game- including all the old school Mario games we all love: Mario 1, 2 and 3 as well as the Lost levels game that was never actually released in America because of it's difficulty. This new game has kept us busy for quite some time. One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is being able to be care free and pretend like you are a kid again. And not have to feel guilty about it either.

Needless to say, it was a wonderful (early) Christmas.

Christmas Candies

I have been wanting to learn how to make homemade candies for years but have  always been so nervous about trying them myself. I have a wonderful friend named Vickie who is a fantastic cook that offered to help me learn the in and outs of candy making. I gladly took her up on her offer. So today, we got busy.

We made Divinity, Peanut Brittle and Almond Butter Crunch.

 We started by making Divinity- which is one of my favorites.

We then made Almond Butter Crunch- Yum!

We  then made Peanut Brittle- this was Karl's only request.

I learned a lot about cooking the candies to the soft ball stage, hard ball stage and the hard crack stage ( which is the part that has always intimidated me) and have learned how quickly the temperature of your candy can change in the blink of an eye.

I did have a few bumps along the road, but nothing too serious. Our Divinity started setting up quicker than we could drop it on the pan which just made some of the pieces not quite as pretty.

I kind of burnt my almonds when I was trying to roast them. We had to pick out a few but most of them were fine.

Overall, I was quite pleased with the end result.

Delicious and nutritious!

(ok maybe not nutritious but they sure are delicious.)

Thank you Vickie for teaching me today. It was a lot of fun.

Now for buying myself a decent candy thermometer...

Visit with the man in the red suit

Today we had our Ward Christmas party. A famous guy in a red suit showed up for the party. Madison was so excited to go talk to Santa... until she was waiting in line and she started to get a little scared. We talked about how Santa was a nice guy and that's why he brings us presents so we don't need to be afraid of him.

At first she was a little timid...

 ... Then she got really brave and actually sat on his lap. First time EVER without tears.

... And then without hesitation she quickly informed Santa that she wants a ginormous doll for Christmas.

(this was the first I had heard of this desire... I'm not so sure Santa can follow through with this one)

 Maddie was actually quite chatty with Santa this year, which is way better than the tears we've experienced other years.

 This little gal on the other hand... wasn't too happy with us for trying to get her to sit on Santa's lap. Sorry babe.



Why we're not (or at least not at the moment) sending a Christmas card...

We have tried a few times over the past couple of months to try and get some family pictures taken. Every time something has either come up or made it impossible for us to get it done. So finally, last weekened, my mom was desperate for pictures.

Let's just say we didn't get what we were looking for...

We may try again sometime, but for now... no card.

Not all of the pictures were bad though. Here is one cute one of little Mads.

And this... heheh. My brother might kill me for putting this picture up but since he doesn't ever look at my blog he can't get mad at me. :) Madison was playing with this old angel costume and made him put it one. What a great uncle huh?

The end.

A little bit of goofiness!

First trip to the...

DENTIST!

I originally made the appointment for this wild and crazy child because lately she has fallen and hit her mouth quite a few times and every time she does her mouth bleeds pretty bad...

(One of the many disadvantages of having a child learn to walk so young- Maddie still hadn't learned to walk by this age)

When we got to the dentist's office the lady asked me if they had seen any of our other children before at which point I said, "NO, and I realized last night I should have made an appointment for Madison too." She told me that they were ahead of schedule and so they were able to fit Maddie in as well. And boy was I glad we did.

They ended up taking Madison back all by herself at first (which really surprised me). I was a little nervous, especially when I heard her crying in back. :( But pretty soon the lady came and got us to go back with her. She said Madison did so good until they tried taking pictures of her mouth. I guess that part scared her a little. We were in there while the dentist looked at her teeth. She was a little nervous but did great. As a reward she got to choose a special toy. This was her choice...

 We were able to learn a lot about Madison's teeth in this appointment. Turns out that Madison grinds her teeth... she also already has 4 adult teeth on bottom getting ready to push out the old teeth and 2 on top. The problem here... the teeth are huge! Her mouth is so tiny that this is probably going to cause some problems later on. At least now we won't be surprised...

And this little girl, did pretty great herself. She didn't like the dentist looking in her mouth much but we made it through. He said that things look pretty good (we were really worried about her mouth with all the bleeding) but he did say her bottom teeth tilt backwards instead of going straight up. Once again, not really anything we can do about this but now we know how she was able to put bite marks in the gums behind her top front teeth (as a result of one of her falls). And as mentioned before, Brooklyn does have a few new teeth popping through at the moment.

So our first trip to the dentist was a lot less traumatic than I had expected and for that I am grateful!