All things Christmas- Christmas Day

Well we finally got things working again, so I finally was able to finish the Christmas day slideshow.

First up was Christmas day at the Peters, which as I mentioned before we celebrated with them on Christmas Eve, but like with the Christmas Eve post I will include those pictures for Christmas Day. We got Steve's parents a huge digital picture frame (Steve's siblings pitched in for this too), and that was the big item of the day. Steve's younger brother Jeff gave his new wife Crystal some flowers which I thought was sweet :) The granddaughters were of course very spoiled and got a lot of things from their grandparents like play food and chef hats and aunts and uncles gave them toys of all kinds! Isabel was a good little helper to pass out all of the presents. My dad had joined us for breakfast that morning and then stuck around for present opening too. Thanks to the Peters!

Next up is the real Christmas morning in our new home.... yes you will see that the only way to have the tree up was for us to take down the kitchen table and put it there... but it worked which is all we could have hoped ;) The biggest hit that morning was the Weebles Treehouse Playset that Santa brought! Em still can't get enough of it! Steve and I didn't have any presents there because we got our new camera, but that was a great present! 

Next up was the Andrews house. This is also where we exchange gifts with my mom and dad. I made both sets of my grandparents a special gift- a unique print of the temples they were married in (Salt Lake for the Andrews and Manti for the Wildes) and a restored picture from their wedding with it. I'm still not completely satisfied with how they turned out, so I'll be doing a little more work on them and once I'm done I'll show you what I did. My mom gave Steve and I some clothes and an extra battery for our camera and she gave Emarie a new Rapunzel dress-up dress and my brothers got her a really cute dress. My brother bryan gave me some new skin care products that I'm in love with and some new tools to Steve! And my grandparents gave us all some clothes. My dad really spoiled us! He gave Em a Loving Family Dollhouse with accessories (hoping this will give me motivation to get her room organized!) and Steve and I both emergency kits for our cars and each a Barnes and Noble gift card, but the biggest thing was a Tom-Tom which came in very handy when we left on our trip to Sedona the next day :) We gave my mom a special made necklace with Emarie's picture in it and my dad some shirts.... both my brothers got gift cards to Amazon. The large tv in the slideshow was a gift from Amy (my aunt) and Jason (her husband) to my grandparents. Thanks Andrews, Wildes and Christie(s)!

Last, but not least was the Wilde clan! This is where the other one of those pictures I made was given. We gave Mitch and Jen ice cream accessories including an electric scooper and novelty spoons and bowls because we had it on good authority that they'd be getting an ice cream maker.... well we got one too, and little did we know, Mitch and Jen not only got one, but 2! Haha, little miscommunication! Emarie got a Fijit robot and another annoying little robot from Mitch, Jen, Connor and Noah, and she got a keyboard from my grandparents. Thanks Wildes! 

All in all it was a great Christmas! 

So enjoy the slideshow

And like before, for best results change the 320p to 720 HD and full screen it

All Things Christmas- Christmas Eve

Keeping up with the slideshows, think I may have found a better way to do it too! Here's a little compilation of our Christmas activities, which included trying to read a Christmas story every night in December... didn't always happen, but we had fun with the effort! Also, exposing Emarie to my wonderful Christmas movie collection (Elf, Home Alone 1 and 2, The Grinch, Muppet Christmas Carol and many others!).

And then Christmas Eve fun. We celebrated Christmas Eve with Steve's family on the 23rd (after the family pictures), but I included the pictures with the rest of Christmas Eve. A little video of Em opening her Christmas Eve jammies that night and of course one of her sleeping so cute! I also threw in a picture of our Christmas card tree (quite impressive this year!), since this seemed the best place to put it it! 

My recommendations for the slideshow is to select 720 HD (scroll over where it says 360p and you will see the 720 choice) and full screen it (to the right of the definition choice) to see it best :) Enjoy!

All Things Christmas- Peters' Family Pictures

I have got a lot of motivation to finally get my Christmas posts finished! Part of the reason I put it off is because the pictures take so much time! With our new camera and my obsessive husband (he wants to edit them and such... and he does it on the desktop which we don't have hooked up to the internet... so transferring them to my laptop is always a pain!)... anyway, thanks to a new site that I've joined (mostly for my job of running the preschool website) Animoto! It has made it so easy to just make a slideshow of all the pictures, so all the Christmas posts will be done with slideshows.

To start us off, we took family pictures the Friday before Christmas (23rd). Steve did a very good job using the tripod and remote button, and although it was cold, everyone was in much better spirits than we've been at photo shoots in the past, because we usually do them when it's way too hot (don't know about you, but I'd much rather be cold than hot any day)!

So here's the pictures

*Suggestion- hover your cursor over where it says 360p and choose 720HD instead. Also make it full screen to see it best (choice for this is to the right of the resolution choice)

After we were done with pictures, we did Christmas eve that night with Steve's family to make it all easier on those of us that had other places to go on Christmas Eve and Christmas day... love that they have always been flexible with this! 

We had a fancy dinner and games, so some of the pictures from that are in the slideshow as well. I love the one of grandma Peters reading a story to 2 of her granddaughters (Emarie and Ariana). 

I'm excited to use an idea I found on Pinterest of making your own canvas prints. I'm going to make a large one of the whole family for Steve's mom, pick some of our favorites for us, do the ones that Kristal and Uli liked the best for them (since we had them for Christmas)... and make 1 for each of the other couples that was their favorite. It should be pretty easy to do them all together and fairly inexpensive... but we shall see! 

More Christmas posts to come! 

Four

*Play song, "Your the World to Me" (incorrectly named though, it's supposed to just be "World to Me") for this post

My baby turned four on Christmas Eve, which is just surreal to me. At times it's unbelievable for me to think that that much time has past, it seems like it was yesterday that I was holding my gorgeous girl in my arms for the first time.... Other times, I can't even remember what our lives were like before her.

Four is an age that will forever hold a special place in my heart. It is the age my sister will be etched in my memories until I see her again. It is also the age of children I have been working with and teaching for the last 7 or so years. It is a great age. One filled with wonder, excitement and imagination. I am so excited to see what this year will hold for my dear sweet angel! 

It has been quite the roller coaster ride these four years and sometimes I wonder how we survived it all with our sanity in tact...... well, mostly in tact ;) I love my girl more than I can describe and I am so grateful for her each and everyday. So, I only saw it right that we celebrate her in the way she deserves.... and for the first time ever on her actual birthday! Christmas Eve has always been filled with way too many things that it was impossible to do any sort of birthday festivities, which is why we defaulted to celebrating in January somewhere near the day she came home from the hospital which was the 22nd. One of the biggest things that usually happens on Christmas Eve is Steve's work Christmas party, which is always a movie.... and not a kids movie, so I always feel awful having someone babysit my girl on her birthday. But this year, since it was on a Saturday, they did the movie on Friday the 23rd, so we had most of the day open! Just breakfast and presents at Steve's parents in the morning (that's when we celebrated Christmas with them since that was the day that it worked best for everyone), and then the annual Wilde family Christmas Eve party that evening. So, actually it was pretty packed, but we knew we could make it work! 

After we were done with present opening at the Peters', we had a special package for Emarie to open. A package that was packed with love from a very sweet Ch18 family in Michigan, the Bowen family. I teared up just when I saw the size of the box sitting in front of our door. And more tears came when I opened it first to prepare it for Em to see. Sweet notes and pictures adorned the top of the box, and what was inside was way more than we could imagine. Thank you Bowen family from the bottom of our hearts. You are such an amazing family and we consider ourselves lucky to consider you friends.... actually family, because we're all in this roller coaster together :) And even though we haven't met you, we feel like we know you as well as family and can't wait for the day when we will actually meet!

 Looking at the pictures of the adorable Bowen kids

 Here's a small portion of what they sent which included some clothes that their daughter has outgrown, they are all absolutely adorable! 

And the last item we opened.... Em's face says it all! 

Our card seemed a little less impressive after all this, but we gave it to her anyway ;)

 "Reading" her card.... I just love how expressive this girl is! 

 The surprise in the card was a gift card to go to Build-A-Bear and to do some other fun things (which we didn't get to, but I'll get to that later)

So, as soon as we were done here, we headed straight for the mall. Our plan was to hit Build-A-Bear at the Orem mall, then head to the Provo mall (don't have a BAB at the Provo mall anymore) to ride the train and carousel.... but thanks to a grandmother that was at BAB with like 10 of her grandchildren getting them all a bear for Christmas and they took forever, we planned to be there 30 minutes or less, which we would have.... but whatever! So since it took almost 2 hours, it was the only thing we got to do :( But, we're planning to do the other stuff when we can (trip then hip surgery, it would probably be a month before we could do it... but well, now the surgery has been postponed of course ((more on that later)), so we may be able to do it sooner than we thought).

 Choosing just the "right" one can be tricky business (see video below for just how well Em did this!)

 Holding her choice of an empty bear and waiting.... waiting.... waiting for her turn to fill it 

 Yup, still waiting..... I should also point out Em's cute shirt that says "One Cute Birthday Girl!" a hand-me-down from Kennya and Kennedy (friends)

The process of filling is in the video below :)

 Choosing the clothes is equally as tricky and important!

 Finally it's ready! I think she's happy :)

Love it!

And later we headed to the Wilde family Christmas Eve party (more of the Christmas celebrations from that in a following post) where her grandpa Mitch and grandma Jen gave her this....

 Yeah, I had the same look as Em.... thanks guys.... that's just what we needed... a Barbie bigger than our daughter ;)

And here's Em at the end of the night with all her birthday loot! The Jingle dog and book, jingle music toy, Rapunzel baby, birthday cake wooden puzzle, socks, Rapunzel gel window clings, Rapunzel purse and Rapunzel pillow and throw (plus all the clothes) were from the Bowen family.... told you it was a lot! Then Steve's mom made her the cutest little rabbit family set, complete with a zip-up carrot holder. And then of course the Barbie ;) Can we say spoiled??

All in all I think she had a great birthday.... what do you think??

Em's birthday celebrations at school

Since Em's birthday is on Christmas Eve, I doubt there will ever be a day she will be at school for the actual day. So we elected to bring a treat and celebrate our girl the day before break (20th). I picked up some store bought (health department policy) festive, frosted sugar cookies.... which Em couldn't eat.... but don't think I'm mean! I wanted something that the kids don't usually have, and unfortunately anything that's dairy, soy and egg free doesn't scream special. But one of Em's friend's from class also has food allergies and believe or not is allergic to more than her, but they can still eat a lot of the same foods, so I got the two of them some very cute Christmas (red and green) marshmallows and suckers, so they both felt pretty special too :) However, Em wanted nothing to do with either of these things, so she got her favorite from the school snacks- Alphabet Cookies.... whatever, it was her celebration after all ;)

 She enjoyed them... that's all that matters ;)

 Her birthday crown, which she wasn't too thrilled about.... until, 

She saw herself in the mirror :)

Someone payed Em a special visit for her birthday......

 What a lucky girl! And I should mention that this is the cute outfit that the Fisher family sent her last year and we're so glad we could make it work one more year! 

Not gonna let that candy cane go for anything! 

It was so fun having her celebrate with her school friends, they're all so cute together!

We had to take a picture of her wearing her crown in front of our tree that evening as well :)

I'm not exactly sure what is going through her mind with that face (she makes faces like this constantly though!), but I like to think it's, "WHAT, NO PRESENTS?!"

Haha, happy birthday Em, sure hope you have another fabulous year! 

Cheesecake Meringue Bites

Remember how I said I was going to post a recipe a month over a year ago?? And how I failed fantastically by only posting 2 whopping recipes in that entire time?? Haha, well that shouldn't surprise you! But, you're in luck! I just so happened to take pictures of something I made today just so I could post the recipe... aren't you so glad?? And these just so happen to be an easy and great alternative to traditional cheesecake for showers, parties and whatever! So here you go.. 

Cheesecake Meringue Bites

Crust ingredients

2 cups Graham Cracker crumbs (which works out to be about 32 squares if that's what you have, but I find it cheaper to buy the already made crumbs, which let's face it, is much easier as well!)

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup butter melted

combine cracker crumbs, sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl then spread evenly over a greased 15-in. x 10-in x 1-in baking pan (I put this in bold because the size is very important and needs to be exact!!), pour melted butter evenly to coat crumbs and mix until all moist. Press firmly into bottom of pan and about a 1/8 inch up sides. Bake at 350 for 5 minutes.

Filling ingredients

3 packages cream cheese (8 oz each), softened

1-1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 eggs, separated!

Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla in large mixing bowl until smooth. Add just the egg yolks  (keep egg whites set aside) one at a time, beating on low speed just until combined with each yolk. Beat egg whites on medium speed in a small bowl until soft peaks form then carefully fold into cream cheese mixture. Pour over crust and bake at 350 for 25-28 minutes or until center is almost set (check often). Cool on wire rack at least 30-45 minutes and then refrigerate overnight (at least 8 hours). Cut into bite sized squares (about 1-in) place in individual baking (muffin) cups and top with whatever you desire! I have used sliced strawberries, chocolate and carmel sauces and a combination of sliced fruit (kiwi, raspberries, etc.), really the choice is up to you! I usually serve a variety of toppings and always on the side (because not everyone likes stuff on their cheesecake!)

Well.... Merry Christmas to us!

*Play song, "Winter Wonderland" with this post

So you may remember in the last post that I mentioned that we may be getting a new camera.... well, we did! And it has not disappointed! For those of you who understand about cameras... or care, it is a Canon EOS 60d and really it is amazing!! But don't let me tell you, I'll let the pictures that Steve took speak for themselves :)

This was a little spontaneous "Christmas photo shoot" we decided to practice with last Sunday. Em is still fighting a tiny cold, as you'll see in one of the pictures, so it was a little hard to keep her happy seeing as it was cold and snowing (but don't worry, we kept her warm in her new H&M hat and mittens!)! But you would never know it since she has a crazy momma that doesn't have any pride when it comes to making a fool of herself in order to get some smiles from a stubborn girl! As it turns out, some of the best shots were of me interacting with her that Steve happened to capture :)

Without further ado, here they are!

This one was my favorite of her! This look just screams! "Emarie, Santa told me you have been good all year and your wishes will come true!"

Like I said, the cold was evident in a few ;)

And here's the "behind the scene" shots, complete with a little video Steve put together at the end... and yes, the new camera shot this video (it is also a high def recorder but with the added bonus of being able to use the effects of the lenses in your videos!), so we will probably be selling our video camera in addition to our Sony DSLR that is only a year old. Also, selling all the lenses with the Sony, which includes a 200 ml lens and a portrait lens (however the portrait lens just sold!). Anyone interested??

 This was by far my favorite of the two of us!

I'm just really sorry that we ordered our Christmas cards before we knew we were getting a new camera... and we just used some pictures we already had since our Sony was not available to do what we would have wanted on our cards :( But for the ones we haven't sent yet, you may be getting one of these babies ;)

And here's the video. And I have to say that this video depicts me far better than I really am!

*P.S. I chose the song "Winter Wonderland" with this post because that is what I am singing to Emarie in this video

What do I not have to be thankful for??

*Play song "Kind and Generous" with this post

Alrighty this was the last day of November, so I was determined to finish this post before it was over, since it was what this month was all about! Now I'm not sure how long ago this tradition was started, but I guess I started noticing it last year but did not participate until this year. That tradition is for many people to post something they are thankful for each day in November on Facebook. Actually, I wasn't planning to do it this time because for the first week, as I looked over everyone's posts, all I could do was think that everyone else had much more to be thankful for than me..... stupid, right? 

So, at first I just tried, somewhat begrudgingly to post because I felt like this would help me out of my slump of: we lost our house, we are worried about insurance/money... everything! Having to supposedly quit my job (which is really mostly a joke since I am there just as much as when I was actually teaching!)... anyway the list could really go on and on... hence why I needed out of this sort of thinking! And actually I was surprised at how the thankfulness just kept coming, in fact my hardest thing was narrowing it down to just one thing a day (which most of the time I failed at... miserably!). Anyway, the whole experience was so refreshing and really wonderful and I invite everyone to do it next year... or all year long!

But anyway, onto our Thanksgiving week (and yes it was a whole week because it was chuck full of food, family and a whole lot of chaos! But it was great!

First, Steve's aunt Ellen and her family came into town from California, which we haven't seen them in a few years and their youngest, Sabrina is just a couple weeks older than Em :) Yeah, Steve's dad comes from a family of 8 kids, and him being the oldest and Ellen the youngest means his grandkids and her kids end up being similar ages, very confusing but fun all the same! Since they were going to be here surrounded with family, they decided to have their son baptized here and we were lucky enough to attend and that was on Sunday. 

*And I apologize for the quality of these pictures because our DSLR camera is broken and is at the sony place being fixed :( So all of these pictures came from our basic digital camera or Em's iPhone (I know I said I wasn't going to post anymore pictures from her iPhone on the blog, but I think I'm getting the hang of it!)

 The crew while we were skyping with Steve's uncle who couldn't make it to Utah

 Steve's cousin Jenny (Bowen) and her daughter Laci are back from Korea! Her husband will be joining them soon!

 Em has liked playing with pianos lately and actually creates melody when she does *mom sees piano lessons in her near future!* She graced us all with her talent that evening

 Steve's aunt Debbie and her husband Bob (Bowens), Ellen (Jones), Matt Bowen who just returned from his mission, and aunt Karen (McCash)

 Some of the kids goofing around. That's Anni (Buresh) and Sabrina (Jones) and the crazy boys, Levi (Buresh) and the newly baptized Daniel (Jones)!

They had a lot of fun together!

The day before Thanksgiving was full of preparation (dinner for close to 60 people takes a lot of that!), and a short break to get some much needed (since September) blood work for Em done. She was happy, sweet and energetic through the whole process! Love my brave girl!

Thanksgiving Day

Only got a picture of the sweet cousins (that are only four days apart) at Steve's parents house, because like I said there was a lot going on there!

At the Andrews'

This picture is really poor quality (usually the iPhone does a pretty good job, so this must have been my fault because the ones Steve took are much better!) But these are the boy cousins that were there: Brett Andrews, Connor Wilde (my baby brother), Ryan Andrews (my mom's twin brother's son), Bryan Wilde being himself (my older brother), and the freakishly tall (for this family) Chase Adams!

And the girl cousins in attendance: the freakishly tall (for this family) me, Alexis Adams Holt (one of my "twin" cousins, we're 2 months apart), Sarah Andrews, and Cassidy Adams. Love these girls!

Black Friday

Steve and I are not really big fans of the hustle and bustle of the "Black Friday" happenings! But we did want to do something fun with our girl, so we went to see the new Muppets movie and we all really enjoyed it!

But after the movie, we figured we were right at the mall and Costco, so it couldn't hurt to check some things out... and boy am I glad we did! We got all the perks of the sales, but the crowds had significantly cooled down after 7 pm!

This is $40 worth of clothes (normal prices would have equaled around $200!), totally worth it!

Sadly we didn't have the luck we would have hoped at Costco, but Em still enjoyed herself :)

On Saturday, we decided to brave the retail world again and headed up to a place that I have been dreaming of going to ever since I left Germany over 8 1/2 years ago!

And yeah, that would be H&M up at the Fashion Place Mall, finally here in Utah! If you don't know what it is, it is much like the European Gap but with better prices :)

After that, we met my family at PF Changs for dinner to celebrate my mom and her twin brother Kenneth's birthdays (they don't celebrate them together very often!)

Here's Em laughing it up playing some mean percussion with the chopsticks! 

And here's Em modeling her new outfit from H&M before we headed up to Riverton to see the former Elder Bowen give his homecoming talk from his recent mission

FYI, that dress was $12 and that was the regular price! See told you!

So wow, we had a great Thanksgiving (Sunday to Sunday) and our hearts are full with so much we have to be grateful for! We have a great majority of our Christmas shopping done (frugally might I add!). So now that I've actually started in on recognizing our blessings, they just keep coming!

Like this..

These are two "nice" checks from the past two years of income taxes, that the state of Utah withheld because of a "discrepancy" from a side business we had for a bit that never made any money. Enough for a new camera so that we'll have one for Christmas (and don't worry we're selling the old one once we get it back), as well as a possible to trip to San Antonio in the summer of 2012 (I'm sure you Ch18 folks know what this means to us!)

Now if only I was blessed enough to get up our dang Christmas decorations!... or at the very least, the tree, because then I'd have a reason to wrap all the presents I'm excited about!