Yeah . . .

THIS

is coming off tomorrow. All I can say is HALLELUJAH!

Christmas WEEK

Tony and Connor didn't have any school this week, and so it really has felt like an entire WEEK of Christmas. Here are the highlights:

Monday afternoon, we headed to Salt Lake for our 2nd annual family Christmas trip. It was GREAT once again. We followed our schedule from last year, eating at the Mayan, staying at a hotel downtown (thank you, priceline!), seeing the lights at temple square, and swimming at the hotel. This year, we went equiped with 7 loaves of homemade bread to give to people who may need it around temple square, but we could only find 3 people to share our bread with! Oh well. The kids still got the spirit of it. Here are a couple pics of our fun trip.

Tuesday night, we got a babysitter and Tony and I went to an ugly Christmas sweater party. This is an annual event hosted by Tony's sister. And this year . . . drumroll . . . Tony won! The real vote-getter was his Christmas star belt buckle which stayed lit all night by his mini-generator, which he carried around faithfully throughout the party. (Connor was our photographer, and I guess he hasn't learned not to take a picture when somebody is rubbing their lips together!)

Tony's family all came to the ranch this Christmas, so the kids have had TONS of cousin time these past few days, which would probably keep them happy even without the presents. I won't bore you with any pictures of what they got, but they were excited. Mariah didn't care a bit about what was inside the presents, but she was completely obsessed with opening them!

My favorite gift was a surprise from Tony--a beautiful picture of the Salt Lake temple to go above our bed in my newly decorated bedroom. This picture, of course, doesn't do it justice, and the wall color still looks NOTHING like the real thing. Oh well. You get the idea.

Finally, today my entire family came over for dinner and a gift exchange here. It was so fun to have them. I really wish I would have taken some pictures, but I forgot. The highlight for me was a coupon from my dad for a trip to Phoenix with him and all my sisters this summer for a Phoenix Mercury WNBA basketball game. I can hardly wait! Thanks again, Dad!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well. I love this time of year!!!

Hair Stuff

A couple quick thoughts on hair. For nearly a year, I've been suggesting to Mylie that she cut her hair, but with no success. "No, Mom. I'm growing it down to my knees!" Well, about two weeks ago, Tony said to Mylie, "I really liked it when you had that cute short haircut. It looked so cute on you." That's all it took. The next day, Mylie and I headed to the hairdresser and she got the chop. What is it about a dad's opinion of his daughter's hair that has such power? It made me think about some of my "hair" memories growing up. I don't usually remember anything specific that anybody said 15 or 20 years later, but I remember two very specific times--one on a Sunday morning before church when I was about 9 years old, and another my freshman year in high school--when my dad told me that my hair looked nice. So, dads, compliment your daughters on their hair. I don't know why, exactly, but it matters.

Secondly, I'm having a major hair dilemma. About three months ago, I dyed my hair dark. I hated it for about a week or two, then have really liked it since then (after it toned down a bit). However, it is MUCH darker than my regular, so by mid-November, I had some nasty roots growing in, which looked gray. It looked to me like somebody had emptied their vacuum right onto my part. Yuck! So, I went to my hairdresser and she touched up the roots for me for just $20, which is much better than paying full price to have it all done again. But now it's been a month, and my hair is still growing (dang hair!) and the roots are changing much too quickly. I can't decide whether to keep paying $20 every two months to keep this up, or to just go back to my regular color (a big cost all at once), and then not have to pay for maintainance. If I hated the dark hair, this would be an easy call, but I'm having fun with the change as well as the compliments (I've never had TWO hair compliments from married men before!) so I don't know what to do. Right now I can hardly wait until my little sister, Olivia, goes to beauty school so I can let her "practice" on me and get my hair done at a fraction of the cost! But until then . . . what do I do?

My 100th blog post!

So, this is my 100th blog post! You probably figured that such a momentous occasion would warrant some amazing news, incredible pictures, or proufound insight. Sorry. Just an odds and ends type of post with a few poor quality photos. (I don't know whether to blame my camera or myself, but my photos lately are AWFUL! I thought this was a good camera back when I was taking outdoor photos this summer, but indoor, yuck!)

Anyway, December has been a wonderful month so far. I've mainly just been home and enjoying the time with my kids. It feels like every day we are focused on Christmas as we have several traditions going. It's so much fun. Here are a few pics of things we've been up to lately.

Connor had his Kindergarten Christmas program last week. He did a great job and had a great time. My camera died during the first song (bad mom moment), so I don't have any pics of him singing his heart out. But here's a picture from before we left. He looked so handsome!

For some reason, Mylie has always known how to pose. Girl thing? When I tell Connor I'm taking a picture, he does this really cheesy face and stands weird (see above photo), but I pick up my camera, and Mylie does this:

I love it! Other good news is that I FINALLY talked Mylie into getting her hair cut again. I love this cut on her. Her hair looks thicker and healthier, and it's much easier to do. No braids or ponytails. I love it.

One fun Christmas tradition at our house is "Grandma Bags." Tony's mom gives the kids a giant bag filled with gifts. There is one for each day from Dec. 1st until Christmas. Here are the kids posing with one of their Grandma gifts. These cute elf hats were actually a kit that the kids decorated and then I hot glued. It was fun.

Last Saturday, I decided to make rolls. I rarely make them, but at Thanksgiving I helped my mom. She made perfectly round circles when she rolled the dough out to cut for crescent rolls. Every time I've tried, I end up with a very sorry excuse for a circle. But she gave me a couple tips at Thanksgiving, and on Saturday, I found out what a good teacher she is (or what a fast learner I am?!?) Either way, these turned out wonderful!

Mylie also had her birthday this month. As a birthday tradition, the person with the birthday gets to choose what we have for dinner. They also get some very fancy dinnerware to eat on. I thought this looked pretty funny: Tombstone pizza on the birthday plate. Hey, it's what she ordered!

Finally, on Sunday morning, I got everybody ready a for church a little early so we could try to get a family photo. We don't have a single one since Mariah has joined our family (how embarrassing is that?) and I thought it was time. So we rushed around, I rigged up a way to set up the camera, we set the timer, and ended up with several TERRIBLE photos. Really, everybody looked great, but the lighting was just awful. They were really washed out, and even after doing everything I could with photoshop, this is the best I could get. Darn. I really wanted a good one. Oh well. Here we are. Merry Christmas!

Fathers and Sons and other Relationsihp STUFF

Tony and I like to read one talk from the past general conference each night before going to bed. Last night's talk had a powerful impact on me. It was the first talk from the Priesthood session, "Fathers and Sons: A Remarkable Relationship," by Elder M. Russell Ballard. I realize that most of my readers are women, but if any men are reading, this article is a must-read for you. You may say, "Oh, I went to Priesthood session. Ya, I heard it. Good talk." Sorry. That's not good enough. Re-read it and maybe set some goals to better follow Elder Ballard's counsel. Female blog readers, encourage your husbands and priesthood-aged sons to read this one. I just think that if fathers and sons would have the quality of relationships that Elder Ballard is describing, our families, church, and society would be so much better!

This talk also made me decide to go ahead and blog about relationships--something I've been thinking about quite a lot in the past little while. I know that I am not an overly (or even adequately) friendly person. This is something weighing heavily on my mind as I begin thinking about my new year's resolutions for the coming year. However, I do enjoy good relationships with all the members of my family. This is very important to me. There is a question about this in the temple recommend interview, and it is one that I contemplate often and take very seriously. It saddens me when I see mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, or siblings who do not have quality relationships with each other. These are the people that will always be there for us, and will be with us (hopefully) for eternity. We need to do all we can to make sure that these relationships are the best ones we have. Although I am not any kind of expert on relationships, I do feel like I have learned a lot about realtionships in the past ten years. Leaving my family and going out on my own gave me a new perspective as well as the added challenge to maintain relationships with my family members when I don't see them daily. I will TRY to briefly explain a few relationships truths that I have learned.

1. The only person you can control is you. I often hear people say that their relationship with another person could be better IF that other person would (fill in the blank). If you are going to wait around for somebody else to do something differently, you could be waiting a long time. If you want to have quality relationships, you have to be proactive.

2. The things you do and say have an impact on others' feelings, and YOU are responsible for whatever that result may be. For a long time, I was guilty of saying, "Well, she shouldn't feel like that about it," or "I wouldn't be that upset if someone said that to me." This is how I justified hurting other people's feelings. If I didn't THINK they should feel that way, then I could continue to do or say whatever I wanted. I see this happen all the time. You have to deal with the reality. I said or did something, and the result was that it hurt another person. I need to apologize and not do or say that thing again. This was a powerful realization for me.

3. When I learned the concept of a "Relationship Bank Account" from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it opened my eyes and I was finally able to see what the problem was with my fragile relationship with one particular sister. It seemed that our relationship was always one wrong move away from being damaged. I had justified it for years by saying, "Oh, she's just overly sensitive. My other sister doesn't get so upset about me doing that same thing to her." But the problem wasn't with my sister--it was with me. A relationship bank account works just like a regular bank account. You put in deposits and make withdrawls frequently. The difference is that you have MANY accounts. You have one with every single person you know, and the balance of that account depends on how many deposits you've made (positive words, actions, shared experiences, etc.) compared to how many withdrawls you've made (negative words, actions, attitudes, etc.). When I learned about this concept, it really clicked. My account with this one sister was always in the red--not necessarily because I was taking a huge number of withdrawls, but because I wasn't making enough deposits. Make sense? Things have improved as I have tried to make more deposits and minimize withdrawls.

4. Apologizing and forgiving are essential in fixing and maintaining quality relationships. And these two actions do NOT depend on the other person. This past summer, I was talking and laughing about childhood memories with my sisters. However, the memories began focusing a lot on how mean I was to one of my brothers. Although it was years ago, and I thought he had forgiven me, I realized that I had never really told him that I was sorry. I left the room, got on the phone, and called him. I told him I was sorry, and he said, "For what?" I then explained how badly I felt remembering the way I had treated him, and that I was truly sorry for that. He kind of laughed, and when my sisters realized what I was doing, they laughed, too. But it was actually a very serious moment for me. Although he had already forgiven me, I needed to apologize and he needed to hear me say it. I was glad I did it. Now, about forgiveness. Forgiveness is not dependent on another person's apology or admission of guilt. Forgiveness is not to bring peace to the offender--it is for the offended. We need to forgive whether or not forgiveness has been asked for. And even better, we can do our best to not get upset with others in the first place. I've heard my mom say, "You can try to offend me, but you probably can't." I like that. Also, Connor has been a great example to me this fall of giving others the benefit of the doubt. He has one boy in his class that misbehaves a LOT. Connor never says anything negative about this boy, but just tells me that he must not have gone to preschool, so maybe he's just still learning how to act at school. How often do we look past other people's actions to the possible reasons why, and give them the benefit of the doubt?

Well, that ended up being quite the epistle. But I feel like as I focus on these relationship concepts (or TRUTHS, in my book), my relationships improve. I hope that each of you have fabulous relationships with all members of your family, but if not, why don't YOU do somthing to fix them? You're the only one who can. And what better Christmas gift could you give somebody important in your life than to mend a broken relationship or improve one that needs to be better?

All is Safetly Gathered In

Today it is below zero. And the snow is falling. And if it kept falling and falling and falling for awhile, and we couldn't get out of our house, we would be okay. We FINALLY have a storage room! Full of food! Actually, I'm a little late posting these, as this project has been done for a couple months now, but I'm really grateful for it today. Here are some pics of my storage room (although it still doesn't have walls).

It has been a kind of long process. Tony framed it last winter sometime. We don't know when we'll get around to doing the sheetrock, but decided that we don't really need walls to have a storage room. So in May, we bought these great can shelves. We found them for $50 apiece (second hand, homemade, and STURDY) on ksl.com. They are two sided and rotate the cans by sliding them down the ramp. They hold a TON of cans, and we put a TON of cans on them!

Then in the summer, we stumbled upon these old store shelves. Tony was getting a tractor fixed and noticed these sitting out back behind the guy's shop. He asked if he could buy them, and the guy told him that he was about to haul them to the landfill, and that if he would haul them away, he could have them. They're really great shelves and although we have a lot of food on them, there is still the entire top shelf, the end section, and the whole other side completely empty! Great find, Tony.

Finally, in August or September (I can't quite remember when), I hit the case lot sale hard and came home with all kinds of stuff to fill our storage room. I also canned tomatoes, salsa, and peaches. Finally, we had a FHE on emergency preparedness and the kids helped us empty and refill our gallon water bottles. We put some meat in the freezer and I've tried to restock the things we've used. So for now, I feel content with it. "All is safely gathered in ere the winter storms begin."

The Grinch

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
may have been that he had to listen to THIS every day in December!