How We Celebrated

December was so much fun this year! We did so many things to celebrate our Savior's birth! It felt like a month-long party, and the kids had a great time.

I decided to get brave and try to start a tradition we had as kids.  Every year, my mom would make a bunch of sugar cookies and colored frosting and each of us kids could invite a couple of friends over for a cookie-decorating party.  So I baked over 100 sugar cookies one day, made frosting in 6 different colors, and after school the fun (or madness) began!  

Connor and Mylie each had their school Christmas programs, which were super cute and they loved doing.  I took video at each of those, but no pictures since there was no way I could get a decent one with my camera from where I was sitting.   But I did get a shot of Mariah's cute little preschool class doing their short little program at our Christmas party.  There are five of us moms that take turns teaching these adorable little girls.  They love preschool!

Tony's mom does a tradition with the kids called "Grandma Bags."  We get a giant bag of gifts at the beginning of December full of 24 gifts--one for each day through Christmas Eve.  There are all kinds of fun, Christmas-themed gifts like decorations, crafts, books, and little toys.  Here are Mylie and Brady modeling the antler headbands they got one day.

 We took our annual day trip to Salt Lake city to have some fun, eat some good food, and see the lights.  This year we did arcade games and other fun stuff at Trafalga and ate at Tucanos.  I wouldn't normally think of Tucanos as a kid restaurant, but since Mariah loves salmon, Mylie loves shrimp, and Connor loves steak, they all love eating there!  It's kind of hard to see, but that stuff covering half of Mylie's plate is the shells from her shrimp. I don't know how many she ate, but it was a lot!

My handsome, blue-eyed boys at Tucanos.

 For Christmas Eve, we had planned to go to Cokeville to my Grandma Teichert's house for her yearly Christmas Eve party.  It had been snowing earlier in the day, but when we left, it was clear.  We weren't even out of the valley and the wind had picked up and it was snowing again.  By Carter, we decided to turn around.  The roads were terrible and we didn't want to risk being stuck in Cokeville for the night (or slid off the road somewhere) with all our gifts still at home.  So we had our own little Christmas Eve party--just us!  It was actually really fun!  We started out by opening our Christmas Eve pj's.  The girls LOVED their beautiful, all-the-way-to-the-floor, silky nightgowns! Then we acted out the nativity (See cute angel below.)  We sang a couple songs and then had a talent show with one talent performed by each person.

And what would a party be without food?  I had bought a few things at the grocery store earlier that day just in case we ended up partying by ourselves, and after combining what I had picked up (crackers, meats, and cheeses) with the goodies we had accumulated over the previous few days, we had quite the spread!  The little chicken bites wrapped in bacon were probably the hit of the night!  We finished the party off by watching "A Christmas Story."  It was a fantastic Christmas Eve!

Christmas morning was exciting as always.  Rather than bore you (and myself) with picture after picture of kids opening presents and then posing with what they opened, I'll just post two and cover each kid.

Every year, Santa puts a special treat in the toe of the kids' stockings--a pomegranate!  The kids love this and look forward to it every year.  Here they are devouring them later that morning.

 Of course, Christmas wouldn't be complete without some good ol' cousin time.  And the kids got plenty of it.  We left Christmas afternoon for Cokeville and spent 3 days there, then came home and spent another 3 days with their Micheli cousins.  We had a gift exchange with both sides of the family.  Cousin gifts are so much fun!  My kids are lucky to have so many cousins.

 The last Christmas-y thing we did was in Cokeville where we made gingerbread houses, a tradition passed down through my mom's family.  The kids really worked hard on them and had fun doing it.  Thanks, Mom, for baking the houses and letting us do this. It was tons of fun!

Last Wednesday, Tony and the kids went back to school and Mariah and I spent the day taking down all the Christmas decorations.  Mariah decided we should take down the tree first.  Before we finished taking down the ornaments, she was in tears.  She didn't want Christmas to be over!  I sang her the chorus of the Forgotten Carol about this very feeling, and told her it was normal to be sad for Christmas to be over.  We would just have to wait until next year and we could do it all again.  She asked if we had to wait until Jesus' birthday to come again, and I said yes.  She then started to smile, and said, "I know! We should celebrate Santa's birthday too!"  Too cute.

Mylie is 7!

It's hard to believe, but Mylie is now 7 years old!

Mylie LOVES school so much, she wanted a "school" cake this year. I really had no idea what to do until she had the idea of putting letters or numbers or math problems on it.  From that, we came up with the idea of doing a "7" cake.  Super easy (which is completely my style), and Mylie loved it.

For birthdays, we always just invite all the cousins and grandparents, which is a houseful.  The kids all have a great time with each other. We are blessed to have so much family close by.

7 things about Mylie Jo:

1. She has a beautiful smile. From the time she was a baby, she has always been willing to share her smile. She was even nick-named "Smiley Mylie" before she was even a year old.
2. She loves her mama.  Of all my kids, I never question how much Mylie loves me. She's always been right beside me, doing whatever I'm doing.
3. She is a great reader.  She reads all the time and can now read just about anything. She cruises right through chapter books. From all this reading, she has also become a great speller.
4. She is a great big sister. She and Mariah have become best friends, which often takes a little patience on her part with the 3 year gap. She is also great with babies. She is always wanting to help with Brady, and he loves her too!
5. She is quite coordinated.  She picked up tumbling very quickly, and has since found that she is also good at tee ball, volleyball, and running.
6. She is very friendly. From the time Mylie was little, she has always made friends quickly.  Her teachers tell me she is a good friend to everyone in her class.  I remember once when Mylie was about 3 or 4 and we were at a McDonalds PlayPlace, Mylie quickly made a friend to play with, as usual. Connor came up to me and said, "Mylie already made a friend.  She really has a talent for that!"
7. She LOVES music. Although getting her to practice her piano is a chore right now, she loves dancing, singing, and watching musicals.

Happy Birthday, Mylie Jo!

Weekend Warriors

So, I actually had to get my calendar out before I could begin typing this post.  There have been 6--that's right, 6--weekends since volleyball ended. And it's amazing how great it's been to actually have some Saturdays with options as to how I should spend them! (I usually only have one Saturday off during an entire volleyball season.) So, here's a hopefully short little run-down of what we've done with this day I've added onto my week!

Saturday #1--Actually just stayed home. Very rare. I painted my laundry room ceiling, which had been water damaged after losing some shingles. Fun, right? Well, it gets better.  I put all my canned good from October's case lot sale on my storage room shelves and hauled a TON of garbage out of the basement and to the dumpster!  Maybe not the most exciting projects, but fabulous things to get done.

Saturday #2--A fun family trip to Laramie!  Tony and Connor went to 4 or 5 state championship football games, and the rest of us joined them for Cowgirl basketball, Cowgirl volleyball, and Cowboy basketball.  The pokes won every game we watched!  I also got to see Tyson, which was great. I love Laramie.

Saturday #3--We were able to go down to Provo to the temple. Olivia was kind enough to be our babysitter for the day. Thanks again, Livi!  After the temple, Tony, Connor, Mylie, and I went to Heber to watch a matinee showing of The Forgotten Carols, while Mariah and Brady stayed with Livi.  The show was fabulous as usual. It was Connor and Mylie's first time seeing it, and they really liked it.  We finished the day by eating . . . and eating . . . and eating at Chuck-a-Rama. Gotta love a good buffet!

Saturday#4--This was a really special weekend for the Micheli family.  Tony's grandpa Joe G, who was not a member of the church, passed away last November.  His wife, Grandma Becky, who had been a faithful member of the church all her life without the support of her husband, was finally able to go to the temple for her first time last December, which was an incredible experience!  Well, she passed away in July of this year.  Thanksgiving weekend, the all of their children and their spouses as well as many grandchildren were able to go to the temple and do all the temple work for Grandpa Joe G.  They were also finally sealed as a family, a blessing they had been hoping and praying for for years! 

Saturday #5--Tony was gone to his first basketball tournament of the year, and Tami came to visit!  She actually came on Friday and stayed the night.  Then we had a fun day with her boys here on Saturday while she went shopping in Utah.  We played and played and played some more!  The kids had so much fun together.

Saturday #6--Actually a pretty lazy day.  Slept in, worked out, went to a lunch/baby shower with some friends, did my grocery shopping, spent some time at Tony's sister's house, complete with pizza, then came home and hung out until bedtime.  Weird for our family to spend a day like this, but nice.

*I am aware that this post would be about 1000x more interesting with pictures, but let me just say that the pictures I did take in the past month are pretty much horrible quality since they were almost all indoors. I could actually use a new camera. HINT, HINT, Santa Clause!  So here are the 2 outdoor pics that I took in the past month, just in case you forgot what my kids look like. :)

LOVE

If you need a natural high today, look no further.

This afternoon . . .

 . . . while I was doing this (BORING, I know)

the rest of the family was doing WAY cooler stuff!

Mariah and Mylie were pretending to be bug doctors--that's right, bug doctors.

Giving the meds.

A little acupuncture.

Connor and Mylie (she bounces around a lot) made these sweet wallets out of duct tape!

And Tony and Brady were doing a little of this.

Life is simple, but good.

My Brave New Self

I've been thinking of doing this for quite awhile now.  And thanks to my sisters both cutting their hair in the past couple years, I finally decided to go for it!

And although it's only been a few days, so far I LOVE IT!!  I told Violet that I feel so much cooler with this haircut.  So cool, in fact, that I can even imagine myself wearing skinny jeans, boots, and a scarf!  Not saying that I will--just that I can now imagine it.  But my favorite thing of all? This hairdo, wet to finished, takes me less than ten minutes to do!  Oh, how I've longed for this day!

Brady--3 months

Somehow, as much as I'm trying to slow things down, Brady is already 3 months old.  It has been a crazy 3 months, trying to balance it all--school starting, volleyball practices and travel, and learning to manage 4 kids and all they are doing.  But it has also been a wonderful 3 months!  Brady has brought such love into our home.  I love seeing the older kids as they love him and care for him, and how much they want to interact with him.  They can hardly wait for him to grow up and play with them! 

He continues to be a chubby little guy.  We haven't had an official weight on him lately, but using the weigh-yourself-then-weigh-holding-the-baby method, we think he's just over 16 lbs.

Brady is getting close to figuring out his hands, but for now, he is constantly clasping them together and then trying to shove both fists into his mouth at once, which can sometimes make him crazy with frustration (not my favorite developmental milestone, I might add)!  He has also found his tongue, and loves sticking it out all the time.  Connor thinks this is a sign that he's going to be like Michael Jordan someday.

Brady is a really good night sleeper, and does ok during the day. We are struggling to find some consistency with daytime naps, as they sometimes only last 45 minutes, but other times will be 3-4 hours.  I never know what to expect.  But what has been consistent is that he either sleeps through the night (like 10-11 hours) or only wakes up once.  LOVE that!

Although I can rarely get him to do it for the camera, Brady smiles a lot, and already laughs!  I'm thrilled about this since Mariah didn't laugh until she was a year old.  He laughs when he's tickled, but has also laughed several times just because somebody does something funny. 

And since we couldn't get a smiling picture anytime in the last week, I'll just end this post with a pic that made me smile--the squishy-face photo.