a very merry Christmas

We hosted 36 people at our house on Christmas Eve. 18 adults and 18 children. It was crazy. And wonderful. We had Cafe Rio style salads and lots of yummy dessert. My favorite part was gathering in the living room and singing and playing lots of Christmas music.

After the extra crowd returned to their houses, we were lucky enough to still have Grandma and Grandpa Slade, Merrit and Matt, and the Linders with us. Our kids opened their Christmas pajamas. Then we read The Littlest Angel (a long-standing tradition) and the Christmas story in Luke 2.

Christmas morning was all kinds of fun. Santa set up his presents in the living room for the Daniels and in the family room for the Linders. After the traditional banana (which Nathan, of course, threw a fit about eating) and the lineup, the kids were able to partake in the new treasures. And then there was much going back and forth to share in the delights of the other room. When the presents were unwrapped, we had a breakfast feast (as per Daniel Family tradition) of breakfast casserole, pancakes, sausage, hot chocolate and juice.

  

I managed to remain in my pajamas at home but the Linders left for other family celebrations and Dave took the four oldest kids to Katie's house. My parents and Keri's family came later Christmas evening so the festivities seemed to go on and on. It was indeed a merry Christmas. 

Unfortunately, that was the end of the good times it seemed. The next day sickness settled into our house to stay for quite a while. There was some combination of fever, coughs, headache, and puking among one or several of us for the next week. It put a damper on the post-Christmas playtime. I wish we had been able to enjoy our visiting family more. I did manage to go see Les Miserables with my family on the 27th. Dave took all the kids but Anne to my aunt Laurie's that evening. I left the house for an hour to go furniture shopping with my mom one morning as well. Other than that we stayed home and did an obscene amount of screen time and I got to snuggle Anne and Ben. A lot.

yeast on the rise

Emma had to complete her first science project this year. She tested which yeast was best in our regular bread recipe--instant or active dry. I must say that I am so glad we homeschool, if only to have avoided projects like this. There were two good things to come out of this though. Now I know Emma is perfectly capable of making our weekly batch of bread and I can hand that chore off to her. Also, I had been using instant yeast all along but her results showed that active dry actually will produce a better loaf with our recipe.

12-12-12

I just had to celebrate 12/12/12 in some way since a date like that won't come around again in our lifetime.

1. We started with 12 donuts for breakfast.
2. 12 was our number of the day for math and tried to work in the number 12 in as many ways as we could during school.
3. We took a picture at 12:12. Dave was home for lunch.
4. We had an eating contest. Who could eat 12 items the fastest? We did chocolate chips, cereal and pieces of cheese. The cheese was a little hard to swallow so I won that one.
5. We did 12 jumping jacks, 12 sit ups and 12 Burpees.
6. We blitzed the house for 12 minutes.
7. We listened to as many versions of The 12 Days of Christmas as we could find on-line. Our favorites were The Muppets, Straight No Chaser and the song called The Twelve Days AFTER Christmas.
8. Emma worked on her science project making batches of bread. It wasn't really anything to do with 12 but she's cute and we had to work a picture of her in there somewhere.
9. I made 3 pizzas with 12s on them for dinner.
10. We read 12 picture books.
11. We watched the 12th episode of a show.
12. We said 12 things that we are thankful for.

Happy Birthday to my brother, Jeff, too!

gender reveal election party

My sister-in-law, Megan, and her husband, Tim, are having their first baby. Finally. We are so excited for them. When Megan asked at a family gathering how she should reveal the results of her ultrasound, I immediately said that she should let me throw her a party! And I did.

Don't you love these awesome graphics I found on Etsy?

We are so excited to meet Baby Jorgensen in April!

lights at Thanksgiving Point

We started out our Christmas season celebrations with a visit to Thanksgiving Point to see the lights. It was free! We loaded the kids up in the van and drove through the lights. Then we went over to the water tower to see the reindeer. They were particularly sleepy that night. We laughed at the one whose head kept lolling to the side only to have its antlers get in the way. We finished the evening off with ice cream cones (with the most horrible customer service ever).

give thanks

We were the hosts of the Thanksgiving feast again this year. We had all of Dave's family minus Katie and a last minute addition of my parents. 23 people total. I cooked two turkeys, stuffing, chocolate butterscotch cookies, and pumpkin cookies with caramel frosting. Then, Mom made the crust for 3 pies plus a pan of mini pies and my girls and I made the filling because one must make pie for Thanksgiving. Its tradition (even if you don't like pie!).

I wasn't going to set up a nice adult table because I wasn't sure where to fit everyone. When I told Emma this, her face showed teary disappointment. Apparently, I had forgotten that she had told me that the one thing she really wanted for Thanksgiving was to have a nice table. After that there was a whirlwind of activity as we moved out a couch, borrowed a table from neighbors, located tablecloths, and gathered together miscellaneous fall decor items. I just covered the kids table with paper and set out a jar of crayons.

Who knew my girl cared about such things?

There was much feasting, conversing and playing. A wonderful day of giving thanks. 
 

P.S. Thanks to Mom for giving me her pictures since I didn't take even one!

the hat

Slade found this hat. Somewhere. Maybe in the dress up box. He decided he liked the way it looked and felt and has been wearing it fairly constantly ever since. Lately he has been sporting it with the added red head band as well. We are not sure why he is so taken with it but love that he does things his own way.

officially a teenager

We officially have a teenager in the house (and all the drama and tears to prove it!). Emma started the celebrations with French toast for breakfast and then we sent her off to school.

We brought her orange cupcakes (her favorite color) at the bus stop so she could hand them out to her friends.

Her friends made her a huge banner/poster that I hung up in her room while she was gone. It was full of fun memories and jokes that they share.

Per her request, we went to Golden Corral that night for dinner. She refused to let me have the waiters sing to her though. Then we came home and opened presents.

Thirteen Things About Emma at 13

1. She is turning into a beautiful young woman who is into fashion, hair and makeup.
2. She is anxious about getting her braces on this next year.
3. She is learning a lot through her public school experience about working with teachers, completing assignments, test-taking and making new friends.
4. She is most interested in being with her friends.
5. She is very into email, texting and Instagram.
6. She likes to bake treats. She has a definite sweet tooth.
7. She loves singing in the choir at American Heritage but definitely does NOT like violin.
8. She is adored by Anne and Ben and she can be very helpful with them.
9. She is kind and thoughtful to others (except her brothers!).
10. She has learned to enjoy being alone in her room when she is home.
11. She has a strong testimony of the Gospel.
12. She loves playing soccer but only with her friends. She isn't interested in moving up a level because that would be too much work.
13. She makes us look like awesome parents. We get compliments from her leaders all the time about how great she is.

We love you, Emma! Happy Birthday!

playing in the leaves

I asked Emma to rake up the leaves in the front yard. She enlisted the help of her friends, Eliza and Allison. They raked them all into a huge pile and then proceeded to throw and kick them back all over the yard. They had a lot of fun but the yard ended looking exactly how it started. I guess I needed to specify that the job entailed raking AND bagging the leaves in the front yard.