December's activities.

Blog posts are few and far between and you would think that after I have been blogging for a few years I would figure out the best way to change the order of my pictures when I upload them... nope, so this is what you get :) But we have had a really great kick off to our Holiday Season!

Cara got her first taste of baby food the other day and pretty much hated it. So after watching her spit it out Caeli asked if she could try some. She did, and the weird girl ate it! It wasn't even something yummy like bananas or apple sauce. It was peas!!! So gross.....

Cara wasn't sure what to think about real live food....

The last week of November we got with some of Caeli's friends and their moms (which happen to be some of my fun friends as well) and we took the girls to the Nutcracker. I had fun. But the girls really loved it. At least Caeli did. She has been trying to make all of her ballerina dress-ups stick straight out like the "pink ballerina" (which I thought was red, but don't try to tell her that) I hope to make this a fun mother daughter tradition at my house. It was great.

We took the kids down to Temple Square one Monday night to see the lights. It was during the super cold spell we had and we FROZE! But it was beautiful and a great way to kick off the holiday season and get into the spirit of the real reason for Christmas.

We have the most fun friends! We got with some of our Logan friends and took a trip to ride on the Polar Express. It was really cute. The kids had such a blast! Cam really had fun too. He loves trains just as much as any little boy could.
The kids got all cozy in their PJ's and took a ride to the North Pole. After the elves brought hot chocolate and cookies by, we got a visit from the big man himself. He brought the kids bells and took orders for Christmas.
Our cute family on the Polar Express. Cara was really not impressed.....

From the train we were about half-way home (to real home) and so we came down to get a head start on the Christmas break. It's been really fun to be home. Cohen loves my Grandpa T and he scored a pony ride when we got to Grandma's house. If you know my grandpa you know that he really loves Cohen if he got a pony ride. Cohen really loves him too.

I have no pictures of it, but Tim and Mandy got tickets to The Forgotten Carols. It was really cool. I am so glad they asked us to go with them! Thanks to Millie for keeping the kids so we could enjoy a full night of one of our favorite restaurants (Sagebrush Grill) and the Forgotten Carols. That's one other thing I wouldn't mind adding to our tradition list.

I have been really thoughtful and reflecting a lot today after going to the funeral of my awesome Uncle Mont. His family is just amazing to me. Aunt Marleen is an incredible woman. It has been a reminder to me of how fragile life is and how quickly it can be taken away. I love this time of year because we can all take a little extra time to reflect on our Saviors birth and what a huge part that event plays in our lives. What an amazing blessing the atonement is and what a blessing eternal families are! I don't know what I would do without my family. I have the best kids and a really great husband.

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all have a wonderful one. With all of the parties and fun things going on around us at Christmastime, lets not forget the reason we are doing all of this celebrating!

Caeli's Birthday Tea Party

Caeli has so many cute friends here. She had them over for a party for her birthday, and it was so much fun. We had a tea party with way more treats than 10 5-year-old girls can eat. We also had a pinata and balloons. I had fun too.
I was running on a very little amount of sleep through the party. The reason? This lovely barbie birthday cake. I swore after the falling apart bunny cake I did for Caeli's 2nd birthday that I would buy every cake after that. I wanted to make an attempt at a cake using fondant though. It was much easier than I thought it would be, but I still stressed about it and ended up spending a lot of time working on it. Caeli had a lot of fun and loved it so that is all that matters.

Caeli Turns 5!

5 years ago my sweet little girl was born! I was one happy momma! I can't believe it has been 5 years! When people say time flies, they aren't kidding. It has FLOWN! She was 6 lbs 5 oz and 21 inches long. I remember from the second she was born she was just looking around at everything, taking it all in. What a happy day!

Caeli's 1st birthday

It was a special day for several reasons, Cameron was home on leave from Iraq and My baby was turning 1. She would NOT dig into her cake like we wanted her to. That was just way to messy for a little princess!

Caeli's 2nd birthday. (Sitting next to her is the famous bunny cake:p )

*I have no still pictures of her 3rd birthday only (not digital) video*

Caeli's 4th birthday when we had just moved up to Logan. She was so excited we woke up to her piling all of her presents on our bed.

My crazy little 5 year old girl! This is her princess face. And she is quite the princess!

It was just Caeli and I for so long when she was little, we are more than just mother and daughter. She saved me while Cameron was gone. She is my best friend. It sounds silly, but it is so true. She didn't come to our family as soon as I thought she should, but she came at just the right time.

Caeli, you are such a special girl. I don't know what I would do without you! Such a huge help and the BEST big sister. You can always make me smile. I love you so much! Happy Birthday!

USU basketball game

Tonight was Cameron's day off so I looked to see what sporting event was going on and we hauled the family to the USU vs UofU Women's Basketball Game. I had so much fun. I am becoming an Aggie for sure. But I do love sporting events a little too much for a girl :)
Cohen would watch wherever Big Blue was. I promise he is really excited here. He had a huge smile on his face both before and after the picture. He tries really hard not to show too much emotion... silly kid.
Guess what Caeli loved the most?!?!?! Yep, the cheerleaders. She was really distraught at first to see that there were boy cheerleaders, but after she saw what they were doing (throwing the girls) she was in awe.

I was excited to see that Halie Sawyer, (from Panguitch) was starting for the Utes tonight. Even though I cheered super loud for the Aggies, I had to cheer for Halie . It's always fun to see a familiar face on the court, she's so cute and did a great job. I am happy to report that we won 67-58! Did I mention that I had a great time? And that I love Basketball? And I can't get the fight song out of my head tonight? Good time.

Cohen

I didn't get anything posted about Cohen's 2nd birthday, so I thought I would post on the 2nd anniversary of his due date. Our little miracle boy was born 10 weeks early and was only 2 lbs 14 oz. Despite all of that he did remarkably well. It was a crazy time and there is no way we could have done it without a lot of prayer and tons of help from our family and friends.

The poor little guy was so bruised! He was in the NICU in Provo at UVRMC for 6 weeks. He was a strong kid and still is. I can't believe it has been 2 years! I don't know what I would do without his bear hugs and "whatcha doin' mom"

(His cake was super ugly but it sure tasted good.) Cohen is such a special kid. Knowing he is our only son makes it really hard not to spoil him rotten. He's so loving to Cara and most of the time to Caeli too :) We are so blessed in our home. He makes me laugh every day and comes up with the funniest things. Some of my favorite sayings of his right now include "look at me guys" "what ya doin'" "go to grandma's house" "ride Grandpa's fourwheeler" and "shoot bear, grandpa's big gun" There is no question he is a boy and we are constantly cleaning up whatever he could find and spill. I have become friends with the poison control people because he eats anything and everything, and I am not kidding....

We love you Cohen, happy 2nd!

Family Pictures!

I LOVE family pictures. Pictures of any kind really. This beautiful Cache Valley fall day made them even better. I am having a hard time deciding which pictures to do big and hang in the house. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated and taken into consideration. :) However I may just take our wonderful photographer's advice and do several of them. Thanks to CJ for doing the pictures.

He took many more, you'll have to check facebook for them. So fun!

long weekend

I would like to start out this post by showing that my fish could eat Teri's fish...... ok now....

I hit blogging burnout for a little while but I have returned and wanted to post a few of our pictures from our long weekend home. We started out having family pictures with the Chidester fam... hopefully I can post some of those before too long. Then we went home to Koosharem so Cameron could help the boys work on mom and dad's countertops. But we did take a few breaks to enjoy some nice fall days. Dad took the kids fishing and we all tagged along.
Super cute, Cohen is grandpa's little buddy and doesn't like it when he is out of his sight. He liked fishing until he caught a fish and then didn't care so much. He went for a fourwheeler ride with Grandpa T and then fell in the pond.

Cameron caught a pretty good fish.

Cara really enjoyed it :)
My fish wasn't quite as big as Cameron's fish but it was bigger than Teri's and that's all that matters. Yes, I am using a rag to hold mine. I don't really do fish. at all.
Caeli doesn't do fish either. She sat down and picked grass.

Aunt Ter is the best and brought pumpkins for the kids and Caeli had a lot of fun making her "really scary" pumpkin. She got to stay up late to do it. Cohen missed out, he was in bed. It was opening day of the deer hunt and none of us had tags, but we did keep tradition alive and mom made her famous cinnamon rolls and we had a big pot of chili. Also, for none of us having deer tags, no one in my family ended up in jail. Successful weekend!

So Cal......

Hello from California! I will do a complete post once I get home, but we are having a great time enjoying the southern California sun. We are all a little sunburned after our day at the beach and off for another day at Disneyland today....

Another one down!

Well, one more kid puking, one more carseat being washed.....and the floor mat of the car, and the floor, and the back seat...and a couple pillows, and the living room rug, and a blanket or two, and some clothes... fun stuff!!

Never a dull moment!!

I'm sure most of you have noticed, I don't normally do the posting on our blog, but considering Crystal's current condition, I figured I'd take a turn. :) Hopefully she won't turn around and delete it before anyone has a chance to read it. lol

Anyway, yesterday was quite a day! We went home for the weekend for Justin's farewell, and since most of the family was going to be there anyway, we decided to bless Cara too. Side note...Crystal went kind of crazy when she was shopping for a blessing dress for Cara the other day, and ended up getting Caeli and Cohen new church clothes too (they did need them, so I guess its ok. Cohen got a pretty sweet suit.). However, for some reason we didn't get any pictures of them. We'll have to do that and post pics of them later... anyway. I always get pretty nervous for things like that, so needless to say I spent the whole morning sweating like a pig. Thankfully everything went well, and I didn't have too many long pauses. lol

Justin did really well with his talk. We are all proud of him and are sure he will make a great missionary!! In a way I'm actually kind of jealous. Missions make for good times! Sometimes you can't help but wish you could go back. :( Speaking of good times, I think almost all the dads in the family (or grandpa in Adam's case) ended up in the nursery for most the rest of church. I don't know about the rest of them, but with Cohen, I spend a lot of time there with him. He doesn't like to be left alone, even if there are other kids he knows in there. There were almost as many adults there as kids. haha.

Dinner at the firehouse was excellent as well. We couldn't talk any of Crystal's family to stay for that part, but there were still a lot of people there. The kids had a blast checking out the fire trucks, especially Cohen. He loved it! He kept walking around pointing at trucks he wanted to get in and look at, even after we had been in them all 2 or 3 times. I wish I would have had the camera with me.

The ride home last night was probably the best ever!! (yes that was sarcastic) About half way the kids started whining about being hungry, so we ended up stopping to find something to eat. Not too long after getting back on the road, while driving through downtown Salt Lake, Cohen started whining all of the sudden and next thing we know, he along with his blanket and car seat, are completely covered in vomit. We had made plans with CJ for us to stop by his house on the way home so he could take pictures of Cara. Luckily for us, (but not for CJ and Steph) we weren't too far away when Cohen started puking. I'm pretty sure he threw up about every 15-20 minutes from then on until we got home. Even with having a large bowl on hand, we still ended up with some messes to clean up of CJ's carpet. (Sorry again about that!!) Its good we had several pairs of clean pjs on hand. The good part about our stop was that CJ took some of the cutest pictures of Cara in her blessing dress. So, with out further ado, here are the ones he's finished up so far.

I don't know about crystal, but this is probably my favorite.

Followed closely by this one.

She's definitely a cute kid, if I do say so myself!!

So we eventully made it home in one piece, even if some didn't feel like it. Thankfully no one else has started feeling sick (knock on wood). Hopefully Cara can manage to avoid it. If Crystal and I can avoid it, that might be possible, however, will all the puke we've cleaned up (some of it off of ourselves) I'm kind of surprised neither of us have caught it yet (knock on wood again). By the way, for those of you fortunate enough never to have had the opportunity to clean a car seat covered in vomit, which I had just such an opportunity when we got home, its not fun so count yourself lucky. :) On that note, I've got homework to do, so I'll be off.

Results are in...

and I got second place! It was by one tenth of a point.... crazy. I had so much fun. There was this older lady who was a finalist as well and she was SOOO mad that she didn't win, and threw such a fit as they announced the winner. It was actually quite funny. She had a few valid points, but the girl who won did a great job. Congrats to her! Now, which kitchen items to get with my $1000?!?!?

Cache Valley Cheese cooking competition

SO today was the Cache Valley Cheese cooking competition. It was so much fun! There were a few mishaps... my stove had problems so I had to use my neighbor's. But it was a blast. Thankfully it was a lot more laid back then things you see on food network. But it was still well put together. Channel 2 news showed up. The most stressful thing was probably the cameras in my face all the time. They had a still camera and videography. Very cool. The winner will be featured in better homes and gardens magazine, and gets a check for 5000 smackeroos. We find out the results tonight at the Bees baseball game. I really don't think I won... but I do at least get $1000. bonus....
Darin Adams from KSL was one of our judges. He was super nice and we sat around and talked for a while afterward. Really nice guy. 
Also one of our judges.... the Grocery Guru. You probably know who he is if you watch Good Things Utah... also a very nice guy.
Me just cooking away, I thought I had sooo much time I waited a little bit to get started, and at the end I was running. Time just goes by fast when you are having fun. This is my "I am stressed leave me alone" face. It was a really good experience. I am glad that I was chosen to be in it. They said over 200 recipes were entered, and 5 of us were chosen. So haha.... there were more than 5 that entered :P

Anniversary

Today (actually yesterday now I look at the time) is our 7 year wedding anniversary! Time goes by so fast! A lot of things have happened in the last 7 years and I am so happy that I have had Cam by my side through them all. I am married to the greatest man in the world! He's awesome and works so hard for our cute little family.

A few of the things these two smiling kids have done in the last 7:

• moved 12 times (3 different states)
  
• survived 2 deployments
• had 3 GREAT kids (2 NICU experiences)
  
• cruised to Mexico
• visited New Orleans and other fun places
  
• coped with a few health scares
• learned to do awesome things with wood
• gained a few pounds
• lost a few pounds
• cried a little
• laughed a lot
• and loved more than we ever thought possible!

I love you Cam! I am so glad you are stuck with me for eternity! :)