Christmas eve 2011

Well, I have to admit...I am so glad that Christmas is over!  This month always feels to me like I am running a marathon.  Every year I tell myself to get better prepared and to simplify, but every year,  I am so tired by the end of it all.  This year we added a new tradition of doing the 12 days of Christmas for a family.  Each of the kids put a name in a jar and we picked one out.  Maggie's friend from school won!  We managed to deliver all 12 days without getting caught. When we finally revealed ourselves at the end, they had no idea that it was us!  I'd call that successful!  Here is a sample of Casey's poems.  He wrote one for every day.  My favorite day was day 10.  What to do for "Lords a leaping?"  This one was easy for Casey as he found a stuffed Darth Vader doll at Walmart and a storm trooper marshmallow sucker.  The Lord of the Sith counts as a "lord" right?  At the end, we reminded this family about the real reason for Christmas and challenged them to pick a family to do next year.  This made our Christmas so much fun!

The really, really great thing about this Christmas was that we got to spend it with my parents.  I haven't spent a Christmas with my parents since 2007!  Can you believe that?  When there are 4 siblings that each live in different places, every 4 years sounds about right.  Well, this year, it was my turn!  They arrived the Sunday before Christmas so I got them for a WHOLE WEEK!  Oh how excited everyone was!





Casey and I had the opportunity to go spend a night out at the coast for free.  Our free gift certificate to the Adobe Inn in Yachats expired at the end of the year so, since my parents were here to stay with the kids, we used it!  We had such a great time sight seeing, shopping and eating!  We love the coast!

Christmas Eve was a fun event!  We had dinner at our house...with 23 people and lots of food!  I know that sounds like a lot of people for my little house, but we made it work.  Because my house was just for eating, we brought everyone in, sat them in their assigned seats and got right to eating.  After dinner, clean up took about 10 minutes with so many helpers and we were off to Grandma Walburger's house for the bulk of the program.  (her house is much more big crowd friendly!)





Grandma had set out all of the nativity costumes for our annual nativity pageant.  Lydia was Mary and the only person that wasw willing to be Joseph was Uncle Jared.  He was so cute with her!  Here is a picture of the "cast" after the production!  Everyone did a great job!

After the Nativity, we heard a knock on the door and opened it to discover that Santa had dropped off a package and a letter!  Inside the package was a pair of pajamas for every child.  (a robe in the case of our girls)

Traditionally, Santa sends a letter along with his package of pajamas.  Somehow, Santa knows the names of every person that is attending our christmas eve celebration.  This year, since there were 23 of us, the letter was 27 pages long!  All of it was in poem and featured the good things done by each person throughout the year!  That santa, he sure is a talented guy!



The last event at Grandma's house was dessert.  Everyone brought a dessert that is their favorite.  Casey, being Casey, had to try every single one.  He insists that the diet re-starts after Christmas is over!  :)

Well, that's it for now.  I'll get to Christmas day later!

Thanksgiving 2011

I finally finished my Thanksgiving page!

week 47

week 46

I'm a bit far behind, but here is week 46!

Thanksgiving festivities coming soon!

2011 Turkey Stuffer

I am sitting here waiting for rolls to finish cooking and so I thought I'd spend a minute updating my blog. This morning we had a great experience running/walking in the Turkey Stuffer through the streets of Thurston. It starts at the wave pool, goes for 3 miles and ends again at the wave pool. There were 1500 people running it this year! Here is a picture of us before the race started:

Casey of course was our runner. He finished in 20 something minutes. Charlotte and Jillian ran and walked while the little girls and I walked.

The little girls did pretty well. We did have to take a shortcut because Lydia started crying halfway through. She was SO cold! The best part was running by Grandma Walburger's house. She and Uncle Matt and Aunt Kristen and their kids had made signs for us and and were cheering us on! It was AWESOME! It gave the little girls a boost of energy.

As we were finishing our race, Uncle Jared (who had finished 20 minutes ahead of us and was walking home) stopped, grabbed the stroller and ran the rest of the crew in for the finish. The girls LOVED it! What a great way to start thanksgiving day!

week 45

I finished our corn maze pages!

Seaside, Oregon...the best city on the Oregon coast!

This weekend we had the chance to get away and go to Seaside Oregon. Casey is involved with the Oregon Association of Student Councils event held there every year. We share his hotel with him..and while he works, we play! Seems fair right? We got there on Saturday and immediately walked through our favorite part of Seaside...the main strip. They have fun little stores and things to look at. We rode the carousel and Charlotte bought a sweatshirt.



This is our favorite store on the Seaside strip. It has so many different kinds of treats! They cover everything in chocolate here...pretzels, pop-tarts, bacon, and even twinkies. Did we buy a six pack of chocolate covered twinkies? yes we did!



After touring the shops along the main strip, we ended our walk at the beach. This statue is of Lewis and Clark looking out on to the Pacific ocean. It was just gorgeous! (the view of the ocean, that is)



It was tough to keep the Sabbath day holy on Sunday. I took the girls up to Astoria to visit the ward there. It is always interesting visiting another ward. This one was kind of funny because the microphone was not working. Right in the middle of the sacrament song, the microphone backfired and let out this horrendous screech. The organist and chorister were startled and it took them a moment to start again. Everyone in the congregation started to giggle. Not exactly reverent...but it was pretty funny. After church, we drove across this gigantic bridge that links Washington to Oregon. The girls were so excited to tell their dad that they had been to Washington today. (We drove back to Oregon seconds after entering Washington...but the bridge was really cool!) The rest of the day was spent watching movies in our hotel room and walking the pristine Seaside beach.



Monday morning, we slept in, and then I took the kids swimming at the hotel pool!



Allison and Maggie were banned from swimming due to bad behavior the night before. (Really bad). So, while the other three kids swam, Allison and I played cards. (Maggie sulked.) But hey, hooray for following through on a punishment right?




All in all, it was a great little get-a-way.

week 44

Hey guys, blogger is giving me problems...I am having trouble posting...hopefully I can figure it out and post more about our Seaside trip and other stuff later :)

week 43

Week 43 is up! I am so sad to say goodbye to October! It is my favorite month of the year for sure!

Halloween in Levi Landing is quite an experience. We had over 400 kids come to our door. People park all along Thurston road just to trick or treat in our neighborhood. I think it's because all the houses here do it up big. There are inflatables, lights, and in our case, a movie playing in the window with full sound! We had such a crowd outside our house all night! We even put out chairs for people to sit on and watch the movie while their kids trick or treated! I took this video before it got dark but you get the idea of how it looked!

Trunk -R- Treat

Hello all! We had such a crazy weekend! It all started off with our ward's Trunk-r-treat activity on Friday night. There were sooo many people there! We had a ton of fun walking through the spook alley, doing the cupcake walk, playing some other games and eating hot dogs. Then, we went outside (into the pouring rain) and trunk-r-treated our way through the parking lot. It was really fun! I put up a few pictures of the event.

The Young Men decorated the stage as a creepy walk-through spook alley. I think Allison and Lydia went through it about 20 times. They loved it!

Believe it or not, that's Grandma Walburger. She puts this giant witch's nose on her face and no one could tell who she was.

Jillian, Joel, Lydia and a friend hung out for part of the night together. Jillian won and consumed 4 cupcakes!! Ick!

The young women were assiged the face painting booth. Charlotte took her 30 minute shift at the beginning of the night. She was nervous at first but quickly got the hang of it.

These two were hilarious! Maggie was Hermione and cousin Drew was Draco Malfoy. They cast spells at each other all night.

The rest of our weekend was spent in Klamath falls with these two:

How is it that little Mackenzie is married???? She is Casey's brother's daughter. It seems like just yesterday she was this tiny little person. Casey DJ'ed their rocking reception. We did almost every line dance and group dance out there. It was so fun! Did you know there is a line dance to "Thriller?" I didn't.

Finally, I finished the scrapbook page for Maggie's birthday.

a-maze-ing weekend!

We really did have a great weekend! First of all, we got the Booren boys for 4 days. I know that that sounds like more of a burden than a blessing but we just LOVE having them live with us! They are so much fun and everyone gets along so great! We took them to the school carnival, we sat in the hot tub at night, we played video games, had Maggie's birthday dinner and went to church together. I was honestly sad when their parents got back from Idaho Sunday night and picked them up.

Second, my debut as the sacrament meeting pianist went great! I ended up just playing the piano, not the organ but I still felt so good about it! It was fun to sit up on the stand the whole time and I had practiced those songs so many times, that I didn't make a single mistake! Wahoo! Next time I'm asked to do it, it should be even easier! (and maybe I'll brave the organ).

Lastly, for Family night last night we went to the corn maze at Lone Pine Farms. We went out there right after school because they close at 5:00. It was a blast! The maze out there is immense and they have fun clues along the way that help you not get too lost!

On the weekends, they have a "Fright Night" where the maze is haunted. Thankfully, we didn't go when it was haunted.


At Lone Pine, they have lots of picture cut-outs for posing. This was our favorite!

It's Maggie's 10th birthday today and she thought that this was quite a treat!

I'll post more about Maggie's birthday tomorrow, but for now, here's week 42!

emotions and the organ

I had preschool at my house this week. Yesterday, we talked about emotions and feelings. I had each of the kids give me their scared, silly, angry, happy and shy face. I then interview each of them and asked them what things gave them those emotions. Some of the answers were hilarious! I will only post Lydia's out of respect for the other kids' privacy...but her answers made me smile. (as did her faces.)

This is my new hobby. (this is not the organ at the church...just a random pic I found on line...our organ is a bit more simple.) When I decided at age 32 that it was time for me to start learning the piano, I had no idea that it would eventually lead to me learning the organ. I have a great teacher (Sheryl Marchant) who doesn't let me take any shortcuts and expects playing perfection. She also pushes me to go way outside of my comfort zone (playing in the solitude of my house) and play in front of others. Gasp@! I started by playing the piano in Primary which was terrifying but got easier. The kids do not care if you make a mistake. A few months ago, I started playing the piano while Sheryl played the organ for prelude music in sacrament meeting. Do you know what I discovered? No one really listens to prelude music. (which was okay by me). Just a few weeks ago, I started playing the opening and closing hymn on the piano while Sheryl played the organ. Again, because the organ was so loud, no one could really hear me mess up. Finally, last sunday, I played the opening song on the piano with no organ to back me up. It went well. This sunday? I'm on my own... EEEK! Sheryl is out of town so it's all on me! I am so nervous! I am hoping to take one more big step and play the organ for prelude. I have learned 5 songs on it and will just play them really slowly. Anyway, cross your fingers for me...and maybe say a prayer or two. This is so FAR outside of my comfort zone but there's no going back now!

week 41

Primary program #5 is in the books! We had our program yesterday in Sacrament meeting and it went so well! Songs that we thought were going to be weak turned out so much stronger than we imagined! All 45 of our primary kids sang their little hearts out. I say #5 because this is my fifth (and most likely last) program that I have had to write. It has been such a joy to put these programs on every October and I've love doing every one of them. I can't imagine that they will keep me in this calling for much longer. It will be six years in March. That's a long time to be in a church calling. We shall see...the chances that I get to write a 6th program are farely slim I think. Anyway, it went really really great. I also got to play the opening song for Sacrament meeting yesterday...my first time on my own. It went well and I didn't mess up too badly :)

here is our last week...fevering kids and all

Shutterfly

I am getting ready for my annual enormous purchase from Shutterfly. There is a very small window when they offer up to 40 percent off their albums and it is usually around this time of year. It occurred to me that I haven't touched my scrapbooking for quite some time (other than project 365) and if I wanted to get these books ordered for Christmas, I needed to finish them up :)

I still have a bit more of the Millar Reunion to go, but I finished these two last night.

Happily, I finished our California Get-A-Way book (the one Casey and I took in Feb.) last night too. I had it all finished except for the opening page. Here it is! It feels so good to at least get one book done. As soon as I see the special come out, I'll order it for Casey's Christmas.