9-9-9

Ammon turned 9 this month. He celebrated with his friends at his first ever sleepover party on the 9th. He invited 3 boys over, so the total number of people in the house was 9.

He got to choose what he wanted to eat for dinner, and he chose mashed potatoes and gravy, refried beans, broccoli, and pickles. Strange combination, you say? Well, I finally got him talked into a slightly different menu of mashed potatoes and gravy and chicken dumplings.

He wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

We were going to have a big sledding party, but due to the warm weather the 2 days prior to the party, there was no snow left. Luckily, there was plenty of ice on our driveway, so they used that for a little bit of sledding fun. They played BINGO and won whoopi cushions as prizes. Ammon opened his gifts. They played nintendo and played guns and watched movies and ate popcorn and laughed and laughed.

At the age of 9, these are Ammon's favorites: color-green, food-mashed potatoes and gravy, drink-Tiger Woods gatorade, friends-Garrett and Ethan, game-monopoly, book-Diary of a Wimpy Kid, school subject-reading, toy-Nintendo DS, sport-football, NFL team-Patriots.

Happy Birthday to you Ammon! We love you and we are so proud of you for the boy that you are!

{wishful thinking}

The cold, gloomy, cloudy, icy "inversion" that's been happening for the last week makes me dream, wish, and long for days like this:

Ten Lessons of 2008

2008 was a difficult year for me. I'm determined to grow from my experiences. This is what I learned:
10. A relationship that takes years to develop can end in one day. (july)
9. Betrayal hurts the most when it's from someone that you trust. (october)
8. Vodka burns and is never the answer.
7. Everyone has gifts, everyone has talents meant to be used.
6. 29 is not THAT old.
5. Doing the right thing can be very difficult, and still is.
4. My husband really does care about me.
3. Best friends are hard to come by.
2. Honeymoons should never be postponed for 10 years.
1. I am blessed.

G is for Goals, 6 is the Total

When I was growing up, my family would get together at the beginning of each new year and individually make New Year's goals in 5 different categories. So for tradition's sake, here's my goals for 2009:

SPIRITUAL:
1. Go to the temple at least 5 times.
I only went once last year, and it wasn't really a great year for me. I'm going to go more this year, and I know my year will be better!

PHYSICAL:
2. Swim past the Rock Island in Williams Lake I swam to it last year, and absolutely loved it! I can't wait to do it again...eventually I'd like to swim across the entire lake!

EDUCATIONAL:
3. Read the Book of Mormon.
Thanks to my friend Hailey for the challenge!

PERSONAL:
4. Grow a successful Garden and Pumpkin Patch, and eat or preserve ALL the crops.
Due to the late frost in May, our garden didn't turn out very well last year.

FUN:
5. Finish the England Vacation scrapbook.
It's been almost a year since we went, and I'm not even half done with it.

FINANCIAL: (a new category-not from my childhood)
6. Pay off my new laptop
I'm surprisingly over halfway to completing this already!

I thought about adding categories for home, motherhood, wifehood and so forth, but I really wanted to create personal goals rather than a to-do type of list. I want to focus on just improving myself first! There is room for much improvement there!!!

Christmas Pleasures

This was the first year since Josh and I have been married that we had Christmas morning at our OWN house. We've always either opened gifts at my parents' or his parents' home. Josh loved the quietness of it, I missed the commotion.
After we inspected all of Santa's gifts, the present-opening began. But with a rotation of only 6 people, 1 of which who wasn't interested in opening gifts (Kanyon), and 2 of which didn't have many presents under the tree (Josh & I), all the gifts were opened super fast!
We ate Christmas dinner that afternoon at Josh's parents home with them and his two brothers. Overall, it was a pretty uneventful day as far as Christmases go!!!


When I was a little girl, I used to arrange all my new presents and take a photo to remember them. I like my tradition, and now I make my boys do it too (although they are less than thrilled to participate in it on Christmas Day!!!).

Ammon's favorite gift this year was the Guitar Hero game that Santa brought him for his Nintendo DS. But he also loved his new sled from Santa, and the GameCube games he got from mom & dad and uncle Mick.


Jonah's favorite item was the sled that Santa gave him. He used it the entire Christmas afternoon in all the new snow, but hasn't been able to use it since due to the warm spring-like weather that occurs within 24 hours of each snowfall.


Micah's favorite item was the bike from Santa, even though he said for weeks before that the only thing he wanted was a snow shovel. He did, however, use the snow shovel a LOT on Christmas day to help make a sled run, but hasn't been able to use it since either.


Kanyon wasn't really interested in opening anything, and he wasn't as overly excited as his brothers about what Santa brought him. His favorite gift was actually the little matchbox car Aunt Katrina gave him. She gave a car to each boy, and Kanyon snatched up all four as his own and played with them the whole day. Ahhh, simple treasures sometimes bring the greatest pleasures!

Simple Requests

Jonah and Micah's requests to Santa this year were very simple.

The requests were expressed to him at the mall, and repeated again in their letters to him on Christmas Eve.

This was Jonah's pile of gifts from Santa. He got a bike, a sled, a stocking full of goodies, and (can you see the smallest thing on the bottom of the photo) a measuring tape.

This was Micah's pile of gifts from Santa. He also got a bike, a sled, a stocking full of goodies, and A SNOW SHOVEL--the only thing he insisted over and over that he wanted!!!

"All I Wanted for Christmas was...

my TWO FRONT TEETH".

But instead, I lost tooth #3 over Christmas Break.

Parenthood

Do you remember the movie "Parenthood" from the late 80's with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis? The movie opens with a scene when they're leaving a baseball game, and everyone's singing "when you're running into first and you feel a sudden burst..." Then after they get home, the dad asks the girl if she's sick and needs to throw up, and she says "uh-huh" and does it right then all over the dad. And then later, the little boy throws away his retainer and the dad is sifting through all the garbage to find it. The movie is loaded with lots of situations that parents have to deal when raising children that are sometimes, well...not so fun.

Yesterday we experienced a scene right out of Parenthood. When Ammon got off the bus last night, we were all waiting for him at the dinner table. He seemed rather glum, and I asked him how his day was and he gave me a thumbs-down sign. I asked him if somebody teased him, he said no. I asked him if somebody was mean to him, he said no. He said he accidentally threw away his retainer at lunch.
Excuse me, Say what?
Yep, he accidentally threw away his retainer in the garbage can with his lunch food after he was done eating. He realized it on his way out to recess after lunch, and he was sick to his stomache the rest of the day just thinking about it. But he didn't tell a single person about it. He didn't tell his teacher or the lunch lady or go to the secretary's office (which is where his grandma works) to call us at home. Josh or I would've gone in right then to help him look through that garbage can. I asked him why he didn't do that, and he said it was because he didn't want to wear the retainer anymore if it had been in the garbage, and he didn't want to look in the garbage either.
So, after our family dinner was over, I called one of the lunch ladies, and she said the garbage man comes nearly every morning to empty the dumpsters. We had two options: we could let the garbage man swallow it up in the morning, or we could be dumpster divers that night. So Josh and I took Ammon to sift through the garbage last night. We bought some sanitary gloves, loaded up the flashlights, and headed off for our Family Home Evening Adventure.
We sifted through four entire large garbage bags of food. It was disgusting. But I found the needle in the haystack, the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, the retainer. We told Ammon his punishment for throwing it away and not telling anyone was to have to wear the retainer right then. EWWW! No, we just teased him by saying that. He said "I would have to scrub my mouth out with soap if I put that dirty retainer in my mouth right now. I know what my punishment can be instead: No Nintendo DS for 2 weeks." As soon as we got home, he looked at the calendar and figured out the day he could play Nintendo DS again. We never even told him he was going to be punished. We just wanted him to learn the lesson that mistakes happen. We know that, and we wouldn't have been angry with him for telling us. But it would've been easier to sort through one can of garbage than a whole dumpster full. But I think he learned the lesson in the freezing temperatures of the cold night, shining the flashlight on his parents digging through all that garbage.

There's more...

Did you see that annoying commercial where the wife is giving the husband Christmas gifts, and he opens a cell phone, is all excited about it, and his wife says "there's more". Then he gets a mp3 player, and is all excited about it, and she says "there's more". And then he gets a camera, and she says "there's more"...
I hated that commercial. I thought it was pretty stupid that one gift couldn't have been enough for a Christmas gift (okay, okay, it was one gift that was essentially 4 things in one, but you get the point.)
But then, my Christmas turned out kind of like the commercial.
First, the day after Thanksgiving, I bought myself this (but I didn't open it until after Christmas):
It would've been enough for me, I promise. But wait, there's more...for Christmas, Josh got me this (which I love-because I dropped my old one in the sand): THERE's MORE. I opened this Christmas gift from the boys (since Kanyon threw away one of our old handsets): THERE's MORE. After Christmas, with some gift money, I got myself this to go with my new laptop and my new camera (I use an older version of it constantly): THERE's MORE. Josh got me this so I could use my new laptop in my room (it took me two days to figure out how to hook it up, but very well worth it!): I feel so lucky! I am SO happy with all my new electronics and camera gear! But, the sad part is, since I spent all my Christmas money on myself and MY laptop, I didn't get my sweet husband anything. I told him back in November, "Honey, this year I'm not getting you anything." I was hoping that he would do the same nothing for me in return. Which of course he didn't. So, the camera and the new phones were such an awesome surprise! He is seriously the best gift giver. I, on the other hand, am the worst! Happy Christmas to me! Maybe next year will be HIS year!!!