Christmas ornaments 2013

Jason's mom got him and all of his siblings an ornament every Christmas. Jason and I have continued the tradition in our own family and every year we have fun picking out an ornament that represents our kids' year. I decided to start taking a picture of each child with their ornament this year and here they are!

Tempe loves loves loves cats and she is so excited that we have one. Her ornament has a little cat and says "Home is where the cat is". That definitely sums up her year!

Helena is such a little diva and she wants to be a rock star. She even dressed up as a rock star for Halloween this year! Her ornament is a very glittery "Rock Star" ornament.

Juno loves tools and has fun "helping" fix things around the house. She even has her very own jigsaw just like Mom's! It's hard to get a picture of a three year old holding an ornament up so you can see it, but hers is a hammer and wrench.

Over for another year

Christmas has come and gone again...

How does it sneak up on me every year??

December has been lovely, with lots of fun Christmas activities and lots and lots of anticipation for the big day. Am I the only one that thinks the anticipation is way better than actual Christmas??

Jason worked most of the day on Christmas Eve so the girls and I got ready for Christmas by baking chewy gingerbread bars for Santa and eggnog scones for Christmas breakfast. Then we went to a local rest home to hand out pictures to residents--the girls have been coloring stacks of pictures to hand out for weeks and it was a nice way to make Christmas Eve a little different than every other day.

After Jason got home, we went to his grandma's house for the annual family Christmas Eve dinner/party. We used to play White Elephant, but now that the family has grown exponentially, it was just too crazy and took forever! Instead we have the best Christmas singalong ever ("Jing Jing a Ling" and "Six White Boomers"!)

When we got home, Tempe, Helena, and Juno opened their Christmas Eve gift (new PJs, of course!) and put out gingerbread bars and milk for Santa before bed. Juno especially was really excited for her pajamas. She hugged and kissed me no less than five times in the half hour before bed saying "Thank you Mom, thank you my 'jamas!"

The girls went straight to sleep and didn't wake up until a little after 7. They were so excited to see what Santa had brought (btw, Juno has been saying "Santa come my house? On roof? On his way?" for weeks. She was soooo excited!) There was a pair of binoculars for Tempe (we live near a great place where bald eagles nest!), a unicorn Dreamlite for Helena, and a wooden train set for Juno plus all kinds of great things in their stockings :)

Other favorite gifts are Disney princess dolls (Jasmine, Aurora, and Ariel), a Cooking Light subscription for Mom, gift cards to The Cheesecake Factory, a babysitting coupon book, and a memory foam mattress topper! We got spoiled this year by Jason's great brother and his wife! They know that our mattress is awful and we both wake up with headaches nearly every day (no joke) so they got us the most comfortable, wonderful mattress topper ever. I love them :)

But the BIGGEST PRESENT of the year was the news that we are having a FOURTH baby girl!!!!

I had an ultrasound the week before Christmas and the tech printed out a picture and wrote the gender on it and then sealed it in an envelope. We went back and forth on whether we should open it or not (we were originally planning on being Team Green) but ultimately it ended up under the tree.

Funny story, I opened the envelope and looked at the picture and had no clue what I was seeing. I was expecting a "potty shot" and I'm still really not sure what this is a picture of. Jason pointed out that the tech wrote "girl" in ballpoint pen on the black part of the picture, so we're going with that!
We're thrilled to have four girls!

Christmas is coming

... are you ready???
I have to admit, I thought I was, but this last week before the big day has got me running around like crazy! Part of that has to do with Jason and I being co-chairs for our neighborhood Christmas party (300 people at a Scandinavian brunch!) but also, those last little things really do pile up before Christmas, right?
Luckily, Juno's new preschool is close to a CVS and I've been able to run in there and grab stocking stuffers, quick little gifts for teachers, and even get a head start on my baby prep!
I know that my due date will look a lot closer when we get on the far side of Christmas, so I thought it would be smart to start stocking up on diapers and other baby gear here and there. So last week when I popped in to CVS after dropping Juno off, I grabbed the only diapers I will ever trust a newborn in: Pampers Swaddlers. I love them They are so much softer than other diapers and really cut down on the leaks!

It feels great to be able to start getting some stuff for baby #4, even during such a hectic time of year! Popping into CVS for those last minute holiday supplies leaves me more time to spend with my kids, doing our favorite things to celebrate the holiday season, like going to City Creek, and taking letters to the special Santa mailbox at the post office!

CVS knows that the holidays can be a stressful time, especially with kids in diapers! That's why they make it easy to run into your local store and save on Pampers. Now one of my readers will save even more! Just leave a comment telling me what last minute holiday preparations you have to do and you might be the winner of a full value coupon for a Pampers product--I'll announce a winner in a few days!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Catch up--Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving, my parents came out from TN and rented a ranch house in New Harmony (near Cedar City). With all five kids in Utah, plus their three adorable grandchildren, they decided they should just come to us!

The ranch was amazing. The house slept all of us comfortably and was stocked with toys for the kids and lots of board games, had a hot tub and fire pit and grill, and that's not even starting on the grounds. It was a working ranch with sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and the two cutest kittens EVER. Plus a river with three huge treehouses and a fire pit and a party barn with a pool table, air hockey, etc. 

So yeah, we had a good time. I was worried about cooking Thanksgiving dinner for a big group (there were 19 of us for dinner) in an unfamiliar kitchen, but it went really smoothly and the kitchen had everything we needed.

Highlights were playing bartender (Josh is the best at it), roasting hot dogs by the river, and watching the most epic home video EVAAAAAAA! We found one of the owner's personal home videos (dangerous, I know) and decided to watch it. It turned out the be a wedding from 1993 with the best wedding gown and bridesmaids dresses you've ever seen, plus the most awkward couple you've ever seen (no eye contact during the ceremony and a side hug instead of a kiss. Sad, right?) I kept expecting it to turn into a snuff film or something.

These two little kittens (Tempe named them Smoky and Scout) followed us around constantly and loved to be cuddled and carried around. They weren't allowed in the house but they sat on the deck watching on and one of them tried to jump through the window and smashed into it while we were watching a movie.

Treehouses look cool from the ground but are kind of scary when you're actually in them.

They even wrote "The Allan Family" on the sign at the gate!

Lots of snakes in New Harmony.

Like I said, working ranch--the sweet owners told Tempe and Helena they could collect eggs every morning. We even ate some!

New favorite Allan family picture. Notice Helena's little bum in the top right quadrant. Yep, she's always talking about her bum so there it is.

Super fancy date night

Wow, I think that this a record for the longest I haven't posted anything.... nearly a whole month!! I've got some catching up to do.
First up is our super fancy date night from right before Thanksgiving. Me and my sisters-in-law had been talking about/planning this for months! Two of Jason's brothers are married with kids and we all live in about a five mile radius, so we do lots of stuff together. The Friday before Thanksgiving week, we invited Jason's brothers and their wives over for a cheese tasting night! Jason and I love going to the cheese counter at Harmon's and eating the sample and oohing and aahing over all the different kinds of cheese that we have never tried. We knew it would be way too expensive for us to buy six kinds of fancy cheese, so that's why we decided to do this as a group date!

Each of us brought a kind of "fancy" cheese. We also had two kinds of crackers, grapes, pear slices, salami, honey, toasted pecans, pepper jelly, and cherry preserves--and sparkling cider, of course. I wish I could remember all the cheeses, but I didn't write them down. We definitely had blueberry Stilton, brie, harvati, a really fancy kind of blue cheese, and a cheddar with porter. They were all so yummy!

We set the kids up (all eight of them!) with a movie and settled down in the other room and went to town making different combinations. My favorites were the blueberry Stinson with honey and pecans, the brie with cherry preserves, and the blue cheese with pear slices. It was really fun and we ate ourselves sick. I think this might need to be an annual tradition!