Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas including the following highlights: Hatch party with Santa Claus. Christmas eve at Oma and Opa's (minus driving through the blizzard in the minivan on the way up), Lots of yummy food and treats, and fun new toys. My best surprise was telling everyone that we are having a boy!

Las Vegas Bowl

We joined thousands of other Cougar Fans for a pre-Christmas road trip to Las Vegas for BYU's bowl game. We had fun staying at Kimberly and Robert's new home in St. George on Friday night. On Saturday, the whole family went down to Las Vegas and we stuffed ourselves at a buffet on the strip before the game. We were lucky to find a good babysitter in Las Vegas so that our kids did not have to sit in the cold. BYU was even luckier to win the game by blocking a last minute field goal attempt by UCLA. We rushed the field with hundreds of others to celebrate. GO COUGARS!

Christmas Cookies

We had a fun cookie making and decoration party here a few weeks before Christmas. We had large gingerbread boys and girls, sugar cookies, and I made a garland with some of the smaller gingerbread men. (I felt like the "elf" when hanging up the garland.) We froze a few cookies to decorate on Christmas eve for Santa. A few days later, the kids and I decorated a gingerbread house.

Here is a good tip for gingerbread houses my neighbor told me: If you don't ever plan on actually eating the house, then first decorate each piece of the house. Then assemble the house together with a hot glue gun. This held great and was very easy. We covered up some of the hot glue with our extra frosting.

Thanksgiving

We had a great thanksgiving feast at Oma and Opa Wirthlin's house. Every dish that was there was delicious. Dad made the best smoked turkey. I had a lot of fun cooking for 2 days before Thanksgiving, I made the following dishes: fresh cranberry chutney, rolls, sourdough bread, pumpkin pies, oreo custard pie, spinach artichoke dip, stuffing, and I also made 2 dozen bagels to have around the house.

We were so glad that Suzanne and Scott came for Thanksgiving and stayed with us. Abby and Alexandra had fun going to the same church class and wearing their matching Costco dresses. They were lucky to be here for a big snow storm the day before they left to go back to sunny Arizona.

Disney World!

We just got back from a week in Orlando, Fl, where we spent 6 days at Disney World. It was a great trip and the kids are allready asking to go back. We really wore the kids out as you can see by the last picture of us on the way to the airport. There were so many fun things that we did, but here are just a few of our trip highlights:

Spending time with John and Kaley. See John & Kaley's blog for more pics. http://jkwirthlin@blogspot.com/
Getting free upgrades on both our rental car and our timeshare room.
Princess breakfast
Pirates of the carribean and hearing Anthony sing "yo ho yo ho a pirates life for me"
Buzz lightyear ride
The petting zoo at Animal Kingdom
The Safari ride with real African animals
Jedi training - watching a live fight between Darth Vader and Jedis
Abigail in her Pocahontas outfit.
Tom Sawyer's island - Anthony and Andrew loved exploring the caves there.
Paul doing most of the pushing of all three kids in the stroller at once.
Seeing fireworks almost everyday.

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween and the weather here cooperated so the kids got lots of candy - they loved Trick or Treating. For Anthony, I wanted to use an old Tigger costume that I have, but every time someone asked him what he was going to be for Halloween, I said "Tigger", Then Anthony would say, "no Tigger, I pirate!" So, Paul thought I should get him a pirate costume and I'm glad I did because he was the cutest little pirate ever.

I spent a day and a half carving the seven pumpkins you see there - the most dificult was the pirate ship. I broke 2 pumpkin saws because those pumpkins were so big and thick. But it was worth it after it was all done, they looked really good lit up at night and all of the trickortreaters loved them.

I also toasted 10 cups of pumpkin seeds using Emily's recipe. They are pretty good:

Pumpkin seeds

2 C pumpkin seeds 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp. butter (melted) 1 tsp. salt

Boil washed seeds in salted water for 15 min. drain mix with butter and Worcestershire sauce and salt. Pour in pan toast seeds 250° for 2 hours stirring often.

Anthony's 2nd Birthday

We had a fun combined 2 year old birthday party for Anthony and Phillip. The best part about it was staying up until 1:30 with Cathy making the train cakes.