Christmas Day

Well, Santa made it to our house! After stuffing himself on Christmas Eve and not having any more room to take another bite, he still found room to take a bite or two of the cookies Rohbi made.

We had to wake her up. She looks pretty chipper for being so tired! I think she was pretty excited to open presents!

I took a ton of pictures but I'm pretty sure I would bore you with all of them so I only posted a few. I also ended up sick so wasn't in much of a mood to do a whole lot. Rohbi made out like a bandit! She got spoiled rotten! Her Grandma and Grandpa Gould sent us with some gifts they bought before they left for Wyoming. Her Grandma and Grandpa Bates mailed several gifts from Boise. Then of course she got the gifts from Santa and from Mom and Dad. Eric's mom and dad also sent Eric and I each wallets that we both love! Eric's sister sent us some popcorn which we will get to eventually, but after dealing with so much popcorn this year, I think she'll understand why we don't get to it right away. It looks yummy though and I know I will end up blowing my diet on it!!! Thanks Shelly! Thank you to everyone who sent us gifts! We loved them! Mom and Dad also gave us a carpet shampooer which I was so excited for! I've been borrowing Mom's so it's going to be so good to have our own! After we opened gifts and eating breakfast, we got ready and braved the storm to head down to Preston to enjoy the rest of our family. We stopped by Andrea and Jon's house to see what Ty and Britni and the twins got. I wanted to hold one of those beautiful little girls all day but where I was sick, I had to resist. I was so bummed because they both looked so cute and I wanted to hug on them. Oh well, I'll get plenty of time. After stopping at their house, we went over to Amy and Mark's house where we had our family Christmas party. We had a lot of fun eating food and stuffing ourselves. We opened gifts from each of the families and played games. The kids played downstairs. Thanks Amy for letting us invade your house and enjoy each other! Aubree and Jeff also braved the storm to make it and spend time with us! Aubree is going to have her beautiful little baby girl in about 3 1/2 weeks and she looks so cute all happy and pregnant! It was so much fun to spend time as a family!

Christmas Eve

What a fun holiday! We had so much fun on Christmas Eve. First we went sledding. We started off with just Rohbi on the sled and Eric driving the 4-wheeler and me riding behind him.

Pretty soon Mom had to ride on the sled because I had to "help" Rohbi. Okay fine, I can't help it if I'm still a kid at heart! ;) I offered to drive so Eric could ride with her but I don't think he trusted my driving! After about 10 rounds of going up and down our driveway, we got bored and went to the fair grounds where we had a wide open field to play in.

Rohbi ended up with a lap and sled full of snow. She didn't want to stop!



Eric tried his darndest to dump us and only succeeded a few times. The last time he dumped us, I ended up with a face full of snow and the worst ice cream headache! As you can tell, I had makeup smeared all over my face by the time we were done. Oh well, we had fun!


She looks cold doesn't she! She did not want to stop! We had to finally tell her she had to come in so we could get ready to go over to Grandma and Granpa Larson's house for dinner.



We let her open some pj's and a book and then we read the book to her. It's called "On This Special Night" and it's a nativity story but it's from the animals' perspective. It was a cute book.

Then we came home and put in a batch of cookies for Santa.

We couldn't forget to feed Santa's reindeer. We mixed some oats with confetti. The oats to feed the reindeer and the confetti to shine and sparkle so they could find our house. We moved since last Christmas so we had to make sure they could find our house!

Christmas In Heaven

I've been really struggling lately with losing Gunnar. I'm so excited for Christmas because I love this time of year but I've been dreading it at the same time. Christmas day will be the 3 month anniversary of us losing Gunnar. I miss him so much. Anyway, I was getting my visiting teaching lesson together and was looking for a Christmas poem to read to kind of incorporate Christmas into the lesson and I stumbled across this poem on the internet. I don't even remember the site I found it on but it is such a beautiful poem and I fell in love with it. Of course by the time I was finished reading it, I was bawling. But I thought I would share it.

Christmas In Heaven

I see the countless Christmas trees around the world below
with tiny lights like heaven's stars reflecting on the snow.

The sight is so spectacular please wipe away that tear
for I am spending Christmas with Jesus Christ this year.

I hear the many Christmas songs that people hold so dear
but the sounds of music can't compare with the Christmas choir up here.

I have no words to tell you of the joy their voices bring
for it is beyond description to hear the angels sing.

I know how much you miss me, I see the pain inside your heart
for I am spending Christmas with Jesus Christ this year.

I can't tell you of the splendor or the peace here in this place
Can you just imagine Christmas with our Savior face to face?

I'll ask him to lift your spirit as I tell you of your love so
then pray for one another as you lift your eyes above.

Please let your hearts be joyful and let your spirit sing
for I am spending Christmas in heaven and I'm walking with the King.

Wanda Bencke

My Mostly Homemade Tree

Well we finally got our tree up and decorated! I had to make ornaments for the ward Christmas party so I didn't have a lot of time to get all mine done. By the time I was finished with the ones for the Christmas party, I was pretty much sick of seeing popcorn! So I did the minimal and left the other 2 or 3 boxes of bulbs for next year!







I made the angel.



Ya so I cheated and put tinsel in the bulb!





They turned out so cute!











Kinda blurry but oh well...




These ornaments aren't homemade but these are the ones we bought this year:


This is Gunnar's ornament. It says "When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure"






Rohbi's ornament

"Our First Christmas 2008"

Ward Christmas Party

The primary singing before Santa came

Eric and Rohbi waiting in line for Santa. Eric looks like he has a snowflake coming out of the middle of his face lol. Oh and he wanted to sit on Santa's lap too but figured he was too big. That didn't stop him from asking for a new gun! Typical cop!

Snowy Days

Wow! I am such a slacker! I have so many pictures and haven't been on here to post them. We finally got a pretty good snow and Rohbi was itching to get outside and play in it! She had a ball!!!

She had to make tracks all over the yard

Snow angels

Making her snow castles

I'm going to add a few other pics of our view, etc.

From what we call our back door but it's actually the side of the house that faces the highway

This is shooting across the highway at the mountains on the East side of town

The "front" of the house facing the cows and the flume :)

Eric's "rig"

Happy Holidays!!!

My favorite Christmas memories

I was driving the other day and for some odd reason, I got to thinking about Christmas and my favorite Christmases and memories from Christmas. I thought I would post those and whoever reads this, I challenge you to think about it and write your favorite Christmas and/or memory.

My favorite Christmas was when I was about 5 or 6 years old. My parents work for the power company so we lived in company housing. We were at a babysitter's house but she lived close by too. We had some people working on our house, doing some electrical work and they had gone on a lunch break. My mom decided to go home for some reason on her lunch break. She came home to a house fire. She had gone in to get the animals out. I remember Mom coming over to the babysitter's house covered in black from the smoke. We lost most of our Christmas decorations and presents in the fire and didn't have a place to stay for Christmas. The power company has a place they call the Training Center which is a place people stay at for meetings. It has bedrooms, a kitchen, conference room, offices, etc. We ended up staying there for Christmas. I remember being so worried that Santa wouldn't know to stop there instead of our house for Christmas. That year we made our own ornaments which included stringing popcorn for garland. We also did a paper chain, etc. We had so much fun! We woke up to a bunch of presents and had a normal Christmas even though we didn't get a whole lot for Christmas. Our community banded together and gave us what they could which included presents and other stuff (I don't remember because it was so long ago). But the thing is that I don't really remember what I got that year for Christmas. I just remember that people did their best to help us have a Christmas and we had so much fun just making the ornaments and stuff.

Another favorite Christmas of mine was just after I had seperated from my first husband. It was kind of a rough time of year. I was alone with my daughter and I didn't have a lot of money to buy her presents. One night we were just sitting around when we heard a knock at the door. I opened the door but no one was there. I looked around and saw nothing but looked down and there was something (I can't remember for sure what it was but I think it was a plate of cookies or something). It had a cute little saying on it. I thought "Wow that was nice but I don't know who did this so I don't know who to thank." The next night, I came home and there was already something on our step. I didn't realize that this was going to be a nightly thing. I started getting excited for that knock every night. Pretty soon, I started getting a different little figurine from the nativity scene every night. There was always a cute little gift for Rohbi to open up too. She loved it! For the first few nights, I tried to catch whoever was knocking on my door but after a few times, I decided that I didn't want to ruin it for whoever was doing this. They were obviously having fun and wanted to keep it all anonymous. I started waiting about 30 seconds before I would answer the door. In the end, I ended up having a full nativity scene and something to look forward to on those lonely nights. I was so greatful for that. I have a few suspicions as to who it was but I don't know for sure. I had another experience that year that was neat but I won't go into detail on that. That year ended up being a great Christmas and it made the blow of a divorce not as bad.

Homemade Christmas (a little picture heavy so please bare with me)

This year when I brought up to my husband that I needed to go buy some Christmas decorations, Rohbi piped in and said that we should make them this year so that is what we have decided to do. I love Christmas!!! Again, these decorations are another idea I stole from someone else. I'm not very creative. I'm not finished yet and I still have a lot of work to do. I'm also making the angel to go on the top of the tree but I haven't finished that one yet. I did buy a few decorations. When we were younger, my parents bought us collectible ornaments every year so this year I bought Rohbi one. I also bought one for Eric and I for our first Christmas together and one that says "When someone you love becomes a memory the memory becomes a treasure" and I bought that one for Gunnar, the baby we lost this September. Anyway, here are those decorations:

These ones I made out of applesauce, glue, and cinnamon. They smell so good! As you can tell, I'm not an artist so please just ignore the artwork! :)

These ones, I actually popped the popcorn inside of the ornaments and then I'm going to decorate them. Rohbi and I had a ball with these!


These you can't see very well but I just put tinsel inside of them. Pretty simple!

While I was at it, I decided to make as many gifts this year as I could. I'll post some of them but some of them I won't because they are gifts for people who might read this post. Anyway, here they are!

These are pictures of a calendar I'm going to put together for my mom and Rohbi's grandma Jean (on her dad's side). Again, I'm not even close to being an artist so ignore the artwork but we had a lot of fun with this. I got this idea from http://www.littlegiraffes.com/handprintcalendar.html.

I've also got a lot to do and I have a lot that are done but like I said, I'm afraid someone might read this post and see their gifts on here so I'm not posting a lot of them.