Christmas 2008 Highlights

Alas, tonight is the last night of the cherished Christmas break.
It always goes too fast, but it was so fun! This is the narrowed-down, whirl-wind version of what Mikey and I did over the holidays.

The first day of the break started off with my
3rd graders' Christmas party!

Then that night Mikey and I hosted the annual Christmas Recipe Exchange with my college roomies. A little squished, but way fun.


One of two new nephews this year, darling Cole.

Visions of Sugar Plums

Santa visited Mikey's sister's house a couple nights before Christmas!

Some of the Lasson Fam at the Jensen Family Christmas Party!

The second of our new nephews, sweet Ezra.

Some of you have seen Mikey's dad's photo blog. For Christmas the fam made him an ibook of a bunch of his photos! He was very touched and honored. It worked out great!

Christmas Eve PJ's

A White Christmas!! (Photo by Russ Peterson)

Christmas Morning

Diamond Earrings!?! Holy cow!!

GPS!

Me sporting the darling hat, scarf, and gloves (and earrings) from Mikey!
He's so cute!


Homemade aprons from my darling Grandma Jensen. So sweet!

Silly faces with my adorable niece, Emmie.

My rockin' dad!

My hip mom!

. . . and the stars of the new band, the Butterscotch Elefunts . . . Butterfly FACE and MikeyV
(our Guitar Hero rocker names)!

We had such a nice, memorable Christmas surrounded by family.
It couldn't have been better.

Our Christmas Home Before and After

There are SO many things I love about the Christmas season, but one of my favorites is decorating our home! Oh, I love it. I love seeing the transformation our home takes on during the holidays.

Our tree is somewhat of a crowded wonder--thanks to Mikey's mom's love of ornaments and all things Christmas. She's been collecting ornaments for her kids for years and years. Thus, we have hundreds of ornaments on our tree. I love it! One of our friends was looking at it the other day and commented, "Wow, you even decorate the middle of the tree!" If we want to use all (or most) of the ornaments, we have to! But it's a really fun, random, memory-filled tree. The "before" picture is below--I wanted the "after" picture to be first so the prettier picture was the first one you'd see.

After

Before

Merry Christmas!

The Results!

So after Thanksgiving I never did report on how my pies went. I was a little nervous doing the apple pie because it was the first "real pie" I've ever made, but it actually went very well! I'd make it again. The chocolate pie was the real winner, though. Once we got the pies out, it didn't last 10 minutes! I think the kids were pretty relieved to have a very kid-friendly pie--though all the pies were so delicious. The chocolate pie was so easy, too. If you're interested in either of the recipes, there are links in blog I wrote before.

Thanksgiving was just such a fun day. Isn't spending time with family the best?

My two pies.

The three pie makers!

Most of the adults with the beautiful Thanksgiving spread.

Mikey's Christmas Music

Many of you know that Mikey is way into music. Seriously. He has 6 days of just Christmas music on his ipod. Well, Mikey has a blog where he posts various things, but mainly he posts different songs and artists he's found that he thinks other people would like. It's way cool. So, for the Christmas season he's started posting different Christmas songs he thinks you should have or know. So seriously, check it out! It's really good music. And make sure you comment so he knows what you think (even if you don't know him :)!
http://mikeyandkarie.wordpress.com/
Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Pies & A Favorite Website

As I was "researching" online trying to decide what two pies to make for my Thanksgiving dinner assignment, I decided to take this opportunity to share one of my favorite websites with you. The Pioneer Woman Cooks is a recipe website that makes me so happy! I've tried a couple recipes off of it and they've turned out really good. Plus, the humor of the woman who writes the blog is just great. All of her recipes are tried and true and she has pictures demonstrating each step. The recipe is then at the end of the demo so you can it print off. The recipe I'm trying she lovingly refers to as "Scrumptious—And I Do Mean Scrumptious—Apple Pie".
Someone else is bringing the cream pies and pumpkin pie, so I decided to do a chocolate pie for my second choice. I found my recipe the old fashioned way--googling! I googled "layered chocolate pie recipe." And this is what I found:
An "OREO Triple Layer Chocolate Pie." It was highly rated on food.yahoo.com, so we'll see how it goes! Wish me luck!

Go COUGS!!

"Rise and shout, the Cougars are out!"
Go COUGARS!!!

Twilight Movie

So I'm not a Twilight fanatic, but I am excited to see the movie. I just bought tickets online to see it the Monday after it comes out. Mikey's such a good sport to go with me! But I guess we're both good sports--I go to football and basketball games with Mikey and he goes stuff like to Celine Dion and chick-flicks with me! It's a good trade off! But the thing is, we're always really genuinely happy to do those things with each other. It's just fun being out with your best friend.

Proposition 8 . . . Comforting Advice

So I have the coolest husband ever. He's so chill and easy going, but he's so intelligent and thoughtful, too. We've been discussing Proposition 8 a lot at home lately. Last night we were talking about it before we went to bed and as a result, neither of us slept well. I don't remember what exactly I dreamed, but it was full of anxiety and stress about Prop 8.

Well, Mikey wrote a blog this morning about his thoughts about the whole thing. It's definitely worth a read. Even with all this conflict going on, all of it testifies of the truth and of prophets. There have been so many things preparing us for this time--the Proclamation of the Family, Elder Hale's talk just this past Conference about standing up for the truth, etc. The Church is true and nothing can change that. Check out Mikey's post here.

Bobbyisms

"Bobby" (one of my funny 3rd graders) and I were walking down the hall together last week and one of my co-workers was walking behind us. She's an awesome veteran teacher who's been teaching for over 30 years. Well, Bobby leaned over to me a little worried and whispered, "There's an old lady following me!"

Halloween Costumes Part II

. . . and here are our pictures from Halloween 2008! Mikey was so sweet to let me be a girl for Halloween this year! (What with being a WWF Wrestler, Karl Malone, and a Ghostbuster before.) I was Princess Buttercup and he was Wesley from "The Princess Bride."

Russ' Photo Journal

Mikey's dad is a very talented photographer. For years everyone's been bugging him to publish his pictures somewhere. Thanks to Mikey's cousin Cathy, he has a blog now! His photography really is amazing and it's so neat for him to have a place to be published. Take a look at it, bookmark it, comment, and enjoy! He adds a couple new pictures every few days.
http://russ-photojournal.blogspot.com/

Mikey and his dad, Russ

Halloween Costumes

Mikey and I have been brainstorming trying to decide what we should be for Halloween this year and I thought it would be fun to review our past Halloween costumes. I think it's so fun coming up with an idea and putting it together. We always have so much fun!
For our first Halloween in 2004 we had been engaged for just over a month. We thought the third picture below was a great candidate for our engagement photo. Some how it got vetoed. Weird. I think it might be time for these wigs to be resurrected.
Our next Halloween in 2005 we went as GHOSTBUSTERS! Who ya gonna call? The packs on our backs are our neighbor's 72-hour kits wrapped up in aluminum foil. I wonder if they noticed the missing granola bars when we returned the packs.

Halloween 2006 had a couple different costumes. One costume for a pre-Halloween party and another costume for Halloween night.
Any guesses on what we were for the party?
We were "LEAF BLOWERS!" We thought we were clever, but having a leaf hanging in our faces the whole night did get a tad annoying.

For a costume contest at work, Mikey was John Stockton, so that night for Halloween he was Stockton and I was Malone. I think Mikey looked pretty darn good! And I was just a spitting image of Karl Malone!
How's my form?

And now we come to Halloween 2007--when I showed the ULTIMATE love I have for my husband by dressing up as a WWF Wrestler--the Ultimate Warrior. Oh the love. Mikey grew up a huge fan of Hulk Hogan and so dressed up as him. Mikey was such a fan of Hulk Hogan growing up that in kindergarten he made a poster for school and on it listed his three heroes as #1 Jesus, #2 His dad, and #3 Hulk Hogan!
This is a picture of the real Ultimate Warrior. See, I just have a talent for looking like big, athletic men. What can I say?

Do you think Mikey had fun? :) I love it!

Any suggestions on what we should be this year?