The 9th Date of Christmas

Danny's niece, Kyanna, had a Christmas Orchestra Concert that we got to attend about 2 weeks ago.  I just love listening to Christmas music!  It was combined with the Jr. High and High School, so we got to hear many great groups.

And to end the night the teacher had ALL of the students come on stage and play a song together!

The eighth date of Christmas

No pictures, sad, but it's maybe a date I don't care to remember. Ok, that's a little dramatic, but, well, let me start at the beginning.

So Danny and I decided to have a little get away before he starts school and I don't see him for the next two years, ha ha.  So we booked a night in Salt Lake and planned 2 days of fun.  My awesome mom took the kids Friday morning and we headed to our first stop.

About now I started feeling a little funky, but figured I was just hungry so we stopped for a quick hamburger because we had an early dinner scheduled.  I felt much better after, but I made the mistake of reading the news on my phone and heard the first little bit of the shooting in CT and I felt guilty for even having a good time.  I tried to push those feelings out of my head because this was a big deal for Danny and I, but it definitely weighed on my mind.

So we headed to the Shane Co. for my wedding ring (more on that later).  Unfortunately we left a little later than planned so we missed the session at the temple we were planning on so we headed to City Creek to do some Christmas shopping before our dinner reservations.  I wasn't thinking clearly, or maybe it was because I was packing for three people...either way, I forgot a coat.  Luckily my sister lives in SLC so we stopped by her place to borrow one.  We checked into our hotel and decided to use trax for the rest of the night.  It worked pretty well, just some of the places we were going were just a tad too far from the stops due to the rain.

I purchased a groupon for Christopher's Steakhouse and we treated ourselves to an AMAZING dinner.

We had a little time to kill, so we literally ran a couple blocks to City Creek to get out of the rain.  (We were all dressed up during all of this)

We then had tickets for Off White Christmas at the Off Broadway Theater.  The show was pretty cheesy, but still fun (their improv is much better, and we are really excited to be going to that this weekend). About half way through the show I started feeling pretty nasuious but I made it through.  We finished the show and hopped on the train back to our hotel.  I crashed into bed and figured I just need some sleep.  Danny turned on the tv and all that was on was coverage of the shooting, which made me even more sick to my stomach.

I barely slept at all, and around 5:45 I finally threw up.  Have you ever puked a $100 steak dinner into a $100/night hotel toilet?  Gross, I know, but I LITERALLY felt like I was FLUSHING $200 straight down the toilet!  Like I wanted to reach in there just to get it back!!!  That was almost the worst part, ha ha.

Anyways, needless to say I was pretty miserable and felt horrible that I had ruined the weekend.  When Danny finally woke up we came home and he dropped off the present to the baby shower I was missing (I was crushed because she came all the way from NY!!!  At least I got to see her for a couple hours on Thursday). And then Danny went to the movie we were supposed to be seeing, all by himself.  And I didn't get out of the love sac for 2 days.

I'm now feeling so much better and I'm SO grateful that no one else caught it (yet!) And that I got it over with before Christmas!  Friday was still a great day, so I can't be too upset.  And my parents kept the kids all day Saturday which was a HUGE help.

So maybe it wasn't perfect, but we'll call it date number 8!

The Seventh Date of Christmas

After enjoying a birthday dinner at Danny's grandma's, we put the kids in bed and grabbed some hot chocolate from 7-11 (the one in Kaysville has the BEST hot chocolate!)

 And we spent the night putting together this puzzle:

 And watching "Arthur Christmas"

I just love Christmas time!

The Sixth Date of Christmas

Caydence and I joined my family at Paige's annual Christmas ice skating show.  I just love listening to the Christmas music and watching all of the skaters.  

These pictures are all from my phone, so not great, and she is far away, oh well :)

The fifth date of Christmas

Pretty much the one thing Danny wants for Christmas every year is Jazz tickets, so my parents obliged, as usual :)  But because he is starting school in January, the games we could attend were pretty limited, so we got an early Christmas present last week.  We had such a great time, and my parents babysat to make it even better!  (Oh, and the Jazz won, bonus!)

 Before the game we stopped by the food court for dinner.  We were casually discussing if he was going to get a bonus this year at work and then we opened our fortune cookies.  I couldn't believe the timing...  :)

The Fourth date of Christmas

Danny's parents were kind enough to babysit for us so we could go the the First Presidency Christmas Devotional with my family.  I have never been and it was so great!  And we had great seats too!  I have lived in Utah since I was 9 and I have never even been to General Conference!  So this was a big deal for me.  I just loved it!

The third date of Chrhistmas

Another tradition we have is going to the Festival of Trees.  We just love it!  I like to find the original trees that are made of things other than trees.  Confused?  Here are 2 examples:

This one is made of soda bottles that they have kind of shredded.

 And it came with every different soda you can imagine (and then some more I've never heard of)

 This one is one big long dryer hose(?)

 And just a Real SL tree we liked :)

 They also have things other than trees, and I found this paining that I fell in love with.  It is by Dowdle (sp?) and I just love his pictures!  I knew they have sold puzzles of his paintings at Costco in the past, and we have been looking for a puzzle to do this Christmas, so I looked, and they had them again this year!!  We are really excited to put it together, if we could just find a night that both of us are home!

 As we were leaving Danny happened to spot this tree and we were so glad we didn't miss it!  If you read my earlier post about Caydence's strange obsession, you'll understand the excitement, ha ha.

We of course stopped for the yummy scones too!  It was a great night, we look forward to the festival every year!

The second Date of Christmas

For the Second date of Christmas, the kids and I attended the annual tree lighting/parade.  It is always so fun.  And a great parade because it is short, and not hot!  It was even warmer than usual, and no snow, which made it even more enjoyable.  It is such a fun tradition.  They have free hot chocolate, a band playing, and then a parade.  The sad thing is that last year, in the big windstorm, the huge "Christmas Tree" blew down!  They still put lights in all the other trees but it was a little sad to be missing the main tree!

The first date of Christmas 2012

I'm using "date" a little more liberally this year.  It can include any combination of family members, as long as it is Christmas themed, ha ha.

So for our first "date" we joined my whole family on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and headed down to Salt Lake for the night.  We started at City Creek and put our name in at the Cheesecake factory for dinner.  We respectfully declined when the wait was 4 hours!

We saw the candy windows that have returned to Macy's.  They are so crazy!  All candy!

 Then we headed over to temple square to see the lights.  It was CRAZY down there, being the Saturday after Thanksgiving and all.  And to add to the misery, Caydence screamed and cried the whole time because we made her stay in the stroller.  As we were leaving I snapped a quick (blurry) picture of this tree.  Yep, that's the only picture I got because Caydence was such a nightmare.

We then had cafe rio for dinner, yum!  We were even lucky enough to find a little room that we could shut ourselves in and have some "quiet".  At least quiet from the rest of the restaurant; there were like 14 of us there :)

All in all it was a fun night, and a great way to get into the Christmas spirit!

Another Picture Update

I'm constantly snapping pictures with my phone, but don't regularly post them, so I just dump a bunch of them at once :)  (I wish I could just use the Blogger app like I used to on my phone, but the app for android is TERRIBLE)  So here is a little of what we've been up to in the last month or so.

We spent 2 days raking leaves.  Will was just in heaven.

 We have 7 huge trees that line our back yard, which is SO nice in the summer (COMPLETE privacy)  but...

 it amounted to 15 bags of leaves!!!  Good thing we raked, because...

 it snowed almost a foot that night!  The kids loved it, I hated it.  So I let them play in it and I watched from inside :)

 Caydence's snow man.  We used candy corn for the face (it's all I could think of)

 We took the kids sledding a few days later.

 And then the snow melted within a few days.  It's been a really warm winter so far!  I'm loving it!

I took Caydence to Disney on ice, and we had a blast!

 My mom bought Caydence a "snowman kit", but there is still no now, so she put the items on herself :)

 Caydence is a crack up!  She says the funniest things.  All of her teachers tell me she is just so funny!  She came home from primary with this picture and said they were all frozen.  Ha ha.

 Sometimes sharing is hard :)

 We spent the day before Thanksgiving at Boondocks bowling, playing games, and riding the go-carts.  It was a blast!  It's so nice to finally have something to do in Kaysville!  I wish it had been around when I was in high school!

 Caydence continues to dress up ALL the time.  This was a little number she put together, calling herself a leopard.

 And Woody.  I actually let her wear this to the store!  That's a pretty big deal for me!

 I'm in love with this face!

 So this is the gate to our basement where Danny keeps his drum set.  He usually lets the kids come play, but this night he went down just for a few minutes by himself and both of the kids just sat and cried at the gate, ha ha.  They love the drums!!  We've taught them well.

Well, that's about it!  Now I'm excited to start blogging about all of the fun Christmas activities we've been up to!  Stay tuned!