A New Start

I have had a wonderful seventeen months of a slower, more relaxed, peaceful life. However, much of that is going to change on Monday. I start my new job as the Director of Library Resources at the LDS Business College. I am pretty excited . . . and a little nervous. It has been a while since I have had to get up early, but a steady paycheck will make up for that inconvenience.

I want to thank everyone for their support and encouragement during the last year. My parents and siblings have been wonderful and I really appreciate everyone that sent me job leads.

Craft Day

For Christmas, all of us girls got a craft. A couple of days after Christmas, all of us girls hibernated upstairs, listened to Celtic Thunder, and crafted the day away. It was a little challenging for Jessica since she only had her thumbs and 1 finger, but she did manage to paint the letters in her craft. Here are the finished products.

Jeni's XOXO

Crystal's Wicked

Sarah's Spring

Jessica's Joy

Mom's Home

Alli's Family

Gingerbread Houses

So mom was feeling really ambitious this year and decided it would be a great idea to make gingerbread houses - from scratch. Not just one, but 3. We divided up into three teams: Matthew and Alli, Mom and Dad and Jessica, and then Sarah, Jeni, and me. It seemed even and fair until we got going. Matthew is a pro landscaper, Mom and Dad are really talented and have experience making these things, but Sarah got stuck with me and Jeni - two elementary teachers. Yikes.

It took 1/2 the day to make the dough, cut out the houses, including the windows and doors, and then bake them. Luckily we have two ovens in Idaho or I think it would have taken us 2 days. The frosting was a mess. We made one kind and decided it wouldn't work, so we had to make another kind. We glued the houses together and filled the windows with sugar glaze. That was really messy and hard. Not sure we're going to do that again. But the windows sparkled when the sun shone through them. We had a few problems putting the houses together - there were some cracked walls and roofs, but it gave the houses character.

Dad was quite creative and cut up a box to keep their roof in one piece.

We were quite impressed with our efforts. And it entertained us for hours.

We were very proud of the duck pond at our house. Jeni is a genius. I personally liked the bench overlooking the pond.

Mom, Dad, and Jessica made a cute little house. I was surprised by how much Dad enjoyed this activity.

We all loved the woodpile, bench, chimney, and the pretty windows.

After all was said and done, Matthew and Alli were the winners of creating gingerbread houses. But I don't know what we were expecting. Matthew immediately started planning the landscaping around the house. He started with the pavers on the back porch and sidewalk. Then he added a water feature and other things.

I wish I had a better picture of the water feature. You can barely see it on the left side of the picture.

It was so much fun, we'll probably do it again next year. With a few changes of course.

Christmas Miracles

I keep hoping that one day I am going to look at our blog and it will have magically updated itself. Is that lazy?

So here are a few of our Christmas miracles.

1. The night of our family Christmas party, Jessica steamed burned her fingers while she was trying to pick up a roasting oven with Sarah. It was pretty scary. My mom took her to insta-care where they put lots of stuff on them and bandaged them up really good. The miracle is that she didn't burn her thumbs and one finger. The finger that didn't burn had a band-aid on it because a couple of weeks earlier, she cut it really bad with a knife. It was also a miracle that the burns were only 2nd degree burns and not third. Thank goodness! And we were all so blessed that she could go to the bathroom by herself!

Here she is showing off her awesome bandages. Her fingers are recovering nicely. She only has 2 (I think) that are still really tender.

2. Sarah spent many hours working on her beautiful handmade ornaments for Christmas. They can be seen in the previous post. We were getting in the truck to head to Provo, when she dropped one on the asphalt and it rolled down the street. The miracle: it didn't shatter! It really is amazing, since those balls tend to break easily.

3. Christmas miracle number 3 - Sarah had 3 job interviews in the last two weeks of December. It was a bit stressful, but it was such good news. And she had another interview set up for January. I'll let her blog about the outcome of all those job interviews.

But our Christmas was wonderful and we had a lot of fun. More posts will follow.