Country Christmas weekend

We spent our long weekend going to Country Christmas craft fairs - I loved it, the kids hated it, and Matt tolerated it. I actually think Matt and the kids had a good time, even though they didn't really want to let on. On Friday Matt had to work so I took the kids just down the street to the Nevada County Fairgrounds for the Country Christmas Craft Faire. It was super crowded and super cute! Our fun day...

They had carolers dressed up in old fashioned clothes, loved it!

Cute decorations everywhere!


Christian and I at the Sweet shop. Uh, the Sweet tent.


They had a gingerbread house contest and we saw the most beautiful, elaborate gingerbread houses I've ever seen! They were so cool that I took pictures to share.


And another one.


Addison thoroughly enjoyed looking at them.


One more.


I know I took a lot of pictures of the gingerbread houses, but they were so cute!


Christian found a big candy cane and posed for his mama like the sweetie he is!


They roasted chestnuts over an open fire and gave them away FREE! I love free stuff!


Here I am burning my hand trying to get a free chestnut. The nice man in the top hat finally had mercy on me and came and helped me, after just a little bit of heckling. PS - Lexi told me the guy in the shades was totally checking me out! :)


I didn't know chestnuts were soft and yellow. And that they don't taste very good. Oh well, at least now every time we sing the song I can point out that I have tried chestnuts roasted on an open fire. :) Small things make me happy!


We also checked out a cool old graveyard. It's a tiny little thing with lots of interesting old headstones. A lot of them are lopsided, Haunted Mansion style. It was very interesting to walk around.





Then on Saturday we drove an hour up to Christmas at Gold Trader Flat. It's a cute little "town" that is completely old fashioned. They've got shops and dirt roads and boardwalks. They do fun events all year so we're definitely planning a return trip. Or I should probably say that I am definitely planning a return trip. :)


Here is Matt talking to a journalist for the Democrat Appeal newspaper. Then he ended up quoting me! That made me feel special because I was the only one to not be in the newspaper in Clovis! So it's only fair that I should be the first to be in the paper here, right? You know that country song Everybody dies famous in a small town, well it's true. Anyways, some pics of our Saturday.







Here we are, not with Santa Claus as I was told, but with Father Christmas.


I thought it was so cute that lots of people were dressed up old fashioned so I asked this lady to take a picture with me. I'm sure she thought I was crazy! Oh well.


I've been into outhouses lately (I'm thinking of doing a bathroom all outhouses) so here I am testing this one out.


And here is Christian getting ready for a bath. Aren't we funny?! I was kinda surprised he was willing to pose for this one. He probably just wanted to show off his little six-pack!


That night, our little town of Penn Valley hosted a Cowboy Christmas. I know, so many cute Christmas things, I could hardly stand it! I didn't take too many pictures there because it was already dark and my camera doesn't do well at night. I wonder if I could learn how to take better pictures in the dark. Hmmm, any suggestions? Anyways, that was very cute too, and they gave free hamburgers, hot dogs, drinks, AND each child that got their FREE picture with Santa got a gift! Alexis got a Barbie (which she promptly gave to a little girl that didn't get a picture with Santa), Christian got a Spiderman (which he played with immediately), and Addie got a stuffed Rudolph (which she quickly made out with).


Santa pulled up in this wagon. They also gave free wagon rides but no one wanted to wait in line. No one except me. :( I got over it quickly. :)


This picture was the worst, but it's the only one I got of all three of the kids with Santa. Addison was fascinated by Santa! So different from Alexis at that age, who screamed bloody murder!


We had a fun, busy family weekend and I can't wait for the next one!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had our first thanksgiving at our home this year. It was really nice but a ton of work! Whew, I was so glad to finally sit down and eat! Since it was my first time to cook everything myself, I wanted to make everything homemade. Some things turned out better than others...

Matt and I started out the morning with an hour and a half walk around our very hilly neighborhood. How out of shape do you have to be that your still sore 2 days after a walk? Not like I ran a marathon, just went walking. I must have been working my gluteus-maximus cause that's whats sore! PS - I have no idea if that's how you spell that because both words popped up on spell check and it didn't give any suggestions. :)

Then we sat around and watched the parade and ate some of this.





I didn't start cooking till about 1:00. I made cornbread stuffing (and the cornbread and regular bread that went into it), holiday cranberries (next year I'll just go back to the can), green bean casserole (Matt thinks this made him sick, even though nobody else is sick), homemade crescent rolls, garlic mozzarella mashed potato's, corn in butter, broccoli with cheese (okay those last two were straight from their frozen packages), and sweet potato casserole (with fresh sweet potato's). Matt fried the turkey, Alexis helped me make a turtle pie, and Christian helped me make a pumpkin pie cheesecake. Here are some pictures of our excitement. :)





The table at the halfway point.


Matt trying to open our Ikea peach sparkler. We all liked it, but we also tried a bottle of what I thought was root beer from Ikea, and Lex and I about threw up! Icky! Matt and Christian liked it, so they shared.


Look how happy Addie is!



Just like a little turkey flapping her arms!


Hope you had a happy thanksgiving!

The Adventures of Alexis... and the rest of us

Alexis has been very busy! She started a blog about a week ago, right around the time she started tennis lessons. She loves both! She thought she sent out invites for her blog, but apparently she didn't since no one received them... so be looking for the official invitation!

Anyways, here are some pics of her tennis playing. She is really good! And she seems to really enjoy it! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is her "thing." My philosophy with extracurricular activities is to let them try lots of things until they find their one (or two, or three) "thing." She's tried loads of sports, dance, etc, and even though she was good, it just wasn't her passion. So this mama is wishing and hoping that Lex likes this and wants to stick with it!



Christian also had a memorable first. He got to ride his bike to school with a friend last week. The school is more than three miles away, and we live in a really hilly area, but he made it and even wanted to do it again. I was fine with it except that they got to school late. Both days. Soooo, we're gonna try it again later. I stood on the back porch taking pictures of him leaving. On his bike. All alone. I'm so sad that they are getting so big!



And just so I don't leave anyone out, here are Matt, Addie, and me. We're all pretty much doing the same ol', same ol'.



Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Twilight at Midnight

Alexis, Addison, and I got to go see Twilight at midnight on Thursday. After debating all week about leaving Addie with Matt I decided to take her because she's been sick and waking up a lot. She only made one little peep towards the end of the movie and other than that she was a perfect angel!

We bought our tickets earlier in the week, but even when we got to the theater at 10:45 there was a huge line of people! We went with 9 people from our new ward, 4 ladies and 5 teens. Before the movie started they asked 4 trivia questions and gave posters to the right answers. Our little group got 3 of the 4 posters! And one of the ladies gave hers to Lex so that was fun!



The movie... was funny. Funny at parts that it wasn't really supposed to be funny. Kinda seemed low budget. The make-up really bothered me, why were Edwards lips sooo red?! And Jasper... so funny! We also really enjoyed the love scene in the tree! The whole theater was cracking up! I thought Jessica was perfect and Charlie was pretty good too. Hopefully they'll have a little better budget for the next one! Either way we were so glad we got to go have a fun girls night out! Can't wait for the next one!

Look what Addie can do!

Addie has a new trick! She can sit up!




She's not perfect at it and has had some spills...


But she just gets right back up to sitting (with a little help from us) and playing. She pretty much hates rolling over. I think she's done it a total of ten times or less. That's probably mostly our fault because she doesn't spend a ton of time laying on the floor. She's surrounded by four people that love to hold her. And the month after she learned how to roll over was spent moving and in hotels, and I wasn't about to lay her on the hotel floor, even on a blanket, gross! So it looks like we just might skip the whole rolling over phase.



She does scoot on her back. She's cried in her crib a couple of times because she's scooted all the way to the top bars. And when she does lay down on the floor she scoots in circles and everywhere. She's getting so big!