Friday, January 10, 2014

The Best Christmas Present

David really surprised me this Christmas. I was shocked by the present I got.  I tried to upload the video, but it will not load, but there is a link to it here.  I can’t wait to use this present!!! Best present ever!!

Christmas 2014

P1060213P1060214P1060215P1060218P1060219P1060220P1060221P1060225P1060226P1060227P1060228P1060231P1060238P1060245

P1060247P1060248P1060249P1060250

P1060235

Christmas morning came and at 6:30 a.m. we were all downstairs opening presents.  It took us a good hour and a half to just have the kids open their presents.  As far as my kids Meme and I went a little overboard with presents, but that is what Christmas is for! I don’t buy the kids toys throughout the year, so I get a little toy happy every Christmas.  The kids got a lot of great things and to name them all would take way too long of a post.  I did get the kids a Kindle Fire, Maggie and Lizzy a kitchen, David and Parker Lincoln Logs and Lizzy got some play center stuff. For big David we set a $30 budget and so we both got creative.  I decided to be really giving and I gave him a card that said that I would play Minecraft for 4 hours. This is a huge present for him. David has been bugging me for years to play with him so I knew this would be the perfect gift for him.  For Sherrie and Dave we got them family pictures scheduled.  It was going to be a surprise, but Sherrie called me a couple of weeks before Christmas and told me she wanted to do family pictures, when everyone was out here. So I had to ruin the surprise and tell her I already had it covered!Smile 

After all the kids opened their presents, we let them go play with them and then us adults opened our presents.  I got so many amazing things. Sherrie and Dave got me a huge deep fryer, a beautiful amethyst necklace and earring and too many other great things to name! We finished up around 9:00 and headed upstairs to get started on our Christmas dinner.  We were up there cleaning and then I started a load of dishes in the dishwasher and a few minutes later we noticed water leaking from it. Then we went downstairs to the laundry room and there was water dripping from the pipes onto all of our storage.  So then David spent the next 5 hours trying to fix this plumbing/flooding issue we were having.  While they were trying to fix this disaster we got the turkey from the outside fridge and brought it in only to find out that it was frozen.  There went our dinner plans, which worked out because we didn’t have our kitchen all day with David in there trying to fix the flood that was happening.  We called a plumber after a few hours of David and Dave trying to fix it and the plumber was pretty rude with David. Trust me I understand that it is Christmas and nobody wants to work on Christmas, but man he was ridiculous especially since he was going to charge us $250 the first hour and $150 every hour after that.  That got David motivated! Somehow after a lot of towels and buckets of water thrown outside, he finally fixed it around 3:00 or 4:00.  So for dinner I don’t even remember what we had. I do know that we had a lot of food in our house and nobody went hungry. 

By that night between all that had happened I was so emotionally drained and so much had happened that that night it felt like Christmas was a hundred years ago.  It was very nice not cooking in the kitchen all day though. Sherrie and I both appreciated that little blessing and it was a great distraction to not think about Biscuit being gone.  It was a great and very memorable Christmas and we were so blessed to share it with so much of our family.  Thank goodness I have a full year to recover!

Christmas Eve

P1060127P1060128

P1060132P1060140P1060144P1060145P1060146P1060153P1060154P1060161P1060162P1060163P1060170P1060173P1060174P1060175P1060182P1060190P1060193P1060197P1060212

Minus the fiasco with Biscuit, we had such a great Christmas Eve.  We had 16 people in our downstairs living room that night and it was so much fun! We had the kids act out Luke 2 and then everyone got to open one present.  That has to be my favorite part of Christmas. Watching people open presents that I picked out or made just for them.  We tried to get a picture of Meme with all of her grandkids, but they were just not going to have it.  The first one was an attempt for us to get one, then we gave up.  Then all the kids slowly just came together little by little, so Meme snuck in next to them and we got our picture! It was pretty cute! It is a rare occasion to have all of her grandkids together, so I was happy to capture that special moment!

Biscuit

20131229_150722P1040325

So on Christmas Eve this year we had a lot going on at our house. We had a lot of people coming and going and we were all trying to get all of our last minute stuff done. We had just finished with Santa visiting and I went to the store with Molly to get a few things.  We went and got in the car and I realized that I hadn’t seen Biscuit in a while, so I called David and told him to go look around from him and then we went to the store. About 30 minutes later David called me and said that he couldn’t find him anywhere.  I was sick.  I know he is just a dog, but as most people that know me well, know that he is my favorite most days.  We looked for him for hours and he never turned up. Since it was Christmas Eve we didn’t tell the kids and we went on with our plans. Then we had Christmas, Maggie’s birthday and big David’s birthday. On Friday I went and looked at all the animal shelters and put fliers up.  We got a call from a lady on Friday night that said that she saw him a little ways from our house on the street and confused and then she said she saw a man get out of an SUV and start walking towards him, so we assumed that he got him and took him home.  On Sunday we were at church and David got a text. I didn’t see who it was from, but it said, “We found Biscuit, he is at the house.”  I was so excited and confused. I thought that someone had seen the flier and had him. So then David told me later that it was from Robert and that Biscuit was at our house, not someone else’s.  I ran home after sacrament and saw him. He was pretty skittish for the first day or so and was pretty skinny.  The poor puppy was out in cold weather on his own for 5 whole days and nights. How he survived, what he did and where in the world he was is going to be a mystery to us forever. It was truly a miracle.  I was so depressed for those 5 days. I really had no idea how much a part of our life he really is until he was gone.  Live and learn and thank goodness for miracles.

Santa Visits!

20131224_12281920131224_12285820131224_12293020131224_12300020131224_12304320131224_123220

We were so lucky to have Santa come to visit our house on Christmas Eve afternoon. The kids were so excited! Each of them got to sit on his lap and tell them what they wanted and he even brought gifts for them too. Parker, Lizzy and Lincoln were not fans of him, but Penny sure didn’t mind him.  It was a great treat to have Santa in our house and we are so grateful he fit us into his busy schedule!

Christmas Projects

P1050887P105088820131113_23293320131204_14571120131204_14595520131209_14532220131210_10132820131211_123647P1060211

I had quite a few crafts the weeks leading up to Christmas.  It was crazy! One thing I decided to do was make pajamas for all of the Torgerson Grandkids. There are only 6 of  them, so it wasn’t too bad.  I am shocked how easy pajama pants are to make.  They were fun to do and that may have to be my new tradition.Smile Since Sherrie was going to be here I decided to put “Meme’s Favorite” on the shirts with their names on their shirts.  It was cute to see them all dressed alike.  I also made some ornaments for the grandmas with the kid’s pictures and what they have done this year.  Then for my friend Alice-Anne I found the cutest little chalkboard and white board and I just had to get it for her.  Alice-Anne loves white boards and at one of our young women presidency meetings she brought a really big white board to draw some visuals for us. We all got a really good laugh out of it and so I thought that this would be a much easier board for her to carry to meetings! Then for my friend, Kate I  made her a “Friends” shirt with all of our favorite quotes from the show on it. It was fun to think of all our favorite episodes! The other huge project I had was to make shirts for all of the people at David’s work.  My 2 favorite shirts that I made were “I’m probably going to fart soon” and “Here I am, what are your other 2 wishes. He works with some pretty good humored people and I think they all got a kick out of it!Smile

I had a few other crafts, but can’t think of them at the moment. Crazy, busy time of year!!