LEGO in the Ear???

Oh man! Ryan and I were just playing a rousing game of Lego Batman on the xbox and he kept digging at his ear. He says mom I think I have something in my ear. So, I take a look and there in my kids ear is a tiny round lego. I nearly peed my pants. I grabbed the tweezers and surgery started. Dan held his ear back, because he really has some ears... and I grabbed the lego. All in all it took just a few minutes to get it out but, oh my goodness my first thought was ER here we come. Well, now that moments over I think I will go to bed.

Darn Adam & Eve

So I was just thinking after doing about 10 loads of laundry today that if Eve hadn't taken that first bite I wouldn't have to do so much laundry. I mean there would still be towels, blankets things like that, but think of all the time and energy that could go towards something else if we didn't have clothes. Oh and the money that could be used for other things. What a thought...

Ok so my hubby just reminded me how frightening the visual could be if everyone was running buck. I guess I will go back upstairs and work on load # 11.

Thank heavens for his vision or I may have attempted a new trend...

Priceless Gift from Becca

Rebecca gave me most of this nativity for Christmas last year or the year before. It took her the entire year to make this for me. She worked so hard on it and made all of the clothes by herself. So, I asked for the animals for Christmas this year. So, she made the animals and I think my favorite are the cows. She decided she doesn't like brown cows, so I have little spotted cows. How precious. All of the camels saddles match the wisemen's robes. She did an amazing job and this is truly a priceless gift. Thank you Becca.

The Larsons

This is my brother Dale's family. Dallas, Lisa - his wife, Mallory, Cherlynn & her husband, Scott and of course the dog friends, Abbey & Ernie.

Roxy's Snow Moment

I let Roxy out to go potty and she refused to come inside, so I let her stay outside for a few more minutes. When she came in she was covered with these little snowballs.

When Rob and Ry first started playing with the new double shot nerf guns they kept talking about their aimage and were not sure about how good the aimage was. We soon learned that Robs aimage is just fine. Ry although hamming it up for the camera continued to dig, who know his multitasking skills were so impressive.

Like Mother Like Son???

PEACEFUL

I can't begin to express the JOY that I have over the calm quiet state of our home. It is so peaceful here. I haven't heard one outburst or negative comment from anyone today or last night. These are the moments I really enjoy and burn into my heart, so when the normalcy of life returns I can reflect on these moments.

Ryan absolutely loves his Dino egg!! He has been digging and brushing away the sand for a good long time - what a great gift. He loves it.

A special thanks to Em & Aaron for the small nerf artillery sets my boys received. They are busy making target practice of my snowman collection. Just kidding, but they are enjoying them.

The Great Rob Roo...

So Ryan gave Robbie a small magician set and apparently this is what a magician should look like. I laughed so hard when he put these on. Too Funny!!

Ever since Rebecca was a little girl Santa would bring her a can of Hersheys Syrup and this year maybe Santa got a little carried away and brought her a 7 pound jug of Hersheys Syrup - really what more could a girl want.

Christmas and oh my Santa came early...

It's Christmas Eve and all is well. Santa came early. We wrote him a letter and asked him if he would come a little early this year because Rebecca was going to her dad's house. After dinner, which we had with Nicole Austin, her family, & G-Ma. So G-Ma took the kids to see the Christmas lights after our fabulous Christmas Eve dinner. While they were out looking at lights Dan and I had some last minute things to "do" and low and behold Santa came while we were out doing those last minute things. The kids came in and well the look on Ryan's face says it all. They were all so excited they could hardly contain themselves.

A special note to the Warnick Clan, "our favorite Texans."
Dan, the kids, and I are so grateful to ya'll for the wonderful Christmas that you provided for us. The kids commented over and over that this is the best Christmas ever. Thank you so much!! We really love you guys! There will be more pictures to follow.

UPDATE on COUSIN DAVID G.

He finally made it home. He stayed at a hostel in Seattle last night. He posted an ad on craigslist and found a guy that would give him a ride for $60. That's more expensive than Greyhound, but he took him up on the offer because he wasn't sure if Greyhound would be running and he was anxious to get home.

December Visitors

We also had some company in December. David Gannaway, Dan Parker (Nancy's son) and Kathy (Dan P.'s girlfriend) came for Sunday dinner. It was nice to have them here and the kids always like seeing their cousins. David stayed with us for a couple of days and I'm wondering if the poor kid is home yet. He came out for work and then added on a few days for snowboarding. We had a nice visit and he was able to get a couple of days of snowboarding in. The boys really enjoyed their cousin. He was suppose to leave on Sunday night, but the flight to Portland, OR was cancelled. The next morning the plane was all set and he was on it. However, they made it to the NW and the pilot told them they were not able to land in Portland they were being rerouted to Seattle. They landed there and were told they could either get off the plane and look for other means of transportation to Portland or stay on the plane and the plane would be heading back to Salt Lake. David chose to get off the plane and buy a greyhound ticket to Portland. He called greyhound and it was busy so he bought a ticket online and headed over to the terminal. He then found out that all buses going out of Seattle had been cancelled for 24 hours. Like I said, I still don't know if he is home or on a bus. But I can tell you he will certainly have a story to tell when he does get home.

More November...

I was reminded earlier today that more happened in November than I thought. Rebecca had spirit week at school right after we got back from Texas. This day was, you guessed it 80s day. We borrowed an original 80s shirt from my friend Leslie and the makeup too. OOOHhhhh the blue eyeshadow. Hehe!!

Preparing for G-Ma's Birthday

Today we are preparing for dinner - crab wellington, oyster stew, asparagus tips and maybe some kind of dessert. Plus I need to go to the store for dinner for tomorrow. Oh boy, I better get a move on. I need to pick Rebecca up from her dad in oh 20 minutes. whoops. On my way out the door now.

The Past Couple of Months...

Ok, well I guess we can start with October - since trying to catch up with an entire year seems a bit crazy to me when it's December. So, bloom where you are planted and here I am.

OCTOBER:

Ryan turned 6 on October 7th and for a variety of reasons his birthday party was pushed out til almost Halloween. I am typically an over the top birthday planner, but I really tried to keep that in check this year. Instead of 20 kids we had about 10 and we decorated pumpkins for his birthday - so those were the treats for the kids to take home. They all loved it.

On his actual birthday, I made his favorite dinner Swamp Stew. G-ma came over for dinner, cake & ice cream. We also went to the Ritz Theatre here in Tooele to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It was a cute movie and we all enjoyed it.

So we started decorating for Halloween sort of early. Everything but our bride was on the porch waiting for little trick or treaters. I wanted to wait to put her out for a variety of reasons - one of which is that I was worried she would blow away. So Dan & I put everything up on 10/30 and it of course all blew over by the morning of the 31st. It didn't stop me though where there's a will there's a way.

I actually ended up weighing everything down with landscaping bricks but it was just really spooky. I had a couple of little kids who didn't even want to come upon the porch. I went down into the yard to hand out candy to them. I just love Halloween. It's kind of sad, the neighbors asked me if we would have as many decorations up for Christmas as we do for Halloween. I told them yes, but the available decorating weekends just got away from us. So, the truth is nope not as many out.

NOVEMBER:

Well as far as November goes. Let's see, we celebrated Dan's birthday. We had some friends over for Sunday dinner to celebrate. It was kind of crazy for me, I have never cooked for that many people. We had our family of 5, Brad Linnell's family of 5, and Darin. That was a lot, but it all turned out ok.

The next weekend we went to Texas for my nephew, Daniel and his wife Linda's wedding and reception. It was a very wonderful experience for all of us on many different levels. While we were there we also went to Fossil Rim Wildlife Refuge and I've included some of the amazing photos from there as well.

Amy & Rebecca at the Dallas Temple waiting for the bride and groom to come out for pictures.





Rebecca was able to feed the giraffe
at Fossil Rim when it stuck its head

through the window of the car.

Dan & David



My mom at the reception

Ryan and his special crown
the garter he caught at the
reception.

Emily & Aaron

This is Dan completely loving and sharing food with the animals at Fossil Rim. I think it would have tried to use its teeth if it had been able to get closer, but there is a huge set of antlers on this things head and he could not get all the way into the car.

December:

This has been a somewhat quiet December for us. Not a lot of hustle and bustle. I have really limited the shopping and we have been doing other things for Christmas. We baked a bazillion batches of cookies & brownies for the neighbors and this year to try and help the kids focus more on giving than receiving we made a reverse Christmas list. On this list we wrote down things that we would like to give rather than receive. Oh, the things on those lists were just amazing. Rebecca would like to give G-Ma the gift of us. She suggested going to G-Ma's house once a week or every other week just to spend some time with her. Robbie is super worried about me being cold all of the time so he would like to get a snuggie for me, which for those of you who don't know - a snuggie is a blanket that can be worn it sort of snaps around you. Ryan has noticed that Dan likes to give coins as gifts so he must like them because he wants everyone else to have them, so he wants to give Dad lots of coin things. It was a nice change of pace to watch them ponder over what they could give instead of making a list a mile long of what they wanted.

Dan has been working most Saturdays and so he was not able to attend Parents and Pancakes with us, but it was a lot of fun. We went to the school in our Christmas jammies and ate pancakes and sausage together and then wrote letters to Santa and mailed those. As we were leaving there was a vary special visitor at the school. The boys were able to get their pictures taken with Santa Claus.

Ok, so that was a lot of catching up to do. I will of course be adding to this within the next few days with G-ma's birthday tomorrow and Christmas coming right up here.