Baptized

Jarom was baptized on Dec 11th.  It was a great day filled with lots of memories.  Jarom was cute and sweet and nervous and excited. 

Rachel, Paul and Patrice drove down and surprised him the day of his baptism.  It was so nice to have them share this moment in our lives.  Jarom felt so loved by all our family who sent cards and special baptism messages.  Thank-you.

Sadly in all the frenzie of the day we didn't take a family picture.  I think we will take one tomorrow and pretend it was taken that day.

Peace at Home

I love the serenity of the early morning, the peace and quite, where I am alone with my thoughts and all that disturbers me is the furnace kicking in.  I get to sip a nice cup of tea as I enjoy the twinkling of the Christmas lights.  The Christmas shopping is done and I have a day ahead filled with Christmas baking with my mom. Life is Good.

Aren't these trees lovely?  Everytime I walk by them, they fill me with such sparkly happiness.  Even the boys adore them.  Wish I had thought of them, but I totally copied them from this gal - I even printed off the Subway Art.  It looks simply lovely in my living room.

In other news.  I made the grossest supper known to man tonight.  I've scared my kids into refraining from saying anything negative about my meal preparation efforts and we all sat there in miserable silence until I finally broke down and confessed how totally awful it was and we all went to Burger King.  Jerk Chicken Chili will forever be a four letter word in our house.

We're in Love

with this baby! All his hair, cute smiles and sweetness won our hearts. We couldn't get enough of him and cried buckets of tears when he left.

Don't these two have trouble written all over them?  Give them a few years and there will be tons of scheming going on in those little brains.

I wish every moment was like this one

My boys love to wrestle, fight, annoy, bicker, trade insults with one another to the point where some days I think I am going to go CRAZY.  It's almost like a Robert Munch book, where I am pulling out my hair and running around like a mad crazed women.  Seriously it's brutal.  I'm sure this is totally normal behavior, but since I grew up with only one brother, I'm not used to the wild boy ways.

Tonight was Jarom's first night of Cubs.  He was so excited,  with a mixture of nervousness thrown in there.  Nolan, Jarom, Barrett and I were on our way to drop Jarom off at Hip Hop and I overheard Nolan sharing with Jarom some of his older brotherly wisdom.  It was one of those moments that just melted my heart.  They had this nice sweet little chat; and I listened; soaking in the moment.

And So It Begins

I don't do a lot of Christmas baking, I'm learning over the years my family is more of a chocolate and candy snacking family than cookies and baking.  Although we will have shortbread cookies, it's not really Christmas without those.  Fudge is a family favorite.  I whipped up this batch last week, I was planning to use half the pan for missionary pkg and freeze the rest for Christmas, but our sweet tooth's got the best of us and it's gone.  It was oh so yummy.

I tried a new recipes this year, I got it from our ward RS party.  It was oh, so good.

Creamy Milk Chocolate Fudge:

2 cups sugar
1 cup whipping cream
20 large marshmallows
1/2 cup butter
2 tsp real vanilla
3 cups milk-chocolate chips (Callebaut is best, Chipits are 2nd best)

1) Place chocolate chips, cut up butter, and vanilla in large bowl. Set aside.
2) Combine cream and sugar in medium sized saucepan. Whisk over low heat until sugar is completely dissolved (about 20 mins).
3) Add marshmallows and turn heat up to medium. Fold in marshmallows until melted.
4) Boil mixture over med heat for 6 minutes (stirring constantly).
5) Pour cream and sugar mixture over chocolate chip mixture.
6) Stir vigorously until mixture is creamy and smooth.
7) Pour into 8x8 pan lined with waxed paper
8) Cool in Fridge, use waxed paper to lift fudge out of pan, cut into pieces!

You're invited

Bumbo Chair - My new best friend

Now his best buddy has one to!!! (Porter Taylor)

Chocolate dipping day

I know, your mouth is watering.  Dipping chocolates is a tradition that runs through a few generations in my family.  We even have a secret family recipe.  The fondant (say this in your mind like the Cake Boss, it makes it funnier) melts and in your mouth. So delicious.

Chocolate Dipping Day is a crazy intense affair, some of the dippers wanted to stop and finish up another day, but I am a task master and I cracked that whip and even though it went into the wee hours of the morning we prevailed.

We made:

Lemon - my favorite

Chocolate orange

Maple Brown sugar - Spencer's favorite

Root beer

vanilla

Amaretto

Maraschino cherry - Nolan's favorite

If you come for a visit we'll be happy to share.

Tid Bits

1. We all think this baby is so cute, we can hardly stand it.  He in return thinks he has the greatest family ever.  He love Nolan and Jarom and smiles at them whenever they come around.

2. I visiting teach with a sister that has all girls.  Last month I had to change Barrett's diaper in front of them, her 4 year old twins went home and talked about the baby with the "tail" all night.  So funny.

3. Christmas so stresses me out.  Every year I say I'll get the shopping done early so I can enjoy the true meaning of the season, but I never do.  I stress out about everything and find myself wishing I could skip Christmas all together.  I know that makes me a Grinch or a whatever. 

4. My favorite movie is Sense and Sensibility. I always cry at the end.

5.  Even though he is not such a great man, I very much enjoy Hugh Grant as an Actor.  I think he is great a romantic comedy.  Doesn't have much of a variety, but I enjoy what he does.

Free Time - what's that?

Man oh Man I have lots to share with you, but someone who is oh so cute seems to take up all my time. 

I'm hoping to do some bulk blogging tonight so hopefully all week you will be treated to little exerts of our lives.  Or at least dozens of pictures of our little guy, cause let me tell you we have a few.

But most importantly we celebrated another birthday at our house.

This so fun kid turned 8. 

Yep it's a big one. 

He is getting baptized. 

We're excited for him.

We got him an Ipod.  He was so excited he did the dance of joy.  It was so fun.

This is his cake. It was actually quite cool.  I did a rainbow cake, so the inside was chalk full of colors.  Jarom talked for days about how he wanted to do the writing as well as decorating his cake.  It killed me, but I let him do it.  It says:

Jarom

Happy

Birthday

Look hard and you'll see it. He had 7 girl friends.

THE STAMP

This is it folks.

The Stamp. 

This is what Spencer spent 14 years working towards. 

It was exciting to have it come in the mail the other night.  We all took turns holding it and caressing it.  We oohed and awed over it.  We are thinking of building a special display cabinet with a spotlight shining on The Stamp for all to view.

Halloween with the Courts

Pulling out the guts - Gross

Jarom's work of art. He was totally into the pumpkin carving this year and did a great job.

Nolan and Greg's Pumpkin

This baby went as the cutest baby ever

Nolan was suppose to be a rockstar; but he was this instead.  Scary

Ninja

This picture reminds me of a certain gift to Rachel at her wedding.

Barrett's Blessing

Pumpkin Patch and other Stuff

  Aren't these fabulous.  To make some yourself here's the link Sunshine In My Soul.  They're quick easy and so darn cute.

1. It's been awhile since I did of post full of randomness, thought it was about time to share some more only problem is I can't remember all the fun things I had to share.  I guess it will have to wait for another day.

What I've been up to.

I've been looking at all the pictures stored on my computer and discs wondering what to do with them.  I wanted to start scrapbooking again - I went digital.  It's quick, simple and easy. Just what I like.  Can't wait to get them printed off

8 weeks

13 lbs 5 oz  and 25 inches

Another Year Older

 Friday this kid turned 11.  Like every mother I am lamenting the fact that he is getting older way faster than I would like.  Nolan is just an all around great kid; one that every mother would want.  He is kind and selfless, funny and enjoyable, athletic and musical. 

2 men on Horse, 6 boys dropped off in the middle of no where = a whole lot of fun.

FYI Nolan had 5 girl friend and his friends named off everyone of them. 

Another Beautiful Day

I guess since we didn't have much of a summer, it has decided to come now, and we will take it.

My kids love Writing-On-Stone.  I wish it was just a hop, skip and a jump away so we could explore the Hoodoos whenever we want but alas this is not the case. 

So much for kids with an abundance of energy to do out there.  We climbed the Hoodoos, chilled at the park then headed down to the beach.  We thought they would just dig in the sand, but they had different ideas and all the kids rode home wet and happy.

We even made a friend along the way.