Riverwoods at Christmastime

Tonight Emily and I took our kids out to stroll through the Riverwoods to see the lights, get a glimpse of Santa, and play in the toy store.  Bonus: seeing Kelsie, who just started working at the gift wrap station!  We had such a great time.  Ruby had the time of her freaking life in Blickenstaff's, the awesomely fun toy store.  I had to drag her away.

I hope you noticed her adorable boots and coat.

We visited Kelsie in the gift wrapping room, and made the little kid craft (a paper bag Rudolph), and wrote a postcard to Santa.

We totally randomly ran into Ashley and her friend Emily, and we all saw some llamas.

Ruby did NOT like petting the llamas, she kind of freaked out.  I loved it though! They were so fluffy!

The llamas were there for Carollama, a group of people who carol with llamas to collect cans of food and donate them to local charities.  I was actually part of the very first Carollama my freshman year at BYU, when it was just a small group of us.  We split up in groups of 3 or 4 and each group took a llama and went to a different neighborhood.  It was awesome!  If you want to do it, sign up on their Facebook page.  It would be awesome to do with an FHE group if you're at BYU or stuff like that.

I can't believe it's still going, and is a MUCH bigger deal.  There was a KBYU news crew there, filming Ruby crying because a llama's face got too close to her.  The guy who started it, Ty, saw me and gave me a cool Carollama tshirt and asked me to talk to the camera crew and be interviewed about the very first Carollama.  By the time I got the guts to go do it, they were all done filming!  Phew.  I was NOT prepared to be filmed.  And I don't know what I could have possibly said, other than that I went to the first event because I was head over heels for Ty.  That would probably have been awkward, and is a subject for a different blog post.

Christmas Party!

The ward Christmas party was a total success!  It was fun to do, but I'm glad it's over and I can relax.  It's a good thing it was so early in the month so I still have plenty of time to get in the real non-stressful Christmas spirit.

Creepy, Ruby. Real creepy.

Katy and I folded these and painted them gold and silver. I love them.

If only we had more lights! These could have been so much cooler!

We filled about 8 million mason jars.

These were tricky to fold but everyone loved them.

Katy and I made this epic wreath.

This is my Christmas present from Kelsie! It's on my front door and I am in love with it.

                         

Kelsie and Landon.

Good food and a good program. Everyone was really complimentary and I felt great about it!  The most fun part: all the kids during cleanup.  They wanted to take EVERYTHING home!  Luckily I was usually able to oblige them.

Family Pictures

Once upon a time, last February, I won a giveaway!  For the first and probably last time. It was very exciting.  I won a free mini-session and disc with Namba Photography, a friend of my cousin Lisa's and the photographer she always uses--so I knew she was awesome!  Well, I finally redeemed this mini-session right after my birthday in October.  We went up to Bountiful and took pictures in a pretty park.  Ruby was cranky and whiny the whole time, but Kassandra was able to get some cute pictures of her.  I don't have the disc yet--it's coming this week, so I'll blog them later--but Kassandra put some on her photography blog .

I really like this one:

And these:

And of course the cute Ruby pictures:

I am NOT giving you the link because she also put up a truly hideous picture of me--which is entirely the subject's fault, not the photographer's.  You know how you kind of know what your body looks like and you can be content with it, but then someone shows you what you ACTUALLY look like and it's a shock to you?  Yeah.  I now know the true meaning of pear-shaped. 

Hopefully there will be more cute ones to put up when I get the disc!

B-t-dubs, I loved Kassandra.  She is super nice and easy to take pictures with--normally we are SUPER awkward about it.  Plus, I love her mini-session idea.  Take pictures for 15 minutes (instead of the epic 2 hour photo shoots), which is all Ruby is good for anyways, and it's just $75 instead of $8 million-including a disc of like 15 pictures.  I recommend her!

Thanksgiving Week

Long time no blog!  Ok it's only been a week, but that feels like ages when you're super busy.

I finally got a calling. I am on the Relief Society Activities Committee.  So now I'm wishing I'd gone to a single Enrichment activity (ok I know that's not what it's called anymore) so I knew what I was in charge of.  The committee is more like a partnership, because there's only 2 of us.  We'll see how that goes.

Yesterday Barbara wanted some alone time with Ruby, which we definitely took her up on.  We left her with Ruby for about, oh, 11 hours!  Kyle and Katy and I spent most of the day with Alan and Nieman, which included 2 meals out, braving the crowds at Fashion Place, and 2 Star Trek episodes that have haunted us since childhood.  It was fun to do everything without a kid--everything is so much easier!  But we did miss her by the time we got back.

So last Saturday Kyle and I left Ruby with the Broadbents, drove 6 hours to Colorado, picked up Katy in Telluride, ate lunch, and drove 6 hours back.  It was surprisingly not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  Here we are at a pizza place in Telluride.  It was taken right before I got hot sauce in my eye.  IT WAS HORRIBLE.

This was the most relaxing Thanksgiving ever.  We decided to forego many of the things we usually do--making a full turkey, making a ton of side dishes, using our fancy dishes, etc.  It was just Kyle/Katy/me, so we just made a turkey breast and simplified the menu down to the basics. It was so much better!  We spent a lot more time enjoying ourselves, and a lot less time doing dishes.  When we have more people we'll go back to being fancy.  As per usual, we watched Poltergeist so it still felt like Thanksgiving.  We also watched a ton of Voyager, which was most fun.

It's been fun having Barbara and Ken in town this week.  Ruby loves them!  Christmas is going to be so fun this year.  Ruby decided that Ken is her favorite toy, and made him hang out in her room while the rest of us were talking on the couch.  She would literally stand in the doorway and push him back inside anytime he tried to join us. We also go out to eat with them everyday--and Ruby ate her first onion ring.  She loved it.

The big ward Christmas party is on Friday.  Wish me some serious freaking luck.  A couple days ago the number of people to plan for doubled, which really complicated matters.

Purple

It's hard to take pictures of yourself without getting all Myspacey in a bathroom mirror.  I did the best I could.

The color is different from what I expected, but I like it.  It is slightly different in real life than what it looks like in these pictures, but it is really dark, as you can see.  In the sunlight, it looks like a really pretty deep violet.  It's better than crazy bright purple.  I also think that it will fade to lighter purple.

Kyle likes it.  He's relieved I don't look like an 80s punk rocker wannabe.

I used to see people with interesting colors in their hair and wonder about them--it made them hoodlums, but also kind of mysterious and cool.  Now I am a hoodlum and I'm loving it.

The strongest proof that I feel good about it is that I forget about it when I'm out and about.  I'm not at all self-conscious about it, which is out of character.

Ruby the Big Girl

I can't believe how big Ruby is.  It's really only hit me in the last week or so.  Taking care of Sophia every day is really making me realize that Ruby is NOT a baby.  Ruby is actually a helper!  She loves entertaining Sophia. She also brings a binky anytime she thinks Sophia might need one.  They have a really sweet friendship--Sophia lights up when Ruby talks to her.  I take Sophia into Ruby's room when it's time for Ruby to get up from her nap, and Ruby is always so excited to see her!

Ruby is also eating more like a big girl.  Sometimes, when she's going to have a bath immediately after, we let her practice feeding herself.  It's messy but she does a pretty good job.

And she LOVES drinking from a cup.  It doesn't faze her at all when there is juice or water running down her tummy.

Of course she still loves the bath!  I'm so happy.  She is such a sweet kid.