the musings of a mother with toddlers and other such nonsense: January 2009

Around noon on last Sunday afternoon a huge explosion was heard throughout Laguna Niguel. After experts researched the area it was deduced that a pyrex pan containing Betty Crocker three cheese potatoes combusted after being subjected to extreme heat from an electric stovetop burner. The suspect equated with this accident who shall further be known as M.O.Y. (Mother of the Year) was said to have put a pot of water on to boil and left the pyrex pan also on the stovetop while she went about other duties in another room of the town house. Apparently, M.O.Y. mistakenly turned on the wrong burner and was in fact, heating the pyrex pan full of potatoes instead of the pot of water. M.O.Y. responded quickly when the commotion was heard. Upon arrriving at the scene M.O.Y acted quickly to put out a small potatoe fire that was occuring on said burner by turning it off and brushing aside the flaming potatoes and moulton pyrex. If eye witnesses are to be believed, shards of glass flew all the way out of the kitchen, across the living room and landed near the large picture window. Luckily, no civilians were in the area at the time of the accident. It took crews nearly an hour and a half to clean up the debris and when they were finished, they enjoyed only half of the intended meal, (a delicious homemade meatloaf!) And in answer to the question on everyone's mind...Yes, Mother of the Year feels extremely stupid and has been placed on temporary kitchen probation!

WARNING: This post contains a MASSIVE amount of pictures!

We drove to Utah to spend the holidays with Eric's family and had a blast, even though I froze body parts I didn't know I had. I totally went outside to build a giant leaning snowman and we didn't get a picture! I promise I was out in the snow for a solid 15 minutes! We played rockband with the fam for hours in Nate's theater and I found out that I need to work on my breath control although in my defense it IS hard to hold a note when you're laughing so hard! Nate says he might act like me after he's knocked back a few drinks! I promise none of us drink but I DO hear that more than you'd think! We had a Bishop family sledding and soup party where I did NOT go outside but sat by the big window in the warm building happilly watching everyone else freeze to death. That doesn't even LOOK fun! But they said they did so, to each his own. We had a fun gingerbread decorating party on Christmas eve and made a birthday cake for Jesus, cookies for Santa and food for the reindeer. Then we did our annual Christmas Day brunch with the family complete with the traditional ebelskeivers or however you spell it. Delicious. We played the day away and quickly learned that we are not smart enough to play "upwords". The day after Christmas we got to go to the Salt Lake Temple with the whole entire family for the very first time! It was so beautiful and I can see why it took them 40 years to build it. It was a great day and so awesome that our whole family could be there! We had Kensie's 3rd birthday party in the style of Mermaids. We invited all the girlie cousins over to have a scavenger hunt where we ended up underwater in the ocean to decorate mermaid princess crowns. (We decorated the theater to look like underwater with different colored ribbon to look like water and clear balloons to look like bubbles. then we turned on the finding nemo living aquarium on the projector so it felt like we were actually underwater! so fun!) I decorated mermaid cupcakes to look like each girl. Then we took our kids to play at a playplace and then Eric and I headed out for a fun night with some old friends at Creighton and Michelle's wedding reception to decorate their car in a very tasteful manner! and mimi's cafe afterward where we were probably (ok definitely) more obnoxious than is allowed in most public areas. Oh well. Sorry to everyone who might have been within a 5 mile radius at the time! Eric's sister Julie threw and awesome New year's eve Fondue party. So yummy! then we had a fun game tournament from which my TOES are still SORE from standing on them for like 10 minutes! We'll definitely have to repeat that one soon. It was really fun! We got to go visit all the grandparents and it was fun to see the kids spend time with them. Especially Kensie because she would just walk up and kiss and hug them. She wasn't shy at all and I think that really made them happy. We spent many a night watching movies and many a day playing Wii in the theater and countless hours in the playhouse downstairs. It was nice spending time in Dad and Mom's nice big, beautiful house. Culture shock coming back home to our 900 sq. ft. townhouse! We'll need some time to re-adjust but at least it's warmer here!

Our first and might I add sorry attempt at a snowman!

Kensie the snow bunny

Charlie takes after his mama. He doesn't really like the snow.

Eric rollin' a giant snow ball and Bryce trying to make it up the hill in 2 feet of snow.

Gingerbread party

we snitched and I LOVE that cute Haley in the background!

Charlie's version of decorating a gingerbread house

This game was way harder than it looked!

I just think charlie is cute in his ozark hat

Santa brought everyone new shoes!

I love Charlie's chubby bum

Santa also brought laptops and headphones!

I LOVE seeing happy babies!

Sir Bryce got a knight dress up set from mom and dad

P.S. thanks Aunt Becca for the cute monkey jammies!

All decked out for brunch

I'm not entirely sure what is going on in this picture but I think Charlie's face is CLASSIC!

I thought it was funny they all had their laptops

Family Temple day

Visiting Nana. I'm pretty sure she has no idea who we are but we brought candy so she liked us!

Eric's camera happy

Kensie's party. she loves her Rachel friend as she calls her

Cute girlie cousins

I was going to make one big mermaid cake but Kensie threw a diva fit and got individual mini cakes. They didn't turn out how I wanted them but still cute!