Happy New Year!

This year has been filled with a lot of fun times, and a lot of struggles! I just wanted to take a few seconds and thank everyone for everything that they have done for me this year! You are all great and wonderful and I don't know what I would do without all my family and friends in my life! You are great examples to me, and I look forward to connecting with you all through our blogs! I'm so thankful that I started this blog! I have been able to vent, catch up with some old friends, and get closer to some of my cousins!! Thanks to everyone that reads and comments on my blog!

I hope that you all had a great year! I also hope that next year will be just as great, if not better than this year! Love you all!

Our big fun Christmas!

Oh Wow what a great Christmas we had this year! Sorry I haven't posted about Christmas yet, but we have all had way too much fun playing with our Christmas gifts!

This year our Christmas fun started on Christmas Eve! Darin had to work on Christmas Eve night, so he missed out on the first part, but luckily he did have Christmas day off!! Well anyway on Christmas Eve we headed over to my Grandma Gines' home for our fun Christmas Eve party! I love going to my grandma's house! I have some of the funniest, craziest, fun cousins and uncles in the world! I just laugh the whole time that i'm there! If you have ever met my dad or my brothers, just picture a bunch of them sitting around telling jokes all night! It's great! So anyway back to christmas, we had dinner and then we played our white elephant game, which has gotten crazy long!! We had 38 people play this year, and it took us almost 2 hours to play! Then Santa came to visit us. He sang and danced and gave all the kids presents. Then we all gave grandma our gifts and then it was off to my mom's to do our christmas together! Unfortunatly, we ended up getting to my mom's house around 10:00 thanks to the white elephant game, so everyone was tired. We still had fun though! At my mom's house all three of the grandkids took turns opening up gifts. MyKelle and Gage both got way spoiled from jo jo this year! Some of MyKelle's favorite gifts were her leapster ( and games to go with it), her coloring table with everything that she needs to color, and her new blanket and stuffed animal! Gage's favorite gifts that he got from jo jo are his basket ball hoop, all the trucks with a car mat, and his new blanket!! Then it was my turn to open up gifts. All the rest of my family took their husbands to a football game for christmas and my mom helped them pay for it, so that was their christmas. Darin couldn't get the time off, so we didn't get to go on the trip, so that's why I was the only one to open up the most gifts! ( my mom did have other gifts for eveyone, like aprons, a cookbook, a flashlight, tools for the guys, etc) My mom gave me a Wii for christmas!!!! I was so overwhelmed with joy that I cried!!! And of course kelli was there with natalies new camera to document the event!!(I don't have those pics though-sorry) It is such a great gift! I haven't stopped playing it! After we all opened gifts it was time to go home and get ready for Santa to come to our house! (not that my kids needed anything now)

This is the Christmas Tree after Santa came to visit!

The kids were so excited about Christmas that they woke up at 7:30 (even though they didn't get to sleep until midnight the night before!) The first thing that they did was went through their stockings! Gage was so excited over the new toothbrush in his stocking that he tried to use it before we took it out of the package!

Gage and MyKelle had a great Christmas from Santa and mom and dad. They got new bedspreads and sheets for their new bed! Gage got a cool tool bench with tools that make real tool sounds!

MyKelle also got a leap frog tag system which is way cool and highly recommened for all kids preschool age!

After our Christmas we headed up to Grandma and Grandpa Williams' to do Christmas with them! The kids all got dart guns and had fun shooting at each other!

We had such a great Christmas! Thanks to everyone for making it so special!

Here comes Santa Claus. . .

This year we have had a few visits from santa already. MyKelle is so cute! She only wants santa to bring her one thing, "a barbie doll, Jasmine". I asked her one night what else she wanted Santa to bring her and she said "Nothing else mom, I have everything else. Let Santa take my other toys to other kids that don't have toys!" What a sweet little girl!

Everytime Gage sees santa he gets all excited but doesn't like to sit on santa's lap until after MyKelle. He always asks santa for a truck. Whenever you ask Gage what santa says he says, " Oh oh oh!" It is just about the cutest thing ever!

This last Saturday we had our big "Nordfors" family christmas party! There is so many of us now, that we had to have our party at a church house this year.

We did lots of stuff at this party. We ate our famous scones and ham for breakfast. Then we tied some quilts that we are going to donate to primary childrens hospital in Charlie Coopers name!

Above is a picture of my mom and jessica tieing a quilt.

Then we had all the kids act out the christmas story! It was quite entertaining this year. However my kids were the only one's that refused to be in the play, so I didn't get any pictures of the wonderful nativity. But incase you didn't know when my family acts out the christmas story there were unicorns, lions, turtles, and santa claus that went to see Jesus born!

I also got to hold Charlie for a little bit! He is so sweet and I was getting some pretty good smiles from him! Thanks Angel for letting me hold your little boy.

After the nativity, we heard that Santa was on his way.
This is all the kids patiently waiting for Santa!

Look at gage, he is so cute!

When Santa showed up he made us all sing Jingle bells and dressed my cousin steven up to look like rudolph. I just love Santa! He always knows how to make me laugh!

I did get some footage of Santa and everyone singing the end of jingle bells. However I was holding my camera the wrong way, so if you want to watch the video you have to turn your head! Enjoy!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Christmas a little early

We got a few of our Christmas gifts a little early this year! Our dishwasher broke back in October, and we have been doing all of our dishes by hand!!! It's amazing how I take that dishwasher for granted!! Well for christmas Darin's parents helped us buy a new dishwasher that I insisted we install early! I just love this new dishwasher. It holds so many more dishes then our last one, and it is so quiet!

The kids also got their christmas gift from darin's parents early! They bought them bunk beds!! (Buying beds is something that they like to do for all of their grandkids. They never got MyKelle a bed, so they got us bunk beds!!) We were so excited about the bunk beds, we put them together the minute we had them delivered. The kids just loved the beds-until it was time to go to sleep! We started putting the kids to bed that night at 7:30, and they didn't fall asleep until almost 11:00! This was the first experience that Gage has had with a bed, so he wanted his crib back and just threw the biggest fit. Once I got him calmed down MyKelle decided that she was too high, and wanted her old bed back. They both ended up crying themselves to sleep! It took about a week to get them used to the new beds, but now they love them!
The day after Thanksgiving we got out all of our christmas decorations and our christmas tree and we decorated our house. Well i didn't put very many christmas ornaments on the tree this year thinking that it would be less tempting to the kids to play with the ornaments. Well the other day I caught MyKelle singing to herself and playing around the tree. I went in the living room and asked MyKelle what she was doing. She told me the tree needed more ornaments, and she was decorating it.
Below are her decorations to the tree.

She went and grabbed all of her bracelets and necklaces and hung them on the tree.

What a sweet little girl! Merry early Christmas!

Candy Making

Every year since I can remember me and my huge extended family get together and make chocolates. I love this tradition! I also love to brag to everyone about how good our candy is! Since my gammy died we have still tried to carry on her tradition of candy making! This year however, no one wanted to make candy. So I called my mom and begged her to make candy with me this year. After much begging she caved in. We invited my sisters, kelli and natalie and jessica to come help us. (We missed you jessica!!)

The first time we got together was the saturday after Thanksgiving. We made a whole lot of fondant that we are using as fudge!! We made really yummy fudge! (sorry no pictures of this get together! I forgot my camera) We made mint, vanilla cashew, and orange cream!(which was orange with vanilla on top!)

The second time we got together it was just me and my mom. We made nut rolls! I have never made these before so it was really fun to learn!!

This is me stirring the carmel to go on the vanilla fondant!

This is me putting nuts on the carmel to make one complete nutroll! Yummy!!!

This is a bunch of the nutrolls!

This was a very tasty treat! We took the leftover fondant and the leftover carmel and put them in a container together and then ate it all up! It was Soooooo good! I'm wondering why we ruin that by putting nuts on it!!!

The third time we all got together, we dipped the chocolates! I have only done this once before (last year) and I only did like 10 chocolates last year. So I was so excited when no one else wanted to dip this year, and I got to do it all my self!!!

This is me "bottoming" the chocolates

Just another picture of me!

This is me dipping!!! The first few looked really funny! but I think they looked edible by the end of the night!

More dipping!

Below are the finished products that I dipped!!

Thank you to my mom and my sisters for helping me make chocolates and fudge this year!! I had a lot of fun!

Santa Claus is coming to town

(Don't let your kids read this blog!!! I don't know why they would be reading my blog anyway!)

Below are pictures of last year.

For the last couple of years my dad has played Santa Claus!! He has been Santa at christmas ward parties, family parties, and Walgreens!!! That's right Walgreens!!! And he's doing it again this year! This saturday (December 13th) from 1:00 - 3:00 my dad will be at the Clinton Walgreens playing Santa. Every year Walgreens has a Santa come and the kids get their picture taken with him and they get a FREE 4 x 6 picture! I think that this is a lot of fun, and my dad really enjoys it! So bring your kids to the clinton walgreens on saturday to have their picture taken with Santa for FREE!!! I love that my dad does this! Thanks dad! Love ya!

Little MyKelle

This past week I have been struggling a bit with staying happy and cheerful. I know everyone has these days, but today was a little different. Today we were driving home from my mom's house. It was late at night and I was hopping that my kids would fall asleep before we got home. Well MyKelle refused to sleep and she was tired and very winey!! All of the sudden MyKelle says, "mommy you made me cry!" Feeling very frustrated with her (because i didn't do anything to hurt her feelings) I asked MyKelle, "Why are you crying MyKelle?" " Because you are being very sweet!!" was her reply. I was so touched by what she said that i started crying!!! How did she know what I needed to hear? I guess the lord does know and understand us!!

Happy Birthday Adam! (wow your old)

Happy Birthday Adam. Adam just turned 30 yesterday! (Sorry i haven't posted sooner, but I was busy yesterday!) Adam has always been an amazing brother to me!! Here are some things that i remember from growing up with Adam!

*I am now questioning his babysitting techniques. To punish us while he was babysitting he would turn on the movie hatchet, and fast forward it to a really gross part in the movie, and pause it, and make us look at a gross dead face for a long time!

*I loved staying up on Christmas Eve and playing mario brothers all night with him! He even made sure we would stack pillows around kelli so we didn't wake her up!

*In Junior high and high school he would always be the one to look out for me and protect me from all the mean boys!

*I was always excited to have my friends meet Adam. He would make them laugh, they would have a good time at my house, and then i would be cool!! (although i don't really think that I ever was very cool)

*He used to call me and my friends- lesbian naizy hookers (sorry about the spelling). A normal person would probably be affended by this title, but we loved it! It meant that Adam was paying attention to us, and that was the best!

Everyone that would meet Adam just loved him! I always wanted to be like him! Thank you Adam for being a great big brother! Your the best!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just love Thanksgiving! I have been meaning to post a lot sooner, but i got busy shopping for Christmas! Anyway for thanksgiving this year we went to my moms house on wednesday night. My mom had prepared a huge meal! Everyone brought yummy salads, and we ate till we had gained 10 pounds!! It was a lot of fun, and it was the first time in a long while that we were all able to make it! Thanks mom for the dinner it was yummy! (sorry forgot my camera, so no pictures :( Boo!! ) Then on thursday we went to Darin's parents house for another Thanksgiving dinner. Also for the first time in a LONG time, everyone showed up!! We had a great time hangin out with family and reading the ads for black friday!! I just love thanksgiving, but now i'm way excited for christmas!!!

Happy shopping!!

What a busy week!

Wow I have such a very busy weekend! Being in the young women's program I had the opportunity to go and support my girls in the region volleyball championship games. These games started on thursday night and went until saturday morning. We had a little excitment on friday night. They had asked me to be one of the scorekeepers for all the games. I was trying my best to keep track of all the girls points when my phone started ringing. It was Darin's work, he had just had a seizure and he wasn't wanting to do anything, and his work was pretty scared about the whole event. So i had to find and train a replacement so i could run to his work. After calming down some of his co workers I took Darin home, so he could sleep. It was pretty crazy. I hate it when he has seizures at work. I felt bad for leaving the girls during one of their games, but they still won!! They didn't lose a game until saturday! We ended up coming in third in the regions!!! I am so proud of these girls, they did great!! Here are some pictures of their last game. (it was the only one i remembered to bring my camera too!)

Right after their last game on saturday, I took my two kids to "brunch with belle". It was pretty crazy, because Darin was still sleeping from his seizure the night before, so i took the two kids by myself to the whole event! Northridge high school is doing the Beauty and Beast play this year. Brunch with belle was something fun they did just for the kids, and boy it was so much fun! They got to eat lunch with the beast and belle, and a bunch of the characters from the play were our servers. They even danced a sung for us. MyKelle Loved it!

This is Mykelle with a girl from our ward that is in the play, it was the only person that she would pose with for a picture. I know she looks a little dozey, but i just don't take good pictures!

MyKelle and gage found this cute little chair to sit in, and just couldn't resist the picture without them knowing!

This is mykelle waiting for belle, and lunch!!

This is them coloring on the table! They thought it was so cool!

MyKelle loved the play so much! She keeps talking about wanting to buy the movie. She doesn't understand me when i tell her that the disney vault is closed!

Christmas is coming!

Christmas is coming! I'm sure this is no suprise to anyone, but i need help with Christmas Present ideas!!! I love to be done with all of my Christmas shopping by Thanksgiving, because I hate shopping in crowds!!! So i'm asking for you help because i have no idea what to do for people this year! So what fun, cute, and cheap things have you done for you neighbors, friends, mom's, mother-in-laws(which would include dad, and father-in-laws), and your kids friends!!! Thank you in advance for all your ideas!!!

Happy Birthday To Me!

Well today I turned 26! And thanks to my wonderful family, it was such a great day! My mom came up in the morning and we went shopping for new clothes, and went to lunch! That evening everyone in my family came up and we all went to dinner at the olive garden and then back to my house for pie and ice cream! I forgot my camera during dinner, so here are pictures of the party at my house.

This is everyone trying to fit in my living room! And yes Adam is playing barbies with mykelle!

Gage was playing football with everyone he could find!

This is another picture of Adam playing Barbies with MyKelle!

The last couple of days Gage has had some Asthma problems. So when everyone left we had to give him a breathing treatment before bed!
Gage is so used to treatments that now he insists on holding the mask himself! Isn't that so cute!

MyKelle was showing her love for her brother! She has been such a wonderful big sister to her sick little brother!

I had such a fun birthday! Thanks to everyone that made it great!

Halloween!

We have had such a busy week getting ready for Halloween!! On wednesday the 29th we had the preschool Halloween party! It was way fun! I had all the kids come dressed in there costumes, (even I dressed up) and we just played games and ate candy the whole day! In the picture below is one of my preschool classes, MyKelle is hiding but you can see me as Cinderella!This is me and my cute cudios tonight! MyKelle was Minnie Mouse, Gage was Donald Duck (I know it's a streatch, but I couldn't find a donald duck costume!) , and I didn't dress up tonight.
Isn't she cute?

Our first stop of the night was to go to Grandma Williams' house to see some of the cousins in their Halloween costumes. Jordan was a pirate, Jenna was a cheerleader, and Jace (who was throwing a fit at the time and not in the picture) was Hannah Montana-and yes he is a boy, and was a very cute girl!!!

After Grandma's we went Trunk-or-Treating with the ward, then when we met jo-jo and poppy at our house so they could see the kids also! My dad, who is always the life of the party, decided to try to teach Gage the "thriller" dance by Michael Jackson. The only problem was- I don't think that my dad knows that dance! What do you think?

I love Halloween and had such a fun week!

Happy Halloween!

Black Island Farms Field Trip

On Monday we went on a preschool field trip to Black Island Farms. This place is so cool! We all arrived around 10:00 a.m. We had to wait for about 20 min to get on our hayride, so I was running around trying to make sure all my 30 preschool kids were still with us!

MyKelle was waiting so patiently as her mom was running around. She found a tall haystack to wait by, because it was out of the sun!
After we finally got on the hayride they took us to the pumpkin patch and let all the kids go and choose their very own pumpkin! MyKelle took a long time finding the perfect one, but when she found it she wasn't going to let it out of her sight!
After the fun hayride we went and had donuts and apple juice in their play area. Then the kids got to go play on all of their fun stuff!!! Her favorite was the cow train. This is her and her friend Brynli riding on the train. The went on it like 4 times in a row! They didn't want to get off. When they finally did, we went through their kiddie maze, played in the corn box (instead of a sand box), they jumped in the pumpkin bounce house, they rode on the teter toter, and they went down their very big hay slides! Wow did they have fun! MyKelle even took a nap when we got home! I love this field trip! It's my favorite place to go in the fall!

Girls Craft Night

So tonight me and my sister Kelli were sitting at my mom's house wondering what fun thing to we could do. Then we both remembered a cute craft that our friend Jordan had done and posted about just recently. It was a cute metal star that had scrapbook paper on it for Halloween. So we thought that this would be a fun project for the night. So we called up Natalie and Jessica to come to my moms for craft night. Jessica wasn't feeling well and couldn't make it (we missed you Jessica!!) but Natalie still came and we had a ton of fun! Our friend had used the great big stars, but we thought that it would be cuter in a smaller size. So we went to tai pan, and bought their $5.00 metal stars (These were way cool because they are double sided so we thought we could decorate both sides for different holidays!), and went to Heartland Paper in bountiful to pick out all of our paper! We stuck the paper on the star with mod podge, and they turned out so Cute!!! I'm so excited to hang them up!

This is one side of the stars. The one on the left is for christmas/winter. The one on the right is for Fall/Thanksgiving.
This is the other side of the stars from above! The one on the left is for Spring/Summer. The one on right is for Halloween.

I had so much fun hanging out with the girls tonight! Thanks Dad for helping with my kids! And Thanks mom for letting us destroy your kitchen!! I love craft nights! We need to do them more often!