Swimming in the New Year

Well, we are still homeward bound with all of the snow. I thought to take the older two out in the snow. But Lily cries anytime the snow even touches her skin. Sooo ... I thought it would be fun to get the kids in the hot tub. They had a lot of fun :-) Lily looks so funny in the goggles!

Here's a picture of Lily's Dollhouse. Pete 'renovated' the Doll House. He found it at DI for $14. It's really cute and in good condition. We got the Madame Alexander dolls from DI and from a garage sale that Emily went to. I got the doll clothes at a garage sale for 10 cents each. I guess our garage sale habit pays off around Christmas! :-)

A Merry Christmas

We have had a GREAT Christmas. We loved seeing the kids' reactions and opening the toys. We also have enjoyed being the "Griswolds" of the neighborhood.

I hope everyone has had a Merry Christmas!

My Favorite Kind of Jewelry

We had a great Anniversary Celebration this year. Pete tricked me and told me to wear a nice outfit (I was showered and wearing jeans which is REALLY nice for me these days). I put on tights and a skirt. We kept joking about where we were going. Then he pulled into the A&W restaurant which is attached to a gas station. I tried to be nice, but Pete said I gave him the look of death. He got the door and I said, "are you SERIOUS?" Anywho, he ordered two A&W freezes and fried cheese curds. (I thought I heard him say "cheeseburgers" and thought this was the real deal). We opened our presents. Then we got up to go, and I was a little disappointed that we didn't get the cheeseburgers.

Anywho, I didn't know where we were going, and I wasn't going to make any guesses after that trick. He took me to LaCaille, which was really good and really fancy. He had planned to take me to A&W first all along to trick me and to make sure I had something in my stomach because I wouldn't last until the late reservations. It was a great dinner and the lights there were beautiful!

Pete got me an ipod touch. Yay!! it is so much fun!! I wanted to post links to a tutorial I found to convert DVD for an ipod. If you are getting an ipod or mp4 player for someone you can load some movies on it for them before christmas. Pete was laughing at me because I got so excited about the ipod touch. I probably wouldn't get as excited about a piece of jewelry. Terrible! I guess I love gadgets!

Tutorial link

Handbrake software link

I made Pete a compilation of our e-mails, journal entries, and notes while we were dating. Not as fun, but as Pete said, we will probably have that in 10 years and not my ipod touch :-)

Happy 5th anniversary Pete!

Christmas Light show

By popular request here is a video of our light show. Pete did the sequence to the "Main Street Light Parade" song. This was the song they played for the DisneyLand Light parade and is the intro to our program.



We have the show running from 6PM to 9PM on weeknights, and until 10:00 PM on the weekend. Tune to 99.9 FM!!! The Cathy Classic Station!

I'll keep posting some more videos. They take forever to upload :-)

Amelia's Baby Blessing

We had a great family day yesterday. We had Amelia's baby blessing in our ward. Pete gave her a very sweet blessing. Following church we went to Pete's parents house for brunch/lunch.

I delegated the whole meal. Becca brought her Cinnamon rolls, we had every possible type of breakfast casserole from Pete's sisters and mom. We even had home-made chocolates. Mom made a really fancy fruit plate with mangoes, kiwi, strawberries and Cheryl brought some danish wheels and flowers. I did make one sausage casserole, but I didn't set the oven timer right, so it was ready an hour after everyone had started eating. ha! Anywho, thanks to everyone that was able to come and help out!

Everyone had fun at Pete's parents house. Pete's mom has all of her kindergarten stuff in their basement and the kids loved it. They also have a "Chi" machine, which is supposed to redistribute your chi ... Here's Doug trying to redistribute his "Chi" while kids are crawling on him:











Proud Grandma's:













Family Photo: A little strained as Phillip didn't want to take a picture :-)









Feeding Frenzy!

Impromptu Photoshoot

I wanted to get a picture of Amelia in her blessing dress for her blessing this Sunday. Again, I thought about going to Target .. but after yesterday's Artic Circle Fiasco I decided not to.

Artic Circle story: I wanted to take the kids somewhere that had an indoor gym. I took them to Artic Circle. We first went to the bathroom, then ordered food ... I was a little scatter brained and left the baby's blanket and purse on the counter where you order food.. ."ma'm is this yours?" Ga'ak! I got the food and the kids settled. By this point Amelia was screaming. I got her latched on with my blanket and thought everything would be fine. Then Phillip asked "Do they have a potty by this park?" He had to go number 2. So I plopped the baby back in the car seat, kept Lily in her high chair and ran Phillip to the bathroom. I kept running back and forth because I didn't want to drag the girls into the bathroom to wait for Phillip to be done. I finally heard what I usually hear at home. Phillip screaming at the top of his lungs, "I'm DONE!!" I could only laugh at my self. I was probably showing my plumber crack half of the time while bending over and taking care of the kids. It's funny how simple things can be really hard to do with 3 kids. Once it was all said and done, the kids had a lot of fun in the indoor play structure. :-)

Sooo...my sink and counter were full of dirty dishes. My hair was greasy and the house was a wreck, but I decided to take a photoshot of Amelia in her blessing dress. This time I put the bouncer in the crib and then draped a blanket over it. Pete's mom made the dress. She looks pretty cute.