The Present......

I got a late Christmas present tonight. The story goes.....

I had to go to a meeting. When I got home Mckenzie cam upstairs and said "Mom, daddy has a present for you" I said, "yeah it's probably a poopy diaper" She says " you like surprises?" I just laughed and went downstairs expecting him to tell me Carson had a "surprise" for me.

I got downstairs and there was a present wrapped. I said "oh you really did get me something, I thought it was a diaper" He told me to open it. So I started opening it. It was a Children's Place box. Then when I looked inside, there was a Lei and Hawaiian stuff and a resort booklet! WE ARE GOING TO HAWAII!!!! I am so excited! This is a picture of the present (I know, I'm a dork!)

Justin has a presidents club at work where you have to bill so much in a year to be in it. We have known since April that he was on track, but it can change at any time. He has been one deal away from getting it since November. He only had until Dec 31st. He got to work today and by 9am got a deal that was double what he needed! Only 5 people in the office got presidents club. They are paying everything for Justin and everything for me except airfare and souvenirs.
Alyssa took this great picture of us! (good job Alyssa) ALOHA!!
Thank You Justin for keeping it from me all day and then surprising me! I Love You!

Chistmas Day!!

I can't believe Christmas has come and is gone like that. We wait all year and it's over in a matter of hours. We had a great Christmas. If anyone knows my kids, you know they sleep in. Justin and I thought for sure this was the year they were going to get us up at 5am. NO, we still had to wake them up. I woke up about 8 and was amazed they hadn't come in. So we got up and went and woke them up. They were so excited. Alyssa and Matthew have been asking for a Nintendo DS. They said that was all they wanted.
Here is the picture of them opening the DS'. They were going crazy.
They said that was all they ever wanted. They each got the system which came with a game, and 3 other games. they got a few other things, but we told them that if they got DS', that would probably be it. They were fine with that, and so was I (no more trinket crap to mess up the toy room with).
Alyssa really wanted a littlest pet shop VIP, so that is what she got from Mom and Dad.
Matthew thinks this movie is hilarious, I saw it on black Friday for cheap, so I grabbed it. He loved it!
Mckenzie couldn't be left out with the game systems, I found this Leapster 2 for an awesome deal at Costco. She likes that she can be one of the big kids.

Mckenzie is a BIG High School Musical fan! I took her to see HSM3 in the theater and she was dancing and watched the whole movie (which is rare because she loses attention). She loves to sing and dance to the music. She used to love Sharpay (that's who she was for Halloween), but now she says she doesn't like her, she says she love Gabriella now! (Whatever, who are you, a 16 year old?)
Of course she needed a new CD player to put her music on to dance to. When she opened it she got all excited and yelled, "Yeah music!"
And here is special bus himself! (Just kidding!!! I love my baby!) This picture just makes me laugh! Carson would get so excited when we would put a present in front of him.
I know, he can't even crawl yet and we got him a 4-wheeler. We just have so many baby toys, we thought it would be better to get him something he could grow into. It is funny to watch his face when we put him on it and push the button.
After everything was opened and paper was in the trash, our families came with more presents! Every year my parents and Justin's parents come over on Christmas day and get to see what the kids got. The kids look forward to showing them every year. Thank You to our family for all the presents! You are all the BEST! Merry Christmas!!!!

Dancing and Splitting.....

Mckenzie and Alyssa had a Christmas Dance performance at the high school last Thursday night. They both did really well. Mckenzie did tumbling and dance, and Alyssa did hip hop. They were so fun to watch. Alyssa did really good at hip hop, I didn't know I was raising a hoodlum. After we went to Artic Circle for some yummy ice cream!
Here is most of Mckenzie's dance class waiting to go on stage.
Here is most of her tumbling class. It was so funny to watch them try to do cart wheels.
Mckenzie waiting to tumble
Alyssa was too cool to let me take anymore pictures than just this one. I had a hard time taking this one.

On to the splitting.... Our ward that we have been in for 6 years split on Sunday. We didn't know it was coming. Justin and I have known that if our ward ever split we would be gone cause we are all the way on the end of the line. We have the best ward ever, I have been worried about ever moving because I didn't want to leave our ward. Our home was just a starter home and we did want to find another home that we could get more features that we wanted. We tried to even move closer west into our ward to avoid ever being split out and it fell through. (that house is now split out with us) The most heartbreaking thing about all this is to watch my kids. Alyssa and Matthew took it really hard. We all know Alyssa cries, but Matthew is not a big cryer, He broke down. We even told them in a very positive way. It is going to be very hard and different. We have to move to a new building and are not even in the same ward name. I will miss everyone so much. I hope that I will still see everyone and that it won't seem to change too much.

Here Comes Santa Clause

Today the kids go to ride on the "Polar Express" to see the North Pole and visit with Santa. We went to the Christmas breakfast at the church. They set it up like the movie Polar Express. We were given a ticket prior to the event. When we got there, the conductor took the ticket and "punched in the word ticket" on it. The kids thought that was pretty cool. They had a special "train" cart for people the conductor was picking from the crowd. Alyssa got to go up (since she needed to hear the bell ring). We all ate breakfast while we were "riding" to the North Pole. When we were done eating, they read the story of the Polar Express and Santa came out. The kids all sat on his lap (even Alyssa) and received the first gift of Christmas, a silver bell. And it wouldn't be Christmas without snow, and we had the first "big" snow storm of the year today. It really is begining to look a lot like Christmas! Carson was really good. He didn't cry. I think all our kids have done really well sitting on Santa's lap.
Mckenzie likes to act so shy, but don't let her fool you. She may be on the naughty list!

Matthew whispered what he wanted, but I think Santa heard him.

Alyssa realized today that if she didn't believe, she wouldn't receive.

Black Friday...I know it's been a week sorry!

Every year I tell myself while standing out in the freezing cold, "I am never doing this again......." and yet I find myself out standing in a line somewhere (for a toy my kids will probably only play with until Christmas break is over) at 3am. Why do I do this? I'm crazy. Now I am not one of the crazy's that camps out for 2 days to get a computer! (BEST BUY!) But I do run in to the store hands up screaming and bashing people to get to my precious item that I searched for in the ADs the night before for 4 hours. (Ok, those that no me know that I would never bash into people I just added that for fun)

This year we decided to only hit one store and AD match, that's right, we went to Wal-mart! I live behind what I thought was the only 24 hour one in the area. Nope, there is another one that "not many people no about so it is LESS crowded" up the street. So since I was so smart and thought to only have to drive to one place and AD match why not go into the 24 hour one and not stand in the freezing cold, we went to the "less crowded Wal-mart". It was so ridicules that I will never go again (until next year). We get inside, and people are already in line sitting on the floor or camping chairs with their carts filled and ready to check out at 5am. THEN there were people all around waiting for things to be able to put in their carts by roped off areas. Yeah they let some people put things in their carts and get in line, and stopped it at some point. You couldn't even move. I looked at my family (Sister-in-law, Brother-in-law, and nephew) and said I am not this desperate, lets go to the other one. So we left and drove by our 24 one (3:45am) it was a zoo. NOPE not stopping there either. So we drove to a Wal-mart that opens at 5am. So there we are standing out in the freezing cold once again. But I do have to say that is the best Wal-mart to go to for the Black Friday sales. There was a line to get in of course, but everything was easy to get to, the only big crowded area was electronics and that's expected anywhere (gotta have those TV's). We checked out at 6:30am and were able to find and AD match everything we went out for. (except the computer I wanted from Best Buy-but I will pay the extra $200 not to camp for 2 days) After the fun at Wal-mart we went to Sam's club and ate complimentary breakfast, which is actually pretty good and filling. Since we were there I felt like I needed to buy something for eating their food. After finishing up we went home and felt great because we only needed a couple more things and we're done. I am trying to post a video of the shopping on here, because I forgot my camera so that I could have pictures to blog. I hope it works.