Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas to all. I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. I got all I wanted. Healthy kids. Warm home. Knowledge and love of my wonderful Savior Jesus Christ and I'm so glad I can share the celebration of His birth with ones I love.

Some highlights of our seasonal events are that we started reading Christmas stories with the girls. We started with one of my favorites, "The Forgotten Carols" by Michael McLean. We listened to the CD as we read, Emma just loved it. When we were finishing the last chapter, she was crying and I asked her why and she said she just felt so happy and was also sad it was over. It was such a tender moment with her. I was so glad we did that, then we also read "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" which has the same feel as the Junie B Jones books. She loved that too. We also read "twas the night before Christmas" and "The Velveteen Rabbit" and "The Christmas Box". This will definitely be a family tradition for us instead of waiting for Christmas TV specials to come on, we made such great memories with these stories.

Also, Kennedy loves to point out all the "twinkle" lights she sees when we are out driving around. Every one is like the first one. She gets so excited. I love that age (20 months) She can say Mama, Dada, Gaga, Papa, Emma, Ahhg (Audrey) as well as the "k" sound for every other word she wants to communicate.

Audrey had the most fun on Christmas morning. She gave the best squeals when she opened a few of her toys. She got some play jewelry from Grandma Jensen and amid all the noise of opening gifts, she stopped everyone with her scream of joy. It was awesome, I just wish I was rollin' tape.

Emma has been really sensitive to the Spirit of Christmas this year. She is so tenderhearted, and is such a blessing to have her in our family. She keeps us doing good things, prayers, scriptures, and the like. She truly is a spiritual giant in the making.

As far as commercialism goes this season, we have been so blessed to have what we need and just enough to help the girls have some presents under the tree. We have been soo blessed from generous family and friends helping me keep my faith in "the process" of life because as my mom taught me "life is a process, not an event" and we've been searching for more work for me and in that search I've really stretched my faith to grow and hopefully be stronger. It always seems we've had just enough work to get us through, week to week. It's all thanks to family and friends keeping us fed, scheduled, smiling, and feeling so blessed. I feel like I've had really watery eyes lately and I wondered why. I know it is my tendency, but lately I have been so blessed I can't help but let my "cup flow over."

I am thankful for these challenges. Refiners fires. Good friends, family, work, and my faith have made Christmas 2009 very memorable. Priceless. Merry Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, I played a duet with Emma, she played piano and I played violin Silent Night. She did great!  I am so proud of her.

All Emma and Audrey wanted for was Moxie Girls.  They got it. Thanks Gaga.

Christmas greetings from Audrey

Audrey was singing on the way to Church this morning and I knew I had to get it on video. And I finally figured out how to function our camera on Video, but I need to figure out the focus (baby steps right!)

candy candy candy!!!

Traditional sugar intake continued at the Harper household with sugar being cooked, boiled, baked, and best of all consumed in the sweetest manner.  This is our (count 'em) 9th year in our great tradition.  We have tried many candy recipes, but the ones that are tried and true and loved best of all are and how long we've been making them:

• peanut brittle (9Years)
• crock pot candy (3 years)
• mexican wedding cakes/russian tea cakes (9 years)
• butter toffee (3 years)
• fudge (9 years, 4 years successfully)
• caramels (6 years hit and miss success)
• divinity (9 years, unsuccessfully for the last 4 years but we still try even though it has burned out 2 electric mixers!!)

Grandma working the sugar for butter toffee

Gaga working the cake cookies

Gaga and Marissa powdering the cake cookies

Me and Tara working the fudge

Tanya and Grandma doing microwave caramels

Papa doing kiddo duty

Tanya with the final fudge trays and caramels

All of us with the finished divided candy to take home

Yummmmy!

Now there is a confession I have about divinity.  It taunts me every year.  I research it every year, trying to improve my odds of success.  Tips they give are you need low humidity or powdered sugar to get it to set, or pour so slowly your arm wants to break off!  I have tried all of this, and short of standing on my head, to no avail.  Even yesterday, the after my miserable failure (and final attempt at divinity, I'm at peace with that) we tried a "no-fail" recipe that even failed!! Bless her heart, Grandma somehow got it to work.  So I am bowing out of this challenge until later in my cooking life.  After spending too many hours and pounds of sugar on something that is consistently unsuccessful for me, I give up.  And it is okay.  I'll spend the time on Peppermint bark next time!

something about trains...

For family night last week, Tim was over at Tara's getting his neck unkinked (thank you Tara!) and for FHE we decided to decorate the house a little more and get the train out.  For some reason, this is one of those things for me I don't really get tired of.  I could watch the train go around and around for a long time and not even realize it.  So, I did with the girls.  It was sweet surrender of time with them where they were happy and giggling and not  teasing or whining for a glorious ? minutes.  Bliss.  Here is some evidence.

Emma was Conductor

Love from Kennedy

Yay!!

Kennedy would wave hello and bye-bye every time the train passed.

Holidays

Now I officially will be short on time with Holiday time taking my time.  I am making a point this year to be attentive to my kiddos and my husband.  I feel like I am spread so thin I can barely make it through the day.  Work and trying to find work takes way too much, so the leftovers belong to the family.  I apologize ahead of time for not writing a lot here, but I am pretty good about getting my pics on the computer, so I'll do my best to just keep posting those.  May we all remember the reason for the season.

Here are pictures from Thanksgiving, the Polar Express train ride, and the start of December.
Here is a link to all the pictures CLICK

What I love...

Food. 

Family.

Happy children playing so I can enjoy my food and family.

Good Thanksgiving.

I am super excited for Christmas season which can now officially start now that Thanksgiving is in the history books.  

Tomorrow is off to the North Pole via the Polar Express!

Yeah!!!

Season of Thanks

I am so thankful. I have been meaning to write down and start counting my blessings during this wonderful season of Thanksgiving.  Because of time, I will start with just three things tonight.

I am so thankful for my family.  For my husband and children.  They are my whole life.  I love being with them, I love that I am able to work to provide for them, I am so thankful they are healthy and happy and that we are together every day.  They are so worth all the things I do for them and I am so thankful for all they do for me. I find joy every day in the little accomplishments my children have each day, and for the sweet things my sweet husband does for me.  He cooks, he takes wonderful care of the kids, he gets straight A's in school, and he keeps me level headed when silly life stresses make me boil over.  Thank you Tim.  I am so thankful my family can be together forever because of the blessings of the Temple.  I am so thankful for that knowledge especially this year with the passing of Tim's younger brother Ben.  That was such a spiritual awakening for our family and I pray we can always remember what a spiritual experience that was.  I am so thankful for the growth and closeness that resulted from that experience.  It was such a sacred time for us and I am so so thankful for eternal families.

I am thankful for the challenges in my life that cause me to struggle and grow spiritually and emotionally and mentally.  For the last few years I have had an unsettled feeling in my gut that things are just too easy, that I'm getting too complacent with my life and growth and goals and family.  This year I wanted to really go for the goals I've set personally, and with my family.  Then, my work place started to get difficult and I was so scared to take a leap of faith to quit because of the economy, and I kept making excuses and just put up with it.  I love what I do for work, but my security and my stress to provide for my family was really weighing on me.  Then I was let go from that office I had worked in for 5 years and friends I worked with and  patients that felt like family were all taken away from me.  I now look at that experience and I'm glad I went through that challenging time where I had to question what was really important.  It was like the worst breakup I've ever been through.  I am so grateful, now, for that growing experience.  Now I work in a great office and I remember why I love what I do for work.  I truly enjoy serving people, helping them get healthier, smile more, and motivate them.  I still am looking for more permanent work, but that leads me to my next point of gratitude...

I am so thankful for the blessings of faith and I truly have a testimony of paying tithing.  I'm working only 3 days a week now, looking to work 2 more to more easily support my family and reduce how much we have to borrow for school for Tim.  I am having to go outside of my comfort zone a lot to call and network without feeling like I'm begging for work.  I know I'm not, but I am silly that way, and this has made me push past that and I'm thankful.  Week to week I've been able to get an additional day here and there to make ends meet a little closer and that has been a great blessing I believe due to our faithful tithe paying.  I don't question whether to pay it, even when the mortgage is coming due, I am so thankful for that testimony.  We truly are blessed for being faithful to the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am so excited for Thanksgiving and will continue to count my blessings. Thanks for reading.

We have this great camera, and it takes wonderful pictures given the light being cooperative.  We were out in the bright mid-day sun today and the window for cooperation was small.  Tim has a pretty good eye for shots, and if we could just get the kids to look at the camera, then they would be awesome pictures.  I applaud Tim for his efforts in getting these pictures, and hope we can get some good photo editing software to make them, you know POP. Any suggestions on software or any other portrait tips are welcome. Here are some of the successes.

Halloween pictures

For halloween we had my family over to our house for our annual sugar cookie decorating event and my birthday.  We also had our annual costume parade.  There were definitely some good creative costumes.  I aspire to be as creative as my sister and sis-in-law.  Maybe later...

Deep breath, 31 candles to blow (actually only 10 pumpkin candles spread across the centerpiece... but you get the gist of it.)

Yeah! I did it! with lots of help, of course.

Kennedy as a pumpkin.  We have had this costume for 5 years and this is the first Halloween one of the girls has worn it. Yeah! Kennedy loved it too.

Audrey was a "flying princess super-girl" and really, she wears dress-ups all the time, this is the one she chose to sport around the neighborhood for tricks-or-treats.

Emma wore this dress which I got on clearance last year after Halloween and saved out from dress-ups.  She got a lot of compliments, especially at the fall festival we went to at the Hastings.

This is all the dressed up cousins ready for a spooky good time.

Cookies!

Me taking a picture of the cookie table, Allie taking a picture of me, and everyone singing "Happy birthday."

The rest are some pictures of the evening, more are in a photo book here (CLICK).

New trick

Kennedy has a new trick.  She likes to poop in the potty.  I'm not taking it seriously, she's only 18 months, but it is so funny! She goes in the bathroom and I take her diaper off and put her on the toilet.  She is so amused at the sounds she makes.  One time, I didn't catch her to put her diaper back on before she pulled up her pants, almost.  I was laughing so hard I could barely get the pictures, but here they are.

She also loves to show off her belly.  She'll randomly pull up her shirt and "belly bump" the other girls.  They aren't sure what to think of it, but it gets a good laugh anyway.

More fascination with potty/panties. She was too tired to take anything off or fight her to do it, so we let her sleep with pj's, and panties. Bless her heart.

Privacy

We are private, and lots of halloween and birthday pictures are soon to come!

That's what she said...

My conversations with my girls a few nights ago...

Mom: five more bites or no snacks ever again!
Audrey: can I have water?
Mom: No. Not even water.
Audrey: If you don't let us have water, then I'm telling Jesus!!
Mom: Well...
(Seriously, what do you say to that?)


Emma: Mom would you be proud of me if I made it to the top 20? (after having watched So You Think You Can Dance)
Mom: Of course I'd be super proud of you!  Show me your moves.
Emma: Okay! (hops off the couch and nails her own nose with her knee)
That was the end of that.

Ten years ago today...

I married my best friend.  I had no idea what I was doing, but at that time I thought I did.  The older I get, the more I realized that I really am winging it and am so grateful Tim loves me enough to let me be me.  I thought I'd just post these pictures, but they are too requisite of blurbs, so here we go...

We got married at 9:00 am and it was the hottest day in October that year (or at least it felt like it) I got sunburned on my face and arms and it shows in my reception pictures.  We were out there for about 2 1/2 hours.

I'm not sure how the photographer got both of my personalities at once, but it's confirmation that I actually do have split personality...(tee he he)

Mix family without Heather because she was just about due with Molly in Kentucky.  Marshall and Jen were watching on the side.  I was 4th of 7 to get married.

All of Tim's family.

Tim's "brotha-from-anotha-motha" Rob. He was best man.

Cake shoving. I don't care how much you say you won't do it.  Don't all good marriages starts with a little white lie?  It tasted great though.

Inside the vintage limo we rented for exit of the reception.  Could we do it any other way?

Outside the limo. It was a great party, wish we could stay, but we have plans with Mickey at Disneyworld tomorrow!!

Happy 10th Anniversary

Sweethart.

I love you!!