Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Chior 2015

Scott Ellie and I were able to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for the annual Christmas concert.  We try every year to get tickets to this concert.  Its a lottery system where you have to ask for them and just see if you get them.  It doesn't matter what kind of connections you have, because we have tried we even know 2 people in the choir and that never panned out.  This year turned out to be our lucky year.

I was most impressed with the organ player.  He was amazing!!! His fingers and feet were just flying.  Having tried playing the organ before I can't believe how incredible he was.  The choir and dancers were good too.

Live Nativity Dec 2015

I had my Christmas piano recital when we were offered tickets to the American Fork live Nativity.  I was a little sad that I couldn't go with the family but duty calls.  Thankfully Scott stepped up to the plate and took the whole gang.  He said it was really great.

You had to walk down a path and with each station you met with some of the characters who were involved in the birth of Christ.  First they came across the shepherds and they told their side of the story, then the wiseman, and then the angels etc.  He said the angels were cool because when you turned the corner you saw the angels with all these bright lights and music.  

The fact that it was all outside and had all the animals made it more authentic and tranquil.

Abinadi Dec 2015

Scott got asked to be Abinidi for a primary sharing time.  Originally Ryan Arbuckle was asked and he declined offering up Scott instead.  Not afraid of a challenge he accepted and totally played the part.  He put on his Jedi robe we found some chain and borrowed a white beard.  The kids thought he was the real deal.  He stayed in character the whole time

Gingerbread Houses with Cousins Dec 2015

I am trying to make this a family tradition for us. It is a lot of work but its one of those things that I want to do.  I do make the gingerbread from scratch and I love how it makes my house smell so good.  This year we invited my sister and her family over to join us in the construction of these architecture sweets.  I have found just the right recepies for all the materials that it makes it easy for even the younger kids to make it work. The trick is to cut out the house shapes directly onto the cookie sheet and not move it until after its been baked.  This is an activity that everyone likes to do.  The dads try to make their the most detailed or biggest, the littles try to put as much candy as possible on theirs and the middle aged ones just want them to be beautiful.  My rule is that each person can do whatever they want.  they can have total ownership of their gingerbread creation.  I think they get a huge sense of satisfaction when I only help when THEY ask, otherwise its all them.

My sisters kids did just want to eat them as soon as they were finished and while they can eat them my kids couldn't fathom why they would want to ruin their creation so quickly.  As long as they only touched their own house I didn't really care.   Thankfully my kids wanted to enjoy theirs a little longer.  

They can snack on their own houses all they want during the season as long as they only snack on theirs and don't touch anyone elses.  This is the hardest part.  I often find someone sad that something on their house is suspiciously missing.  

For Peter's school class we were supposed to talk of a tradition.  We brought pictures of our last years gingerbread houses and brought the one he made this year.  We even brought little gingersnap cookies made from the left over gingerbread.  I had all the kids smell cookies before they ate them.  I was trying to help them experience how the house smells when we do the gingerbread houses.  They were all in heaven.

Thanksgiving Party 2015

We often host Thanksgiving and every year I host I try to come up with a great idea for a game or activity.  I am often asked to do this and let me tell you it is not easy coming up with fun games or activities that are good for all age groups and fun for those that might not be into things.  For this year I first did a nature scavenger hunt for the little ones.  I gave them each a paper with a picture of what they were to find because little ones can't read yet.  If they completed it they got a little prize.  For the slightly older ones 8 years old to teens I did a family bingo but they had to get a black out.  This is great if you have people that don't know a ton about each other and you need an ice breaker.  It has things like. find someone whose favorite color is yellow, or who has braces, or who knows another language.  They could ask anyone at the house the questions and that person had to sign their name in that box.  To make it harder the people could only sign their name once! They all got prizes as well.  

For the big game this year I think I came up with a winner. FAMILY JEOPARDY

  I starting with having everyone try to give me about 3-5 quotes or silly/dumb things that their family members have said or done. In my family this is not a hard thing to do.  I asked for these about a week ahead of time because it is really hard to get people to respond.  If they didn't come up with something, I could usually remember something myself.  

The first thing I did was type up all the different sayings or doings with a "key" to tell me who said/done it. Then it was time to come up with the categories.  This was the fun part after reading through all the quotes I came up with some that fit most.  My categories were:

From the mouth of babes

Darwin Award Winners

Don't try this at Home

We're Not Racist

That's what she said

I put each quote in whatever category I thought it fit best.  For the poster board I put all the categories and then tapped slips of paper starting at 100 points all the way to 1400 points.  I had everyone sit around in the living room and just chose the first person to pick the first category.  Once the question was read the first person to raise their hand got to have first dibs on answering. If they got it right I gave them the paper with the point value on it.  The person with the most amount of points at the end of the game won a "million bucks" (a chocolate bar with a wrapper that said a million bucks and had dear on it. The one stipulation I had was that if it was your quote/action or you were part of it you couldn't respond.  I did end up with a ton of Darwin Award winners.  That was things that people did that probably should have killed them but didn't.

After each quote/ action was answered we either explained what was meant or told a little more about the story and that make it even more funny.  For example one quote was, "I'm gonna knock you up." the story behind the radical quote was 2 brothers were mad at each other and one getting flustered mixed up I am going to knock you out and beat you up.  Which brings us to "I'm gonna knock you up"

It was a ton of fun and we were all rolling on the floor. 

Peters Class Pet 2015

For Peter's class pet they have a little owl named Ollie.  it was his turn to bring him home for the week.  we were told to have Ollie participate with us for as much as possible.  Peter was right on top of that.  He did his homework with him, he ate with him.  He even brought out all his other little owl friends to watch a movie together.  I think his and his teachers favorite is when they sleep together.  Thank goodness  for these kinds of class pets.

Halloween 2015

Halloween has always been a favorite of mine.  There is just something about pretending you are something/someone different that your normal boring self.  I think I what I truly love about Halloween is the creativity that can come with it.  Most holidays are so traditional which is great but as a creative person I love when things can be done "Outside the box".

Halloween just lends itself to creativity in so many forms and I am sure that is what drives me towards it, because I don't like the scary aspect of Halloween at all.  

there are those times of course when as a mom you have these grandious ideas and your children just want to be the trending superhero that year.  this year was one of those.  My boys all wanted to be StarWars characters including Scott.  I have been doing this mom thing long enough to realize this is a battle I don't engage in.  Who cares if this is that one thing they really want.  It is less work for me and they are more than happy.  My sweet Ellie has not learned this lesson yet, and as a creative soul herself she has a hard time letting go of their trendy idea.  She tried with all her might to get them to change their costumes without success.  Someday she may learn.

My brother had is annual Halloween party complete with spooky woods. My sister Stephanie and I DON'T like scary things so we went together.  I know its ridiculous that we are afraid of the neighborhood kids or our very own family members dressed in costume, but that's what makes us so special! We have always been a great team that way. We went and peed our pants a little with our screams but hey we've got to make someones day.

After I purchased my bouts costumes they insisted on wearing them for about 3 weeks straight.  I was pretty great seeing a storm trooper helping me out with dinner.

For the actual trick or treating we headed up to the Reeves home because our neighborhood is awful. Meaning no one gives out candy or opens their doors. Her neighborhood is great and they had a whole set up.  they were the white trash couple so they pulled their RV up on their driveway, found some old ratty couch and set it out front.  they even hung up a clothes line from the RV to the lawn trashing it up as much as they could.  We had hot dogs cooked on an open fire or the grill and that's what they handed out.  It was actually much cheaper than handing out candy.   

Ellie's Juice Joint Oct 2015

For Ellies' 15th birthday she decided she wanted to have a murder mystery party.  Since I did this for one of Scott's birthday party's I thought it would be a cinch.  Turns out I lost all the stuff from his party so I had to make a totally new one.  I used new characters and new story line so it was the same idea but totally different.  

She decided on a 1920's juice joint theme. I want to say this party turned out so great.  Everyone got involved.  Scott was the bartender and the boys were the bus boys and servers.  We dolled the whole place up with glitz and glam with plenty of hours de vours.  But the main thing was drinks.  This was after all a juice joint.

The drinks were a 

white lady= pina colada

side car=mai tie

Bees Knees=Margarita

tuxedo number 2=martinellis 

all non alcholic of course.  For the cake we decided to make little pettifores.  they were chocolate cake with cream cheese chocolate frosting and a marshmallow fondant.  Yes they were all made from scratch and they were delicious!

My version of the murder mystery party is a little like clue.  I created main characters all with a back story and a motive to have killed the victim.  I also had rooms created. And weapons used. All of which can be changed  to fit any theme.  One of these days I will get around to linking my game with this blog should anyone want it.
I print off cards of each of these and put 1 of each category in an envelope and that is the who what and where.  I do this so know one really knows if they are the murder and that helps them to act shocked and innocent. Also I would hate for them to give themselves away during the middle of the game.  Everyone gets a paper with the suspects, weapons, and rooms on it.  The suspects are given 2 or 3 cards in an envelope.  Their cards have either a person, weapon, or room.  That tells them what is not in the final envelope.  However they cant show anyone their cards.  Everyone has to go around asking questions to the different suspects until they figure out who dun it.