Week in Review

The past week has been a little crazy. I've never felt super busy during the month of December. I'm usually about done with my shopping and just working on a few odds and ends. This year however, has taken me by surprise. I had most of my shopping done, but for some reason, I have felt crazy busy and like I've been running like crazy. So, for documentation sake, here is the past week or so in review....enjoy (or feel free to skip)!

We went to a fun Christmas party with some friends a week or so ago where I took the best white elepant EVER!!! I found an old 80's padded/quilted photo album in mauve with lace and ribbons too. I put a picture of John on the front and then filled it with scrap booked pages of John that said things like, "so easy to love," "manly," "ooh la la." I'm kicking myself for not scanning the pages before I gave it away. It had people crying they were laughing so hard, seriously, I'm that hilarious. Anywho, after some fighting for the book some friends of ours ended up with it. I can't wait to see what embarrassing situation that book pops up at again.

Our week was also filled with birthday parties. We had my mom's b-day on the 16th. Ains had 2 birthday parties in one day (she rarely goes to birthday parties, how is it that she ends up going to 2 on one day).

A friend of mine also had a birthday last week and her husband threw her a surprise party. It was a lot of fun. There was a gift exchange, it was supposed to be another white elephant, but there were only 3 of us that gave white elephants. Everyone else gave cool stuff like movie tickets, candy, and platters. We took a mounted fish wearing a Santa hat...again, I'm hilarious. John was relieved to know that our friends that currently posses his scrapbook were out of town and would not be able to attend the party.

We also had our ward Christmas party. (This just happened to be on the same day as Ainsley's 2 birthday parties...what a day she had!) The party was very typical. We got these awesome shots of the kids with Santa.

Yep...that was the best we got. And we have about 20 shots like this (Owen was the photographer for the night.) It was very lazy of us to let Owen carry around the camera, but ours is taking worse and worse shots and so we're in the market for a new camera right now, but that's another story.
We have lots of crotch shots. It must stink to be 2 and be stuck at that level all day.

I've also been baking. I thought of a genius idea for neighbor gifts this year. Unfortunately I'm not a genius. I decide to make a couple of batches of cinnamon rolls and freeze them in little tin pans and then give them to our neighbors with baking instructions. This way they could enjoy them at a time when they weren't over run with treats. Unfortunately I made one batch without adding the salt and sugar to the dough. They tasted a little off. So, we gave away some and are now stuck with some pans of not so good cinnamon rolls. Yay!!!


We also decided to do the 12 days of Christmas this year. It has been a little more time consuming and costly than I originally thought. But I've had fun doing it, and I think Ains has loved dropping something off and running. Although, John has been stuck doing a lot of the delivering on his own. This is a treat we made to drop off for them last night...and then we used the extra to make up for yucky cinnamon rolls, maybe I am a genius?!?

We also had a massive snow storm, okay, massive for here. John and the kids spent a decent amount of time outside after church yesterday. But now it really feels like Christmas.

Other than that, its just been a lot of shopping, wrapping, and such. I think I'm now officially ready for Christmas. Only a few more presents to wrap, a little cleaning and laundry to do, and then Santa is welcome to come!