Holiday family time

We kind of had 3 Christmas's this year.  It was a good time.  We went to Danny's Dad's house here in Heber first, then went to Cedar City for a few days, then off to Circleville for a weekend.  It was really nice to be in southern Utah again.  We do miss it but we are happy where we are now.  

At Grandma and Grandpa Kendall's house.

 Danny had to work Christmas Day, So we ended up celebrating our own Christmas a day later.  Ashlynn was very excited to see dad made it home.  And, to open her presents :)

She was very excited to open this present. 

 My dad has his OWN way of shoveling the walks when it snows...He claims there was a lot of ice so he needed "his big equipment" but I know he just likes to have a reason to ride around in his tractor.  Luckily, Ashlynn got a ride out of it and loved it.  You can kind of see her if you look reeeaal close :) 

At Grandma Chris' house.  She sure does have alot of grandma's....she is a very lucky girl I guess.  She had a good time with her cousins and grandma.

 Danny decided to hitch sadie up for some sledding with his Nephew Hunter. I thought Ashlynn was still a little too little to take on a ride with Sadie :) Maybe next year.

I really enjoy puzzles. when we got to my moms house, I went and bought a puzzle to do on our down time.  It was a 350 piece and thought it would take me the two days we were there to do it.  Well i finished it in about 4 hours.  (with a little help) So then I decided we should do another one.  So me and my family found a 500 piece puzzle at my moms house and did that in about a day.  When we got to Danny's moms house, we were still on our puzzle kick and found one at her house that was 1000 pieces! We were only there for a day and a half and we got half of it done.  But there wasn't enough time to finish it.  So I guess we have a made ourselves a new tradition of doing puzzles over the holidays.  It's a fun easy thing to do for the holiday downtime and full bellies!

Lots a changes

So these last few months have certainly been memorable and definitely life changing.  When I look back at everything that has been going on in our lives I can't believe it.  We've had more changes and decisions to make in the last 6 months than we've probably ever had in our almost 7 years of marriage.  And, it seems like after one big decision is made, another one comes up.  Needless to say my faith and prayers have significantly increased.  I have come to realize just how amazing it is to put all your trust in the Lord and then realize that the choice you made was the right decision.  That overwhelming feeling of 'this is right' has been such a testimony builder for me.

In previous posts I had talked about moving to Heber City, getting a new job,  having a new baby on the way, (I don't know if I've posted that on here yet, Due Mar. 2nd) Danny took an upgrade in flying to captain, and then is also starting a side job of mortgage lending (Anyone refinancing? give him a call. :) ) and then to add to it we are packing up AGAIN and getting ready to close on a house here in Heber City.  We are supposed to move at the end of January.  Guess we'll be here a while :)

All of these changes have happened in such a short amount of time that I feel like our life is just a blur.  However, everything has worked out pretty smoothly.  Other than the nights of no sleep because we kept going back and forth on all of these decisions, we feel good about our everything.

So wish us luck as we continue to go through a lot of adjustments again when baby boy number 2 comes :)

Holiday fun

I think this is the first year since we've been married that we've gotten into the Christmas spirit more than a week before Christmas.  Up until this point, our tree went up about the 15th of December and we didn't do a whole lot in preparation for Christmas.  But one of the nice things about living up north is there are more things for us to go out and do as a family.  There are quite a few pictures so enjoy :).

Seeing the light of temple square

I had to add this one because I have been known to give some pretty dirty looks and they're usually not on purpose I think I just look angry when I'm tired.  Anyway,  Ashlynn clearly has the dirty look thing down.

Our friends the Fuessel's.  It's nice to have good friends to go out and do stuff with. 

We went to the Zoo light of Hogle Zoo. 

Not too many animals were out and about, but the bears were.

Ashlynn with her friend Leila

We also made a huge batch of sugar cookies.  Thanks to pinterest, I found this REALLY good recipe.  I would highly recommend it.  It says to use cake flour, I just used regular and they were still delicious.  I don't know how to make a link...so just go to that website

http://www.abountifulkitchen.com/2012/02/cutlers-famous-sugar-cookies.html

My brother and sister in law came up from provo to help decorate.

Ta-da!! we aren't relaly the best of decorators...but they were still good

Oh Chirstmas Tree Oh Christmas tree...

This was the first year we went to a tree farm to get a tree.  We were used to just buying a tag and going up on the mounting and cutting (or one time shooting...) down our tree. We didn't know how the whole 'buying' a tree thing would go.   This year we went with some friends to get a tree.  I'd have to say, it was the best one we've had to date. 

say what?

So, there I was driving home from work one day and I drive past this bank.  The electronic sign had a banner that said "Come in now to get your Christmas loan"

What???! I coudln't believe it.  This is one of the dumbest things I think anyone could do.  It got me thinking about my other posts about money and how crazy people get and how rich they think they are becuase it's Christmas time.   If you have considered this crazy idea then you have been sucked in by stupid advertising....don't do it!! Sorry...but it's sooo not worth it and here's why.

1 - You will be purchasing things to give away only to pay on it for the next six months.
2 - While you are paying off your christmas gifts that you gave away, you will also be paying alot more becuase of interest.
3 - Christmas is not an emergency, it's not something that is a surprise.  It is a day that happens ever year at the same exact time! Therefore, why not save for it thorughout the year.

Then here's the kicker...you may not be taking out a loan...but maybe putting it on a credit card.  FYI, it's the same concept.  That's why I'm a total believer in going with cash.  You know what you have, what you can spend and where your money is going.  Then when you pay for it, you're done.  Never to be thought about again.

Since we started doing cash for everything we decided that holidays and birthdays are things you should view as a planned expense and you should work it into your budget. So here's what Danny and I did.  We first decided how times we buys gifts a year.  So we calculated how many siblings we each have for birthdays,  Mother's Day (both sides of the family), Father's Day (again, both sides) then we figure about 3 other times for wedding/showers etc.  Then we also calculated christmas and who all we give to.  In my family, we all give to one sibling, and then our parents and kind of the same things for Danny's side. We then decided you can get a decent gift for $15-20 dollars give or take.  You can see this as cheep or high or whatever. Do what you think you can do.  Then...times that by how many gifts you will probably purchase a year and TA DA! yes...lots of money a year goes to gift giving so you better start saving up!

In case you were wondering, when I take out my cash each month, I take $50.00 out each month to save for when needed.  That totals to 600.00 a year.  The nice thing is that we know we always have cash to give a gift and we never have to worry about not having enough money for someones birthday or what not.  In fact I never even think about how I'm going to pay for gifts because I know the money is always there.  Saving up and rolling over month after month.

So there's my two bits for the day.  :)

Family Pictures

I'm such a slacker when it comes to pictures.  I feel like I take alot of pictures...but not formal family pics.  Well Ashlynn turned two, which I just realized I haven't written about, and I realized it had been about 2 years since we had had family pictures.

So, after we moved I really wanted/needed some formal pictures.  For christmas last year, we got a nice Nikon camera with the justification that we would take our own family pics.  So, after we moved to Heber, we had Danny's uncle come out and take some pictures.  I really wasn't a fan of the time of day we did them, I would have prefered to do it in the evening when the light was better, but this was really the only time he could come out and take them.  There's a few that turned out good and we didn't have to pay for them, so that made it even better.

On a side not...I learned that day that I'm REALLY bad at doing little girls hair.  I think people think that just because I'm a mother I automatically know how to do hair.  I don't.  It's sad and on picture day I had a bit of a come apart because I had NO idea what to do with Ashlynn's hair.  Good thing she's cute to make up for mom not being able to do hair. 

I had to add this one so I could share all the funny faces Ashlynn pulled that day.  I'd say that 80% of the pictures were of her sticking her tongue out.  she hardly ever does that and of course she chose not to keep it in for pictures. 

That tongue is really showing in almost all the pictures.  Silly girl.  Pictures with toddlers is not easy...

Heber really is such a beautiful city! But after looking at these, I really would like to learn to take better pictures.  At least of Ashlynn. And there are a ton more pictures we took, but because of the sun they just didn't look as good.  But I like the second one.  So I think that's what we'll use.