Christmas gifting

At least 4 weeks before christmas...

me "What should we get your parents for christmas?"
Rillz "I don't know"
me "What about Idaho coffee or something?"
Rillz "No, they have the best coffee in the world. Don't worry about it. We don't need to get them anything."
me "Ok then..."

The morning 4 days before christmas

Rillz "I need to get my parents something"
me "You said we weren't getting them anything"
Rillz "Yeah, but we should... What about a bag of coffee or something?"
me.... no comment.....

Lesson learned.

Breakfast Cranberry-Walnut Quinoa Cookie and x-mas gift

I was reading Bon Appetit magazine yesterday and saw a recipe for Breakfast Cranberry-almond Quinoa cookie and said I must try that! So I did.

I had to make alterations to what I had on hand. Used white flour instead of white whole wheat flour, used coconut extract instead of almond extract and used walnuts instead of almonds.

These turned out so yummy! Definitely a good breakfast cookie. Not very sweet and kind of bready. I was just so curious because Quinoa in a cookie?!? But, yes, it really is tasty and a nice consistency.

This is a christmas gift I made for my 2 best girlfriends. I found the mason jar with a handle at goodwill for $ .25 a piece. Etched the beehive in the glass with etching cream. Kristi found the honey dippers for $2 a piece at a craft fair that she was selling jewelry at. A normal mason jar lid wouldn't fit so I started raiding the lids in the fridge to find something that would fit. The one in the picture came off of a salsa jar and the other one I made came off a mustard jar. I just spray painted the tops black. The salsa lid already had that cool yellow design on the side so I left it. So for a couple bucks and some change... I have a nice x-mas gift to give.

The most wonderful time of the year...

I love christmas!! We have so many traditions as a family.


*The Caldwell night light parade. We always eat taco soup before the parade and apple cobbler after. So Much Fun! It only gets better with all the babies!


*Christmas Eve is when we get together with my family. A movie and then a breakfast dinner together. And, also, opening the sibling and parent gifts that night.


*Christmas day in the afternoon we always go to my Great Aunt Nancy's house with the Hollingsworth relatives. We play an awesome roll the dice gift game and just really enjoy the company of everybody!

Waiting for the Caldwell parade to start... Brecken didn't have gloves so Heidi loaned him some. They fit just right ;)

Me and my daddy!



Mom, Heidi, and Cami Girl

Me in front of the huge lit up tree in Caldwell

Mom and Dad in front of a bunch of lit up lights along the water.

Christmas decorations are always fantastic to look at and I am strict about the day after Thanksgiving my decorations are out of the shop and ready to put up! They need to be up for the max amount of time!

My christmas tree looks a little sad in this picture. But at night... I love it. I decided to use the old fashion c9 bulbs on it and put less ornaments. (Mainly because I got lazy hanging ornaments). I didn't even try to put the star on top this year because our fake tree is just to tall and goes right to the ceiling.

My stockings

A random shelf I decorated. I just used stuff I had laying around the house or extras of stuff in the x-mas boxes and kinda came up with this look.

Love my bear advent calendar. Just like the one I had growing up! It is ugly but full of memories!

Two days ago my boss saw these light up reindeer that they never use and asked if I wanted to take them home.. Ummm, YES!! Rillz, I, and the dogs went out in the cold this morning to assemble them. I love them!

Aren't these great! We put them closer to the front door because we don't live in the best neighborhood and I don't want them to get stolen.

Rillz staking the reindeer down so they don't blow over. These things were SO easy to assemble!

Miss Malu helping in the front yard. Yes, she has a coat. She gets so cold so quickly and just starts shaking. So Malu gets a coat.

Little Simon boy.

Jersey... she was let out in the front yard with no leash for the first time and did GREAT! She stuck around the whole time. She has been a great addition.

Also, Pandora on my phone has been AMAZING! I put it on the She and Him Christmas channel and just love the tunes! Oh I love christmas music but the radio x-mas channel gets a little boring. Pandora is truly fantastic!

Christmas is in exactly one week! Crazy. Still no snow in Boise, Idaho (which is a little weird for this time of year). But snow or no snow... Merry Christmas everybody!

Christmas

Our family tradition is to celebrate as a family on Christmas Eve. We always go to a movie and then have breakfast for dinner. The movie was tangled. So cute! Then we went to lunch at Red Robin and Noelle was our waitress. That night at about 5 Heidi said... what time are we eating? None of us girls knew so we asked dad. He then informed us that people were coming at around 6. Um... people? What people? Yeah, we had not been told that uncles and aunts were joining us. So Heidi, Kristi, and I start cooking. It all turned out and I always love working side by side with my sisters. Dinner was yummy and everyone left. We then opened sibling presents and it was fun!

Rillz and I decided to stay the night at my parents christmas eve. On Christmas morning we opened the rest of the presents with Brent, Noelle, and my mom and dad. Rillz had to work at noon and I went to my Auntie Nancy's house which is always so much fun! This year was a nice quieter christmas.

Month of December

December was madness... must I say more. So crazy that I didn't even coupon at all this month. Yeah, I know! So this month I worked, and worked, and worked. And then I had a hula christmas party, and my moms re-birth party, and of course christmas.
The hula party... It was Sunday December 13. The whole family attended. The keikis and adult class performed a couple songs. There was plenty of yummy food! And we were surrounded by people we love! Santa even came to the restaurant! Lucky me, I got to take santa home with me.

Here comes santa claus!

Gunnar is such a nut. He saw Rillz changing into santa and told us that Rillz was in a santa suit. I kicked Gunnar out of the back and "Santa" made his appearance. Gunnars face lit up so much when "Santa" came out. It was so funny to see him believing in santa after that. But then the next day he told Kristi "Mom, did you know willz (Rillz) was santa?" Another little girl said to her mom "Mom, I didn't know Santa was samoan." Haha. Innocence of children... so cute!

Santa needed a lot of Miss Clauses help to get dressed. He would have been missing a belt, hat, and shoes. Oh boy santa... get it together!

It was great fun! Thank you Tasha, and Aunties for a great party!

Christmas = lots of fun. For christmas eve we did our usual movie which was The Chipmunks squeakwal. Or whatever it was called. The girl chipmunks were so funny! I was pretty against seeing the movie but it was cute and better than expected. We then went home and got ready for our traditional christmas eve breakfast dinner. That night Rillz, Heidi, Ren, Jake, and I played The Office board game. It was really fun and hard! Christmas was great. The family gathered at 9 a.m. to open presents (minus Brent and Noelle). Gunnar was the present passer outer. That is something we always faught over when we were younger, as we got older none of us wanted to do it anymore and I was always stuck with doing it... until this year! Way to go Gunnar! At 2 we then headed over to Aunt Nancy's. It was my first christmas going over there and it was so fun! Then the family went to a movie. Me, Heidi, Kristi, and Gunnar went to The Blindside. LOVED it! The rest of the fam went to Avatar 3D. I heard it was outstanding and a must see... well even after those great comments from almost everybody, I still feel I don't need to see it.

This is Rillz having to give himself a face lift with tape when we were playing The Office game

I hope you all had a great 2009 very Merry Christmas