Feel the love!!!

Sometimes I REALLY love being a mom. There are times that I wish I had a recorder on my brain that I could rewind a situation and play it back for everyone. Today, one of those moments happened.......

Tyler, "mom, I'm going to be famous when I grow up!!!"

Me, "I sure hope so!!!"

Tyler, "how do you get famous?"

Me, "you have to be really good at something"

Tyler (said with the excitement of a 7 year old boy), "MADDISON!!!!!! YOU'RE GOING TO BE FAMOUS!!!!!!!!"

Maddison, "Why?"

Tyler, "Cuz you're such a good artist!!!"

Me *holding back tears*


Isn't that so nice? I know that brothers can be a pain in the butt, not from my own experience, but from what my girls tell me, but I think he just made up for a lot of that.... what do you think?

A word from our sponsor.....

I have lots of pictures to put on my blog about Christmas, but until then, please enjoy my newest favorite song. In the spirit of this song, I request that you dance around a little and then get hooked on this song the same way I have!!!!

Happy Birthday Jesus!!!

In college, I had the opportunity to sing Handel's Messiah at Christmas time. It was such a wonderful experience. One I will never forget. I have such an appreciation for this music. On this Christmas day, I hope to hear one song in my head over and over.


For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

Hopefully you all have a Merry Christmas with your families and give our Heavenly Father for giving us His son, Jesus Christ. I love you all!!!

The lights of Christmas

One of my favorite parts of the Christmas Season is Christmas lights. I love seeing how everyone expresses themselves with lights at Christmas time!!! Now, we're not the Griswold's from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but we enjoy the lights that brighten up our home at Christmas time. This is our light display this year, notice the lights that need to be replaced? I don't buy any Christmas decorations until the day after Christmas when I can get them for cheap enough that they're almost FREE!!!!


Like I said, we're no Griswold family, but you get the point. Then we have my mom and dad's house. This year I am especially grateful for my brother-in-law, Michael. He put my parent's lights up on the house this year because my dad was going through radiation treatments and didn't have the energy. Mike knew how much my parents enjoy the lights at their house at Christmas time and so he took time out of his busy schedule to take that burden off of my dad to get them up. My kids especially like the candy cane walk way, it's like a magical sidewalk leading up to Grandma and Grandpa's house!!! I have vivid memories of going to bed in my house growing up during the month of December and staring at the lights through the blinds in my bedroom window until I fell asleep. I think our kids will be remembering some of these lights also!!!

And then you have Randy's parent's house. They have some really fun blow up decorations.


And also some really cute wood cutouts that Randy's dad cut out and a neighbor of theirs painted for his mom a couple of years ago. Out of all of these cute decorations, my absolute favorite is this one.

I love the idea of Santa kneeling down in respect and admiration of Baby Jesus. I am so grateful to get to see that cutout every Sunday when we go over in December. I will speak for myself and say that I sometimes get lost in the retail end of Christmas. When I see this display, it puts me right back in my spot and remember what we are really celebrating. The birth of Christ, our Savior.

I hope you enjoy the Christmas light displays as much as we do each year and let the light of Christ illuminate your life. Merry Christmas!!!

So sad :(

Tonight I am so sad for my sister. Her youngest son and his wife had their 3 girls taken away from them permanently by the State of Utah for abuse and neglect. It became final just this month. This was excruciating for my sister to see her 3 grand daughters, that she was so close to, get taken away from the family because of poor choices made by my nephew and his wife. Well, my nephew and his wife had a baby boy this week and we just got word that there is a court order in place that is giving the State custody of their baby. We're not sure what happens next, if this is permanent or temporary, but my sister's heart is hurting so bad right now and it's so hard to see her in so much pain. There is no doubt in my mind that my nephew and his wife DO NOT deserve to have any of their children, in fact, I was one of the main ones that put calls into DCFS to get the State's attention about the abuse and neglect that was going on. But the pain it has caused my sister is horrible. My nephew and his wife couldn't care less about losing their children, but it just goes to show how bad choices don't just affect us, but it affects our whole family. I just hope that as her sister, I can be the support she needs. Hug your babies a little tighter tonight, there are some out there that wish they could.

Drum roll please......

Today is the day I officially get to announce my new calling. I am the new 1st counselor in the Young Women's Presidency in our ward. I am so excited!!! I am excited to work with the presidency, those girls are all such wonderful women and I'm also way excited to work with the girls. I was blessed to have some really amazing leaders when I was in YW. Women that made a huge impact on who I am today. I hope that the girls like me and I can do a good job.

Randy spoke in Sacrament today and I had called both of our parents to come over to help set me apart, so they all got to hear Randy speak and hear his testimony. It was really great. After the great Christmas Program, I got to be set apart by the bishop with Randy, my dad and Randy's dad in the circle. I am grateful for those men and their willingness to be there for me.

So, here we go!!!! Time for lots of work. I can't wait!!!!

And the winner is......

This morning was Randy's work Christmas party. His company owns the movie theatre in Hurricane, so we always go first thing in the morning, eat breakfast, learn about insurance changes for the new year, prizes and then we get to pick from 2 movies to watch. Today's picks were Avatar and Did You Hear About the Morgans? We chose the second one to go to. I was tired, so I kept falling asleep... whatever, what parts of it that I saw were great!!! So, they were giving away prizes at the meeting and I might have nodded off a little, and then I heard Randy's name called, everyone clapping and I looked up and the table full of prizes was empty. Did he win the grand prize this year? I didn't know what was happening and that's when I realized that HE WAS THE WINNER!!!! What did he win? A new 32GB Ipod Touch!!!!

That's a $300+ Ipod!!!! The funny thing is, at Thanksgiving, I bought my cousin's Touch from him to give Randy, but when I realized how cool they were, I confiscated it and made it mine!!!! So, now Randy has his OWN and it's twice as big as mine!!!! So cool, huh? Maybe our luck is turning around!!!!

Look at my little understudy!!! She saw me take his picture,
so she grabbed the other camera to take care of business also!!!