Thanks Steffanie

I have the most amazing sister-in-laws in the world and this year my extremely talented

sister-in-law-Steffanie made the girls the most amazing quilts I have ever seen. Each quilt has a purse with their name embroidered on it, and a bunch of cute pictures on it. None of us had any idea that she was even making them. She "borrowed" my external hard drive, and was pretty sneaky about the whole thing. It really pays off to have a sewing teacher in the family. They are seriously adorable. We will keep them forever.

THANK YOU AUNT STEFFANIE!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

This year we celebrated Christmas without Chris. I must say that this has been harder that I thought it would be to celebrate Christmas without you Chris. And to complicate things they decided to change things around over in Iraq and we weren't able to skype, email, or even talk to Chris the week prior and the week after Christmas, except for an unexpected 15 minute phone call Christmas Day. We Miss YOU Terribly! Aside from all of the drama, we were able to have a nice Christmas with family in UT.

I have a sister who is 16 who morphs into a 5 year old every Christmas Eve. She is always the one who wakes everyone up at 5 am ready to open presents. This year I agreed to let her sleep in my room as long as she promised to let us all sleep in until 7:30 am. But like any 5 year old she couldn't wait any longer and woke us all up at 7am. So we woke up the girls and headed upstairs. We love you Ali!

Brooklyn did not want to budge Christmas morning. She unlike her sister does not like to wake up in the morning, but after letting her wake up naturally for a few minutes she was awake and anxious to see the goods.

The girls were excited to see the Christmas presents, as was my sister Ali, all wrapped up in her zebra snuggie

Chris sent the girls these awesome tea sets from Iraq. They were the hit toy this year. The girls have not stopped playing tea party since.

Brooklyn opening her baby cradle for her "baby white". She has now slept with this cradle next to her bed, her baby all tucked every night since.

Hallie opening her Polly Pocket Rollercoaster

Hallie was pretty excited to see her snow tube from Grandma Reece. If you have to live in the snow you may as well enjoy it.

Santa was able to track down a Zhu Zhu Pet last minute, Hallie kept shouting "How did Santa Know, How did he know?" It was cute, she was pretty excited. I am not sure why these little electronic hamsters were so popular this year, but she was happy.

Brookie was happy to finally get a barbie of her own, and I was relieved that in the excitement of Christmas morning she forgot all about the roller skates, and ice skates she had asked for.

Brooklyn opening her cinderella dress. She has been in this costume ever since.

Hallie about to open her Barbie teacher

What a mess, but we sure had making it.

After putting so much work into getting Christmas together I really hate that it only lasts a few minutes, so to prolong the excitement Chris and I decided to let them open their presents from us, and their stockings after Christmas breakfast.

The girls getting ready to open their stockings.

I knew that to get through the holidays without Chris this year I would need a lot of projects so this year I made the following:

A doorway Puppet Theater

Felt Food

Chalk Mat (almost finished)

Felt Mat/Felt Stories

And A Magnet Table

I didn't get a chance to glue the ribbon around the edges to protect the table (hence the white table cloth) but I was able to make table top, and convert 3 sticker books into magnet play scenes.

All in all we had a wonderful Christmas, and we are so lucky to have the support of such amazing friends and family. WE LOVE YOU ALL!!

Christmas Eve

Every Christmas Eve we have a family party and seafood dinner. This year we were missing quite a few members of our family Chris, my brother Sam (who is on a mission), My brother Cam and sister-in-law Steff, and My Grandpa Hintze (who passed away last month). It just wasn't the same without them, but my parents did a good job of making the most anticipated dinner of the year extra special this year. This year we had : Lobster Tails, Crab Legs, Shrimp, Steak, Scalloped Potatoes, Ribbon Jello, Sour dough Bread, Strawberry Spinach Salad, and Italian Sodas. Brooklyns Dinner Menu was: Blackberries, Strawberries, Bacon, and Chicken Wings. It took a lot of work for my parents to put it together, but we will always remember our wonderful Christmas Eve Dinners.

Right before dinner the girls got dressed up in their party clothes and posed for me while I took their pic.'s

Another tradition is to have a family talent show after dinner, it only took one year of this to realize that our family is the most untalented family on earth, but we still have fun watching our ridiculously horrible displays of talent. The girls definitely took the talent up a notch this year with their song and dance, choreographed by the talented Aunt Ali. It was hilarious to watch them dance together while singing Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.

Hallie and Brooklyn doing the can-can in their stellar performance

After that we opened a few presents. Ali gave Hallie what is certain to be her favorite gift of the year, it was another princess cookbook. Ali gave her one of these cookbooks last year and Hallie has slept with it every single night this year while dreaming up, and planning little tea parties.

We all got the traditional Christmas jammies. It was major drama picking out pajamas for the girls this year, we tried EVERYTHiNG to find some cute silky pajamas like the ones that Ryan Haws mother so graciously made for my girls, the are the only pj's that Brooklyn will sleep in which means that I usually wash them daily. But apparently they are harder to come by than we thought so we settled for these fleece nightgowns and luckily they were a hit. May I also mention that I am extremely brave for allowing a picture of myself in my pj.'s to grace this blog. It was the only picture we got of the girls in their PJ's for some reason, and so I am only doing this for you Chris.

Gingerbread Houses

It was time for our annual making of the gingerbread houses. This is one of my favorite christmas traditions. Chris and I started this tradition when Hallie was just a baby, Chris was the master decorator he always made sure that our house had a massive chimney, a helicopter, and even a palm tree in the front yard. It wasn't the same without him, but we decided to give it our best shot. This year the girls were old enough to really participate. At first it was hard to let them give decorating advice (my sister and I are pretty serious about our gingerbread houses) but after a while we gave in and let the girls do their own thing. They did a good job, and we all had a lot of fun.

My brother Cameron and his wife Steffanie joined us this year, they tried to make it a competition and I am proud to announce that they lost miserably.

Christmas With The Millers

A few days before Christmas my long lost brother and sister-in-law and their adorable kids stopped in UT for a visit on their way from Missouri to California. We have missed them sooooo much that we jumped at a chance to come and visit them.

The girls were in heaven. They played dress-up and many other things all weekend, in fact I barely even saw them, it was wonderful.

Poor little Reese really needed another boy cousin there to play with, but we found him some reindeer antlers and that entertained him for a bit. He was a good sport.

This is little Dawson. I have the cutest niece and nephews!

Before bed the girls put on their cute pink silky jammies

and Grandma read them all a bedtime story.

Grandma teaching the kiddos a tune or two on the piano, earplugs definitely suggested.

Unfortunately an impending store storm shortened everyones trip to Grandma and Grandpa Millers, but before we left we were sure to have some hot chocolate around the fire,

Hallie's idea of course

Hallie and Grandma Miller sipping hot chocolate around the fire.

Seeing The Real Santa

We ran into Santa outside a toy store in Park City. Hallie who has been skeptical about store Santas since she was about 3 was positive that this Santa had to be the real Santa Claus, and all the other store Santas were just hired help from the north pole.

Hallie wasted no time asking Santa for a Barbie and a Zhu Zhu Pet

which she then told Santa that her mom said that they were too expensive

( a little white lie that I told just in case Santa was unable to get ahold of the hot toy of 2009)

I had no idea that she was going to rat me out to the real Santa Claus

Brooklyn decided to take her time she talked, and talked, and talked, this is a picture of her showing Santa her new purse. Finally after a little pursuading she asked Santa for a

blue present, barbie, roller skates, and ice skates.

I have no idea where she got roller skates and ice skates but I am really hoping that she forgets about them.

Christmas Party

Hallie had a christmas party at school, and Brooklyn was super sad that she couldn't go too. So I promised her that we could have our own christmas party at home. Well, it started out small and then it turned into quite the event. Brooklyn has entered the phase that Hallie just came out of, and that is wanting to only wear dresses. She asks me if she can wear her church dress, and today I let her and we called it her party dress. She couldn't have been happier. We then made a fort, and played her favorite game the bumblebee game.

After that we read stories and made cotton candy (one of the only treats that she can eat) It was fun to spend time some one on one time with little Brookie.