New years Resolutions?

My ideal personal trainers or Life Coaches:

Jillian and Tony Robins

In order to be more honest and accurate about New Years Resolutions, I thought I would categorize them.

1. Things to do list

-paint my bathrooms.
-clean out my playroom



2. Fancy wish list
-take a Spencer trip
-take a sisters trip
-take a girls trip


3. Pipe Dreams
-loose 15 pounds
-overcome my body image issues
- go to New York City

Best Christmas Ever!

I don't know if it is just because I had such low expectations or what, but Christmas was AWESOME!! Here are just a few highlights.
-I expected my kids to be disappointed with what they got - they weren't, they were thrilled, (thank you grandparents)
-I expected my kids to fight a little on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, - they didn't, they were a delight
-I expected my kids to wake up at 5:30 Christmas morning- They slept in until 7.
-I expected to be stressed out about the mess and wonder where I was going to put everything,-I got 3 cupboards cleaned out, and a box ready to take to the D.I. and Saturday morning everyone pitched in and helped clean, it was actually kind of fun.
-We found out that Kiran is coming up in 2 weeks, YEA, I love Kiran.
And now, Spencer has a whole week off. YEA, Hope you all had a great Christmas.

Christmas Eve at my parents. Warren and my Dad playing chess.

My Mom's Christmas village

My Mom's "Christmas tree"

My Mom's Christmas table

New Christmas Eve pajamas.

Making cookies for Santa.

I think this was the only time one of my kids cried for 2 days.

On Christmas Eve my Dad reads the Nativity Story while the kids play with the pieces.

BEFORE

AFTER, actually after round 1 of cleaning.

Warren "helping" Max open

Auri's favorite gift.

Auri's other favorite gift. All gifts that she opened after this one, she didn't play with. She just put it in the cart and walked in circles for the rest of the morning.

My favorite Christmas sticky buns.

Before

After, when you flip them over.

Warren's gift from Aunt Angie

Max's gift from Angie

Warren's favorite gift from Grandma

Max's new light bright, from Grandma

Dinner at my parents house with the cousins.

Opening gifts with my Mom and Dad.
The aftermath.

Max got a lot of Ben 10 stuff this year.

My Mom with the kids

Me and Holly at the end of the night. What a great Christmas.

Mid-morning wear

I'm not pregnant in this photo, the shirt is a little too big.

The lovely stripes.

A few years ago I was telling Kiran about a time when someone had stopped by at almost noon and I was still in my pajamas. I was pretty embarrassed about it, which is when Kiran introduced me to mid-morning wear. Here are just a few perks.

-It is sporty rather than lazy

-you are always ready to spring into action, you don't really need to change if you get a call and need to be somewhere in 10 minutes

-if someone does stop by you look tired from exercises rather than whatever it is you have really been doing.

-you get to cruise around sporting the NIKE logo, I'm sorry, in spite of Tiger Woods, I still love their stuff.

-you can clean dirty without stretching out your cute jeans.

the list goes on.

So on Saturday night Spence and I went to Nordstrom Rack and I found a new pair! I was so excited about this because they rarely cary Nike at Ross, and I never shop at the real Nordstrom, (what am I a Rockefeller?). I pondered for a moment giving them to Kiran for her birthday, after all, I'm not crazy about stripes, but when I got them home and got them on.....

well, lets just say I'd sooner give her my unblemished first born son. Happy Birthday Kiran, your getting Warren.

Highlights and Lowlights

Portland Temple
December 20th 2001

It's how I like my hair color and my marriage, lots of highlights and just a few lowlights. On Sunday we will have been married for 8, count'em 8 years! The first 4 were slow going, but now that the kids are in school the time has just flown by.

Here are just a few of the high-lights and low-lights

high-light
-my wedding dress
low -light
-the stress of a wedding



high-light
-finding out we were having a baby
low -light
-giving birth


high-light
-finding out the gender of the baby
low -light
-adjusting to a new baby, seriously, we have had some of the weirdest fights in a sleep deprived state in the middle of the night.


high-light
-the kids getting older
low -light
-the kids getting older


high-lights
-more money
low lights
-more problems


high-light
-Spencer gets better looking and smarter with age
low -light
-I'm not sure I do.


high-light

-more dates, babysitters and hopefully more vacation
low-lights
-there is no down side to this



low-lights
-having a stroke
high-lights
-having a husband who eagerly and gently takes care of a stoke patient

high-lights
-sharing a blanket and watching Lost

-always having a buddy

-always having my bed warm

-going out to breakfast Thanksgiving morning

-Christmas Eve with him

-when I hear his keys unlock the door at night

-not having to take out the garbage, pay the bills or lock up every night

-never having to change a light bulb or call a plumber

-when he bought me a car

-going to Philadelphia with him

-sitting next to him in Sunday School, (all kids are in nursery or above, yea!)

- Valentines Day

I am sure there are a million more that I will keep wanting to add, but for now these will do.

Some of my favorite marriage quotes


"Choose wisely, live kindly" - Dr. Laura


"It's not lack of love, but lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages" -Friedrich Neitzsche



"Someone asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave them the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true and incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage" -Gloria Steinem



"My husband and I have never considered divorce...., murder sometimes, but never divorce." -Joyce Brothers


"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning, it is better to live outside that garden with her than live inside it without her."

- Mark Twain, from Adam in Adam's Diary


"The goal in a marriage is not to think alike, but to think together" - Robert C. Dodds



"There is no secret to marriage, you just commit and then do it"- Holly


"True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well being of one's companion" - President Gordon Bitner Hinckley


-"Affection is responsible for nine tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives" C. S. Lewis



-There are two kinds of people: those who say to GOD, "thy will be done", and those to whom GOD says "All right, have it your way""-C. S. Lewis (I know this has nothing to do with marriage, but this quote makes me laugh.

Bah Humbug

Christmas 1980, I was 4 I remeber that dress well.

Christmas 1999

Christmas Eve at the Kilgor's house
Leland, Dad, Will, me, Mom, Holly, Brian, Kiran, Grandad

The box that the ring came in. (see below for explination)

How I feel today.

I used to love this holiday, I did. I remember listening to the Beach Boys Christmas Album on our record player in our Nebraska house over and over again. I was about 8 when we lived there and every day in December when I would get off the bus I would look eagerly to see if my Mom had gotten me a Christmas tree. I remember loving the gifts under the tree and especially in my stocking. My Mom always put an orange in all of our stockings to remind us that one year during the Great Depression an orange was all my Grandmother Anderson (Gram) and her 11 siblings got for Christmas and they were thrilled about it. I loved making butter cookies with my Mom, she had this really cool piping gun and we would make rows and rows of them. I remember getting so excited about the Frosty the Snowman special on t.v.

Even as I got older this holiday did not disappoint. Most years my Mom put a piece of jewelry in our stockings. One year she put a gold ring in all of our stockings to remind us of our Grandparents love for one another. That year my Grandmother Brownfield (affectionately known as Gramfield) was in a nursing home with Alzheimer's and her wedding ring was stolen, she only occasionally remembered her husband, so that year my Grandfather (affectionately known as Grandad) had a small wedding in the nursing home to help her remember that she was married. I am not much of a romantic, but that is one of the most romantic things I have ever heard of. Anyways, my Mom gave all of us gold bands in our stockings to remind us of this.

Every year my Dad would buy bicycles for kids who didn't have them, I would get to help deliver them. Every year we went to my Dad's partner, Dr. Kilgor's house, and we would have a huge feast and watch old Christmas episodes of Saturday Night Live or play trivia games.

I loved coming home from college to a Christmasy home filled with food and my siblings. We stayed up late, went to the movies, drove around looking and the Christmas lights, it was all great.

One year I lived in New York city and the Christmas season was amazing!! I used to walk down Park Avenue at night to Rockefeller Center to sit and stare at the tree.

I used to tear up just hearing "O Holy Night" especially at the words "fall on your knees" and "and in His name all oppression shall cease", I don't anymore.

In the past several years I have come to dread Christmas. It is beyond stressful to me. I just thought it was because of the circumstances, last year we had to drive 15 hours in treacherous weather with kids in the back fighting and whining the whole time and I was still in so much PAIN. The year before that I was pregnant, again in a ton of PAIN, huge, ugly, and uncomfortable. The year before that we had just moved here, so I was lonely didn't have time to decorate, and I was cold and alone at the gym without my trusty walking partner Melanie. (I have since switched gyms)

But what is my excuse this year? None of these circumstances apply and yet here I am, wishing Christmas was over. Here are just a few things I am stressed about:

1. MONEY!!! Christmas costs so much money and I am starting to think my kids are spoiled. 3 gifts aren't enough, it seems like 20 seems to suffice.

2. FOOD!!! I get so stressed around sugar! On a daily basis I don't eat it. I will indulge in the occasional sugar-free pudding or hot chocolate, but that is about it. During the holidays it is EVERYWHERE! I get stressed out just knowing I am going to have to double up my will power and strength to avoid it. Just this morning, I thew away an entire chocolate cake, I figured it was easier to have the will power to get rid of it once than avoid it every time I waked into the kitchen. It is 10:00 at night, believe me, I made the right decision.

3. Traditions. Am I making good enough traditions for my kids, as good as my parents did for me? Can you really top the ring in the stocking to remind you of unconditional and undying love? Can you really top a simple orange in the stocking to remind you that even a small piece of fruit can bring joy and happiness during our country's greatest time period of despair, that's practically as good as what the Little Drummer boy gave! Every year we take the kids to buy toys for each other and to get toys for the giving tree, but it just feels so forced and blah, it doesn't even seem like they get it. Maybe that is what my parents thought about us. Maybe when my kids grow up they'll be saying the same things about how their family traditions were so great and so were their parents, hard to imagine....., so until January, bah humbug.

Christmas Decor

Auri's Christmas dress. I have a little spot in her room where I hang all her "pretties" as we call them. This is our latest fave.

Auri's Christmas tree. Cousin Grace and Avery have the same one.

I changed out all the flowers in my vases from red to blue and silver.

Some of my favorite ornaments on my blue and silver tree.

It's not the best picture of my tree, but you get the point.

Some of our favorite Christmas books.

I should have put a strand of lights in the hurricane. There is still time.

Some of our favorite Christmas movies. Just for the record, I particularly enjoy Charlie Brown's Christmas, Micky's Twice upon a Christmas, and Micky's Christmas Carol.

It is a little bland and the size of the topiaries are off, but it gets the job done.

I need to add another tree in here.

The stockings were hung by the mirror with care.