Woah.

As expected, our December was COMPLETELY INSANE! So, I haven't blogged for a while, and I HATE trying to catch up on a ton of stuff. So, let's make this quick and painless, and I'll try to do better at keeping current.

First of all, our kids' orthodontist does a drawing a few times a year where the kids get to guess how much of something is in a jar and if they come the closest, they win the jar and its contents. Well Austin (without any help) guessed that the jar contained $85, and guess what ... it had $84.81 in it. So we had one very excited 11-year-old on our hands. He's saving his money to see if a Wii game is developed for the Percy Jackson book series.

Jackson performed in the Christmas Carol musical at school this year. He worked very hard at rehearsal for almost two months and had a great time performing for the school as well as two evening performances for family and friends. Way to go Jacks!

While I was out Christmas shopping, Dave and half the neighborhood took advantage of the first big snowfall and made a great big snowman. It looks pretty FREEZING to me, but they said they had a great time and couldn't wait to show me when I got home.

T.J. (previously a little frightened of the jolly old fellow) got acquainted with four Santas this year ... and didn't suspect a thing. We had a little scare with one of them when T.J. asked for a dog. After asking Santa to clarify with him, we discovered it to be a stuffed animal dog he was after. Phew!

Right before Christmas, we wrapped up our BYU football season with a Las Vegas Bowl party. Thankfully, the Cougars took care of business and we had a great night with family and friends. Kati even came all the way from Washington D.C. to cheer the Cougars on with us ... or maybe she was home for Christmas. Something like that.

The kids were as hyper as can be by the time Christmas Eve rolled around, and I wasn't about to cook anything, so we headed out to dinner at Wingers and off to Alvin and the Chipmunks. It was a pretty cute movie, and the kids LOVED it.

The obligatory Christmas Eve kids in pajamas in front of the tree picture. Man I have cute kids.

You might say I'm a bit of a spoiler on Christmas. Even if it's little stuff, I like a lot of presents to open. I just think that's the funnest part ... watching the kids' reactions and seeing them all excited. I love surprising them. Austin and Jackson's favorite things were their new Wii games. They've been BEGGING for Madden 10 and Super Smash Brothers Brawl FOREVER, so it was fun to see how happy they were.

Dave managed to surprise me (very hard to do) with a few things, including some new weights and a Borders Books gift card. I'm excited to go browse a book store ALL BY MYSELF and not worry about looking for a used copy of the book on Ebay like I usually do when I find something I want to read. I had asked for an elliptical for Christmas but couldn't wait and got it a few months ago ... Merry Christmas to me! I LOVE it. I got Dave an Olympic size bar and 260 pounds in free weights for his bench we got a few months ago. He's wanted a bench and weights since we got married I think, so it was fun to see how excited he was about that.

London and T.J. had a really fun Christmas morning. These two had some pretty simple requests: a horse stuffed animal and a dog stuff animal. Works for me. They were really excited about their Alvin and the Chipmunks stuffed animals as well. And T.J. of course was ECSTATIC about his Bendaroos. Those things have turned out to be funner than I thought, so I might have to take back all the making fun I did of them ... but probably not. We got the Toy Story Mania Wii game and we spent our Christmas vacation playing that. We even had Grandma and Grandpa Morton over for New Years, and they loved playing it. That game is a lot of fun! Jackson is the master champion at all things video game in our house, including the Toy Story game, but I'm slowly whittling away at his high scores. I'll get him.

We found a great sledding spot on the golf course in Eagle Mountain, a nice long hill with some jumps, and NO ONE was there. Perfect.







Dave apparently thinks he's still a kid. We heard about this jump for days:





Somewhere in the middle of all that, we celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. I couldn't be happier about that. Dave turned 35, and he's handling that pretty well. We spent time with family and friends, played games, had fun, and ate and ate and ate. We saw a lot of movies:


Melanie and I took all nine kiddos to this movie, and we still managed to laugh all the way through it. Don't underestimate this movie. It's funny.

We really liked this one. Morgan Freeman was AMAZING as Nelson Mandella, and the story is incredible. Great movie.


We've seen this one twice already, and it is definitely entertaining. Great movie. It made me want to go back and read the Sherlock Holmes stories.

This one is our absolute FAVORITE movie we saw this season! We saw it two weekends in a row. Actually it's the best movie either one of us has seen in a really long time. Great story, great acting, excellent message. We HIGHLY recommend it!