Yummy Treats!

K, few things make me weak at the knees, but one of them is chocolate covered pretzels. I can not control myself when it comes to these, especially the Snyder brand covered with hershey's chocolate. YUM!

So I was very excited to find this idea for a holiday give-away treat on familfun.com. The best part of making this treat was that the kids were able to help without getting me frustrated. :) Their job was to unwrap the 10 bags of hugs and kisses (yeah, it took a LOT more than I thought it would to fill up a little bag), while I spread out the pretzels. Then you stick the hugs/kiss on top of the pretzel, melt them in the oven for about 5 minutes at the lowest setting (the directions say 170 degrees) and then place an m&m on top. I don't want to know how many I've actually eaten, but they are delicious!

A place to play

Here in the northwest, it rains, and rains, and rains for about 260 days of the year. It makes the scenery absolutely gorgeous, but very hard on us moms who can't take our kids out to play. However, some genius invented the indoor park. This is basically a gym filled with outside toys that kids can play freely on, after paying a small fee. I've only seen these in community recreation centers, which for us, is great, since we live right across the street from one. Here are pictures from one of our visits.



Michael's favorite toy is this roller coaster thing. It uses a ride-on toy that moves when you push your feet on the ground and a mini roller coaster with two little bumps. He has a hard time getting the car up to the top everytime, but he ususally goes down several dozen times while we are there. It's pretty funny to see him go.




Today he really wanted to play in the play house, but it was always guarded by these little girls (probalby 1 yr to 15 months) who wouldn't let him in. These girls, barely able to walk and not yet learned to talk, would put their chubby hands on his chest, scrunch up their faces, and push him back every time he tried to enter. One time a little girl pushed him for about 10 feet! you could see the shock and hurt on Michael's face when the girls did this to him. Finally, he was fed up with this nonsense, and with the girl's hand still on his chest, he pushed Her back saying "No, No, No, No, NO! SHARE!!!". Eventually he gave up and went to go climb on something else. HOwever, a renewed interest appeared in him when these adorable twin girls showed up to play. They thought Michael was great. He would be inside the house, and they on the outside, trying to shut the shutters to the windows. When Michael pushed them back opent they would giggle. Then Michael served them pretend food through the window and became very distraught when he noticed he only had one cup and two girls. He turned to me and said "Cup! CUP!!!" Sensing the urgency in his voice, I ran and found another cup, and once again, saved the day. What a great mom I am! :)

Resident Retention

Aparmtment managing definitly has its ups and downs, but to be completely honest, it probably has more ups than downs. It really has been an awesome job...free rent, a litte bit of an additional salary, great property (meaning decent residents, decent apartments, and an owner who is very good about spending money on the property), it's tiny (only 20 units), and we get to do these things called "resident retentions." The idea is that you show your residents how much you care while trying to stick out above other complexes so that your residents will stay with you. I do get a lot of comments when I'm buying 20 pumpkins, or 20 giftcards to Blockbuster, such as "Wow! My manager doesn't do that! How cool!" :) We do them about every three months. This month I was really stumped so I asked another manager what she was doing. (A lot of us are student wives, and many LDS). She filled a gift box with tangerine oranges and then a box of chocolate covered orange sticks and a note that says "Orange you glad you live at Brittany Square? We sure are!". I know, very cheesy, but I loved it! It was also a great thing that Chelsea could help with. It's a little scary how much she's turning out to be like me...very methodical and everything has to be done in order. We had lots of fun.

The things kids say...

Finally! I lost our flashdrive which I HAVE to have in order to post pictures (it's a very complicated process), and I can't seem to blog without pictures. Dan found it for me so now you will get a plethera of pictures and posts! :)





So, Chelsea's best friend is a little girl she met at preschool last year, who happens to be our next door neighbor. Kayla is a very active girl and the two of them get along very well. We have her over somtimes for "play dates" as Kayla calls them. I'm not very familiar with that term. I grew up just having friends over to play. Not sure what the "date" thing has to do with anything. Anyway, these two are hillarious to listen too. Today they were setting up a game and this is how one of their typical conversations went:
Kayla: So, Chelsea, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Cheslea: I want to be a teacher
Kayla: (Gasp!)Me too!! We could both work at the same school together!
Cheslea: Yeah!
Kayla: So, what kind of teacher do you want to work at?
C: I know! We could teacher at a preschool!
K: Yeah! I caould be teacher, then you could be teacher, then I could be teacher!
C: Yup!
C: Mommy, what do you think we should be when we grow up?
Me: Well, it sounds like you guys want to be teachers. I think you would be great teachers.
K: No, I don't want to be a teacher. I want to be a farmer!

Chelsea is constanty making "things" for Kayla. Usually, she draws a picture, cuts into tiny pieces, tries to tape it back together, then stuffs it into an envelope. This year Kayla got into the pre-K program at the elementary school, but due to a lottery drawing, Chelsea did not. Too make trying to get together for "play dates" (gag) even harder, Kayla has preschool in the mornings, and Chelsea goes in the afternoon. Fridays are the only days they can play together and many times Kayla is visiting her dad. Oh! Here's something that Kayla just said
K: Chelsea, do you need a tissue?
C: No.
K: Well, there's things dropping from your nose.
C: Oh.
K. Here, I'll go get you a tissue.

Man, I love four year olds!

Christmas Traditions

Christmas, like most people, is my favorite holiday. It used to be about Santa Claus for me, but now that I'm grown up, I think it's the joyful spirit it brings. I love the excitement in the air. I actually think the holiday is more fun as a mom as I watch Chelsea's anticipation grow. So, I was talking with my oldest brother the other day, about all the traditions we had growing up. There are so many out there that people do, and I love hearing and learning about them, especially as a young family where we are picking and choosing which traditions we will do.

When I was younger the best part of Christmas was waking up to find out how Santa had messed up again. There was always some kind of accident that resulted in a day-long search of our presents. But, before that hunt could begin, we had to be showered, dressed, and rooms cleaned before we could go downstairs to even see what we were in for. Our parents made sure of that, usually be baracading the stairs with a door they had taken down somewhere.

When we finally made it to the tree, we would find our stuffed stockings which usually contained toothbrushes, deodorant, nuts, oranges, MAYBE some candy, and a big bag of cold cereal. (Growing up, Christmas was THE only time we had cold cereal). Then we would begin our adventure. Sometimes Santa couldn't find our new address (if we'd moved), so we would have a treasure hunt that led us all over town with the presents at the neighborhood park. Another time he was ran out of time and needed our help to do some of his chores. This resulted in another type of treasure hunt that was made up of tasks we had to complete, such as caroling at the nursing home, making cookies for our neighbors, acting out the nativity, etc. After each task, the person would give us our nest task/clue until we finally got to our presents.

Another year we woke up to find our home as a huge web. Trixy and Pixie, Santa's helper elves had been wrestling and gotten their magic dust all over. There was string going everwhere. We were each blindfolded and given one end of a string which we were then to follow and roll up to find our stash. One year we actually could see our presents when we got to the tree, but they were scattered throughout the house, each with a number on it. We had to find the presents, in order, and bring them one-by-one back to the living room where we would all watch the recipient open the gift. I don't remember what the reason for this Christmas was, but it seriously took till 1 PM to finish.

Looking back, this must have taken tons of planning and preparation by my parents, but it really made Christmas so much fun. I was wondering what traditions your families might have? (Whether you liked them or not). At Dan's house, it's tradition that Dad passes out each gift. Another thing the Perry's do, is leave the presents Santa brought unwrapped and all set up by the person's stockings.


We started one where we made one of those chains from paper (25 chains) with something to do for each day. For example, we made a gingerbread house, went out for special holiday ice-cream shakes, wrote letters to friends, made cookies for neighbors, etc. Chelsea has really been enjoying it, and I love being able to stretch the holiday out as long as possible. Varden wants to try having a stack of Thank-you cards by the tree on Christmas morning, and as a present is opened, a quick thank you is written before another is opened.

Whatever you do at Christmas, I truly hope you have a blast and love every moment of it! Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday Michael!

I know, I know, I'm slow. For Michael's birthday we went swimming at one of the many indoor pools here. We were freezing, but the kids were all shivering smiles! Michael is so funny because he has NO fear. He's also very ticklish. The water at this pool has a very shallow play place so he could walk around. We liked to chase him and then grab his sides. He doubles over, face into the water, laughing. It's not just like his face gets wet, but he practically does a summersault...and did a few times. Chelsea helped me make him an race-car cake, which he was very excited about. He blew out the candles at least 6 times and kept saying "More Fire!" (Uh oh....I think he might be like his dad....) I can't believe he's two already. My favorite thing he does now, which is actually quite cheesy, is tilt his head to the side, bat his eyes, and says "Mooommmeeeeee" in a sing song voice. It's silly, but I love it so much!

A great Thanksgiving

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Each year I keep meaning to make the apple Turkeys, like the ones we made with mom growing up, but I always forget. This year I remembered! Chelsea, Michael and I made them for FHE one night. I ran out of apples, so I had to use a pear. Michael loved putting on the marshmallows (for some reason, the slideshow enlarged the picture so you only see his head. :()
For Thanksgiving, Dan's parents and sister were kind enough to come to our tiny apartment for Thanksgiving. Dan had to take his Dental boards the next day, so if we had gone up to Tacoma, it would have been a very quick visit. Chelsea was thrilled to have them come down. I was grateful to have the learning experience on how to make pies, rolls, turkey, etc. Thanks mom! It all tasted sooo good! On Saturday night, I got a babysitter for Chelsea and Michael, and the rest of us went to see John Schmidt in concert. It was a great evening and weekend. Oh, the picture of Melissa, Dan and I is us trying out the nasal strips dad got to try to help him sleep better. They really work!

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Chelsea gave her second talk in primary today and did a fantastic job. I think she likes the attention of getting up in front of everyone. She did it all by herself, much to the amazement of the teachers and presidency who gave me wierd looks when I didn't go up to assist her. She loved practicing for it and would say "Can we practice my talk six times today?" What a girl. This recording isn't very good with all the back noise and light. OH well....Something else to learn I guess.