Gingerbread Houses

What memories I have of past gingerbread houses. I'll get to those stories later, but for now I'll show the latest two creations.

These two little munchkins helped me on Monday afternoon to decorate the two simple houses that I made that morning. As soon as Luke the two year old understood we weren't just chowing down on all that candy, it went fairly smoothly. He didn't like the gumdrops anyway, so after he tried two they became less of a temptation. I just put the Royal Icing "glue" where they wanted with my trusty pastry bag piper, and the kids placed all the candy where they wished. I did tell them that one of the two of them had to use the Necco candy wafers for a roof, cause I'd purchased them a long time ago and wanted them out of my cupboards. Lena created a "red and white pattern" with the mint M&M's. She was very excited to place red then white then red then white. Made me wish I had her around more often when I'm trying to do random placements of things. Impossible.

Pretty good smiles on those cute faces I'd say. 

My picture taking habits are suffering right now because of my computer/photo saving/sharing issues, so thanks for taking this cute picture (post assembly) Kara.

Big J" for Turkey Day

The Hubby and I flew to sunny Colorado for the Thanksgiving weekend. Through Phoenix this time around, we enjoyed the canyon land geography between Phoenix and Grand Junction. It is truly amazing how deeply crevassed and many monolithed the western country is even from 33,000 feet up in the wild blue. I kept speculating where we were in relation to geographical points of interest that I am familiar with, and I was usually wrong. Next time I should grab my nephew Christopher who personally flies those routes often enough that he knows what and where everything is located.

My parents took us for a lovely drive in my childhood "backyard,"over "the Monument" (Colorado National Monument) which is located a few miles southwest of the city. We felt like we were in a car commercial with the scenery around us.

 One of thousands of precarious rocks

 The "Coke Ovens"

GPK's in their Lexus SUV

We were pleasantly surprised when Jonathan decided to join us for a couple days and we enjoyed being able to spend some time with him as well as my little sis Camille, her husband Brad, my mom Joyce and my dad Sam. Mom is seeing less and less and her arthritis is giving her some miserable pain

Grandma Joycie and Jonathan G.

Smallest Thanksgiving gathering ever

Still a few dishes for Brad to do.

Another trip to the Monument for a hike was also part of the trip for John, Jonathan, & Brad.

Hiking Father and Son

Very cool formations.

The other thing that we did a lot in GJ was go to movies. Saw a couple of good ones.

A great relaxing week with some wonderful people.

Thanks all!

So Many Trees

We were gone for Thanksgiving and so held the mail for 5 mail days.
Yesterday the mail lady brought us all our kept mail and we had 4 letters and …  ALL THESE CATALOGS.

You think someone wants us to buy something?

Crazy.

Now A "Twins" Shower

We have a cute new mother-to-be in our ward or church congregation that is having a couple of boys. She and her husband just moved into our area and don't know many people. They have no family around and are just getting started with jobs and a life together. 

We decided to welcome them with a baby shower and we had it at our home. I cooked the same things that I had for the bridal shower held just 4 days before and I also decorated similarly.
I started by redoing this paper cone wreath and added different blues and banner so that the colors look like baby boy colors.

I've been spying these diaper cakes online the last couple of years, and now I decided to make one up for the new mom and her nursery.

With a cute jungle theme and using monkeys and elephants, I was able to find a fun ribbon that is striped with the same colors as the apparent new nursery.
We had great food and the turnout of women in the Los Gatos Ward was fabulous.

Wedding Shower

quiche, chicken w/peanut sauce, butter lettuce salad, shrimp

My friend Lois and I threw a shower for a long time friend of our daughters. I personally have spent many days and nights with this cute girl and her mother at volleyball tournaments throughout Stephanie's middle school and high school years, so wanted to show my support and love for her as she enters the realm of married person.

I made pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and chocolate coconut filled cupcakes with whipped chocolate cream frosting. We also served "Icing on the Cake" banana cupcakes.

We had the party at Lois's home and I decorated and helped with food, etc. Here is my new paper wreath deco. Just made paper cones and dipped the edges in blue glitter. Finished it off with cake cutouts and medallions of various colors and sizes.

Leslie and Jolyn with "pretend" Stephanie in the middle. She couldn't come to town for the shower, because of a coaching obligation.

Here's out cute bride to be.

Lois (L's mom), Jolyn, me, Leslie, Debbi (J's mom)

And all the mothers with daughters too.

Fun time was had by all.

Mine are the Cutest

Here's a little belated Halloween post. Full of pictures of the 5 cutest kids ever.

The purple and green Witch Ballerina and the Skeleton Ballerina in their homemade matching tutu's start off this parade.

The Rocket Robot has got to be the best costume his dad ever conceived and was the hit of the party as well as the neighborhood.

 Check out the back of this costume.

And the face on this kid is so cute and excited. He couldn't take stairs very well but I heard no complaints as he navigated our neighborhood with his much faster sisters. 

 Can you hear this one saying Woo, Woo all day long?

 What an adorable little owl. She was joined by her Red Robin mother that was "sitting on the nest," and her father who was a Bird Watcher, and ...

this little Peacock who was decorated with care from head to toe.

 She loved being able to fan up her tail whenever she pleased, or just leave it down for a pretty tag along tail.
Cutest 5 in the world? Talented kids of mine putting these all together.
I rest my case.

Fan Chart

My parents are celebrating their 65 Wedding Anniversary with us this weekend. All my siblings and spouses are meeting up in Salt Lake City for a memorable time together. We start by attending a symphony which represents the love of music that my parents have shared on a daily basis from the time they met in the 7th grad up until today.

The next morning we are all going to a temple session in the SLC Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This wonderful couple was married in this temple in September of 1947.
AMAZING! Their love of the gospel of Jesus Christ is another thing that they have been able to happily share throughout every day of their marriage.
Lastly, we are meeting up with more of the extended family at a restaurant in Orem for a nice lunch/dinner (linner) later that day. Again, their love of family is one of the great things in my parents life, and they have shared it well.

I was able to make a genealogy poster for them that looks like the picture above. It was surprisingly easy to do because my ancestors are already in the data base.  So, if you have your ancestors information already it will be easy, if you don't then there will be a LOT of investigating to do before you can have a chart like this one.
Big shout out to all my family members, (mostly ones from the generation preceding mine) who took their time to find all these ancestors for us.  You did a terrific job.

You can't see this chart very well because of it's size and the small names in all the blanks, but a little explanation of it is that the fathers side is on the right with his father in blue and his mothers side in various shades of green as the families come together. The red and yellow sides are the different generations and names of my mothers family up to the 6th great grandfathers and mothers. It will be fun to compare what we know and remember of these names and places where they came from. The dates of birth are included up until the 4th great grandparents.
I increased the regular 8.5 x 11" size to a large 24" x 36" poster and found a frame for it so it will be easier to look at.

So in short, here is what I had to do to get this chart completed.
Quick rundown:

*Go up to    LDS.org     and under "Resources" click on family history. I signed in and found my grandparents names already there. I plugged in my name and up came all my connections back several generations. You DO NOT have to be a member of the LDS church to use this site.

*Now go to create fan.com and login, then click on "Create".

Walla !!!!!!   It appears, all filled in (except some of the 8th and 9th generation names that no one has found yet.)

It just APPEARS!

*I then downloaded the complete chart, converted it to JPEG for the printer and took it to Walgreens Drug Store to have it made into a poster. You could order it online and just download it to their site or Costco, or any photo center, but I wasn't sure what size I wanted, so I went in to the store. I picked them because they were having a 40% off on enlarging. So it cost me 40% of $29.95.
Not bad for a couple hours of my time.

And did you hear me when I said "It just appears?" I really didn't even do anything.
AWESOME.  My parents will love it. Looking at these names all in one nice concise place.