Fixed up Brinley's Doll Houses - December 29, 2014

Monday - December 29th

Brinley was feeling a little bored yesterday morning.  She came to me asking for ideas on what she could do.  I gave her ideas, but with everything I suggested, she said, "But I want someone to do that with me."  So, I asked if she wanted me to play barbies with her.  She said yes and we sat down to play.  I was noticing all of the things in her Barbie house that are broken or missing.  Then I remembered her little doll house that she likes to play Polly Pockets in.  It's sitting upstairs in my bedroom, broken.  It has been up there for at least 2 months now.  So, we decided to fix her barbie house and make some new things for it.  That's how I spent my whole day yesterday.  I had to glue and tape the broken floor in the little house.  To make the floor look pretty again, I made carpet for it.  Brinley loved the look of the carpet, so she asked me to carpet some of the other rooms in her houses.  We ran out of glue before I could finish carpeting all the rooms that she wanted carpet in.  We recovered and fixed the barbie couch, made a table for the little house, made new seats for barbies car, put in some pretty curtains in a few of the rooms, fixed barbie's bed so it would be soft and comfy looking, and made some curtains that would stay attached to barbies bed.  We still have a lot more things we'd like to do, but I need more glue and we need to do some searching in the kids' rooms to find all of the missing furniture and pieces to the barbie house.

This morning, when Brinley's friend came over, she couldn't wait to show her all that we had done.

I Can't Stop Crocheting! - December 28, 2014

Sunday - December 28th

I think I have a problem.  Every time I sit down to relax and watch tv, I reach over for my yarn and hook and start crocheting.  I decided to take a little break from crocheting because I can, but I can't seem to stop myself.  I can't just sit down and relax any more.  It feels wrong to watch tv without crocheting.  I really didn't see this coming.  I thought I was going to enjoy a nice break from crocheting.  I'm not disappointed though.  I'm still taking a kind of a break.  I'm taking a week long break from crocheting hats for others.  So, for fun, while I was relaxing, I whipped up these two hats.

Also, we got a little snow today!

Playing With Our New Toys - December 26, 2014

Friday - December 26, 2014

Grandma stayed all day yesterday and again today.  It was so nice to have her here with us for so long!  We love having company.  Roger and his mom spent the morning in Logan.  roger wanted to look into getting a new phone, since his broke.  He sent his phone in a week ago, so they should have had it and he should have been able to get a new one, but it didn't happen that way.  for some reason, his phone has been sitting at the post office in Salt Lake for a week.  So, that was a bummer.  Hopefully they will send it soon.  After looking at phones, they went ice skating, then they stopped at the store before heading home.  I spent the morning scrap-booking.  I haven't scrap-booked in forever, because I have had nonstop orders for my crocheted hats that I have had to work on.  It was nice to be able to spend some time scrap-booking.  When roger texted to let me know they were on their way home, I got off the computer and cleaned the house as fast as I could.  Then I started taking down all of the Christmas decorations.  I always like to take it down and put it all away the day after Christmas.

While I was scrap-booking, Alissa was putting together one of her new puzzles.  She is so excited to have puzzles of her own that are bigger than 100 pieces.  Parker came in the kitchen also, he made a fun track with his cars.  He loves his hot wheels.

 Roger and his mom, stopped at a grocery store before heading home.  They got the stuff for us to make Meatball Hashbrown Bake and they got batteries.  Roger's mom surprised us by buying as some groceries while they were at the store!  I love surprises like that.  Food is the thing we always scrimp on.  We rarely have a refrigerator full of food.

Since, we have batteries now, the girls were able to charge and use their flutter-bye Fairies.  They were so excited to try them out.  Alissa's worked perfect, but Brinley's did not.  Her's barely came up out of the stand, then went shooting sideways.  We've gotten it to work a few times since then, but it still doesn't work as well as Alissa'a.  They are such a fun toy.  We all have had fun playing with these.  The girls were a little scared at first.  They are afraid of getting their hands hit by the wings.  Brinley has had her hands hit a few times and she really didn't like that, so she is a little afraid of it, but says she loves it.  Here is the video from our Flutter-bye Fairy fun.

 Brinley was being goofy and kept jumping in front of the camera every time I tried to take a picture of the Flutter-bye Fairy fun.

Christmas 2014

Thursday - December 25th

It's a good thing that I didn't sleep for a little while, then wake up and wrap the gifts, because the kids woke up a lot in the night.  Luckily for me, I'm a deep sleeper and didn't wake up to any of it.  From 2:30 am on, they kept waking up.  Around 3:00 am, they went into Grandma Moser's room and woke her up.  Apparently, they woke roger and his mom up a few different times in the night.  Roger was nice enough to let me sleep until 7:00 am.  He warned the kids before they went to bed, that he was going to let me sleep until 7:00 am, so they were prepared for that.

We let the kids decide if they wanted to open the gifts the slow way, where each person opens a gift at a time and that way we all get to see and enjoy what each person got or they could just go crazy and rip open all the gifts as fast as they wanted to.  They wanted to just rip in to the gifts as fast as possible.  So, that's what we did.  Roger was in charge of getting video of all the fun and I was in charge of snapping pictures.

 This is after all of the gifts were open.  Grandma Moser prepared some meat, cheese, and crackers for us to enjoy.  Brinley was really excited about her new cupcake/tea set.  She couldn't wait to use it and make some yummy treats.

 Roger and Grandma were tired.  Grandma took a nap on the couch and Roger went upstairs for his nap.  While they slept, Alissa and I started putting together her K'nex rollercoaster and Parker installed the new game we got from Aunt Kristy, Disney Infinity.  Alissa took a break from setting up the track to play the game for a while.  I like putting stuff together.  It's like a big puzzle.  I had fun working on the Roller coaster on my own.

 Brinley took a shower and got dressed in her new clothes to have a tea party.

 Here is Alissa's Roller coaster all put together.  She loves it!

 We took Alissa's Roller coaster up to her room so it wouldn't get ruined.  Then we spent the rest of the day making videos.  All of the kids want to have their own YouTube channels.  They each took turns making videos of them playing Minecraft or Disney Infinity.  Brinley's channel is going to be called funnybrinley.  She will do a variety of videos, she said.  So, we made a video where she showed off all of her gifts.  she was kind of wanting to do it like a toy review or something like that.  Then we did a cooking show, so she could try out all her new cupcake stuff.  We really made a lot of videos today.  I need to get a good video editing program so I can start uploading all of their fun videos on YouTube.  Here is a short video of Brinley making cupcakes.

Christmas Eve 2014

Wednesday - December 24, 2014

I stayed up late last night to finish 3 more hats.  The guy who ordered these wanted the hats in time for Christmas.  So, I whipped them up as fast as I could last night then Roger and I delivered them this morning.  I need to do the math to figure it out exactly, but I made around $700.00 selling my hats in November and December.  I think that is crazy!  But so nice.   We did not have any money for Christmas this year, but because of my hats, we had money to buy Christmas for out children!  I still had some shopping to do this morning.  Roger was going to come with me after we dropped off the hats, but his mom called before we had a chance to head to Walmart.  She came to spend Christmas with us this year.  We weren't sure what time she was going to get here, so it was a good thing that she called before we left.  So, Roger and I headed home in time to be there when his mom got here.

 After saying hello to Roger's mom, I had to head out and finish my Christmas shopping.  I waited until Christmas Eve to finish, because I had some more hats to finish and a little more money coming in.  I managed to get some really good deals on Christmas pajamas from Alco and the Family Dollar.  Then I headed to Walmart to get a few groceries and the remaining gifts.  Walmart was ridiculously crowded.  I had too much to do today, so I ended up forgetting to eat.  I realized this as my stomach started to hurt really bad as I pulled into the super crowded Walmart parking lot.  It ended up being a rough trip to the store.  Dealing with the crowds and my tummy aching made it very unpleasant.  I was happy with the things I was able to buy.  I left the store feeling good that the kids would be happy with all the fun stuff I was able to get them this year.  But I also left the store with a yucky headache.  That was frustrating.  Medicine doesn't usually work to get rid of my headaches.  What works is a good nap and I knew I wasn't going to be able to fit one in before we celebrated tonight.  I had a really bad headache at my family Christmas party also.  It's so frustrating.  I haven't had a headache in over month.  I was starting to feel like I was completely cured from my frustrating headaches.

Anyways, Roger's mom came bearing food!  She brought yummy snacks, roast, and potatoes.  Before I went shopping, Roger put the roast in the crockpot so we could enjoy it for dinner tonight.  We don't usually do a nice dinner on Christmas Eve, but after last year when we were at Linda's and they had a really yummy steak dinner, the kids were really wanting to start the tradition of having a nice, big, special Christmas dinner.  This dinner wasn't anything too fancy, but it was still nice, so the kids were happy about that.  They felt glad that we got to have a nice Christmas Eve dinner.  About an hour after we ate dinner, we let the kids open their Christmas pajamas.

 I also promised to let them open one gift.  We got them some fun yummy treat type gifts.  So, we could let the kids open them, then enjoy their gifts while we watch a Christmas movie.  They loved them!

 Brinley got a hot chocolate s'mores kit that came with two cute snowman cups.  Parker got a Root beer Float Kit that came with some fun fancy cups.  Alissa got a Hershey's S'mores kit that came with two Hershey mugs.  They were all really excited and happy with their gifts.  We all fixed ourselves some treats and settled down to watch 'The Muppet's Christmas Carol'.  Roger's mom hadn't seen it before.  I love that movie! 

 So, I tried really hard to fall asleep long enough to get rid of my headache while we watched our movie.  I was able to fall asleep, but it wasn't long enough to get rid of my headache.  That was really frustrating!  After the movie, we all went to bed.  I laid down for a little while, but I didn't want to let myself fall asleep.  I knew that if I did, I wouldn't be able to wake up in enough time to get all the presents wrapped and under the tree.  It was really rough, since I had such a bad headache, but I did it.  I got all the gifts under the tree.  Here is what it looked like before I went to bed.  

Hats - December 23, 2014

Tuesday - December 23, 2014
I woke up and quickly finished two hats that someone on Facebook had ordered.  she was planning to come and pick them up tonight.  She messaged me really late, that she had forgotten and would pick them up on Friday.  That was kind of a bummer, because, I could really use that money to help me finish up my Christmas shopping, but that's okay.  I'll get over it.  I have 3 more hats to finish tonight, so I can deliver them tomorrow.  Here are the hats I finished this morning.

Alissa's friend, Sydney, invited Alissa to go see the Hobbit with her as a Christmas gift to Alissa.  Alissa was so excited about that.  I dropped her off at Sydneys around 10:45 am.  She came home around 5:00 pm.  She said she had a lot of fun.
Roger had to work tonight.  This is his last night of work until January 6th.  That will be nice!  I love it when he doesn't have to work.  Although, I worry that he is going to get really bored during his time off.  We don't have money to go out and play, so I don't know what he'll be doing.
Since, Roger had to work, my friend, Heather came over to play.  She bought the complete series of 'Everwood', a show that was on tv back in 2003.  We both had seen a few episodes back when it was on and we have been dying to see the whole series.  She bought it.  There are 4 seasons.  She has been nice enough to share with me.  She comes over as often as she can, so we can watch a bunch of the episodes.  Brinley loves it, because she gets to play with her friend, Mikenna (Heather's daughter).  We make No-Bake Cookies (or Chocolate Oatmeal - as Heather calls them so they'll sound healthier) to eat and enjoy while we watch our show.  It's fun.
When I checked Facebook tonight, I noticed that our old neighbor from the house we rented on the south side of Tremonton, passed away.  He was only a year older than I am and he has a young family.  I feel so bad for his wife.  I don't know how he passed away.  It seems wrong.  He was so young and didn't seem to be unhealthy.

Moser Family Christmas Party - December 21, 2014

Sunday - December 21st
It was so nice to sleep in and walk up headache free this morning.  It snowed last night!  Parker and Brinley were so excited, they couldn't wait to go out and play in the snow.  Alissa and I slept in and woke up to see them outside playing.  Parker and Brinley had fun, but Brinley realized really quickly that her shoes are terrible for the snow.  Her poor little feet got soaked and she was freezing.  Then on her way inside she stepped in dog poo.  So, she came in from playing outside feeling really bad.  she had to leave her shoes outside until I could get out there and help her clean them off.

We had a nice relaxing morning.  I had to hurry and finish crocheting two hats for Roger's sister Caroline.  In all I brought 5 hats with me to our parties.  My sister Missy ordered 3 hats and Roger's sister Caroline ordered 2.  Missy loved her hats so much, that she paid me more money than what I had charged her.  That was a nice surprise. 

Anyway, so I hurried and finished up those hats.  It is Kristin's birthday today!  It was fun to get to see her and be around her for a little while on her birthday.  They all went out to lunch at Texas road House.  I didn't get to go, because I had to finish those hats and I was worried that we wouldn't be back in time.  My niece, Missy came to pick us up and drive us to the Moser Family Christmas party.  I was afraid that if I went to eat with them, I wouldn't be back in time for her to pick us up.  It was a good thing I didn't go, because I just barely had enough time to finish the Olaf hats for Caroline.  I really don't love the way those hats turned out.  I couldn't get the mouth to look right.

The party was fun.  It would have been better if Roger was there.  It feels so weird to be at one of his family parties without him.  We had a nice dinner, then we visited and opened gifts.

I made a notebook last year, filled with questions for Roger's mom to answer.  I had forgotten all about it.  She had it all filled out and gave it back to me.  That was so much fun to see.  It was fun for everybody to pass it around and read some of the stuff she wrote.  I plan to make a copy of it all, so I can share it with everybody.  Here is the video I took from the party.

After the party, Linda came to pick us up and we slept at her house again.  Since it was Kristin's birthday, there was some really yummy cake waiting for us when we got back to Linda's.

Bone Family Christmas Party - December 20, 2014

Saturday - December 20th
Roger had to work overtime this weekend, so we had to change our plans for the Christmas parties.  I really wanted to go and I knew the kids would be so sad if I told them we weren't going to make it, so we made arrangements for the kids and I to ride the frontrunner and stay at Linda's house until the frontrunner could take us home again on Monday.  Riding the frontrunner with just me and the kids and so much stuff was stressful.  By the time we made it to Linda's, I had a full blown headache.  That was frustrating!  It seems like I had a killer headache at the last 2 of my family Christmas parties.  I really didn't want to have a headache again this year.  It has been at least a month since I had my last headache.  I was starting to feel cured and thinking that I was going to have to deal with this again.
The kids had fun riding on the frontrunner.  It was a lot more fun after the Salt Lake Central stop.  That's where most of the people got off.  After that, we pretty much had the train to ourselves.  The kids were really panicky about the train not stopping long enough for us to get off (that happened to us last time- We were right by the door, but the train barely even paused before it started driving - a worker was able to get the driver to stop and let us off).  So, at the stop before ours, the kids made sure we were sitting right next to the door and ready to go.  We made it off the train without any problems.  Linda and my dad were waiting for us in the parking lot.

After we left the frontrunner station, we drove to Cafe Rio to pick up our dinner.  Linda had paid to have Cafe Rio cater our Christmas party.  The food was so yummy.  That was a fun way to do it.

We got to Linda's just in time for the party.  I still had to wrap our gifts.  We had to stop and buy them at Walmart before we got on the train.

Dad was nice enough to give up his room to me and the kids for the weekend.  So, I ran all our stuff upstairs and quickly wrapped our gifts.  I didn't have to take the presents downstairs though, because Linda decided that the best place to play our games and open our gifts would be up there, since that was a really big room with lots of space for all of us to sit.

After dinner, we all headed upstairs to play games.  We played a fun Christmas Carol game.  I forget what it's called.  We divided into two teams.  One person from each team was the drawer for each round.  They drew a picture and you had to guess what Christmas song they were drawing.  when you figured it out, your whole team was supposed to sing the song to get the point.  It was a lot of fun.  My team won!  We won a big basket full of different candies.  We each got to chose a candy from the basket.

Parker was a little fussy.  He does not like it when things get to loud and crazy.  He just can't handle it.  I ended up giving him my phone and he went to find a place to hide out and be alone.  He is too much like his dad.  Roger doesn't enjoy parties either.  He likes the quiet and calm.
I only took a short video from our Christmas party.  Here it is.

By the time the party was over, my head was throbbing.  I was so ready for bed.  Linda and Dave went upstairs and changed the sheets on dad's bed for me and helped me get the kids' beds ready, since they could see how much I was hurting.  That was very nice.

More Hats - December 16 - 19th

More pictures of the hats I've been working on.

The Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert - December 13, 2014

Saturday - December 13, 2014

Linda texted this morning to see if Roger and I would like to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert.  She had two extra tickets and wasn't sure who she could bring with her.  She though inviting Roger and I was a long shot, but decided to do it anyways.  Roger worked last night, so he didn't wake up until around 2:00pm.  I asked him as soon as he woke up and, of course, he wanted to go.  We had to quickly make some arrangements so the kids would be taken care of.  Alissa is old enough to babysit now, but we were nervous about being so far away.  We arranged for Alissa's friend, Erin to come and help Alissa babysit.  That way the kids wouldn't feel scared and alone and Erin's parents would be able to drive over and help out if there was any kind of emergency.  The kids were all happy with that idea.

Roger and I hurried to get ready.  Linda texted that the concert  started at 8:00 pm, but my brain read that it starts at 7:00 pm.  So, we hurried to the frontrunner station.  We stopped to get some food first, but we had to scarf it down in order to get on the train in time and make it there before the concert started.  Linda texted to see if we wanted to get some food together in Salt Lake, but I told her no, because we wouldn't have enough time.  She was confused about that, but didn't say anything.  We would have had time, had I not been thinking the concert started at 7:00 pm.  So, Roger and I hurried and stuffed our faces then raced to get on the train before it left.  I was frustrated because I was hungry and I didn't have enough time to finish my food.  But I dealt with it because I wanted to get there on time.

We made it in time and I was confused when we got there, why Linda wasn't there yet.  That's when I found out that I had the wrong time.  We had an hour and a half to wonder around and see the sights.  I was frustrated that we hurried, but it was nice to be able to relax and walk around Temple Square with Roger.  It was nice to be able to see all of the sights and not have to worry about keeping an eye on the kids.  We had fun wondering around.

When Linda and my Dad got there, we all walked over to the conference center to see the concert.  It was so fun to get to be there with them.  We loved the concert!  The muppets were there!  And the guy who is the voice of Hans in the movie frozen.  It was so good.  The most memorable performance of the night was the organist.  He is so talented!  He was playing 2 different songs at a time using both his hands and his feet and it sounded amazing!  It was so impressive!  Anyway, we loved everything about the Christmas concert and are so happy that we got to go.  

The concert ended about 10 minutes before the frontrunner was scheduled to leave to take us home.  there was not enough time to get there and catch it before it left.  So, we had to wait around for an hour before the next train came.  We didn't get home until around 1:00 am.  I felt bad for being out so late, but Alissa and her friend didn't seem to mind.

While we were gone, the kids had a cookie decorating kit that I told that they could use.  I made them promise to clean up a little before and after they did them and they had to take pictures of their fun.  Here are the pictures they took.