Getting There in Time to Party

No time soon do I plan on repeating the events of Dec. 14. Flying alone. Ok, well I wasn't technically alone. I got to brave security and the air-headed, Southwest check in-lady with Rach and Gavin. But once we got on the plane they made us split up. She was still a comfort sitting behind me, but that's where anything resembling comfort, ended.

Maybe this kid's face explains how he felt about the situation. Given, it was his nap time and he doesn't sleep well anywhere but his crib. One hysterical fit later.. sleep ensued and my nerves had an hour to calm down. The other four hours of flight were spent stuffing his face to muffle the screams (not sad screams, just "I'm on a loud plane, and thus need to be louder than the plane even if I'm just playing" screams, and watching Kidsongs. Bless portable DVD players.

Another blessing... direct flights. We got in around 8:30pm and had to say goodbye to Rach, who was connecting to Salt Lake.

The next day, I got together with a couple of my best friends from high school. One of them, Jessica, lives in Pittsburg while her husband also does dental school. She was only in town until the next day so we made sure to get together for lunch before she headed back. I'm amazed that we aren't doing a "stare off" or flashing the peace sign or some other made up gang sign in this picture. I don't think we even have a picture of us in high school without such poses. It doesn't really need to be said, we were really cool :) I love being with these girls and visiting. It's still really weird to me that we're all moms and supposedly "grown ups". Between the four of us we have 9 kids. Ok, Jenni really spikes that number with 4, but still... :)

[Side note to this day: I just have to add that I got to drive the car my sister and I shared, post high school, to Jenni's house that day. Good 'ole Cami. Cami is short for Camry. My parents still own it and I had the pleasure of driving it for our stay in AZ. I was actually really excited about it. It was like stepping into a time machine. Excitement turned to panic, however, as I steered that bad boy onto Southern and passed 30mph. Grinding noises accompanied by clunks and scraping metal had me convinced I had either lost a tire or dropped my transmission. I swerved into Target parking lot, frantically calling my sister to check that this car was in fact drivable. After confirmation from my dad that it was indeed road worthy (questionable), I cautiously made my way to Jenni's. After I grew accustomed to the cacophony of noises, I again grew fond of Cami. I hope she's still around next Christmas to remind me of my childhood. (If only we could take a joy ride in Jenni's GrEEn BeAn truck, my life would be complete :)]

The next few days brought me my husband (yea for the 1st semester of the "worst" year of dental school being over!), a fun night with my aunts and cousins making cute headbands (WHY did I forget a pic?!), and much cleaning to get ready for some major family parties. My parents hosted both the Lindblom and Udall parties this year. Friday night brought the 80+ crazies known as the Lindbloms. Ok, let's be honest, the name Montague should really be assigned to most of those crazies. :) 51 to be exact. (My mom counted). They really took "multiply and replenish" to heart. We ate yummy Mexican food in the outside garage, then came inside for the usual "talent" program. I use the word, talent, lightly. It's usually "shove your kids onstage to sing Jingle Bells" talent. Maybe that's part of the reason why my mom made my family learn "Oh Say What is Truth" for this year. My parents and brothers spent the past month memorizing all four verses as a Christmas present to my grandpa. It's his favorite hymn and he also has it memorized. Have you ever paid attention to the words in this song? It's ridiculously hard. They had to use the dictionary just to pick apart the meaning of most of it. Us married kids only got in on memorizing the last verse and cheated with a hymn book for the other verses. We struggled with staying on tune (A Capella is always a sketchy way to go), but we did it.

What better way to end the night, than going on a hay ride? We just didn't know this was the hay ride that never ends. We look happy because this was taken before it started. There were two trailers and we happened to get on the one full of kids. Kids who like to sing, but don't know the words to any songs past 1/2 way through the first verse. That's when we started hearing renditions of The Star Spangled Banner. And after a half hour it got cold, even for us seasoned New Yorkers. But it was fun passing a backyard wedding reception a couple times and trying to be louder than the music playing :)


Sunday night was the Udall family party. Still a lot of people, but significantly smaller than the other side or our family. Again, we started with dinner in the outside garage. This time, soup and bread.

I love being with Shelley and Leah!

For the Udall party, we have a program where Luke 2 is read, interspersed with Christmas hymns. I love this program. It's short, but really brings the Spirit and reminds you of the real reason for Christmas. Next, we have the second reason for Christmas... presents. :)

The unmarried kids do a gift exchange and the married kids do a White Elephant exchange. We brought an annoying electric megaphone, complete with siren, that I knew a Hogle boy would snatch up. Sure enough, Lanny and Jesse fought over that one! Thanks for the idea, mom :) And Trav was nice enough to let me steal the gift I wanted.. a distressed picture of the temple. Love it! Thanks, Natalie!

All the single ladies! Just kidding. Only three are still single!!

Then, Monday night we had the Evans family party. Unfortunately, we missed the party for Paula's side of the family the week before. We ate "Flora Specials" (chimichangas), and had a talent show. Then the adults played a game that scored us a gift card to Ned's Crazy Sub! Not too shabby :) Here's Grandma with Collin and his cousin, Matt, that is a few months older.

It was so fun to be home for family parties this year since last year we missed them all. We love being a part of BiG WoNdeRFuL FaMiLiEs!!

Fugly Sweater Party!

Well it's tradition! Two years running, the Shaws have thrown an Ugly Sweater Party complete with a White Elephant Exchange. Minus the ickiness of picking through thrift store merchandise, I love this idea! Here are our 2009 treasures. I love that mine can double as an 80's costume. Trav's is more seasonal appropriate :)

Crescent picked one of our gifts first- a box FULL of tuna fish. But wait! There's more... Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies!! Can you believe this gift got stolen the max of two more times! Had no idea it would be such a hit. And here I thought I was just getting rid of all the tuna we never eat.

A few more funny ones...
A pic of Bron playing baseball (autographed by said player) with an authentic baseball...

A wine cooler...

(we'll be putting that bad boy to some good use!)

The second appearance of Pink Unicorn!

This was the second gift we brought. I wish I'd captured Andy's face- it was hilarious. It was like he was actually excited to get the pony. Also included was a "Theraputic Waterfall" that one of my students gave me, but I never used. Classy overall I think :)

I thought Denise's gift was so funny. The monkey reminded me of the one on Night at the Museum. And that cell phone happens to be Trav's old razor that the Shaws used for a while, then decided to share the love.

The Position of the Day book also made a second appearance! Ironically enough, Tiff was the one to bring it last year. She didn't go home with it though. That bad boy definitely got stolen twice :)

Second irony of the night. Trav picked a ghetto, old stereo spacesaver. These things seem to have been pretty popular out here, decades ago. The irony is that we have an even more ghetto one in our kitchen that gets one fuzzy station. Earlier this week I tried to figure out how to rip it out and throw away (unsuccessfully), so now we have something to replace it with! Oh joy :)

Group shot! Rach called out to do our best "Paris" pose. Dang are we sexy.

I just had to.

Can you find Miss Unicorn?

Collin was supposed to go to sleep in his pack and play, but I think he could hear the party and just wasn't having bed time. So he joined the party and was doing just fine until he spotted Dave. So funny. We figured he must be scared of men with dark features and/or scruff. Dave was nice as could be, smiling at him and talking to him and Collin just lost it. Dave's face is like, "Ya, that did the trick!" :)

Oh man, Doug's turtleneck/vest combo was my favorite. Plus, he figured out it doubled as a baby sling.

Well, we didn't win best Ugly Sweater (Andy won for his homemade, cottonball/puffy paint ensemble), but you couldn't ask for a better night. Here's to lookin' your ugliest!

Tommy no likey...

Well, it's been a week! Stephy no likey snow. And boy have we had snow. My sister texted me to say that Buffalo had shown up on the news a few times this week and she wondered if I was excited to come to AZ soon. That's a no brainer :) In the meantime, I've been doing some {indoor} projects this week. Sewing cards....

curtains....

(not sure if I like these, the patterns are crazy, but they match the bedspread)

rice bags....
(I made a bunch of these to hand out for Christmas this year, along with fudge {didn't have the energy to make the amazing caramel corn. I'll leave that to my mother in law :)}

Also on the indoor list: cleaning! Have to get the house spic and span before I leave. I sure wish you could clean a room and just shut the door and have it remain spotless. Sigh. Not to be. It's amazing how much mess three people can make.

Also this week, my parents have been living it up in NYC! So close, yet so far away :( My dad is on business there every month, so this time he took my mom along to play. It was fun to see glimpses of them on the Today Show and the David Letterman show. This picture was posted on the Today Show blog. My Mom's motto: Be groovy. :)

On Thursday I was out with some friends when Collin started acting up. Nothing was making him happy, so Rach suggested giving him the lemon slice in my water. We thought we'd see some funny faces, but instead he chowed down! He loved it, sucking out all the juice and chewing away at the rind. Funny boy. He's been pretty {hormonal} lately which we think is due to his top teeth coming in.

Later that day he had his 9 month check up and it was snowin' and blowin' outside! Visibility was bad, but I was so proud of myself for not panicking! Most of the time I couldn't see more than two car lengths ahead of me, but I just followed the tracks in the snow, went 15mph and eventually made it to the doctors! My little munchkin weighs all of 16.1 pounds (10%) and is 26 inches.

A few things about him at 9 months:

- He's so close to crawling, getting up on all fours (or sometimes just his toes), but still just scoots backward.

- He wants to eat everything we are eating!! When we have food that he wants, he starts grunting really loud and reaching for us.

-He loves bread, cheese, peaches, pears and apparently lemon slices.

- He only has two bottom teeth.

-He finally started sleeping through the night at 8 months.

- He hates being left alone. If I leave the room, he screeches for me until I return.

When we got back from the doctors, it had snowed so much, you couldn't see the driveway. I gunned it, and got this far. Barely out of the street. It was snowing so hard and Collin had fallen asleep so I had to leave it for Trav to dig out when he got home. Poor Trav.

And even with all that bad weather, we were still crazy enough to go get a free burrito at Chipotle that night. A new one opened up on Niagra Falls Blvd and they were giving out free burritos so we joined the other hungry, crazy people in line. Don't worry, I didn't subject Collin to the cold, I waited inside the Carters store next door until the line was inside.

You can always count on good 'old Ryan for a smile!

Yum! We only waited 20-30 min. for the food and I thought it was worth it. We saw lots of other dental students there and laughed at what us {poor} folk would do for a free burrito! Ah, memories. :)

Stay tuned for pics of our Ugly Sweater Party!!

Party Hardy

The Buffalo ward does an annual Christmas ornament exchange that has quickly become one of my favorite traditions. Before this came along, our squat 4 foot {spruce} was quite bare. I think the coordinated, matching trees are beautiful and fancy, but not my style. I much prefer the coziness of a "pieced together" tree, full of odds and ends ornaments that remind me of the person or place they came from. The ornament that I made this year ended up looking nothing like the picture on the blog from which I shamelessly stole my idea. I wasn't pleased. But since $$ and hours had been spent, I stuck with it and it has since grown on me.(Like a fungus) (A.D.D. moment- Whenever someone says something has "grown on them" I always add "like a fungus" on the end in my mind. Kind of like you add "in bed" to whatever you pull out of a fortune cookie. Aaaaanyway.)

This year, 23 participated, thus... 23 ornaments.

The exchange party was Friday night and it was a blast. Fun people. Yummy treats. Good conversation. Scratch that, loud/hilarious conversation. I brought sugar cookies and I have to share the recipe because I've finally found the perfect sugar cookie recipe from which I will never depart. Until this day, I had yet to make a good sugar cookie.

2 Cups sugar
1 Cup butter, softened
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 Cup sour cream
6 Cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. In an electric or stand mixer, cream the sugar and butter. Add eggs, vanilla and sour cream until well combined. Slowly add in the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt until well combined.2. In 2 batches, place in plastic wrap in a disc shape and chill for at least 2 hours for best results.3. Once chilled, roll and cut into desired shapes. Bake at 350 degrees for 9-11 minutes depending on how thick you cut your cookies. Remove and let cool. Frost and decorate as desired.
Trust me- they are delish!

Then tonight we went to our ward's Christmas party. Here are some of the rockin' guests.

And here is the scary man that Collin is now petrified of. Haha. Just the past couple of times that Ryan has been around, Collin will spot him, then burst into tears. We think it's pretty hilarious. No idea what sparked the tantrums. I think he must have inherited it from me. I have memories as a child of being terrified of my cousin, Tyler. No idea why, except he was big, male, and a teenager. We would go to their house, and if Tyler was around, I'd either hide behind my mom (which was no good, because she'd just push us toward him) or take cover in the suburban. He milked it too, because I even remember him chasing us out to the car, then circling it while sporatically shaking the whole thing and roaring at us. Ah, childhood memories. Now I get to torture my own spawn.

Better keep an eye on that guy. He's trouble! :)

Needless to say, he didn't last long, so off to home we went to continue watching another movie in our list of Christmas favorites. Tonight was National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I love this one. Silly, slap stick comedy. Very quotable. "I pledge allegiance, to the flag...." "Clark! I don't want to spend the holidays DEAD." hehe. We watched Home Alone last weekend. Just got to fit in Elf, A Christmas Story, Serendipity, and While You Were Sleeping. I know the last two are chick flicks, but they're set at Christmas time, right? :)

YW in Excellence

When last night was over, I breathed a BIG sigh of relief.

I've been planning our YW in Excellence for the past month (yes, I know it's December!) and it's taken no small amount of time. I've been in Young Womens since we moved here, but I was only put in the presidency four months ago. About a month and half ago, I was at a stake leadership meeting when they mentioned YW in Excellence. Come again? I literally recoiled in my seat realizing no date had been set for this event. Since then, I've madly tried to get the girls ready with their Personal Progress, come up with a program, plan the meal, ask girls to give talks/sing etc., delegate assignments for food and help, apologize to the bishopric that this was not planned sooner, make food, and on and on. I've been on the phone so much the past week, I think I used up at least 1/2 our minutes for the month. I felt I literally had to beg people to come.

With many needing rides, I filled my car to the brim with girls and food and precariously made my way to the church building in the pouring rain, only soaking Chelsey part way with the ham juice from the pan she was carrying. Amid kids running around screaming, young men throwing footballs over the decorated tables, and crazy people calling on the hall phone wondering if we were watching Obama (huh?), we were able to get dinner on the tables and the program started.

At 7pm I felt on the verge of tears from shear stress and realizing not 1/2 of the people I thought would come, were actually there. I made myself eat since it had been at least 7 hours since my last meal, but had absolutely no appetite. As we got the program going, and especially once my talk was over, I started feeling much more relaxed. We actually had 5 parents come (believe it or not that's pretty good) and the girls seemed to enjoy the evening and the plaques I made for them to take home. I was so proud of them for having the courage to get up in front of everyone and explain their projects, or lead the music, say the theme, or sing. The parents seemed to listen as I explained the PP program and most importantly, you could feel the Spirit in the room. And for that reason, it was completely worth it. I was home by ten and even though my house was a disaster area and my baby had been neglected that day, I was feeling happier than I had in a while. I'm so grateful for the other leaders helping with the food, invitations, and getting the girls ready with their projects. And it also made me REALLY grateful for my own YW leaders growing up. I totally took them and the program for granted. I never realized what a blessing it was in my life.

Here are the girls that came that night.

This is one of the signs I made for them to take home.

(No, I didn't come up with this on my own. I copied a sign I have hanging in my living room that a friend gave me for Christmas years ago. Remember, me=not crafty)

The quote is the mutual theme for 2009.

Yea for YW in Excellence and an even bigger yea for it being over :)

THe GooD, the BaD, and the SLoW :)

The Good:

My sweet new nephew. 3rd grandson. No granddaughters. We love our boys!

The Bad:

Dec. 1- Awakening to a winter wonderland. Icy memories came crashing back.

The Slow:
Sweet boy Collin. 8 1/2 months and just scooting. Backwards. His frequent {stuck} spot. Mom doesn't mind at all. Still not getting into things yet. :)

And just because:
Been seeing more of this lately. Gotta keep those fingers extended. Reminds me of the "neener neener neener" pose.