End of 2012 Catch Up Part 2

I think I was overloading the last post so I thought I would pick up and finish here.  I love this picture because Joey was reading to Carlee and Carlee was following along in a different book.  All of my kids like books.  They love DSI and Wii time, but they have always loved to read a good book.  So this picture made me smile.


Thanksgiving rolled around and off we went to Utah to celebrate.  The kids had the week off school and so we took advantage of the time and left as soon as we could. 

  

I love celebrating Thanksgiving in Utah because we also celebrate Christmas.  It's a fun way to kick off the holiday season.  The day after Thanksgiving we do our family gift exchanges and then have fun doing a special teen and adult gift exchange.  The younger cousins give to each other.  Family get togethers not only include food and gifts but lots and lots of dodge ball.  The weather was unusually warm and so the lack of snow meant even more time to throw balls at each other.  I have yet to determine why this sport is so much fun, since several kids and adults come home injured, but oh well.  For some crazy reason the Priors all seem to love it.  

 Carlee turned ONE!

 It is hard for me to believe that one year has already past, but my baby turned one right after Thanksgiving.  About three weeks before her birthday the doctor did an endoscopy and several blood test in hopes of figuring out why Carlee seemed to be allergic to so many things.  The results all came back negative.  Shortly after we found out Carlee wasn't allergic to ANYTHING, she started trying EVERYTHING and was keeping food down.  I don't know if getting older made the difference, or if she just had some weird reoccurring problem that cleared up, but we are counting our blessings that Carlee is healthy, happy and EATING CAKE on her 1st Birthday. 

December has been a crazy month.  Our family went through one sick bug after the next each rotating through a different child or adult and then sometimes striking twice.  I was in charge of the ward Christmas party which turned out great, but between that and all of the sick bugs we didn't do a lot of the things we typically do at Christmas time.  We did get around to having our Holiday Craft Party but not until the Friday before Christmas. 

The change in timing ended up being great because my Sister Carrie and her family were in town.  Instead of inviting 30 families this year we let each of our children choose two families and then we invited my siblings who live in AZ or had already arrived for Christmas.  I will never forget cute Matt Huber (my nephew) making Rudolph cupcakes, getting high on sugar and making up new words to "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" and laughing hysterically.  It was awesome.

 

 Christmas morning rolled around and everyone made out like bandits.  The kids each get one big gift from mom and dad and then Santa always seems to do some spoiling too. 

My sister Carrie and her husband get gag gifts in their stockings from Santa.  It was hilarious.  Mark got butter in the shape of a Christmas tree and a six foot long extenda fork.  Carrie got a hot pick sparkly peace belt.  Gotta love that silly Santa. 

 With so many of us living in AZ everyone decided to come to AZ for Christmas this year.  My parents, and sister Carrie and her family stayed with us.  Rich, his wife Rachel and Jaime stayed with Cindy and her family and Grandma and Penny even came up for a night.  The only one that couldn't make it was my brother Bob.  We missed having them but hope to convince them to come next time. 

 We had a lot of fun, but I think the excitement might have been a bit much for Great Grandma Brown.  She seemed ready to go home when the time came, but we are really glad she made it. 

 When you live in AZ and want to see some snow, you don't have to go to far to find it.  We live about 20 minutes from a place called Madera Canyon; and even though it's only 65-70 degrees at our house it's a whole lot colder in the mountains.  With the kids out of school we decided to take a day and spend some time in the snow.  Our 45 minutes of fun was perfect and then down the hill we came and back to our comfy homes.  The kids would have stayed longer, but with a baby who wasn't used to the cold I thought our brief visit was good enough for now. 

So here's to a great 2013.  Maybe I won't get so far behind in the future, but no promises. . . Sorry.