A Great End To 2010!

We had such a fun December! Megan and I sang a song at our ward Christmas party, Brad and I celebrated our 10TH ANNIVERSARY, we made Christmas candy with family & at home, Julianne & Paul's family gave us 25 gifts to open throughout the month, we visited with lots of family, saw the Christmas lights at Temple Square, we made our very own sledding hill, had a great Christmas Eve program, got some fun new toys Christmas morning, and Brad got to talk with his brother who is serving an LDS mission in Texas.

Before singing our duet at the ward Christmas party (Megan did sooooo good! I was so proud of her.)


Our Happy 10th Anniversary! Happier than ever!


My sister Shalyce is such a fun aunt! She made these cute Santa cookies with the girls. These cookies turned out a lot better than the majority of our candy that night!


Daddy's little helper!


Thank you to the Blacks for making our December SOOOOO fun! Starting on December 1st we got to open up a gift each day. The first day was a chocolate calendar, and the second day was colored paper so that the kids could make a countdown chain. I also had gone out and bought a small Christmas tree for the kids to put a small ornament on each day, meaning that every morning the kids got to: 1. pull off a link on their paper chain 2. eat a chocolate from their calendar 3. put an ornament on the tree 4. open a gift. Our mornings were very fun!!


Santa Pancakes (our gift from the Black's were canned cherries & a fun recipe. The kids loved them!)



Christmas Eve:
What a cute Nephite - and my dad stole the show as Samuel!

What a cute wise man!

What a pretty angel!


Megan's letter to Santa - she wanted to set the cookies and milk right next to the fireplace so that Santa would see them as soon as he came down the chimney. He sure seemed to like what she set out. She got the cutest letter back from Santa I've ever seen!



A new bike for Christmas! Paige got a scooter from Santa, and I have to include a picture of Ashlie in her new skirt! My mom made matching skirts for all of the granddaughters, & they turned out so cute. I couldn't believe how nice the weather was at my parent's house Christmas morning. I'm glad Megan got to try her bike out since it snowed 20 inches at our house a couple days later!!



We found out that all Ashlie really needed to be happy Christmas morning was fruit roll-ups. She loves them, and she was eating as many from her stocking & her sister's stockings as she could.


Visiting with the Woodward's Christmas weekend - at Brad's parent's house we got to visit with Brad's sister's family (Becky, Scott, & kids) and his brother's family (Ray, Amanda, & kids). Megan and her cousin Rainha were pretty cute, coming up with well over 100 reasons why they must be related. The first reason was that they both have "reddish-brown hair". Megan's hair is definitely brown, but she's called it blonde when she wants to be like Paige, and now it's turned a bit reddish it sounds like! :)
This photo doesn't show everyone. I wish it did.


Sadly, Christmas is over, but to prolong the fun we decided to go to Temple Square to see the lights on our way home from the Woodward's. My parents, my sister McKenzie, and my niece Alyssa joined us. We thought with Christmas being over it would be easy to park and walk around -- not the case! We almost gave up on the idea after driving around what seemed like FOREVER before finding the perfect spot! It turned out very fun, and I'm so glad we went. Check out these beautiful photos!




This post wouldn't be complete without sharing some video of us sledding down our VERY OWN sledding hill today! We had so much fun. Even I had my snow suit on, and was going down it like crazy. The best part was that we could sled while Ashlie napped right inside the house. :) Brad worked like crazy tossing the snow clear up to the top. I tried to help the other day when we got so much snow, but my shovelfuls mostly went down low, making the hill fatter! :) All are welcome to visit us and try out the hill. Grandpa John's given it a try!



I hope you all had a great Christmas and that you're excited for a new year! I always think it's fun to start fresh with a new year, with new goals. One of mine is to BLOG MORE! Thanks for reading this long thing! Love you all! - Camille

Content with my S-L-O-W pace

Last week I found this quote from Marjorie Pay Hinckley (President Hinckley's wife), and it just really fits me. It also explains why I'm just now posting about Halloween, a week after-the-fact. My life rarely slows down, and even while posting this I've had maybe 1,001 interruptions, and I'm tossing miniature Chips Ahoy cookies to my three children to keep up with their demands! :) I love to blog, but unfortunately I haven't scheduled it into my life as well as I'd like to have.

Here's her quote:
"We women have a lot to learn about simplifying our lives. We have to decide what is important and then move along at a pace that is comfortable for us. We have to develop the maturity to stop trying to prove something. We have to learn to be content with what we are."
— Marjorie Pay Hinckley

A Rainy, Yet Happy Halloween

Megan & Paige went trick or treating with their cousin Alyssa this year. Northern Utah had some rainy weather Halloween night, so the girls had to wear jackets over top of their costumes, and they had to carry umbrellas, but they were troopers and came home with quite the load of goodies! Kim and I stayed home with our babies (yes, I'm still calling Ashlie my baby at 15 months) and handed out candy, and we saw this beautiful rainbow out her back window. Paige came home wet up to her calves, but like I said before, they had fun!
Megan was a princess, and Paige was a butterfly:


The girls with their cousins, Alyssa & Ethan:

October 29th Brad got off work a little early so that we could go do some fun Halloween things down in Utah County. I found a pumpkin walk for us to go see, and online I had found "Come ride the Stringtown Nightmare Express in Lindon...". Sounded fun enough, so we thought we'd check it out. Well, we parked, walked over to the house, and quickly realized this was a larger attraction than we had thought. So what we thought would've taken a half hour, turned out taking our evening - and it was worth it!!! The lady at the start of the line said it was an hour and 45 minute wait. We weren't really prepared to hold Ashlie for 2 hours, but we figured we were there, and we should give it a try. I'm writing about this because everyone should go with their little families. It was so great. This family has gone all out, and it's all free of charge. It's 455 East 200 North in Lindon.
Here's a photo of the girls and Brad at the beginning of our wait. You can see the train coming around in the background on the next photo. I wish we would've kept the camera with us, but Brad kindly ran it, along with other things we didn't want to hold back to the car:


We did fun Halloween things all month long. Now it's on to Thanksgiving and Christmas - Yeah! and AHHHHH!!!! ( I haven't even started!!)

What a happy day!

I've been on cloud nine all day! I decided a little while ago that I wanted to refinish the china hutch I was so lucky to inherit of my grandmother's, and today we finished it!! My grandma collected cups and saucers, and when I was just a little girl I decided I wanted a collection just like hers. I finally feel like I can display what I have upstairs in my living room. Brad helped me sand, prime, and paint it an antique white color, and we stained the edges. We removed the back panel of the hutch and reinstalled a bead board backing (which I love!). I don't have a fireplace mantel, an entry way, or a large entertainment center to decorate, so I was just in heaven actually having somewhere to display some seasonal things. Happy day!!!

The hutch BEFORE (I almost forgot to snap some photos - I'd already removed the left cupboard door as you can see):





And the AFTER (We bought new hardware, but I figured out that we could use our new knobs along with a decorative part of the old knob and it made our knobs look even better!):






I was already having a great day when I decided to FINALLY pull out my Halloween decorations. See, I really wasn't that excited since I didn't have anything but a tinsel black cat!! I opened up my Halloween decor bin and lo and behold "three tied up grocery bags with carefully wrapped items inside"...turns out I had bought after Halloween items last year (so they still had the tags), and I'd forgotten all about them. So I had new decorations after all. Here's a couple of them:


We had a great weekend. I loved watching conference, and really loved President Monson's message to us about being happy and positive. My dad ran the St. George marathon, so I was thinking of him Saturday, and he was amazing as always. During the two hour break between sessions on Saturday, Brad and I and the girls drove up to Strawberry Reservoir and saw the kokene salmon. On the way home we had a fun picnic lunch at a cool little spot we discovered for our first time called "Whiskey Springs". I'd checked out a library book for Megan called "Look what I did with a leaf", which made her want to collect leaves so she could make leaf animals, so we gathered leaves too. Fun day. Here's some pictures of our Saturday as a family:


Her first animal was this cat (which she made up without using the book):

Then she made this cow (which she made by looking at her library book):

And this was her bear... :)


Okay, this is turning out to be the longest post ever, but it wouldn't be complete without writing about HOW FUN it is to watch Megan play soccer twice a week. I never thought it would be all that fun spending a Saturday morning watching a game, but I guess when it's your child out there playing, it somehow magically becomes REALLY FUN. I absolutely love it. She's been having a great time. Here's a couple of photos. I love the second photo because it shows her in "sprint mode". When she decides to run fast, she sure has a good sprint with those super long legs. She's a little too timid and nice, but she's got a great run!

Paige (and I) Start Preschool!

Today was Paige's first day of preschool, and I taught the kids today. It was so much fun. I seriously was meant to do this. My teaching days just came back to me! I'm switching off with 3 other moms, and we do two days during the week (1 1/2 hours each time) and then we switch so that we only teach about 2 times a month. I did A is for Apple today and it went great! I set out Paige's clothes last night, and she came out of her room this morning at 8:00, and was not only dressed, but was wearing her backpack! She wore her backpack while we took Megan to school, and until preschool started at 10:00 (She did let me remove it while I did her hair however). I didn't get a picture of all four girls (one was in Disney World), but I did get a photo of her with one of her little friends that's doing preschool with us.

I also thought I'd post about a couple other things: So, over Labor Day weekend Brad took all three girls up to his parent's house and gave me a weekend ALONE (at my request). I was feeling like I needed a moment to "fill the well" so to speak, so I could do the mommy thing a bit better. Well, my sweet visiting teacher remembered that I was going to have this "scrapbooking weekend" so to speak, and she brought this by the Friday my family was leaving and she wished me Happy Scrapping!:Doesn't that just make you want to be a better visiting teacher?!

Ashlie is into EVERYTHING right now! She discovered where our toothbrushes were a while ago, and I had Brad put a child lock on the vanity drawer so we wouldn't constantly have her sucking on our toothbrushes, and what did she discover next? Well, if she climbed into the main cupboard on the vanity, she could reach inside of the toothbrush drawer! I have such a smart child!!! So now we have a child lock on the vanity cupboard as well! :) The other day I was ready to run errands with Ashlie and Paige when I just ran to get my purse and my shoes. I walk down the hall saying, "Okay, I think we're all ready to g....." and I see that Ashlie was covered in raspberry jam (which she reached on the table!)
It's fun things like this that zap your energy I tell ya, but I wouldn't trade my cutie #3 for anything.

I was telling my family about this just last night, so I thought I'd post a picture of it from about a month ago. Brad doesn't put a catcher on our lawn mower, so he doesn't have to dump the grass. This tradition started way back probably with Paige, but he almost always mows the lawn with Ashlie on his back, while I cook dinner or something. Isn't he wonderful!

School has begun!

This morning Megan went off to 2nd grade! I walked her into her classroom, and the teacher let them choose where they wanted to sit, so she got to sit by her good friend Lilly today. I'm sure that made her happy. I'll miss her being with me at home, but it was nice to have something motivate me to get up and get going this morning. Routines can be nice. She's a cutie, and here she is just before leaving for school this morning:

Brad took off work Tuesday so we could do one last summer outing as a family. We had a great day! We drove down to Thanksgiving Point for their $2 Tuesday deal, and went through the Museum of Ancient Life they have there. I took tons of pictures that didn't turn out because our camera takes terrible indoor photos, but we had such a great time.



After the museum we had a picnic by the Provo River, then we went to the movie theater to see "How to Train Your Dragon". Who knew there really were still dollar theaters around?! We found a movie theater in Provo that was $1, and on Mondays it's only 75 cents!!! The rest of the week it's a whopping $1.50. Isn't that great?! So they had about 8 movies to choose from, and I think for sure we'll be back. The movie was cute!

After the movie we went to Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon. The girls biked up the trail, and then had tons of fun playing barefoot in the water below the falls.
Megan just kept going higher, and higher, and higher (barefoot). Later she told me that she was trying to hike up to the rock that she's sitting on in this photo:

If You Loved Twilight, I Think You'll Love This Book!

I just finished "The Hourglass Door" by Lisa Mangum last night, and wanted to spread the word that it was really good. It reminded me of Twilight all throughout the book. It's almost 400 pages, but I read it in about a week. It's totally clean - no swearing or anything, and the author is from Utah. Anyway, that's my suggestion for a good read. Now I can't wait to pick up the second one in the series "The Golden Spiral".

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere!

Okay, so I feel like I know somewhat what I'm doing when it comes to flowers, but apparently I don't know as much as I thought. I know that petunias are annuals. I mean, I did purchase them in the annual section of the greenhouse, and in years past I've had to repurchase & plant them yearly (that to me would mean "annual"). Well, this year we did the same. For the first time in three years we planted regular petunias instead of wave petunias, and what began to randomly start growing in our flower beds two weeks ago? WAVE PETUNIAS!!! This is too cool to us, so I'm wondering if anyone has ever heard of this happening.

The petunias I planted this year:


The wave petunias we planted last year coming up from seed (unfortunately I thought they were a weed at first, so I weeded out most of them). Here's what they look like:



Here's one of the wave petunias that grew and has mixed into my regular petunia plant:


So, speaking of flowers, I thought I'd show some pictures of two of the flower hair clips I just made this morning. I've been wanting to make some since before Ashlie was born, and I'm finally getting around to it. Most of the ones I made are much smaller than these, but the girls chose the big ones today!

Here's Paige:


And Megan:


Okay, I'm adding this photo in later in the day. I went crazy & spent 3 hours making flower clips today. So I made these plus Megan's currently wearing a blue one in her hair. Now I know why women sell these. It's so easy to make a TON! I have about 65 clips leftover plus oodles and oodles of flowers. I think I have a fun new addiction!