Holiday Hoopla

Boy, am I backlogged with blogging. Working full time and having 3 kids leaves little time for much else, including taking pictures and writing a blog. I will try to come up with the important highlights of the last few months.

In November there was Thanksgiving (obviously) and we had a nice dinner with my family at my sister's house. Bonnie has 2 cousins that are close to her age. Jayson was born 2 days before she was and Liberty was born the day after.

 Bonnie and Liberty

 

 

Bonnie and Jayson

My sister Lindsay moved to Colorado in July and I have missed her so much. Thankfully, she was able to come and visit us for Thanksgiving week.
We stuffed ourselves silly and played a few games. Then I went Black Friday shopping. Whoopee!
Everything I wanted went on sale at either 8 or 10pm and wasn't in high demand, so I was out of there at 10:30.  I bought new phones for me and Jared. We decided to drop AT&T since our contact with them was up and we switched to Straight Talk. Everything about it has been great so far and we have not been disappointed.

Jared has been working very hard to finish this semester. It is his first semester in the Respiratory Therapy program and he has had a lot of work to do. Finals just finished this week and it's so nice to know that we can just have some time to relax.

At the beginning of December we had our usual Hunsaker Christmas party with the extended relatives on my mom's side. We had lots of great food and fun at the auction and then the kids got to sit on Santa's lap.

Uriah asked for a guitar, which was the first (and last) time we had ever heard him ask for that. Santa even asked him if he wanted an acoustic one and Uriah said "oh, yes!" Silly boy.

Jordyn refused to look at Santa for the longest time, until finally we had bugged her enough to look up. Then she made this face...

 

This was Bonnie's first time sitting on Santa's lap and she had absolutely no troubles at all. She just kept looking at him and then looking at us. She loved the cookie that he gave her. She is the first of my children who didn't get sad the first time they met Santa. I don't know who this man is, but I think he makes the best Santa I have ever seen. His beard is real and he tells all the children who sit on his lap that he loves them. He even told me he loved me when he gave me a hug. I wish everyone were just a little more like this man.

 

Since October, Bonnie has gone from crawling a little to crawling almost faster than we can walk down the hall. If you go in the bathroom, you have to shut the door really fast because she is right there on your heels. She pulls herself up to the furniture (or the wall, or your legs) and has even been standing by herself for about 5 seconds at a time before hitting the ground again. I have a feeling that she will start walking around 11 months like Uriah and Jordyn did. She is such a good baby and brings lots of joy to our house.

 

Jordyn was pretty much potty trained at day care. We tried to potty train her at 2 1/2 years old during the summer time and nothing ever stuck. When I found out her teachers at day care said that they worked on that in class, I didn't think much of it and said to myself "Good luck!". Jordyn has been in panties and away from diapers for the past 2 months and I am forever grateful to her teachers for teaching her to use the potty. It really saved us time (and money!) having her learn to do that at school. She can go all night without needing to go potty and she even tells us or goes by herself when she needs to. She loves to wear her princess and Hello, Kitty underwear.

 

 Here is my sweet Jordyn "helping" me put the lights on the tree.

 

Santa and Mrs. Claus were saying hello to customers at Costco and I thought Jordyn would want to get a picture taken with them. I guess I was wrong.

 

Uriah is 4 1/2 now and has learned how to write his name. He is very much interested in electronic games, which I am trying to wean him off of (unsuccessfully). He is learning and growing by leaps and bounds, and next year he will be going to kindergarten. He says the sweetest things to me and tells me I am his best friend.

Urah and his Angry Birds winter coat

 

Today is Jared's birthday and on Sunday, Jordyn will be turning 3. I haven't even started on Jared's cake, but last night I went to my brother-in-laws house and worked on Jordyn's cake until midnight. I got the idea to make a doll cake from a friend of mine who made one for her daughter. I thought they were adorable, so I searched Google for images of a Tangled doll cake and knew that I just had to make one for Jordyn's birthday, but I knew I wouldn't be able to do it alone. Thanks heavens my BIL was willing to help. I made the cake and the frosting, prepared the fondant and helped sculpt the cake under the fondant and then Adam just took it from there. There was so much more detail we could have put on it, but by midnight we thought it looked excellent and didn't need anything else.

I couldn't be happier about the way it looks, and I can't wait for Jordyn to see it!

 

Tonight I will be making Jared a German Chocolate cake and tomorrow we will be having my family's Christmas party and a party for my nephew Phoenix (whose birthday is also today).

 

For Christmas, we will be at home. Jared's parents will stop by our house in the morning on their way to Rexburg. I am hoping that we will get to go see Les Miserables at the theater.

 

I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas!