Christmas 2010

What a crazy busy fun filled month. We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends and family in our lives. This entire month was a blur from start to finish and there was not a lot of time to blog about it. Christmas day we were up dark and early in anticipation for Elder Mitch's Christmas call. We were expecting him to call at 7 am but were excited when the phone rang at 6:30. It was a little hard to hear him, it sounded like he was talking through a tube but it was SO fun to be able to talk to him and have him answer questions and be able to talk to everyone. He said that they had a nice dinner in Huancayo on Christmas Eve with turkey and hamburgers...what a combo!!! Then they went on to the roof and watched fireworks at midnight. He told us they were excited to have 5 baptisms that day! He was able to talk for almost one hour before his calling card ended and just cut us off. It was a really hard way to end the call and I was in tears most of the rest of the day but I am really grateful we were able to hear his voice even if it was just for a little while. Hopefully we will be getting our regular e mail tomorrow!!!!

Maddi got her first big white envelope with her first acceptance letter. This one is for Weber State. She is anxiously awaiting the next one for Dixie State where she really wants to go. I am voting for Weber. I'm not too sure I can handle two kids being gone! At least I could call her and go see her whenever I wanted too.I would still miss her a ton!
Good job Maddi!!!

Moving on to Christmas!!!

The ground outside is covered in snow and the kids were itching to put up the tree so up it went! Every year the kids get a new ornament to put on the tree so they each have their own box to put up of their very own ornaments. I did O.K until I opened up Mitchell's box and then I lost it! It seems so strange to not have him here to do these family things! He even got his own ornament this year even though he is far away. Maddi's ornament is a pair of cowboy boots, Thomas got a Texas Longhorns one( I love E bay!) and Jacob got a little baseball player. I guess there is no turning back now... Christmas time is here!!!

Over the river and through the woods.......

On our way!!!

Mema and Grandpa with Mini Mitch

We had the kids make Indian or turkey hats to keep them busy so we made one for Mini Mitch too!

Mini Mitch doesn't have quite the appetite as the real Mitch so we had A LOT of mashed potatoes left over!

The cute cousins and their creative hats!

We, O.K I decided to not have Thanksgiving at our house this year because I was missing Elder Sheridan to much and didn't want to be home bawling the whole day. So we packed up and headed south, leaving the snow and cold for sunshine and cold for a few days. My brother decided to go down also so we had a packed house but it was SUPER fun. The kids had a great time just hanging out with each other and Thanksgiving dinner was AMAZING as always! Thanks Mom!!!
Little did we know that my Dad had just been checked out of the hospital that morning. He had to have another stent put in for another blocked artery. So what says recovery more than having 10 people(six of those being kids) crash at your house the day you get out of the hospital! They didn't tell us because they knew we would have stayed home, and they were right but I am so glad we were able to go . It wasn't nearly as loud and hectic as I thought it was going to be ( it probably was for grandpa though!)
We decided to take Mitch with us on the trip. Kevin's mom told us about a friend of hers that made a flat missionary( like the book Flat Stanley) and takes it with them and takes pictures to send to their missionary. I thought that would be fun so we made a mini Mitch to go on our adventures with us so he could participate in all of the Thanksgiving fun!
We had a really great time and I am so thankful for parents who do so much for us and give our kids awesome memories like we had growing up ! Thanks Mom and Dad for putting up with us! It was so much fun!

Sadies

In Mitchell's last e mail home he mentioned Maddi fingers are wrong in her Spiderman web slinging picture from the Sadie's dance at WX. So here is the picture from the dance! Also check out Mitchell's blog HERE to see how GREAT he is doing and how tall he looks next to the little Peruvian family... he looks like a GIANT!

Elder Sheridan's Christmas surprise

Thank you SOOO much to everyone who sent me a note to add to Mitchells' Christmas Advent calendar. I have tried to figure out how to send him a Christmas tree and some sort of advent calendar. This killed two birds with one stone! Now he will have a Christmas tree with a pocket to open up each day in December filled with a note from someone back at home. It turned out really cute and I am so grateful to all of you who took a few seconds to write him a note. It will be a fun thing for him as he spends his first Christmas away from home! I received so many I was able to put more than one message in each pocket!

Halloween

Halloween came and went in a blur. We carved pumpkins. I even carved Mitch's pumpkin for him. We went trick or treating in the pouring rain and hosted Thomas's swim buds for a Halloween party. Kevin and I thought of the scariest movie for them to watch, it scared the pants off of us when we were teens. The movie was... Poltergeist. Needless to say the 80's special effects and gore just wasn't up to par with what today's teens are used to. As we sat upstairs we listened to them ROAR with laughter at our "scary" movie. I guess they were entertained either way, they watched a newer scary movie from this decade when the comedy Poltergeist was over.
All in all it was a fun crazy weekend. Jacob was a vampire, Thomas was a Ghostbuster and Maddi was Rachel from "Glee" which really is the way she dresses anyway so no one really knew that she was dressed up.
Fun times!