Happ - Happiest Season of All!

Does anyone else get a little sad when the holidays end... they haven't even ended yet, but just the thought of returning to "normal life" makes me a little blue. That means Fisher will go back to school and we won't get to see family almost everyday (which is a good thing if you like your family) and no more games every night (which is a good thing too). It has been a great Christmas! A little hectic at times, but so much fun to see Curly get excited about giving and receiving gifts (obviously she liked the receiving part more). We were lucky to have my sister spend Christmas with us. She spent the summer at BYU-Jerusalem and I guess that inspired the rest of my family (except my brother and his wife) to go to Israel for a 15 day tour during Christmas... so poor Kristi had to hang out with us and Fisher's family. We loved it!

Some Favorite Christmas traditions with Fisher's family -

- The sibling gift exchange and opening of "The White Stocking." The stocking is the special secret container for our goals for the year. We write them on index cards, fold them in half and put our name on the front, then put them in a stocking made of white lace. Mom Lake puts them away and then at the end of the year we get to review our goals and make new ones. I actually achieved 3 of my 4 goals this year! Don't be too impressed, one of the goals was to actually plan 4 meals each week and then prepare them.

-The "Puddles Print" - This tradition started when Fisher and his siblings were little and had to wait for their parents to get up before opening their stockings on Christmas morning. I am not sure of the exact history, but they created a "Puddles Print" newspaper for their parents one year - with each child contributing stories, cartoons, etc... Every year after that they would do some project to kill time until their parents woke up. The Puddles Print has continued with all the original siblings and inlaws contributing and Fisher's sister in law compiling the paper. She always does a fabulous job and it so fun to read and see what a creative family we have.

- The German Christmas Eve party. My mother-in-law and her only brother are fully German. Every Christmas Eve we get together for a traditional German dinner - Rouladin, Roetkoe, and potato dumplings with gravy. I like all the food, except for the potato dumplings - they take hours to make and taste like tasteless, dry tapioca pudding squished into a big heavy ball. But, don't put too much stock in my critique. The Lake family loves them (or at least their German pride requires that they say that). This year we also did a nativity with the children. Curly was supposed to be a "lepard" (shepard), but decided to be grumpy instead. Louwas a sweet little angel.

- Christmas Gift Riddles - Dad Lake labels all the Christmas gifts with picture and word riddles. You can't just hand out the gifts because you don't know who they are for.

- Saturday bowling - The Saturday after Christmas the whole family goes bowling at 7:30 a.m. The original reason for going so early is that the games were super cheap that early in the morning, I guess the tradition stuck. After bowling, the whole family eats brunch together. There was one hitch this year, the traditional bowling alley was set for demolition...so we had to wait to go later and pay three times the price at a fancy bowling alley. It was still well worth it.

Homecoming!

Yay! It's Christmas time! It's so fun to see Curley get excited about Christmas and the festivities! We went to a party at "This is the Place" park. Curly loved riding the train (see picture) and she LOVED the live nativity. She keeps asking me if we can go see baby Jesus and the "baa-sheep" on the farm.






We had our first big snowstorms last week. Enough snow to actually make something. Curly insisted that she didn't want to wear a coat and she was pretty sure that you wear snowpants with nothing underneath... that didn't last long. She and Fisher made a snowball lantern - something Fisher learned on his mission in Finland. You make a whole bunch of snowballs and stack them into sort of an igloo shape with windows between each ball. Then you light a candle inside it. It was really pretty.








Fisher completed his last final on Tuesday. We are now more than half way done with Physical therapy school! Only 1 1/2 years to go! We immediately headed to Rexburg so that we could see my cute sister come home from her mission! Amberlee and I designed lovely shirts for us to wear using masking tape. Jeniel looked great. She was very happy and smiley. I am sure the people in New Jersey will miss her a lot!



This morning she was up early (thanks to the time difference), which was great for us when Curley got up at 5:30 a.m. Jeniel happily took her upstairs and entertained her.

Blog Tag!

Apparently there is such a thing as "blog tag" and I have been tagged...so 6 facts about me - I will try to make them interesting, but no promises!

1- I slept without a baby in my room last night for the first time in five months! Lou now has her own room! I am not sure how I feel about that yet...

2- I have a love/hate relationship with the terrible twos. I always love Curly, but sometimes I really hate her behavior! She is very extreme in everything she does!

3- I love shopping! I would be in heaven if I won a shopping spree - I could spend money without worrying about our lovely student budget!

4- Sometimes I wish I could go to school forever! I want to go to photography school, culinary school, cosmetology school, medical school, interior design... I could go on and on!

5- I am addicted to my family! My favorite thing to do is hang out with them. I love being home with my husband and kids. I love going to stay with my family in Idaho and I love visiting my in-laws too. Isn't it great that families are forever!

6- My little sister gets home from her mission in 6 DAYS!!!

I now tag Alli, Jill, Jodi, Miranda, Dana, and Tanya!

Thanksgiving Carols & Chandeliers

I love the holidays!! I got to spend almost this entire week with my family. I love just being home, playing games, eating yummy food... My family enjoyed some other fun activities as well.

The first activity requires a preface. When we were little my dad would call us all into the living room and then we would sing. This is probably a pretty normal activity for lots of families, but for us it was torture. My dad would dig up these complex musical pieces and make us practice the parts. We rarely performed these fancy musical numbers (thank goodness), but there were a few times we were asked to sing as a family - at church functions, family reunions, and even at a wedding in Finland once. Anyway, as much as we hated this when we were younger, we now love to sing together. On Thanksgiving evening, my youngest sister (and also the best singer in the family) suggested we go Thanksgiving caroling. We all practiced "For the Beauty of the Earth" and then visited several of my parents neighbors that were home without family and sang for them. They all expressed a lot of appreciation and we felt good that we had the opportunity to something kind and fun!

My parent's neighbors are serving as missionaries for the construction of the Rexburg Temple. On Friday, they called to see if any of us would be ineterested in putting together Chandeliers in the Bride's room of the temple... what a silly question!!! Of course we jumped at the opportunity. We spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to hang hundreds of crystals in the right way to create a beautiful chandelier. Afterward we got to take a tour of the nearly completed temple. It was beautiful.

Is it really already November?

This picture of my cute husband and baby is from my sister-in-laws wedding reception... I had to post it because it is so cute!

This week I had to do one of my least favorite things... that is take 'A' to get her picture taken. She hates having her picture professionally taken and cries the whole time (thus we haven't done it since last January). My goal was to get a picture of 'A' and 'L' together in their holiday dresses and then get pictures of 'L'... Things did not turn out as planned - I ended up with a whole bunch of cute pictures of 'A', one good one of 'L' and no good pictures of the two of them. We have Aunt Pika and mini m&m's to thank for 'A's pictures. Thanks Pika!

I got to have lots of GNOs this week! I met up with two of my best highschool girlfriends for dinner. I love these girls and I am so glad that they live in Utah so that I can see them!

Then, on Friday my sister and cousin came up from Provo. My aunt Pika, grandma and cousin Boogie also joined us. Boogie taught us how to suck hot chocolate through a grasshopper cookie - so good! We got a little silly about it (funny things happen when girls are left alone with chocolate) as demonstrated by this video...

The Great Pumpkin

This is Fisher and his prized pumpkin.
In the spring he asked my greenthumb grandma if she would order some pumpkin seeds guaranteed to grow 100 pound pumpkins. He asked his dad if he could have a little space in their garden to grow his pumpkin. The result was this 75 pound pumpkin! (and two others). He is so proud of his big baby and I am so proud of my pumpkin head!

For Family Home Evening we carved the pumpkin. Curly thought it was great, but couldn't figure out why her little knife wasn't cutting as well as Fisher's keyhole saw. Lou also thought it was great when her parents stripped her down and put her inside the pumpkin, as you can see from the video. Fisher was very creative in his design of the "telescoping" nose.

On Halloween Curly was a sheep or a "baa - sheep" as she calls it. It took some major bribery to get her to wear half of her costume. Lou was a cute duck. Of course I had to dress up as Old MacDonald. We went to our community "trunk-or-treat". Curly was in heaven - so much candy so little time! Even after I took her goodie sack away she kept finding candy. She has got a mouthful in all of the pictures I took!

Wedding Weekend

The great thing about weddings, besides the obvious, is that you get to have a mini family reunion! Fisher's last single sibling got married on Saturday (that's the third Lake wedding in 4 months), so we got to spend time with all of Fisher's family. The ceremony was very nice and we attended a yummy luncheon afterward. Curly loved the bride's "pretty" dress and kept picking up the train and following her around. We spend the evening after the wedding at Fisher's parents. 'A' and her cousins put on their Halloween costumes and their Oma sent them trick-or-treating to all of the rooms in the house. I have lots of wedding pictures in my web album.

Since all of the family was here, Friday night was the opportune time to have the annual "Lake Family Tomato Fight." Here is how it works. Those that want to participate put on their armor and meet in the garden. We divide into two teams (typically with spouses on opposite teams) and divide the frosted, rotten tomatoes between the teams, then it gets pretty techincal... you throw the tomatoes at each other until they are all gone. It is a lovely tradition.

We also enjoyed a visit to Gardner Village this week to see the funny stuffed witches with Fisher's parents. Fisher and I took the girls on a short hike to a pretty reservoir in Bells canyon. There are lots more pictures of all our fun in the October photo album.

Ecuador Girls Unite!

Friday night was our night to babysit in our ward babysitting rotation. Then I found out that some of the girls that I went to Ecuador with 5 years ago were getting together. Fisher is so great! He said he could handle the babysitting so that I could go see my girls. So, we met in Provo and spent the evening catching up and reminiscing about our time in Ecuador. It was so great!! Even though I rarely see these girls, it was like we were best friends again - talking about anything and everything. We missed the others who couldn't come, so we are thinking about planning a weekend reunion next spring!

Curly had a few firsts this week. We had free admission to "Discovery Gateway" (The Children's Museum), so we checked that out. I am not sure who had more fun - Curly or Fisher and I. There were a lot of cool things to do. Curly's favorite place was "the neighborhood" that had a child size house, construction site, grocery store, farm, and gas station. She also liked this little "birdhouse" in the toddler play area (see picture). Fisher liked the animation studio where you could create your own video with plastic figures and a backdrop. It was a fun afternoon. The other first for Curly was going to a movie theater to see "Ratatouille." We all went to the dollar theater on Saturday. Curly did pretty well, she got a little restless at the end (so did Lou and I). I think the storyline was a little too old for her, but she liked the mice - er I guess their rats.

Junior High Journals - Oh the Drama!

I forgot to mention the very fun evening I spent with my mom and Amberlee while in Rexburg. We all dug out our journals from Junior high and shared funny entries from them. It was hilarious! I didn't even know my mom had a journal from then. It was fun to learn some things about her... like she had a boyfriend!! I guess she never told us this because we weren't supposed to have boyfriends. AND she used to watch TV. This is highly unusual behavior for my mom. She can barely sit through a quality movie because she is such a busy body. Amberlee is a great and entertaining writer, so all of her entries were hilarious. Plus she was very awkward then ; ) She has more than made up for it now - very gorgeous and sweet. Let's just say I laughed harder than I have in a long time. The tears were streaming.

This is the only picture I could find of the three of us. Its from 2005, but one of my favorite. We are wearing tree skirts and ornaments.

A much needed Fall Break

Fisher had a week long fall break (just in time). We spent the first half catching up on projects at home, and then headed to our favorite vacation spot... Rexburg, ID. We decided to talk a small detour on the way and visit "The Spiral Jetty" which is exactly what it sounds like. It was cool - I guess it was worth the hour drive out of way on a very rutted and rocky dirt road. I probably won't go there again though.

We love going to visit my family in Rexburg because it is relaxing. We can just hang out without feeling pressure to go sightseeing. Plus my mom is always very helpful with watching the girls so I can get a few projects done.

My dad likes to plan and go do things. This trip we went and checked out some beautiful river property that my parents just acquired. Curly loved throwing rocks in the water. My dad and Fisher also spent an afternoon fishing. That was actually the purpose of our trip - fishing. Fisher's 92 year old (going on 50) grandpa lives in Rigby and they planned a fishing trip with Fisher's dad and siblings. I had my own fun while they were gone. My mom and sister helped me make Curly's sheep costume, or "baaa-sheep" as she likes to call it. I really needed a haircut, but really didn't want to pay for it (and find a babysitter, etc...) and so I let my mom and Amberlee trim my hair - AAAH! Actually they did a pretty good job. I also helped beautiful Amberlee color her hair. It sounds like all we did is work, don't be fooled. We also ate out a few times, played games, and I got to read a novel.

It was a nice vacation, with one hitch. Curly decided that she wouldn't sleep at night, ANY night. She would usually wake up and get up between midnight and two a.m. and then stay up for four hours before we could finally settle her back down to sleep for a couple hours. It was exhausting and we are still catching up!!

A. loves wearing shorts and is having a hard time accepting that it is now too cold to wear them. So, I guess they'll work as a hat?

Bunny ears with pajamas.

Our morning battle is A.'s insistence on dressing herself - which she does very well most of the time - and needing help, but not wanting to accept it. Her shirt and pants are both backwards - CRISS CROSS!

Yes, that is a shirt that she is wearing as a skirt.

Awesome 80's dance ensemble - definately coming back in style!

Lounge singer.

This will definately make the wedding slideshow. She had a little help from her aunts and their old dance costumes on these.

Our Future "Christine" Dior

A took an interest in clothes about 10 months ago. Necklaces were her first accesory.

Then it grew to include hats, purses, backpacks...

and headbands. I was hoping that she would be satisfied with accesorizing only. But, soon accesorizing clothes (the stranger, the better) became her favorite leisure time activity.

I've chosen a few of my favorites.

What's all the excitement about?

Apparently it's pretty cool to have a blog. That must be true because most of the cool people I know have a blog... So I decided to give it a shot. Mostly for me to try sometime new, but maybe my family and friends will enjoy being able to take a glimpse into my life!