Our Merry Little Christmas

This year we are going home again for Christmas! but this time home for us is a 10+ hour drive in a very packed car with a very active 1 year old. We decided this year, instead of packing our gifts for each other all the way to Utah just to unwrap them and pack them all the way back we'd have a little Christmas with just the 3 of us.

.i LOVED it.

We finally got to make our own little traditions and do our own thing on Christmas eve. It was so much fun. As I was unpacking my Christmas decor this year I kept setting all of our Christmas books under the tree so Evie wouldn't get to them until I could find a better spot for them, well they ended up just staying there and so started a new Christmas tradition! 

Every night at "wind down" time Evie, bathed and snuggled up in her jammies, would go get a book out from under the tree and bring it to me to read to her while she drank her bottle! 

We did this EVERY night! I loved it! We are for sure doing this while our kids are little, Evie would have destroyed the gifts if we would have put them out any earlier anyways so we just left the books there instead! 

Then she noticed a big difference the next morning when all the books were gone and presents were there! 

We woke up around 8 and let Evie walk out and find the presents

She of course went straight for the BIGGEST present in the very back 

ha ha ha

It was a big Princess castle! We got her a few little princesses to go in it and she LOVES it! We had to set it up right then!

I made Evie and Brandon big snuggly Blankets

I'm obsessed with Evies lol

B got the leather hooded jacket he's been wanting

He looks pretty good in it (minus the bed head and pajamas lol)

I must say though my gifts were the BEST :)

IPHONE 5!!

(we're not weirdo's I promise...)

Evie loved her gifts but of course

like any true one year old

loved the box more

....

Here's our little Christmas turn out :)

We ended the morning with a Christmas morning call to Grandma and Grandpa on my computer mouse?... 

and now it's time to pack and get ready to leave for utah in the morning!

.... wish me luck...

Thanksgiving break!

Oh yeah, it's Monday after Thanksgiving and i'm already on top of posting about it!

Hold your applause!

Our Thanksgiving was so fun and much needed! We drove the 8 hours back to Richfield Utah and Evie did AMAZING in the car! She watched movies on the iPad, sang (I assume) songs, ate snacks, played with her socks and slept. Thanks heavens. Our families both have roots in Richfield so we got to see Brandons family and my family this week! It worked out perfect! Now before I get into pictures i'd like to apologize for my photo quality ha ha ha. I decided last minute not to bring my Nikon and just bring our little point and shoot that has been dropped and sucked on one too many times by a certain 1 year old. So my photos are sub par and it bugs me ha ha ha. Enjoy.

Me and my little sisters! 

Kaili is about 23 weeks along now! Can't wait! Thats my very FIRST nephew in there! 

(even though you can barely tell she's pregnant)

We ate SO MUCH FOOD! Kaili brought some of that cookie pudding stuff and I'm pretty sure I took 3rds of it. Homemade rolls, turkey, mashed potatoes! YUM!

While we were in Richfield we stayed at Brandons Aunt Holly's house and she has the "dream backyard" for any kid. Evangeline was literally in HEAVEN! I think she spent 6 hours outside on Thanksgiving Day! She convinced everyone at least once to take her on the swings, the playground or the tramp!

.It was pure bliss.

 After thanksgiving B passed out on the floor so Evie thought she'd help out with that

That night we watched The Avengers and my family got to town! After the movie a few of us brave souls took off to Walmart for some Black Friday craziness. It was my very first time doing black friday and I figured since I'm in a small town i'd try it out this year. We got to Walmart, looked at the line at the check out, wandered around for 30 minutes and left ha ha ha ha Huge failure but it was fun. 

The next day the Valantines packed up and we moved over to my Grandpa's house in Elsinore to hang out with my family! Yahoo! We hit up all you can eat french toast at the Ideal Dairy and then did some Christmas shopping at my favorite shopping spot, Christensen's!  After we blew our Christmas budgets we took the 4 wheelers out for the rest of the day! 

 Evie thought she was gonna drive all morning while we were getting the bikes out and started up ha ha ha. Evie ADORES her uncle Jared, it is just hilarious to watch her with him, she goes nuts and just squeals at him all day!

Evie would NOT go down for a nap, we wanted to get out on the bikes but she was being so stubborn! Then my mom remembered that Jared used to pass out on the 4 wheelers so we thought we'd see if Evie would be the same way and viola! 

.worked like a charm.

We took the wagon and went and saw farm animals, Evie of course loved that! 

The week went fast and we were sad to go but we are glad to be home ...

okay we're glad to have Evie in her crib 2 rooms away from us again lol 

No offense to Thanksgiving but LET CHRISTMAS BEGIN!!

We've been non stop watching Christmas movies and my Glee Christmas playlist is on repeat! 

I put our tree up and a Christmas miracle has happened! 

Evie BARELY touches the tree!!

I thought she'd tear it down on day one! She will come up and touch one ornament 

(one I got from the dollar store and intentionally put right at Evie eye level on the front) 

then after she looks at it for a second she just moves on to other things!

.amazing. 

Merry Christmas to All!

Halloween!

Halloween this year was a BLAST! We have the funnest friends out here in the Mile High City! For Halloween this year we decided to have a big halloween party and EVERYONE had to dress up for it! It was so fun to see everyones fun costumes! Our costume was Evie inspired. Brandons little brother Cary taught her this move we have come to call The Hulk! She's squeezes her fists together as TIGHT as she can and then makes a hilarious grunting noise until her face goes purple! HA HA HA HA It kills us! We love it!! 

So while trying to come up with a costume for our family we decided on The Avengers JUST so Evie could be The Incredible Hulk! (well... a more girly cute version of him)

 Evie was the Hulk, I decided to be Black Widow and Brandon couldn't decide for a while who he wanted to be. He either wanted to be Tony Stark (not Iron Man, Tony Stark), Captain America, or Thor but only Thor during the part where he has just his jeans on and no shirt ha ha ha ha!  

.Luckily we finally landed on Captain America.

We wanted to take Evie Trick or Treating this year and B's school was doing a Trick or Treat day at the school so we decided to do that!
Evie LOVED IT!!!

A lot of the husbands got let out early from classes and got to meet up with their kids and go trick or treating. Evie was HILARIOUS! The first 3 stops took us around 3 minutes each because when someone would put a piece of candy into her bucket Evie would put her face into her bucket and just SQUEAAAAAL with joy about it! 

HA HA HA 

She would FREAK OUT for a few minutes and then we could move on to the next stop and do the entire thing over again! 

.Too funny.

Heres our friend group out Trick or Treating with the kiddos!

After Trick or Treating we met up for a Halloween party!

It was so fun! We had games and sugar cookie decorating, halloween music, good food and lots of awesome costumes!

Boxers and a Fairy                                                                       Mustard Ketchup and a Hotdog

African Safari Tourists                                                 A Sailor, Captain, and Mermaid

The Flinstones                                                                       Captain America

I LOVE that I married a man who will dress up like a super hero and run around with little kids :)

 B did awesome in his event, he had to hang a jar lid from a rope around his waist and drop it on to a soda bottle!

.Group Shot.

Kori and Lidia enjoying some sugar cookies

Evies first Halloween was AWESOME!

I can't wait for a lot more fun years of Trick or Treating to come!

Ma Belle Evangeline

I used to do a month to month update of Evie until she turned 1 and then stopped. She has been growing and changing so much that I decided I'd do another one for my own benefit and for my family that now live so far away from me and don't get to see her very much.

Evangeline is 15 months old now! She may only be 15 months old but you'd think she was a 2 year old. She is SUCH a toddler! Evie is the most adventurous little girl I've ever met! Nothing scares her! Her best bud at our apartment complex is a 8 month old, 100 pound, Alaskan Husky that knocks her to the ground licks her face and she LOVES IT! She looks forward to seeing this dog EVERY DAY!

She has no fear of water or running out in the street (which I love)

She is shy at first and then gets super chatty once she knows you.

She climbs on the table EVERY chance she gets and empties out my cabinets 20 times a day.

She's beyond happy if you take her outside and LOVES animals.

She insists on going down the BIGGEST slide at the playground all by herself and always chooses to play with older kids. She will do stairs until her shoes wear out if you let her. 

Oh, she has the BIGGEST feet ever! She is already in a size 6! (she gets that from mom)

She's currently addicted to Tangled, Princess and the Frog and Curious George.

Thank goodness too because Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was making me insane! 

She pushes all my pillows off my sofa every day no matter how many times I tell her not to.

She think's it's funny when I tell her "No!"

The only way I can get it across to her that I mean business is to sneak up on her, smack my hands together and yell NO!!! Like, scare her to DEATH!! It seems like abuse but she finally stops, but no worries, she still laughs at me...  

She likes to velcro her own shoes when it's time to go.

If you say the word "go" and you are not standing on the front porch in the next 3 minutes you'll have a major meltdown on your hands.

She still only says "mom" "dad" & "Uh-oh"

Every time I try to take her picture she tries to put my lens cap back on my camera so all my pictures look like this..

Every time she gets hurt (no matter to what degree) she takes about 5 seconds to recover and then wants to be put down again. She loves to get tangled up in the blinds, especially if we've just told her NOT to get tangled up in the blinds. Her hair is super curly (like her daddys) which I love, but it gets fluffed into an afro as soon as she gets in her carseat so no one ever gets to see it. Her hair is finally long enough for pig tails and they KILL me every time! She loves to clap! She'll clap and won't stop until everyone in the room has joined in too. She claps between every bite at lunch and whenever a song plays. She is constantly hiding in my closet and is not trust worthy in the bathroom. 

She climbs on EVERYTHING! 

I can't get her to eat anything right now. She only eats bananas and peaches. Makes me crazy.

She's such a blast

I can't get enough of her firey personality!

She's a handful, and makes me nuts, but she's my sunshine :) 

xo, Meg

Whimpy Salsa

I made some of my "Whimpy Salsa" the other day and I've had a flash flood of people asking me for the recipe so instead of re writing it 20 times I thought I'd just make a blog post out of it.  I love salsa but I am a major baby when it comes to anything spicy! (like, too much Ketchup is spicy for me) 

I found a recipe on Pinterest, it was a cilantro lime chicken recipe with tomatoes on the top, I made it for dinner one night and it was really good but I made WAY too much of the tomato topping and didn't want to waste it! 

So I thought, 

"hmm I BET I could turn this into salsa!

So added my own stuff and VIOLA! Wimpy Salsa was born! 

It's more of a zesty-lime-vegetarian-salsa so don't feel bad about eating 2 bottles of it in one sitting

.i don't.

So first off sorry about the bad instructions

I didn't major in fractions so I never use measuring cups if I can get away with it lol

My recipe makes about 7 cups of salsa so I'll let you do the math if you want more or less than that :)

Here are the ingredients

1 White Onion

8 (ish) Scallions (Green Onions)

3 Big Tomatoes

2 Cans of Corn

Cilantro 

Salt & Pepper

Olive Oil

Sugar

Lime Juice 

Dice up the green onions, white onions and tomatoes into small chunks. Pour the corn (no water) and diced veggies into a large bowl. Stir. Add 3.5 table spoons of lemon juice, you can add more or less if you like, just keep tasting it as you go. Stir. Pour on olive oil, i'm not sure how much I actually use, I just cover the top and then mix it all in. If I HAD to estimate I bet it would be around 3/4's a cup. Just make sure the mix has a light coat, don't drown it and you'll be fine. Stir. Finely chop up the cilantro, I always use 1/2 to 3/4's of the bundle but this is another ingredient you add as much or as little as you like. 

(This is dumb but I add just enough to make the salsa look pretty and then call it good ha ha ha.) 

Add to mix and stir.

Next step is the MVP of this recipe! THE SUGAR!! I put about 3.5 table spoons of sugar in, especially if my tomatoes aren't perfectly ripe. Add to mix and stir. This is another ingredient you can add more or less of if you like. 

Last, salt and pepper to taste!

I put mine in jars so they stay fresh and I can easily take them over to peoples house.

GREAT neighborhood gift at Christmas and everyone LOVES this stuff! 

Enjoy!

Xo, Meg

Patmos Greece

Today was an AWESOME day for our trip! Mine and Nat's husbands are big motorcycle guys and they both had to sell their bikes when they got married 

.I'm now wearing Brandons Harley on my finger :).

So since we feel bad about that we try to do at least one day on every trip on some sort of bike.

Since Patmos is such a small Greek island we decided today was a great day to rent some Vespas!

We woke up just off shore of the Island for an AMAZING view at breakfast and then headed for the tender boats!

We hit up a little scooter shop right off the dock and got the day started early

Here's Joe checkin' out the selection

Jareds wishful thinking of driving his own scooter instead of riding in the car with Mom and Dad and Evie lol 

.Sorry Jay.

. and of course Evie running laps around everyone and winning over the hearts of the natives .

 We drove around to a few beaches and saw most of the Island and then worked our way up the mountain to a really holy site for most churches.

 On the Isle of Patmos there is a grotto at the top of the mountain where it was said that John received the inspiration to write the Book of Revelations. Inside the Grotto was really cool, you couldn't take pictures but they had places in the rock plated in gold where John had supposedly laid his head or nelt to pray. 

  .the Grotto is the domed building on the right.

After that we climbed the mountain a little higher and visited a really beautiful Monastery!

(again, couldn't take pics inside but it was amazing how much detail these people put in their work inside)

These 2 pictures pretty much describe my entire trip with a one year old...

. I tripped over her so many times i'm surprised she lived!.

 After the Monastary we headed back down the mountain to the beach and Jared finally got his ride on the vespa :)

 The beach was great! 

Evie loves to play in the shallow part but, being the Miss Priss that she is with mud, she hated the rocky sand in the shallow end and insisted on being held for the rest of the afternoon.

 We ate lunch right on the beach and then got back on the ship.

That night we went to a "Cinematastic" show on the boat and Evie danced and clapped and spun circles through the entire thing until she crashed ha ha ha

My next blog is on an AMAZING day in Kusadasi Turkey!! 

There are no words to describe this place!

p.s Sorry I don't post a ton of my "photography" from this trip on my family blog. I kind of save the majority of those for posts on my photography blog. I'll be sure to send links when I post those though!

xo, Meg