Merry Christmas Eve!!!

We woke up Christmas Eve morning to a blanket of snow outside. Dan started shoveling and when he was finished he decided to start a snowman in our backyard. Kenna woke up just in time to help. Thumper likes the snow too. He likes to catch snowballs and Kenna likes to throw them at him. The snowman turned out pretty good. Dan even gave him cheekbones. By early afternoon the snowman fell over and died. Mom and Dad Patton and Laurel decided to drive up a day early to beat any bad weather. They came up Sunday night and made it here safe and sound. Thumper loves having visitors and goes crazy when people stay over. McKenna goes crazy too. I don't think she went to bed until almost 11pm last night. It's a good thing she usually sleeps in until 8:30am. We took Grandpa, Grandma and Laurel to Sunrise Cafe, a local restaurant that serves an inexpensive breakfast and has really good biscuits and gravy. If you come and visit, most likely we will try to take you there once. Our fantasy football league ends tonight and boy am I glad. I like to watch and compete, but I stress out too much. I ended up fourth out of eight. Not bad since last year I was seventh. I am proud to say that all three girls in the league made the top four. Girls rule!! Dan is fighting for fifth or sixth. We will find out tonight. Thumper hated having the scarf on. He kept trying to rip it off his neck, jumping to twist around. Pretty funny to watch. I hope everyone's Christmas is going well and sorry for missing Christmas in California, doctor's orders. Merry Christmas!

Doctor's appointment

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and everything is going great. I gained 8 pounds in 4 weeks and grew 5 cm. Makes up for the 1 pound gain from last month. I start the every two weeks appointments next month. Not really looking forward to going to the doctor's so much but what can you do. With McKenna I never made it to the once a week appointments. Depends on how much this girl wants out. Dan has been busy with work. They asked him to work overtime again this week. Not my favorite thing but at least his office has lots of work. He has been busy at home too, buying book shelves and a mirror at Target to get the guest room ready for his mom and dad to come visit for Christmas. McKenna is excited to see Grandma Wendy and Grandpa David. Oh, and Laurel too or course. Ben is leaving on his mission to Washington DC tomorrow the 19th. We will miss you. On Sunday, we went to the Meldrums' for dinner and cookie baking. We made chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter bars. Adrianne received some peppermint marshmallow fluff from a friend and we tried to make brownies with it. Bad idea! the marshmallow cooked to rock hard and the brownie mix underneath remained gooey. Well, we thought we would try something. But the other cookies turned out well. I don't think I have ever baked so many goodies in one night. McKenna's new favorite Christmas song is The First Noel sung by Josh Groban and Faith Hill. She asked me today what the second noel was. It took me a second, but I thought it was funny. She also likes the Little Drummer Boy. She asks the strangest questions sometimes, but she is four. Sorry no pics today. Will definitely have some next week.

Snow and Gingerbread Houses...

We decorated our gingerbread house Sunday night and here is our masterpiece. McKenna had lots of fun eating the candy and trying to help. We almost had a disaster a few times when she tried to reach over it, but in the end it turned out great. We did it from a kit so not from scratch but I am all about easier. If you look closely there is a green palm tree in the front compliments of Dan. This week was pretty busy for us. I had to sing in the Christmas enrichment of Tues while Dan helped out in the nursery with probably over 20 kids. Then I had a cookie exchange to go to Wednesday night. Do you ever go into a cookie exchange and feel like you wish you could take just your cookies back home? I made homemade oreo cookies. They turned out delicious and they are really easy to make. Thanks Adrianne for the recipe. Sunday I had to sing a solo in sacrament meeting. That was fun, but I was kinda nervous. It snowed last night and I thought I would show you the extent of snow we get here. You can still see the grass coming through. The picture with the house is taken from inside our house from an upstairs window so they are our neighbors across the street. Someday I will include pictures of what my house looks like for you Tracie. Just when it is not so cold outside... Yes I am a wimp.



Oh and the cord is what is left of our extension cord that hooked up our icicle lights thanks to Thumper. I knew it would happen sooner or later. He can never resist a good cord or plastic. Luckily it was not plugged in to the outlet at the time. Yelp!!!

Happy Birthday!!!

To me! Well, Saturday was my birthday and I had a baby shower at my house that day too. My friend Adrianne threw it for me and mostly church friends showed up. I haven't made too many friends outside of church or work yet. I'm not all that social anyway. The baby shower was fun. We had cupcakes and a light lunch. I received lots of cute gifts for baby Ryleigh. I don't have to buy diapers for the first couple of weeks. Yeah! During the baby shower, Dan put up Christmas lights on the house, but ran out of clips so he only got about half way done. Hopefully he will get the rest up this weekend. He has another test to take on Saturday so we will see. After the baby shower, we got ready to go and take family pictures at Kiddie Kandids. Dan bought me a pair of shoes and My Fair Lady for my birthday. After pictures, we had dinner at Red Lobster. Yum! I love crab! So does McKenna. Then we went home and watched the movie. I had a lot of fun. I forgot that My Fair Lady is almost 3 hours. I was tired after it was over.