Christmas 2010

We had a great Christmas this year. With Zander being older he was so much more into it and really Abe and I were most excited to see him open his presents and play with all his toys.I love, love, LOVE our Christmas tree. It is a bit of work but Abe and I both love it! This year we added some presents that light up and Abe came up with a brilliant idea of putting celiphane, ya know the clear stuff you can use to wrap gifts and stuff, we put that in our tree and it added so much with the lights on it lights right up and was very reflective. It's hard to see in this pic, which is the only one of our tree I got this year! but really it looked awesome and I think we have caught onto something.

So for Christmas Eve this year we went to my Uncle Golden's golf course in Orem called Sleepy Ridge at the Club house and had a great dinner. Then my Grandma and Grandpa Holt handed out there presents to everyone. They are really so thoughtful and generous! Then we get our BINGO on! This is a Holt tradition. When you get Bingo you have to do a victory dance. Then you get to play deal or no deal. My Uncle Golden is the banker. This year Abe won big bucks!!!! So we were very very happy:)

Zander loved his toys from Grandma and Grandpa Holt but he really loved the drinking fountain.

This was him most of the night the little stinker!

Christmas day we have brunch with my side of the family at my parents Grandma and Grandpa Frandsen and open gifts. All the grand kids got a pillow pet and Zander loves his.

 Then it was onto Gramdma and Grandpa Fitch's. I love there tree this year. My mother in law did a Grinch Christmas and it was sooo cute and don't you just love her upside down christmas tree! The large Grinch dressed as Santa will sing and dance and both Zander and his ciousin Briggs loved it although they were a little agraid of it at first. We spent the rest of Christmas with Abe's family eating yummy food with great people.

November & Zanders Birthday!

November was a great month. We had lots of fun playing in the leaves

I love autumn with the crisp air and all the colors. It is my favorite time of year!

Zanders Birthday is at the end of November and he celebrated his FIRST birthday!
Really the year has gone by so fast. I can't believe he has already turned one.

He had a monkey theme with blue and yellow colors

The yummy food. For Zanders smash cake I just used cool whip and colored it yellow. It worked great and was a lot of fun for Zander to eat and play with:)

Ya he got really into his cake! His favorite part was slapping the cake and making the cool whip frosting fly everywhere. We were still finding frosting the next day.

Next it was onto opening presents. He loved all the attention and his toys!

October and Halloween Fun!

During the Summer we got Lagoon season passes and went a lot with my sister Megan and cousin Amanda. So we checked out Frightmares and loved it. It had such great things for the kids!

Zander having fun with an axe in the hay maze during Frightmares.

This is my nephew Ethan

Mason

We took some pics over in Pioneer Village. I love the white gingerbread house!

Abe and I LOVE halloween! So we usually have a halloween party. This year it was so much fun and we had great friends and family over. We had everyone bring a white elephant gift. My original idea was to do a creepy cake walk with the gifts but we ended up putting scarry pics of spiders, whitches and such on paper and then handing one out to everyone. Then we had a bowl with the same pics and drew them out. It was sooo funny. The best gift was the creepy nun doll which I wish I got a pic of. It just showed up on my friend Sommers parents flower bed one day.

The treats!

This is Abe's brother Andy he was David Bowe in Labrenth. It was awesome!

Abe was a ghostly gentelman. Here he is eating a gummy finger!

Big thanks to my friend Sommer who works at a local costum and party place where we got a great friends and family discount!

My parents made it! My dad makes a great Indiana Jones and my mom a whitch:)

On Halloween we went over to Abes sister Kenzees house and had so much fun with all the trick or treaters. They also have a neighbor who puts on a spook ally for the kids it was pretty cool. It was so much fun taking Zander out Trick or Treating for his first time. Even if he had no idea what was really going on.

Kenzee, Justin and Briggs one big happy clown family!

I also dressed as a witch and Zander was the cutest skunk ever! I loved his costum!

Catching Up

I feel so fare behind on blogging! I wanted to do an update on a few things we did over the last six months. In July we went on our family vacation to Flaming Gorge. We love it there and had a great time. This was Zanders first trip and he loved it! He had a great time on the boats and loved watching the water and splashing.

Here is Abe with Zander and our little boat which we sold after this trip:(

We decided it just was not a good boat with small children so we are hoping to get a larger one at some point in the future. Instead we purchased a trailer for camping and trips to the lake:)

This is how Crombie stayed cool.  He loved to dig in the sand

For the 24th of July we got this pack of fireworks! Growing up I always begged my dad to get the big pack but they were always to expensive. So this year we went in on this pack with Abes family. Honestly it was not worth the money. Really after a few fountains they all look the same. We still had a great time though.

In August we took a trip with our new trailer. This was an epic trip that will live in history. Little did we know we chose the weekend before school started back up so camping was free! Which would have been great had we been able to find a spot to camp. First we went up Ogden Canyon but everything was booked. So we tried out at Antelope Island still no luck. So we drove up to Evenston WY and up into the mountains which was a very pretty drive and we saw some great places and even a moose but still no camping sites that would fit our trailer. So we took the back road from Evanston up to Park City and back. We ended up staying the night in the Riverton Walmart parking lot. Which is right next to the IHOP and every  Saturday morning my Grandpa Holt will buy anyone who comes at 7:30 AM breakfast. So at leat that worked out in our favor. It was quite the drive for breakfast.

Can you see the Walmart in the background?

In September we attempted again to go camping this time we went to Flaming Gorge which was a bit chilly but we had so much fun and it warmed up after the first day. Zander loved it!



September is also Abes birthday and this year it was the big 30.

I surprised Abe by taking him out to dinner and having his family meet us there and then all of us going to the Circus! It was so much fun even if he guessed it as we were on our way to the restaurant. At least I kept it a secret which for me is not an easy thing.



This was a cool elephant that painted to music before the Circus started

In October we got a new member of the family Nessie!  She is also a Hungarian Komondor like Crombie. We imported her from Hungary and she is a doll although she is earning the nick name messy Nessie. Her registered name is Highness but Nessie for short. Crombie loves having a buddy to play with. We are hope in a few years to have a litter of white fur balls.

She was so worn out after her long trip



Sorry for the super long post I will tell you about our Halloween and Christmas festivities in a later post.