New Year's 2010

I continue to catch up.


We celebrated New Year's in Salt Lake with Tom's family. We enjoyed the snow, family, and festivities. We actually let the kids stay up until midnight (I don't think James made it). They loved being with their cousins and eating lots of great food and just enjoying the festivities.

Christmas 2009

The rest of Christmas.

I love Christmas and all of our traditions. Some of them we have carried on from our families, some we have started on our own. We start our festivities on Christmas Eve with a very traditional program filled with drama, music and the spoken word. All of the extended family is invited.

We act out the nativity either live or with Playmobil.

We play and sing Christmas hymns. This year, much of the family prepared special numbers. It was fun, even if it wasn't perfectly harmonious.


And of course, we read from the scriptures, the story of the birth of our Savior.

A tradition from the Fisher side that I love is the whole ritual of Christmas morning. We all dress in our Sunday best, we sit down to a formal breakfast (the Dansies do not eat the traditional oysters).

We used to always have puffy oven pancake, aka German pancake (a Dansie tradition), but we have it so often that I wanted to do something a little more special. So this year, we had crepes with all sorts of delicious toppings.

Grandma and Grandpa are always invited, but we like to be in our own home. After a delicious breakfast, the kids line up, youngest to oldest in front of the sheet covering the living room. By this point they are so filled with anticapation, it is almost painful to watch them.

Finally, after someone goes around the other way to be ready with the camera, the sheet is parted and the kids are allowed to see what Santa brought them. Santa brings our children one gift and stocking filled with fruit, candy, soda and maybe a small toy or so.


James' favorite gift this year was a littel football Santa put in his stocking.


They spend the morning enjoying all the fun before we open one gift at a time from under the tree. Again, we try not to over do the whole present thing. We enjoy a relaxing morning before heading over to Grandma and Grandpa's for a delicious dinner.


Merry Christmas! And I will soon be caught up in my blogging.

Christmas Tree Decorating and Potential Christmas Card

Had we actually gotten around to printing a Christmas card, we would have chosen one of these photos, but alas, we didn't. And here it is, June and I am barely just getting around to blogging them.

The Valentine Scurry

Valentine's celebrations are tomorrow and what have I done? Nothing. Now, it is raining, I don't feel like spending money on silly valentines and we need to get cracking. I guess I will just copy what we did last year and luckily, Yogos were on clearance at Costco recently and I have probably 100 + packages.

Tom and I get to spend Valentine's morning doing what we love the most: running a race. We get to do the Dam 2 Dam 5-miler. Hopefully my valentine can win the thing and I can cross the finish line less than 10 minutes behind him.

Here's to the day of Love.

Merry CHRISTmas

I love this time of year and I love my Savior. I am glad for the opportunity to celebrate his birth and hope I instill in my children the importance of Jesus Christ in their lives. I know he is the most important person in my life.


I love to collect nativities and I try to keep them the focal point of my Christmas decorations. The nativities come from all over the world - Jerusalem, Venezuela, somewhere in the Caribbean, Germany (Playmobil), even Texas and China.

My favorites are the Playmobil
and the wood one carved from olive wood from Jerusalem.

Here is my collection. Now I just want to get the Fisher Price Little People one.Merry Christmas! Enjoy it and remember to keep Christ at the center of all your celebrations.

30 Desserts for 30 Years

I have the most thoughtful husband in the world and I am the most thoughtless person and forgot to take a picture, so you must use your imaginations.

For my 30th birthday (yikes I'm middle-aged now) Tom threw me a 30 dessert party. I think his original plan was a more figurative thing, but I told him after he started inviting folks that if you advertise 30 desserts, you better deliver. and he did despite our family being sick all week.

Desserts ranged from cookies to pie to ice cream and rootbeer floats, to runts and nerds and chocolate covered cinnamon bears. There really were thirty thanks to Tom and some great friends who contributed.

We had tons of funs with friends and lots of sugar. Thanks for the great birthday! I'm just really sad I forgot to take a picture.

Halloween 2008

For Halloween this year, we went to Porter's school parade, the library parade and we went trunk-o-treating and a tiny bit of trick-o-treating.

I was lazy with costumes:

Porter's - DI for $5, Eliza's - Ross $6.99, James - Old Navy $5 and I decided last minute that Tom and I would be the corpse bride a groom. I am wearing my mom's wedding dress (shhh, don't tell her).Next year, I promise to be creative and maybe even have a theme. I am thinking maybe Alice in Wonderland.

Way Belated Birthday

I don't think I ever posted about Porter's 6th birthday. Well, he turned 6 and he is a great kid.

He loves being in 1st grade. He loves to read. He loves to play the violin. He loves to ride his bike to school. He loves to build things with k'nex. He loves to play with Legos and Playmobil. He loves that his birthday is on a holiday (pioneer day).

He doesn't love being teased by Eliza. He doesn't love eating anything green except for broccoli and peas. He doesn't love to be nagged or yelled at (who does?).



We love Porter and are glad he's part of our family.

1st Birthday, 1st Steps and 1st Chocolate Cake

James turned one at the end of August. I can't believe how fast time is flying by.

He took his first steps right around 13 months. He still is crawling more than walking, but he is doing it more and more.
And to celebrate the big 1, I made the most delicious chocolate cake ever!
Not that James could tell the difference. But seriously, it was divine.

Of course the recipe came from Bon Appetit. I made a few small changes, on purpose and by accident. All I can say about this cake is "divine."

I used kosher salt instead of fleur de sel. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of bitter sweet chocolate. I omitted the coffee powder and put in some vanilla and almond extract. I forgot to salt every layer. But this cake is so good.

Here's the picture from Bon Appetit because it looks even better.

Happy Birthday Moms

Two wonderful moms celebrated their 70th birthday only two weeks apart. My mom, Lynda, turned the big 7-0 on June 20, followed shortly by Tom's mom, Shanna, on July 5. Fortunately for us, we were able to celebrate with both of them on their happy days.

We enjoyed an intimate party with my mom where we enjoyed lobster salad, panko crusted chicken with warm pineapple salsa, orzo risotto, and brown butter green beans. For dessert we enjoyed a delicious lime tart with a strawberry-apricot compote.

Shanna's celebration was a bit more high key, thanks to the thoughtful and diligent advanced planning of Elbert. The party involved close to 100 of Shanna's closest friends and relatives, beautiful flowers, a ten-piece band, a party tent, and a delicious menu of blue cheese and apple quiche, wild rice salad, spinach salad with orange vinaigrette, assorted veggies and fruits, a huge assortment of delicious cheese and cheese dips, and an assortment of cookies and FBPs for dessert. The party was grand, to say the least, even though we forgot to serve the birthday cake.

I just wanted to send out a happy birthday to the two best moms in our lives. They are wonderful moms to us and even better grandmas to our kids. Thanks for all you do and enjoy being 70.

A Belated Birthday Greeting

On June 2 Eliza turned 4 (I know she looks likes she is 2). We decided this year was just going to be a family party because I spent a lot of time and effort on last year's friend party. But at the last minute I decided to invite the neighbors over for cake and ice cream. The perfect party: no planning, no gifts, and just casual fun and eating.



The snake cake was her idea and came from familyfun.com. I wanted to make the sand castle cake, but it the snake shortcake turned out cute.

She was too scared to blow out her candles, so the rest of the kids did it for her. I usually forget the candles on birthdays so she hasn't had much experience with them. We love you because you are so kind to James. You love to play princesses, house, and playmobil. You are a great help in the kitchen. You unload the dishwasher so well. You are opinionated. You are beautiful. You are Porter's best friend. You love to have dad read to you. You love salad.

Happy birthday Eliza!