Christmas parties and goodies

Here are some pics of our ward Christmas party. Jannika, Kaylee and Ashlyn were angels (they are Kyle's sister Megan's kids). They loved their part. Everything went well with the Nativity, much to the joy of the primary president (me)! Megan is my secretary and she really jumped on the project of making most of the costumes. She is great at it! Thanks, Megan!

Here are some of the goodies we made to take to our friends. The top picture is a chocolate bundt cake that is super easy to make.

1 chocolate cake mix

1 small vanilla instant pudding

1 C water

1/2 C vegetable oil

Mix. Grease bundt pan and coat with sugar. Pour batter in and bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

Poppy Seed Bundt Cake

1 yellow cake mix

1 small vanilla instant pudding

1 C water

1/2 C vegetable oil

2 Tbsp poppy seeds

1 tsp almond extract

Mix. Grease bundt pan and coat with cinnamon/sugar. Pour batter in and bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

(I actually like the poppy seed one better. It is a really quick and yummy dessert so I try to have the ingredients on hand.)

Soft Sugar Cookies

1 C butter or margarine

2 C sugar

2 eggs

1 C sour cream
1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp soda

4 tsp baking powder

4 1/2 C flour

1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat well. Add the rest of the ingredients. (Best if refrigerated for a while). Roll out on well-floured surface and cut into shapes. Bake at 350 for 14 to 17 minutes.

Easy Yummy Frosting

1/2 C shortening

1/2 C butter

1 tsp vanilla

4 C powdered sugar

2 Tbsp milk

Mix shortening and butter. Add remaining ingredients. Can be used to frost cookies and can be used to decorate with a decorating bag and tips.

This is the only frosting recipe I use! It is soooo good.

One more fun thing I make during the holidays is yogurt pretzels. Just take almond bark and melt it in the microwave. Dip pretzels in and put on a tin foil covered cookie sheet. Enjoy!

It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like...

Well, for those of you in Utah (and probably other places too) you know it's beginning to look a little too much like Christmas! The snow is pretty but the temperatures are CRAZY! On the news last night I noticed on their little weather map that it was 28 degrees in Logan and 18 in Price! I thought we moved away from Logan to get out of the freezing weather! I just don't like to be cold. It seems like I am always wearing a sweatshirt even inside my house. I seem to be a few degrees colder than other people too. Maybe I got that trait from my dad who wears at least 2 shirts at all times even in the hottest part of the summer! (I am not quite that extreme!) Oh, well, we did have a lot of fun making a snowman. Kirsten thinks that the word for snow is snowman and she asks if she can walk in the snowman every day! It was also fun to put up our Christmas tree and some other decorations. I love white Christmas lights and snowflakes, they are my favorite! I am also excited to do some holiday baking. Yeah!

And... I also have some news for those of you who don't know that I am even expecting...We are having baby number 3 in April and I had my first ultrasound a few weeks ago. We found out that we are having a GIRL! We are very excited and Jannika has been saying all along that we were going to get another sister before we got a brother. Maybe she is right when she says she knows everything :) I will post a picture of me and my baby bump at a later date.

Hooray!!!

Hooray, I am done doing Jacqueline's wedding cake! I have been stressing about it all month. I tried several different fondant recipes because I really wanted to learn how to do it and I didn't want to spend all the money on the ready made kind. I had several failures for every success but I finally found a good recipe, thanks to my sister, Fawn, and it worked out! I also need to post pictures of Jannika and Kaylee being flower girls (since my batteries ran out on my camera right after I took pics of the cake). They were sooooo cute. Jacqueline is Kyle's step-sister and her wedding was very nice. I loved how she picked red, black and white as her colors. Congrats, Jax!

It was also Kirsten's birthday on the 28th. She is 2 years old! She loved her new outfit from Grandma Gayle and also her Dora doll and princess camera. She is getting so big and definitely shows us that she is 2 some days!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving this year at my parents' house in Castle Dale. My sister, Fawn, and her family came and also my brother, Mark and his children came (his wife had to work). We also have some friends from India that lived with us for a while that came to join us so we had some traditional Indian food as well.

This is Kirsten and Fawn's little girl, Brooke. It is funny how alike they look and Fawn and I always seem to dress them in the same color on the same day!

We had lots of fun with cousins. We didn't get a picture of all that were there but here are my kids with 3 of Fawn's kids, Cassidy, Brooke and Ridge. Cassidy is one of the favorite cousins and she is so helpful with the kids and they love playing with her. Thanks, Cass!

And, of course, a family gathering at the Seelys' wouldn't be complete without a game or two (or three!) of Scrabble. We also had fun playing Cranium and Monopoly. This picture is of my sisters Fawn and LeAnne and me and my dad. You can see the Christmas tree in the background because Kyle and Fawn's husband, Tim and their two oldest boys, Kody and Hunter went up to our property to cut trees the day after Thanksgiving. They had a great time driving all over the mountain and cut four trees for different family members. They also did some boulder climbing that the boys really liked. Fawn and Tim had only planned to stay until Friday afternoon but decided to stay that night so that the guys could all go out to the desert on Saturday. What an adventurous weekend! The girls also had fun doing some shopping in the large city of Castle Dale!, and talking and playing games.

Family Pictures

We finally got some good family pictures. Thanks, Megan, for taking them! If you could see the top one closer you would see tears in Kirsten's eyes. She just wanted to ride her bike...not get pictures! And Jannika's poking out her belly a bit, but other than that, they turned out pretty good!

Fun with the Fam

Kyle got together with his siblings this past weekend and went to Cabelas and Boondocks to do bumpercars, mini golfing, rock climbing etc. They had a great time together. It was Grandpa George's 80th birthday party in Magna so the bottom picture includes Grandpa and Grandma Dorothy and also Kyle's dad, Steve and his wife, Deann. Derek (Kyle's oldest brother) also came to our house the next morning to visit for a while. It is always nice to get together with family!

Halloween Fun!

Halloween was fun this year! We went to a carnival last week at the college where Jannika's favorite game was throwing the bean bags into the pumpkin. She also loved getting cotton candy. We went trick or treating with her friend, Ginny, and of course got LOTS of candy. Kirsten loved being a bee and didn't ever want to take off her costume. Jannika has been singing the "Mean Old Witch" song and has also learned this one in Pre-school:

Old McMonster had a house

Eek ack, Eek ack, Oooohhhh

And in that house he had a spider

Eek ack, Eek ack, Oooohhh

With a creep creep here and a creep creep there

Here a creep, there a creep, everywhere a creep creep

Eek ack, eek ack, Oooohhh!

Pretty cute, huh?

Apple Pickin'

Well, we've been doing a little apple pickin' in our backyard. We have two apple trees and they are crispy and yummy! We are excited for next year when we will actually be able to have a garden and grow some vegetables too. Jannika is a big fan of carrots (dipped in Ranch) and we all like squash and peas and corn on the cob...yum!

Valerie

Well, I have some sad news today. My oldest sister, Valerie, passed away after fighting cancer for two years. She died on Monday and we attended her funeral on Friday in Pendleton, Oregon. When I told Jannika that Aunt Valerie had died, she said, "Mom, remember that if we get married in the temple we can see people again that died?" I just cried and hugged her close to me. I am so thankful for the gospel.
Valerie was a wonderful sister and when her family lived in Castle Dale when I was in High School, we used to talk a lot. We still had a good relationship when they moved but it was a little bit harder because of the distance. But whenever we talked on the phone we could just pick up where we left off. Our family does have a great tradition of writing a family letter every few months and keeping up to date on each other's lives. Valerie not only included news of her family but also her thoughts, feelings and insights, especially about the gospel. It is so wonderful that our family has these writings as a tribute to her life. She had a positive attitude through her treatments and had an ever firm testimony of the gospel. She was a great example to me. My only regret is that I didn't connect with her one-on-one as much as I should have. I guess it is a lesson to me to connect more with the people that mean the most to me. I love you, Valerie, and I will miss you.

My Kirst

Here are some things my babe is doing right now:

She is learning new words every day

She thinks the camera is called "cheese"!

LOVES Barney and Lala (Dora)

Calls Jannika "Gaka" and herself "Din-Den"

Loves watermelon and pop-a-ples (popcicles)

We sure love her!

My Jan

I know, I have some really random posts but I just keep finding cute pics that I would have put on earlier if I had known how to blog! Last night I was writing down some things about my girls so here's a few

Jannika:

Loves books and practicing writing

She is obsessed with Dora

She writes her name

Says the sweetest prayers

Says she wants to be a teacher and a mom when she grows up

Her favorite things are:

Long noodles (Ramen)

Sweedish Fish

Little Caesars breadsticks

Purple

Dancing and playing dress ups

I just asked her what her favorite thing to do is and she said, "I like to help people so they can feel better." (I have a suspicion that this answer might be because we just practiced her talk for primary tomorrow that was about service! What a sweetie pie!)

Last year's San Diego trip

Okay, now it's time for some nostalgia... I'm going to live in the past and put on some pics of our awesome trip to San Diego last year about this time. We had tons of fun with our friends, the Phillips, and we just want to remember this trip! We spent a lot of time at the beach, went to Sea World, Coronado Island, Tijuana (and almost couldn't get back into the U.S.!), the San Diego Temple among other fun places!

The Chocolate Face

Here's just a funny picture of Kirsten with a chocolate face. We had ice cream sundaes one night and she got a hold of my bowl that still had chocolate sauce in it. What a funny girl! She was eating away and as soon as I got out the camera she said, "cheese!" with this facial expression! She has been saying so many new things. She can put 3 words together like, "a daddy go?" She almost always knows the answer: "daddy boom?" which means daddy's vroom or daddy's truck. She is very into Barney right now( heaven only knows why) and wants to watch it all day. She also likes Lala (Dora) but not as much as Barney.

First day of school

Wow, I have really wanted to add to my blog for a long time but I haven't gotten around to it. Oh well, here's some updates. Jannika started preschool on September 4 and she goes 3 days a week for two hours each day. She loves it! It is called "See World Preschool" and it always reminds her of our trip to Sea World last year. It is so fun to see how grown up she is. On the first day of school we got her all dressed up in her new school clothes and she started to cry. I asked if she was scared to go to school and she said no; she was crying because her clothes were too big! So we had to put on some older clothes that fit her better and she was all set!

Being in the Pageant

Well, here we are, playing people from the olden days and tyring to figure out this new technology of "blogs"! We had a great time being in the Pageant this year. We played Joe and Tilda and Kirsten was our baby Joey. She loved running to daddy in the finale of the Pageant. Jannika played Jessica in the Wink and Anna family. It was a little bit more difficult to get over to the Pageant site each night since we live in Price but it was worth it! We also need to thank LeAnne for helping with our kids each night. She was wonderful!