Going sledding

I love to see my dear friend Brooke when she comes into town. We grew up together and were even debate partners :) We decided to go sledding and I have to admit it was both my kids' first time at it. I have to give a shout out to Susie for the red sled--it was a big hit with all the kids!!!

Temple square

So this is the one attempt at photography that caught my eye as the family was walking around temple square. I'm sure I still didn't do the picture justice with my little digital but I thought it was pretty nonetheless :)

Bitter sweet...

Here we are saying goodbye to Karina for who knows how long. She is off on her current adventure to spend 3 months in New Zealand, backpacking, and then it's off to Australia, Tasmania, for a year long working holiday (doesn't it seem like those two words don't really belong together?) and then maybe Nepal, Thailand, and oh yeah--Europe after that. Wow, GOOD LUCK KARINA!!! We love you and miss you so much!!!

Family Holiday Pics

Here are our latest family pics from my little digital camera. I'm still looking forward to the ones we had taken a little while back. Look for those soon to come :)
Like mother, like daughter...
Like father, like son.

Thanksgiving part 2

Not only did we get to see my family, but Ryan's mom, dad, sister and Owen came to surprise everyone for the holiday!! So here is our yearly trip to temple square, but with the whole family!!!
All the cousins

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving that will definitely be a highlight to remember from the year!! Here's the entire crew of my dad's side of the family--and Ryan actually seems to be among the shortest of the men--surprise surprise!! This was most likely the last time for a couple of years that we will all be together, since Karina is gone for who knows how long and Panu and Leah will be living in Australia for the next several years. We love you guys!!! Congrats Natalie and Mikko for the announcement of number two--we are so excited for you!!!
Elina was able to reunite with our long lost friend from the summer, Nemo, I mean Mino :)
My mother seems to be recovering as well as can be expected. Hopefully we were able to destress her for thanksgiving since she didn't have to cook!!
Leah, Panu, Pekka, and Uncle Seppo.

Tyler's 1st year

We love dancing!!!

These are my dance machines--they love to dance and in my opinion, are getting quite good. Following after their mother I guess :) (Please refer back to the random facts post regarding me and my dancing skills.)

Bday cake!

Needless to say Tyler dived right in and the cake was a hit!! Hopefully all that sugar won't disturb our sleep training tonight :) Wish us luck!!!

Bday Presents!

Tyler wants to thank everyone for coming and for all their generosity :)

We Love Family!!!

We loved having some family over to celebrate Tyler's birthday. Thanks for the fun!!

Bday Party Preparations!!

Here's our birthday boy
Say Cheese!!!
Tyler and Elli are both helping to make the birthday cake by getting a taste test--yum yum
The finished product--Tyler literally could not wait to get his hands on it!!!

I've been tagged

Share 7 random/weird things about yourself.

1-I have to sleep on my right side so that I can sleep with my mouth closed and breathe out of my left nostril. I have allergy issues I guess, as of the last couple of years, and if I roll over, I can no longer breathe through my nose and have to open my mouth--which is no good come morning!!!

2- I get an enormous amount of satisfaction in getting the most for my money--finding the steal of a deal--see couponing post :)

3-I still make the ugliest noise in the world to scratch my throat--but you know what, it really works!!

4-I have a titanium rod, the length of my very long tibia, in my left shin, screw and all, and will probably have it for the rest of this lifetime. (It never goes off in metal detectors though)

5- Before we put our lawn in, I was obsessed with weeding our dirt. You'd think that now that I only have to weed the flowerbeds, it would look better than it does. But really--who can be obsessed with weeding forever.

6-I'm not a dancer--but all these dancing shows on TV inspire me to dance--which is something that I only do with my children, since they don't care what I look like :) I'm actually to the point where I even want to take ballroom dance lessons, but that's not really flying so well with my dance partner at this point :)

7-My husband refuses to buy me a nice pair of sunglasses because I cannot take care of them. So I think I have about 4 or 5 pairs from the dollar store, and I can still never find any of them!!!!

I tag: Brooke, Helen, Natalie P., Mindy, Jaci, Natelli, Rachel

My project

So I believe that I've made previous comments about my desire to increase our food storage. Well I think I've figured out a way that won't make my husband role his eyes everytime I bring it up. And a big thanks goes to Arianne for helping me--she took the time to show me how she coupons!!! and I have to say, that I'm a believer!!!

I got tagged recently to share some weird/random things about me, which I'll get to one of these days Leisha :) but I think you could say that this goes on my list. I get the biggest satisfaction in knowing that I got the most for my money, like spending $.09 for deodorant or wishbone salad dressings. So here is a picture of my latest project--I call it a project because it took me about 2 full days to plan out my trip to the grocery store to make the most out of my coupons and grocery store promo. I was so proud that for every $30 I was technically spending on the promo stuff, I was actually paying less than $10!!! and I did that with 6 different transactions and even left the store with and extra $15 cash!!!! (due to a long drawn out process at customer service :) ) So if you do the math--I was paying less than a third for what it was all worth--what it was worth on sale even. All in all, money well spent--most of which adds to my food storage.



If anyone seems to be remotely interested in the prospect, I'd be happy to share my newly gained knowledge !!!

FHE

I've had a sweet experience this week in our attempts :) to hold family home evening with a toddler and a baby. Usually, attention span is only long enough for us to pick a picture out of our church photos and talk about the picture--but this week I had an idea. I chose the picture about Christ coming to visit the Nephites, talked about it (to which Elina was actually very attentive), and then told her I had a surprise. I turned on the last chapter segment of "the Testaments" movie that actually depicts this scene. Elina was glued--Jesus really seemed to come alive for her. Afterwards, I was able to bare my testimony, not only to her, but to my family--which is not something that I really get to do that often, and I can truly tesify that a testimony is definitely strengthened in the bearing of it!! Elina didn't really understand why I was crying, and was trying to figure out why mommy was "sad". :) --But I know that as hard as it is to do every week, when we make the effort to hold FHE it really strengthens our family. The best part is that she wants to "watch Jesus" like 20 times a day at least --and without fail, everytime we watch, we/I feel the Spirit and I feel it testifying to me of our Savior, and I know that he knows me and loves me personally. It is such an awesome feeling and is like my pick me up for the day. So anyways, just wanted to share what's been in my heart lately :)

The snow claims it's first victim!!!

So low and behold the snow claims it's first victim, my mother. Bless her heart, she woke up to the snow and did her usual thing by going outside to shovel the snow. Well she hit some ice on the corner and fell down quite hard. After being in pain for a while, she decided to go to the doctor to get it checked out--well, they never let her leave and admitted her to the hospital the same day after finding out that she now has a fracture in her hip that needed surgery to put in pins!!! Quite a shock!! So after having the surgery yesterday, this is my mom--doing well today as she is trying to recover, still relatively pain free, but she has a lot of meds in her :) Prayers would be appreciated :)