Thanksgiving...

I love Thanksgiving Dinner. I love the turkey covered with gravy. I love the sweet potatoes and the mashed potatoes smashed next to each other on my plate. I don't love the cranberries. I love the stuffing with the left over gravy from my turkey. I love the rolls soaked in the gravy. I love starting the meal off with shrimp cocktail and I love ending it with pie.

This year was a little different. I have just been diagnosed with ulcers. Not from stress but from my anti-inflammatories I have been taking for the past year and a half for my foot. While diagnosing my ulcers, they found that my gall bladder isn't working perfectly. So, this year, I didn't get to dive into the food as much as I would have liked. Luckily, everything with my tummy is treatable and I'll be in good health in no time. I'll get to enjoy food the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

This year for Thanksgiving, we were with Scott's family. I love getting to spend time with them and getting to visit with his sister (and family) and cousin (and family). Scott's brother's family was sick, so they didn't make it. We missed them. Also, we missed almost all of his cousins - except Ryan and Brianna.

The food was yummy and the turkey was super moist. They cooked it in an electric roaster. We almost didn't have mashed potatoes, but I'm glad we did.

The kids didn't care much about eating- they just wanted to pretend they were dogs. They played the game for HOURS. Which actually made for some very nice grown up visiting time.

I was asked to bring pies. Since I'm not typically much of a baker, I had to turn to the family cookbook. My cousin in law, Jenny, is an amazing pie baker. So I used her recipe for Banana Cream Pie. It was delicious. The other pie, I experimented a little bit with. I sliced up 6 apples and mixed some of my homemade peach jam with the apples. It actually turned out pretty darn good- if I do say so myself. Super easy - with a minimal mess.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We did.

The Images of Halloween...

A final wrap up of our Halloween activities.

Jade and Luke have a really cute little dance that they started doing the other night when they were with my mom. They wanted to get it caught of film. Cute silly Grim Reaper and Corpse Bride.

Grandma put together a story of an old withered corpse. It was an awesome story. She spent a lot of time gathering the pieces of Old Man Brown's corpse. As she told the story, we each had to reach in and feel the inside of the bags holding each body part. There were his ears, his eyes, his heart, his brain, his hair, his hand, and his nose. They were all really gross things that we had to touch and Ivy wouldn't touch all of them. Jade was fascinated by them and did a really great job of figuring out what everything was. Here's a picture of all of the bags of stuff.

The moon came up early in the evening and the full moon looked amazing over the mountain.

The girls' loot with their costumes tossed to the side. The girls had to sort their candy as soon as they were both home. (Ivy ended her night a little early because she was cold and "sensitive"). They put them in the following groupings... chocolate, candy, tootsie rolls, suckers and nerds. Ivy's filled one gallon ziploc and Jade's filled 1 1/2 gallon ziplocs. Last year their candy lasted until about a week ago. We'll see how long it lasts this year.

The huge mounds of candy came from trick or treating at my office, trunk or treat with Aunt Kat and Uncle Jon's ward and trick or treating in our neighborhood with Dad. Ivy said multiple times that this was her BEST Halloween ever.

I really do love Halloween.

As promised...

The Greedy Witch and the Black Diamonds- Kat posted the actual text of it here.

The Greedy Witch and the Black Diamonds

My Mom and sister did a lot of work preparing for our family Halloween festivities. One of the special activities that they did was the story of "The Greedy Witch."

The image below, shows some of Mom's props and the scrolls that she "found" in the basement of my grandparent's condo.

(Kat is going to post the whole story, but here's a summary. I'll post a link to Kat's post when it goes up).

The story was about a witch who was very greedy and prideful. She wanted to have all of the riches and all of the glory. So she captured some mice and turned them into perfect black diamonds. Every night they would turn back into mice, so she had to make sure to only show them during the day. She would brag about them and show them off. One day she didn't realize the time, so she hurried and sped off on her broom before the sun set. Something went wrong with her broom and she dropped her bag of jewels. The bag was found by an owl that lived in the corkscrew willow. The owl ate all of the little black mice. The next morning, the mice turned back into diamonds. So the owl had to cough them up one by one.

My Mom took the kids out to her corkscrew willow where the kids were able to search and find 3 black diamonds. But they had to be careful about the other little creatures that they mind find. (The each found 2 creepy crawly bugs).

If the diamonds are found by a kind and caring soul, they will stay diamonds, but if they fall into the hands of someone that is greedy, they'll turn back into mice.

Later Halloween night...

Ivy and Jade were each enjoying Smarties from their Halloween stash. Jade asked Ivy if she could trade a pink for a yellow. Ivy wouldn't share and jumped on her pile of Smarties so that Jade couldn't reach them.

"Ivy, do you want your diamonds to turn into mice?" I ask her.

She let go of her stash and jumped on the couch. A few minutes later she says to me,

"Mom, do you think my diamonds turned into mice?"

"I don't know sweetie, are you being greedy?"

"No, I'm being nice. So will the mice be diamonds again?"

I love when stories have lessons that kids can relate to and want to follow or learn from.

This is Halloween....

Have a wonderful hauntful Halloween. It's our favorite! (Halloween, 4th of July and Christmas are all really big with my family).



The witch is my mom, I'm a nerdy librarian, Zach is a dragon, Kat is a vampire, Jade is the Corpse Bride, Luke is the Grim Reaper, Ivy is a Belly Dancer and Harrison is a Vampire Skeleton.

Happy Halloween from all of us!

Ever wonder what I do at work?

I spend my days with these people. They only dress like this once a year. (I'm really glad that it's only once- we didn't get very much work done today)- but the girls got a lot of candy.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Happy Halloween!

The day of the 4th of July

The 4th of July recap...

This year's theme was all about Hawaii. And surprisingly enough, it has nothing to do with that my parents went to Hawaii this year. The theme comes from Hawaii celebrating 50 years as the 50th state. It's too bad we couldn't celebrate on a beach in Hawaii, but we did a pretty darn good job of celebrating the culture.

Mom decorated for the occasion and made her yard look like a Hawaiian hut. And Uncle decorated the pool and surrounding area to feel like a Hawaiian beach.

Then the games began. This year we had a quiz all about Hawaii. No one scored a perfect score, but everyone tried hard and had some good laughs. The team pictures were very creative this year. One team pretended they were on a boat, another team rode a wave with sharks below and another team created a "50" with their bodies. Very fun to see the creative juices flow.

The relays were a blast, and we managed to catch my dad and Lori in an uncomfortable exchange- again. The cake walk was made perfect by Teral and Nina's mock hostess cupcakes. They were to die for!

My favorite part of the games was the "So You Think You Can Dance the Hula" portion. It was so fun to see the skills our group has. We're talking a lot of 10 cow women in this bunch.

My mom researched a bunch of recipes and she delivered a wonderful meal. Everyone contributed to a meal worth repeating.

The evening ended with fireworks, a special tribute to Micheal Jackson by the Fire Girls 550 South dance team, a blimp dropping candy, the "Bonus Brothers", the Star Spangled Banner by a real American Idol, Carmen Rasmusen, and a spectacular entrance and speech by the soon-to-be-Governor of Utah, Gary Herbert. It was AWESOME!

Check out Colin's video for an awesome recap of the events... here.

Here are some other blog posts about the event...

Kat- hasn't posted yet- so I'll update when she does

Cass (It links to her Celebration Tag- there are several posts about the 4th)

Sari

Emily- hasn't posted yet- so I'll update when she does

Happy Father's Day to my dad

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

Thanks for always being there for me and taking me on daddy-daughter dates. Thank you for always being willing to give me a father's blessing whenever I needed one. Thank you for watching all of my dance performances and for not laughing at me when you would try and play catch with me. Thank you for accepting that I was not an athlete and never would be. Thanks for being a best buddy to my little girls. Thank you for embracing my husband as if he were your own son. Thank you for all that you do for us and for the smiles you bring into our lives.

(Father's Day is a perfect excuse to share some of the old pictures I have scanned.)

My birthday

Saturday the 21st was my 37th birthday. I can't believe I am getting so old. But, I had a wonderful birthday.

Friday night, Scott and I went to Wise Guys Comedy club with some friends of ours. We were planning on going to just the 8:00 show but they let everyone stay for the 10:00 hypnotist show. We did. It was hilarious. It would have been more fun if someone from our group would have gone up, but oh well.

My parents kept the girls over night. In the morning I went and met Grandma and Ivy at her dance class. Jade hung out a little longer with Grandpa. We spent the morning and afternoon hanging out at Grandpa and Grandma's house.

After a while, Scott, Ivy and I went shopping. Jade wanted to stay longer. I bought a really cute pair of jeans and Scott got several really great shirts. (It was really fun that my jeans are 2 sizes smaller than I used to wear). I love this diet.

In the evening, Grandpa and Grandma came up for some Baked Cajun Shrimp and presents.

The girls have been so excited to give me their presents. They started working on them earlier that week with Miss Kim. They each got me a flower pot and painted them beautifully. Then they filled them with dirt and impatience flowers. I'm so excited for spring so that they can start growing. Aren't they so darn cute!?

Scott gave me a huge surprise. He always does a fantastic job on my birthdays. He alwys comes through with something that I've been wanting but wouldn't ever buy for myself. This year was no different. He got me a sewing machine. (The one on my lap is not the one he got me).

A few days after my birthday, we went over to Nuttall's in American Fork and checked out some brother sewing machines. We were looking at one from Costco and the other from Nuttall's. We went with the one from Nuttall's. It's a bit better machine, works with the Disney embroidary patterns, free classes on how to use my machine, an extra font, a USB connection and a hard carrying case.

Here is my machine...

Birthday Girl

Jade had quite a fantastic birthday. It started on Sunday the first, otherwise known as Super Bowl Sunday. We decided to combine her birthday with the Super Bowl festivities. Jade was okay with it, in fact I don't even think she knew there was a game going on. The first half of the game, the kids played Wii upstairs in our bedroom. At half time, we started the birthday party. Jade wanted a "Spanish" party with a pinata. For dinner we had tacos. While everyone was still eating, Jade opened up her presents. She loved everything she got.

Then the game was back on and the kids made their way back upstairs to play Junior Clue.

After a while, we gathered the kids and started the craft. Here is the background behind the craft... About two weeks ago, Jade and I were talking about her toys. I mentioned that there were some kids who don't have toys like she does. She then asked me if we could make dolls for some of those kids. I asked her if she wanted to do that for her birthday party. So it was decided. We made dolls for her birthday.

The craft went over very well. I had cut out a bunch of dolls and sewn them together. Then everyone got to decorate them and stuff them. I was a little nervous that the kids would struggle with not getting to keep the dolls. Surprisingly, they almost all handled it very well.

Once we finished the dolls, we did the pinata. Zurcher's has some great pinatas, but they are so hard to break. It took so many hard hits before it finally broke.

Fifty seconds before the game ended we sang Happy Birthday and ate cupcakes.

Then we all gathered around and watched the fantastic ending to the Super Bowl. Go Steelers.

Then on Saturday, we had her friend party. We started out making ugly dolls. Each child made 3 each and got to keep one of them. The cute kids had a blast doing them. After the dolls we did presents. Jade was so excited about her presents. Once we did presents, we moved on to the pinata. They had to hit it as hard as they could a million times! Finally Scott helped it break and they dove for the candy. Everyone had their little piles of candy, but half of them forgot to take theirs home. Funny kids. Happy Birthday was sung by the adorable children's choir. Then the cupcakes were gobbled and mangled. While we waited for the moms to come and pick the kids up, they danced and danced to "The Gummy Bear" song.

The party went well and I hope the kids had a lot of fun.

Happy 6th Birthday, Jady Bug. We love you!

The 4th of July Andrus/Christensen Gala- OH MY!

About thirty years ago (that's as far back as I can remember), we started having very full 4th of July's. We would start out at 9 AM by heading to the parade. The Bullock's (family friends) grandma lived by the parade path,so they would save a section for all of us. After the parade was over, we would go to Doc and Grandma's house where we would play in their pool and have lunch. After several hours at the pool, we would all return to our homes, rest and get ready for the evening. Early evening we would gather at my folk's for water balloon volleyball (okay the volleyball didn't start being part of the festivities until we were a little bit older) and relays. My mom would create little games and the competition was pretty light hearted. As we got a little older, the games got a little more aggressive and more difficult- but always very fun. Once the games would end and we'd dry off from the water fight, we'd have a yummy bbq. When we were little, it was Doc's super terrific steak. As we got older, the steak went away and was replaced by my dad's bbq country cut pork loin. We always had Grandma's potato salad and her baked beans. After Doc and Grandma started to get older, we- the grandkids- started to take on some of the food assignments. I think I was 14 when I started making the frog eye salad. Sari used to joke that she wanted a great big wading pool of it at her wedding. I don't think she was actually serious, but a nice compliment. Once we were done with the food, we'd load up in the station wagons and head over to the apartments where my parents used to live. From there we would watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks. Ah what a fun day the Fourth has always been.

Over the years the Fourth of July party has grown and the attendee list has grown with it. When we were young, it was just the 14 members of the family. When we got a little bit older, the Bullock's started to join us. Once we got older, we would invite friends to join us. Then the "kids" started to get married and the permanent group got a little bigger. "Stratton" has been included now for about 13 years, the McBrides have been with us for about 15 years, the Cochran's have been a part of the party for about 10 years. (Please submit any corrections in the comments).

In the late 80's-early 90's we started to wear matching shirts. Uncle and Cass were the artists for the first few years, and then we started silk screening. Cass and Dan have created the designs, Uncle has designed many of them, my mom has designed several, even Josh and I took a turn. This year's shirt was designed by Kat and has been used as the logo on all printed materials. (Yes, there are printed materials).

Doc and Grandma moved into a condo, so we started going to the BYU motion picture studio for lunch and games. Then Aunt and Unc built their beautiful home with a pool, so the afternoon activities moved to their house. The next year, my folks moved into their beautiful home and the two couples were wise in their planning. They bought lots that were adjoining, so now there is a gate between the two houses. This final move, meant the festivities could start at noon and continue until late in evening with plenty of room to roam and play.

The simple relays that used to take place in my folks backyard, have grown to a very large production that includes a shiny trophy. One year we did a scavenger hunt that took us all around town. Another year we did Survivor. This year we did "As Seen on TV" with games taken from 3 different reality shows. There is always a theme, there are always charges of cheating, there is always water and there is always a winner. To date, I have not been on the winning team. Maybe I should be a coordinator not a player. Either way, it is a LOT of fun and very serious.

Eventually we did away with the drive down to Provo to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks. (We weren't very old when we quit going to the apartments to watch). About 7 years ago, the "Cul de Sac of Fire" was started. Call me naive, but I thought we actually came up with that title. I guess I was wrong as I have heard of many "Cul de Sac of Fire" events going on. Anyway, this portion of the day's events takes place in the Christensen/Lee cul de sac. It started out as a simple firework display. Each year it has grown a little bit. There was a theme song added one year, choreography for the "lighters" another year, a refreshment tent the next and this year there was an intermission with TWO musical numbers and a painted logo on the street.

This year was by far the biggest celebration to date. Next year, who knows what will happen during the event. Your guess is as good as mine, but I'm sure it will be FANTASTIC.

I really do love our family and I love that we have remained close for so many years. For 36 years now, my family of 14, have been my best friends.

Happy Fourth of July and I can't wait til next year!

For more posts concerning the holiday, check out Cassie's, Sari's (part 1, 2 and 3) and Em's blogs. I'll add Kat's as she posts them. For now, she's the only one who did the parade, so here's her post on it.

About thirty three years ago my mom's parents moved from California to Utah. They built a beautiful home in the same stake as my parents. Shortly after that, my aunt and uncle moved into the neighborhood too. Because all three households were so close, we got together for every birthday and every holiday. We loved growing up so close and we have continued these friendships as we have married and had children of our own. Okay, I digress. We're talking about the 4th of July right now.

A teaser of what's to come...

I apologized for being absent the past several days. We've been so busy that I have not had time to blog. So, I wanted to give just a quick teaser of our 4th of July Gala. Take a couple of minutes and few Colin's amazing youtube video.

The Andrus/Christensen clan has spent the last 30 years celebrating the 4th to the fullest. I'll give a more detailed recap soon. But for now...



There were lots of giggles and screams.

Many people got soaked. (Mostly thanks to my dear husband who some how always avoids getting wet but soaks everyone else.)

There were lots of games.

And some amazing dancing by the "FireGirls 550 South". You can see more on the choreographers here.