Christmas Eve at Grandma Brown's

This is Grandma Brown. I love Grandma Brown. She is beautiful and classy. Grandma has taught me so many things. She hosts an annual Christmas Eve party that we look forward to all year. She is wonderful and I see a little bit of resemblance of her in my daughter. Thank you grandma for another fantastic party!

Calvert Christmas Party

This is the 3rd Annual Calvert Christmas Party. I love this one. It is so much fun. This year we started the night out at Fat Cats. We played unlimited bowling. The kids LOVED it.

This is Quinn's new thing. When he is shy, embarrassed or just plain doesn't want to look at you, he closes his eyes. Problem is, he still goes on with what ever he is doing. He has run in to several walls lately.

Uncle Mike took Anna to play some games. Some how Anna won the ticket jack pot. They just kept coming and coming. She was thrilled. She spent her tickets on sugar...a lot of sugar...didn't go to bed till 11:30 sugar.

This is my favorite part about bowling with my kids. They get so excited. {apparently I do to} She did pretty good.

Quinn enjoying a swig of Dr. P, shh don't tell.

He knows what's good for him!

Quinn couldn't get enough. He loved loved it!

We take the bowling stance very seriously...

After bowling we went home and exchanged our sibling gifts. Poor Josh was not feeling very well. NIke Shox for Anna, Quinn, and Josh


Nerf gun to Brian from Josh. Awesome.



And of course it wouldn't be a Calvert function if Dad wasn't on the floor singing his heart out. Every time my dad would stop, Quinn would stop playing and say, "I like it!" Just enough to keep him going for another hour.



The Fondue was the part I didn't get pictures of, too busy eating. The food was fantastic. Can't wait till next year!

Opportunity COSTS...

Many years ago I sat in a class room at BYU learning about concepts of Economics. I don't remember what my final grade was in that class but I can tell you this, ever since becoming a Mother there has been a concept from this said class that has haunted me day after day. The concept of Opportunity Costs. Everything we do has a cost. Not necessarily a monetary cost but some sort of cost whether it be time, emotion, pain, etc. You get the idea. Well today I chose to clean my kitchen. It needed it very bad.

You see we spent the day making this lovely piece of work. As beautiful as it is, my floor and every other square inch of my kitchen was covered in thick coconut frosting and candy colored nightmare.

So this morning I had two goals.

1. Clean Kitchen

2. Finish my Christmas Card banner.

I am happy to say I accomplished my goals BUT at what cost did I accomplish my goals?

Let me just show you....

Exhibit 1: This is Anna. She is got into my closet and dumped out a huge drawer of shirts to find this fabulous out fit. She is sporting a wide variety of my clinique make up which was later spread all over the rocking chair in the kids' room. She did her hair. Very cute. And made sure to get the bra on before all of the layers of shirts.

Exhibit 2: This was a once very boring cake plate. It is now well dressed with insects of all kinds. Thank you Anna. I was hoping to get to that project.

Exhibit 3: This is Quinn. Or better yet this is Quinn's purple hand. His hand is dyed purple because he got into the {child proof} closet and found the bag of "gummy drops" {gum balls}. This was a bad thing. Very bad thing. This brilliant shade of purple was the perfect ink pad for my baby to stamp his little finger prints all over my sparkly walls. This purple also frosted Quinn's outfit from head to toe. Love the purple.

Exhibit 4: This is my year supply of batteries. These as well as 500 other little items were dumped out of the {child proof} closet.

I know you know what I am talking about. Our lives are full of Opportunity Costs. And some days, the kitchen just needs to be cleaned.

After 10 minutes of sitting on the toilet Anna says to herself:

"I only wish there was a button on the toilet that made it soft that had an arm to grab the poop out."

Ingenious!

today

Today was a big day.

A day I feared would never come.

Rather than go into all the details {and to keep my blood at a healthy temperature} I will just say this:

One day about three and a half months ago Anna went to preschool. That was the last time she went to preschool, or Church, or to play at a friend's house, or to my own mother's house or ANYwhere with out me right by her side.

This poor little girl has been in a world of hurt and fear. For the last 3 months I have been beside myself.

I have prayed.

I have talked to many friends and family members.

I have read books.

I have searched the internet.

I pleaded with her.

I cried.

I tried and tried to get her to do things, to go places, with out me...

It didn't work.

For months it did not work. I finally gave up. I was reassured by loved ones that she will bounce back. She will return to her vibrant self who loves to learn and loves to be around people. I wanted to believe it would happen but it was hard to see any end in sight when I was blinded by the present day.

Today however was different. Today I took a little girl to preschool. She was brave. Her bottom lip quivered and she fought to keep the tears in her eyes as she silently assured me she was going to be okay. I lovingly handed over to a friend I trust and walked away.

Inside her tiny back pack was her special Scriddle and a stopwatch that had a timer set for when I would return.

Today. she. did. it. She was away from me at preschool for 2 hours and she loved it.

Today I saw the return of a once brave little girl.

I am grateful for Today.

Meet Scriddle

This morning when we awoke, we found this under our tree.

Inside we found a special letter from Santa Claus himself. He sent us our very own little elf who we named, Scriddle. {not quite sure how we came up with that name!} He came with a fabulous little story that told us that he will watch over us every day and at night when we go to sleep, he will magically fly back to Santa's workshop in the North Pole. He will report to the big man on our progress each day. And when we wake up in the morning he will be hiding in a new spot. We will have to see who finds him first. Scriddle was welcomed with open arms in our family. If anyone needs some bribery made of gold, I would highly recommend this book! It is Fantastic!

...maybe next year scriddle will be cooler than quinn's chocolate milk. We will see.