Muggle-Born

Two days after Christmas we headed up to my parents for a baby shower my sisters were throwing me. I knew it was going to be Harry Potter themed but that's about it. They really did an AWESOME job. Well, anything Harry Potter related is awesome in my opinion. And seriously, what else is more me anyways? Shows how much my family loves me and embraces me and my nerdiness to decided to do a theme like that!

I snapped a few pictures of all the amazingness.

Platform 9 3/4! 

Andrea even dressed up for me!

The ladies who put it all together! (And mom, but she took the picture.) Tonya even let me draw a lightening scar on her forehead. She looked just like a female Harry! Ha ha.

It was so nice of them to do that for me. There were fun games like guess what baby item was in the brown bag, "hot potato baby" where you had to share an embarrassing parenting moment if you got stuck with the baby, and a word scramble. It was fun to have family and friends there. Can't believe that this little nugget will be here in a matter of weeks!

The rest of the weekend was filled with games and laughing, like usual when we are visiting with family. It was weird to realize that was the last time I will ever be at my parents house without a child. I am growing up!

A Siddoway Christmas

Christmas this year was spent with Paul's family. It was very enjoyable. Last time we were with his family, me, along with his Dad and a niece or two had some sort of stomach bug all of Christmas Eve day. I remember only having the appetite to nibble on some green jello. So being able to enjoy everything this time around was great!

Totally forgot the camera, but Paul snapped some pictures for us. Mostly of his nieces. Because let's be real, gatherings with families are usually about the little ones.

I had to work on Christmas Eve until the early afternoon. Paul had about 8 paid vacation days he "had" to use before the end of the year or else he would just lose them so he took about 2 weeks off around the holidays! No fair. I had a list of projects for him to do so I guess it turned out ok. And he thought he was going to just be able to relax the whole time. . muahahaha.

Anyways, when I got off we packed up the presents and headed to his parents. We helped prep stuff and then had a tasty dinner full of mashed potatoes, ham, jello wreaths, rolls, etc. You get the idea. Here are some pictures that were snapped during the occasion:

Elena. . . so full of personality.

Looking pretty, like usual!

The whole reason for this picture is Camilla's AWESOME face on the right. I'm dying laughing.

After dinner we of course did the Nativity play! Paul and I were Mary and Joseph. I fit the part pretty well being great with child and all. . . The nieces were the angels. Brothers in law David and Alvaro and Dad Siddoway were the shepards/wise men.

It was really fun to do the nativity with his family. We would stop and sing hymns during the story and I really enjoyed it. Really brought to light again the true meaning of celebrating this holiday.

Aaaand those are pretty much all the pictures I took. Pathetic, I know.

After the Nativity we had a wonderful Norwegian dessert that is like rice pudding and really really REALLY good. Paul's Dad served his mission in Norway so he grew up having it and we've had it a few times and it is so tasty! It's tradition to put an almond in the batch and whoever has the almond in their bowl while eating gets a prize. Paul's dad made sure to put one in each of the little girls' bowls. But they were all so excited/full that they didn't really even finish. Ha ha it was funny.

The girls went home and Paul, his brother David and sister Janet and I all went up and watched a non-Christmas movie. I guess that's another tradition of theirs that started who knows when. . so we watched "Pirates! A Band of Misfits". One of the most hilarious cartoons I've seen.

Paul and I then headed home. It was our first Christmas Eve night on our own! We planned on going back to his parents late the next morning. We decided to do our own gifts for each other and the ones from my family that morning with just the two of us. We didn't own any stockings (I bought some the day after Christmas)  so we unceremoniously exchanged our stocking stuffers in the plastic grocery bags we bought them in. Ha ha. It was really fun to have just the two of us and I'm not going to lie, even though I love spending holidays with family, I'm excited to start doing our own family holiday traditions.

We headed back to his parents for the rest of gift opening and just relaxed. His parents were very generous and got us a crib for the little nugget. After the festivities wound down we headed back up to our place and his parents followed to help set it up. We then went and saw the movie "Saving Mr. Banks". It was good, but I wasn't blown away by it. . .there were plenty of good parts but it's not a movie I'll ever think about buying.

That was pretty much our Christmas! It was a great holiday and I am so blessed to have married into such a wonderful family. We really enjoyed the holiday.

Thanksgiving and other stuff

I'm finally getting around to blogging about Thanksgiving and well. . . other stuff. I haven't really rushed to get on and post about it because I think the main people who read this blog are the same ones who I was with for the holiday anyways!

My mom had signed all of us up for a race Thanksgiving morning called "Run to Feed the Hungry". There was the option of doing a 10k, 5k, 5k walk, or 1 mile walk. Collin did the 10k (overachiever), Paul, Tonya, Andrea and Alex ran the 5k, Mom did the 5k walk, and Dad, Ashlyn and I did the 1 mile. Except, we totally didn't even walk more than one block. I personally wasn't very impressed with this race this time around. We did it about 2 years ago and this time I felt like it was more crowded but way less organized. I was super bugged because the people putting it on made it sound like the race started AT 9. But no, all their pre-race crap started then and it was really cold! We all had to hop around to keep warm for the next half hour while they had weird zumba ladies up on some stage doing a work out. Dad did the best at keeping warm:

When the race finally started, it was still so unorganized. There were about two thousand people supposedly there, I think. And yet they had no signs for what route you should be doing depending on the race you signed up for. I think that would have made things a lot easier! So Dad and I had no idea where to go for our 1 mile walk so we walked a little bit with everyone else but realized if we kept going this way we were going to have to do a 5k walk, and yeah right like either of us wanted to do that! So we turned around and went back to the car and sat in the nice warm heat and let Ashlyn play with the steering wheel and waited to see everyone else come across the finish line. Not bad, in my opinion.

Anyways, after that fiasco the festivities began. Dear little Alex participated in no shave November the best he could while still following BYU's honor code:

Doesn't he look like someone from the 70's? That whole outfit. . . . 

And yes, asking Dad to say cheese while he carves the turkey results in a picture like this:

We all had fun with Ashlyn, of course. She is so funny and sassy. And loves to play with whoever will play with her. One in a while she actually called me by my real name, and didn't think I was Jodee! 

She of course still loooved Paul. He seems to be one of her favorites.

And I made a craft! Tonya brought us leftover stuff from a craft night she did with her young women and we all made these cute turkeys. 

Of course the day after Thanksgiving we helped Mom put up all the Christmas decorations! That's how it should be in my opinion, but being married to a SCROOGE I have to wait until December 1st. But not at my parents!

The tree decorating crew. Tonya and Collin and co had left earlier that day. :) Notice how Paul isn't part of the decorating crew? Refer to my comment about being a scrooge above. He wants nothing to do with Christmas until December.

Aaaand here's my parent's house with all the lights. My dad and Alex were so confused as to why 3 fuses blew out in this process and couldn't figure out why. . . . . hmmm. . . . let's all think about that. . .

It was a fun little holiday gathering. 

Luckily since Thanksgiving was so late this year, by the time we got home it was December 1st, so I brought out all our Christmas stuff! (which isn't that much, but my goal is to add to it every year, despite my SCROOGE.) I dragged Paul to Home Depot for us to get a nice little tree. It was the last warm-ish day before the freezing nasty cold weather settled in.

We've also been making some Christmas treats. These were supposed to be those cornflake wreaths, but we didn't bother molding them to look like wreaths. They looked more like Christmas tree poops. Still tasted good though! I also made some tasty toffee that is my FAVORITE christmas treat, but misread some of the directions and added double the amount of brown sugar I needed to for the cookie crust. So they turned out really gooey, but still really good! I took them to work and they were gobbled up right away and no one even thought about it!

So that's the run down. I can believe Christmas is less than 2 weeks!