Christmas Sunday

I was able to get some cute pictures of the kids before church last week. I just love Mara's Christmas dress. She wore it all day long and told everyone that her dress was pretty!!

Family Christmas Party

Saturday night we had our Annual Hillam Family Christmas Party! It was nice to see my extended family. Here are the highlights:

Xander & Karri

Mara & Conli (The Rockin' Angel)
Me & My Sweetheart

Max & Xander

Me & Mara

We always have Santa come and each child gets a present. This is a picture of a very nervous Mara! When Santa came she got so nervous that she had to go 'potty'. So while we were in the bathroom I talked with her about sitting on Santa's lap. She said that she didn't want to, of course. So I relented and told her that if she sat on his lap that maybe she would get a princess!! That made her happy for a moment, but by the time we went back in the room, she was nervous again!

Us trying to distract her from watching Santa!

The Best Santa Around!!!!!

We have had the same Santa for over 20 years! He's awesome, and it wouldn't be Christmas without him :)

Xander & the Big Guy He got a Lego set. As I took this picture he said to me:

"I just love it so much"
By the time it was Mara's turn, she had gone in front to be with Conli. When her name was called she just ran right up to Santa!! Needless to say, I was in complete shock!! She did a great job and even talked to him :) By the end she was starting to get nervous again but then was able to get down, so there was no crying. I am just so proud of my little girl. I thought for sure it would be another year of a crying child. I think my niece Sawyer was the worst, and the funniest! Lisa has pics here.

Mara wasn't disappointed. She got her princess :)

Mara & Conli playing with their new dolls.

"Hi, I'm Belle" "Hi, I'm Gabriella"

One last picture before we left.

Chris, Sawyer, Me & Lisa.It was a really fun party and next year's is going to Rock The House!!!! (My generation is going to be planning it)

I just can't believe that Christmas is almost here!!

Request

This is a request from all those people that were in High School Choir with me at MVHS. I have the songs on CD that I recorded from home video, but I don't have the titles to most of the songs. So if any of you out there happen to still have copies of the programs from our concerts and could email (bregirl81 at gmail dot com) the titles to me that would be awesome or type them in the comments!!!

I am looking for all concerts in the 96-97 year (Ladies A Cappella), all concerts in the 97-98 year (A Cappella), and the Christmas concert for the 98-99 year (Chamber & A Cappella)!
Thanks!

Snowing & Singing

It finally snowed for real on Tuesday and Pat had his last final of the semester, so to celebrate we all went outside and built a snowman!! (I just took pictures, I don't like the snow too much)

Here are the highlights:

Daddy with the base of the snowman! The snow was more powder, so it was hard to get the snow to stick together. But they did a great job nonetheless!

Mara had to play on the swings, even though they were covered in snow!!

The finished product!

The kids were being so cute with the snow. I had to post some videos!

Listen closely to Xander, he made me laugh :)

Last night Xander had his School Program!

He did such a great job on all his songs and he was singing loudly too :)

They were singing 'Frosty the Snowman' in this one!

This is Xander with his teacher Koni Youd! She is a wonderful teacher and he has improved so much these past few months. He is learning all the sounds of the letters and even sounding out words! She says that we can get him reading by the end of the school year!!

I am so proud of my little boy! He is getting so big and smart :)

Be a Hero. Save a Blog (You could win an iPod or a Cricut!)

So, my awesome brother started this company, called Bloggled, to help all us bloggers in the world!! You can back up your blog for free!!! So if you delete something, they can retrieve it for you. If you accidently delete your whole blog (after you have backed it up) they can bring it back to life. You can even turn your blog into a book, without all the extra uploading :)

Anywho, they are having a great contest on Monday December 15th to celebrate the launch of their website! You could win a Cricut or an 16 GB iPod Touch!!! So keep on reading to find out how to enter to win!!! Good luck!!

Have you ever had this experience? You are posting to your blog, click the publish button, and the very next thing you know the screen is blank. So, you click back to your drafts and nothing is there, then you click your published posts and nothing is there. At this point you are starting to think to yourself…oh no, what just happened? As you continue searching your blog admin for information you see that all your uploaded images, videos, files, and everything is gone.

Living through this situation would be enough to devastate any blogger. Knowing that years of data about your person, family, or business is gone can be difficult to overcome emotionally, but even more difficult of a problem to solve. If you haven’t backed up your blog recently, or ever, chances are your posts and everything else are gone for good.

This is the kind of situation that led Brent Ramey to the idea of creating Bloggled.com, “and to honestly save anyone in that situation the act of going insane.” Bloggled.com is a blog backup company that is allowing bloggers to backup their blog for free as an introductory product to celebrate their official launch out of beta and as a holiday gift this season. Bloggled is also offering multiple prizes to those who participate in their “Be a Hero, Save a Blog Contest” that is running through the day on Monday, December 15, 2008. Winners can choose from either a 16GB iPod Touch, or a Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter Machine and it’s quite simple to enter. All you have to do is one of the items below, but if you do more you get entered more times into the drawing…but you have to enter by Monday 12/15 to qualify so act fast, or should I say slow so I have a better chance of winning. :)

1. Join Bloggled. Register and sign up for a Bloggled account (http://www.bloggled.com/).
2. Friend or follow Bloggled on one of the following social network profiles:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bloggled
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Brent-Ramey/1002883214
3. Subscribe to Bloggled’s RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bloggled.
4. Blog about the Blogger Contest on another blog then notify Bloggled about the new blog post by commenting on their blog.

Anyway, as you can tell from my post here, I have met the criteria and will be hoping I’m drawn as a winner on Monday. You can find the full contest details by visiting www.bloggled.com.

Trees and Lights

Tuesday Night my mom watched my nephew and nieces while Brent & Lisa did some Christmas shopping. We had already planned on going to my grandma's to put up her Christmas tree that night, so my mom swapped cars with them and after dinner we got all 5 grandkids in B&L's car (it's a Pilot, I so want one) and we headed to Provo to meet Karri, JD & Chris at Grandma Joan's house! The kids had a great time being in the same car together!

The girls wanted to play in the tree tote.
And then hide in it too!
They had to make a train of chairs behind Grandma Joan, because trains are always great fun!

The final product with Chris getting the vacuum ready.

Grandma Joan with Conli, Xander & Max.

Mara & Sawyer didn't want to be in the picture.

On Wednesday night we went out to Thanksgiving Point and rode on a horse drawn wagon to see their Holiday Lights. It was better then looking at the lights from inside our car. Definetly worth the few extra dollars.

Chris, JD, Mara, Mom, Me, Xander, Pat, & Karri

We missed you Ramey family. Hopefully we can do it with you next year!

This is what we rode on.

It was a really fun night! Thanks for the idea Mom :)

What We've Been Up To

Another week has gone by and we are getting closer to Christmas! And there still isn't snow to be seen on the ground. (So weird) Last Monday we put up the Christmas Tree for FHE, but it took us almost all week to get all the ornaments on it :) We are such slow pokes this year.On Wednesday we went to the Provo Mall to see Santa! This is our 3rd year to see the same guy and I love it! He does such a great job! What's even better is that there was no line when we got there :) Xander was able to run right up to talk to him.
But Mara had her usual case of Claus-trophobia After seeing Santa, we went to see 'Bolt'. It's really cute and funny and the kids loved it. And we also had the whole theater to ourselves, so I didn't feel bad talking to my kids during the movie. It has been a long time since we spend the day as a family and took the kids to a movie.

In the Fall of 2004 I saw these way cute Christmas stockings in the Pottery Barn Catalog. But they were 25 bucks each, and at the time I only had Xander and knew that it was too expensive to buy them and that I probably wouldn't be able to match the stockings in the future. So after looking at them I knew that I could make them :)
Here's the picture from the catalog: So that Fall I bought all the material for 6 stockings and it was less then 3o bucks!! I made the stockings for the 3 of us, but have never really used them since we live at my mom's and she has stockings for us to use. And for that very reason I have never made one for Mara and this is her 3rd Christmas! I was also having a hard time deciding on how to make it, but I finally bit the bullet and made it on Saturday!! I feel so much better now that it's done. We still won't be using it, but at least it's done. All I really need to do now is get the names on them. I think they turned out great! It's always fun to have hand made stuff.
Here's a picture of the finished stockings:

Dad - Santa

Mom - Mrs. Claus

Xander - Snowman

Mara - Angel

Here is a few cute pics of Mara and the tree.
I love this one, even though it's dark.
On Saturday Night we had our Ward Christmas Party and Santa came there too!! Before he came out I made Xander run up to the front, so when Santa got there he was within the first 10 kids! I walked up there with Mara, but she kept on saying "I don't want to". I hope she gets over this phobia by next year.Last night we had family over and my mom had bought Rock Band for the Wii (my sister convinced her too). So we got it out and played for a few hours. Times like this it's hard that we have the Wii hooked up to the kitchen TV, but we worked it out.

The first set Mana -Vocals, Pat - Drums, and JD - Guitar

Karri & Xander -Vocals, Mana - Drums, Pat - Guitar

A better shot of Mom on the drums

Xander & Karri rockin it!

A good shot of my Iron Man on the guitar.

Xander even got a turn on the drums, and was excited that he got 34 %. He's so funny.

After we got the kids to bed I finally got to play. I sang a few songs, played the drums and the guitar. I think I like the guitar best. The drums are harder then I thought they would be, but still fun. I found that I was having Rock Band dreams all night. It must mean that I need to play more :) Maybe after the kids go to bed tonight!

I got a video of the first song played by our band.

It's 'Roxanne' by The Police.

I don't know if my mom really knew the song, so it's funny to hear her sing. And it's a little loud so don't turn up the volume too much.

I forgot to mention that Mara has been doing great at potty training. It's been 2 weeks and only 2 or 3 accidents. She is even starting to be dry at night :) I love that I don't have to buy diapers, and my checkbook loves it too.