For those who haven't heard...

we're having a BOY!!! We actually had our ultrasound on Monday but life has been BUSY here so it's taken a couple days to actually post this. The ultrasound went GREAT. The tech was super nice and spent nearly an hour with us. The baby was very active and it was so fun to watch him. We're so excited for this little guy to join our family. Tanner seems excited too. Let's hope he stays that way when his baby brother actually shows up! Here's his cute little profile and a video clip of him kicking and kicking.

Christmas 2009

We had a wonderful Christmas around here yesterday. Tanner is such a fun age to have around at Christmas. He love, LOVE, LOVED his gifts and had so much fun tearing open wrapping paper. We got up and had our own little Christmas morning at our place and then quickly got ready and headed over to Dean's parents so we could be there for the big phone call to his little brother Eric on his mission in Romania. We spent the whole day over there playing with cousins, playing games, visiting with each other and just relaxing! We of course opened MORE presents and squeezed in some Brian Reagan to finish off the day. We were a little sad to see it end.

Traditional family picture in the hall BEFORE getting our gifts.

An immediate hit! He didn't care about any other presents after seeing his tool bench. In fact he cried when we were leaving until we let him bring some of his "tools" to Grandma and Grandpa's.

Opening presents from under the tree (yes, Sue I may have gifted Ammon's old jammies. Ha! Don't tell Tanner that they aren't brand new!)

I got a craft cutter! Vinyl letters, amazing cards, and countless projects here we come!

Dean and his much anticipated I-Pod Touch. He's been trying to convince me for weeks that Christmas should come early this year. He seriously didn't set it down ALL day. Well except to eat.

Mom and Tanner with his "tools".

Kaitlyn, Hyrum, and Jared setting up the train set. (Note Kaitlyn's shirt...I made matching shirts for all the kids. I think they turned out pretty cute!)

Dianne, Kaitlyn, Hyrum, and Genevieve. Opening presents.

Janna opening her gift from Grant and Rachel

Kaitlyn, Leah, Grandma and Tanner

Christmas Eve

This year we're lucky enough to have ALL of Dean's family except for Eric (who is on a mission in Romania) in town for the holidays. They all got here before Christmas and we've had a LOT of fun so far. For Christmas Eve we all braved the snow and cold and went caroling to 8 different widows and widowers in the area. It was so nice to spread the Christmas Spirit and to see the joy on their faces because of our visit. Then we had a delicious dinner at Grandma and PapPap Furin's and opened gifts from them. It was such a nice day and we came home and got Tanner in bed by 9:30 and we were in bed by midnight so Santa had no problem sneaking into our house while we slept! Here's a few pictures of the evening...

Merry Christmas...

In the nick of time...

So today I finally finished our stockings that I started making back in October. They did take a while, but mostly I've had a MILLION other things going on that kept me from getting around to finishing them up. I LOVE how they turned out. I made four and I have extra fabric for more in the future. But after finally getting them done we may not have any more kids just so I don't have to make stockings again! Ha! I'm joking....kind of. I still plan on putting our names on the top at some point, but I haven't decided how yet, plus we don't know a name or even a gender for baby #2. So we may not have names on them this year. Anyway, here's a couple pictures...


P.S. I think that officially makes me ready for Christmas! Well except for delivering goodies that are already made to the last of Dean's home-teaching families. Yay! Time to celebrate!

FINALLY!!

We've been waiting all winter for our first REAL snow. We've had a couple lame little flurries where nothing stuc, but today we have a whole 5 inches!!!! So of course we had to bundle up and head out to enjoy it. Tanner has been wanting to make a snowman all winter, but sadly it was too powdery to stick together. Despite our best efforts we were unsuccessful at building the long-awaited snowman. That didn't stop us from having LOTS of fun though. In fact I didn't think I'd ever convince Tanner to come back inside. Here's some pictures and video clips of our day...

All bundled up and ready to PLAY

Despite those rosy cheeks he did NOT want to go in

Helpin' Dad shovel

Loving the snow

Throwin' snowballs

His first Shiner

So Tanner was playing just a little too hard with Daddy last night and somehow smacked his eye really good. I think he conked it with a flashlight actually. This morning it's a bit swollen. But he was super tough about the whole thing. Really I think it's kinda cute. He also has a rash on the side of his mouth. We look like AMAZING parents lately! Ha! Hopefully they're both gone by Christmas.

Our Tree

We're the proud new owners of a FREE, really nice, 7.5 ft. Christmas tree! Did I mention FREE!? A family in our ward was getting rid of it and we kindly took it off their hands. We've already decorated our smaller tree twice now, due to the fact that we used it at the Ward Christmas Party, so my enthusiasm to decorate ANOTHER tree was lacking. Especially since we don't really have enough stuff to cover such a big tree....but we finally got around to it tonight. Maybe by next Christmas I'll have some great ideas for decorating it, but for this year it will do and we're just SUPER grateful/excited to have such a nice tree!
*I totally forgot the best part of the night. Once we had the lights on the tree Tanner looked at it and said, "Gorgeous!" I turned and said, "What did you say!?" He just repeated it all non-nonchalantly, "Gorgeous!" Ha! My one year old has the word gorgeous in his vocabulary! Who knew!? Of course I immediately taught him what else is gorgeous. Uh, his mother! Then he proceeded to tell me all night that "mom is gorgeous!" I just love him!

Christmas In Nauvoo

We somehow ended up in charge of "Santa's Workshop" for our ward Christmas party this year. The theme was "Christmas in Nauvoo" so it was supposed to be pioneer themed. Dean was asked to play Santa as well. So after racking our brains we came up with a few things we could pull together to make it look somewhat authentic. Dean put together the cardboard fireplace and I made the burlap ornaments. We enlisted Eric's help to string popcorn while he was here. Then we grabbed anything remotely pioneer we had around the house and did our best to make it look nice. Santa was a little skinnier than usual this year, but the suit had no belt, so we weren't quite sure how to keep any stuffing in. Oh well. It turned out ok and now it's DONE! And Dean only made a handful of kids cry! ;) Here's a few pictures of the nursery room before/after. And of course Tanner's Santa pictures for the year. I actually wore a pioneer dress too (thanks Mom Nelson!) but we didn't get any pictures of that. Oops!

The fireplace Dean made and painted.

My burlap ornaments and the popcorn we strung.

And a few brown paper packages tied up with string! ;)

Tanner LOVED this antique tricycle. I guess we know what to get for his next birthday!

Lucky for us Tanner wasn't a bit afraid of Santa this year. We were just worried he'd go around telling all the other kids, "Dad, Santa...Dad, Santa" cause that's what he's been telling us all week!

We also had a table covered in brown paper that the kids could color on, and paper for them to make snowflakes, but most of them were far more interested in just seeing Santa.

Here's a little peek at my pregnancy progression. I'm actually starting to show!

A Kind Act

So most of the time I'm more of the gloom and doom, our world is getting worse by the second kind of thinker, but today something happened to remind me that there's still good in the world. It's FREEZING cold here today. Still no snow, but FREEZING cold. Anyway, Tanner and I ran out to the post office and to the grocery store and I was worried Tanner was going to turn into a popsicle between the car and the store. When I came out after shopping I was trying to hurry and load the groceries and Tanner into the car and a man that was parked near me noticed that I still needed to return my shopping cart as well. He just said, "it's WAY too cold out here, I'll take your cart back and you get in your car!" He proceeded to take my cart all the way back to the store for me before returning to his car to head on his way. This may not have been a big deal to him, but it sure was to me! It was just one of those little moments when Heavenly Father reminded me that we are all His children, and despite a LOT of bad in our world, there's a LOT of good. Hopefully we can all do little things, especially at this time of year, to remind everyone around us of that! Thanks mister, for your kind act and for brightening my day!

Ornament Wreath

So I jumped on the bandwagon and made this wreath that's been floating around craft blogs this season. I used the same dollar tree ornaments so it was pretty cheap but super cute! LOVE it!

Celebration of Lights

Today we've had some CRAZY weather. It's been SUPER windy and it knocked our power out for 2 1/2 hours. Now I'm just praying that the wind blows in some SNOW tonight! Despite the crazy wind we headed out to see the "Celebration of Lights". It's about a 45 minute drive, but it's like 3 miles of lights and lots of fun. Santa was even there! Tanner thought it was way cool and we even let him get out of his car seat so he could see better which of course made his day. Ha! We snagged some ice cream cones on the way home and surprisingly Tanner made less of a mess than Dean and Eric! Way to go guys! We tried to capture some of the lights, so here they are...

Our stalwart driver...I think he stayed awake the whole time ;)

The monkeys in the back seat

We made it!

These tunnels were pretty cool. Tanner especially loved them!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

It feels like you're in Dr. Suess land with all these trees.

We broke the law and let Tanner ride on my lap so he could see. Oops! (we never went more than like 1 mile an hour cause of the SLOW car in front of us)

Dean actually had the idea to get ice cream cones ALL ON HIS OWN! WOW!

Our Day...

We are still having LOTS of fun with Uncle Eric. Tanner is going to be sad when it's just Mom around all day after Eric heads home. Today we made it to the Andy Warhol Museum finally. Tanner did really well, except that the place echos like crazy so we were constantly trying to get him to talk quieter. Apparently Andy had a thing for taxidermy so there was a stuffed lion and a great dane that he had owned. That was by far more exciting to Tanner than any pictures. And thank heavens for elevators between every floor. Pushing elevator buttons kept Tanner happy. Ah, simple pleasures. Afterwords we headed to the Church parking lot so Eric could try his hand at some stick shift driving. Tanner had so much fun with all the crazy jerking that he protested when I took over to drive home. Apparently Eric's driving is WAY more fun. He was even telling me about the "ride" Eric took us on as he went to bed tonight. To top off my day I got to go learn from the chocolate expert, a.k.a. Grandma Furin, how to make chocolates. Now we'll see if I can pull it off on my own next year. Thanks Grandma for teaching me and for all the yummy chocolates! And now a couple pictures of Tanner drowning in Uncle Eric's sweater. Pretty cute!

We make pretty sweet ELVES!

We made this back before Thanksgiving but it was too early to post anything Christmasy. Tanner absolutely LOVES watching these. I've seen each dance about 30 times. Anyway, this one's my favorite. Probably because Dean and I could never actually pull this off in real life! ;) Enjoy!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Gingerbread Houses

Tonight we had our annual Gingerbread House making activity. We figured it would be a fun thing to squeeze in while Eric's here visiting. He's been talking smack all week about how much better his would be, but I'll let you be the judge...

Tanner ate WAY too much candy, but thoroughly enjoyed the activity

Me working on some icicles

The boys hard at work

Dean's finished house (Eric and I secretly agree Dean's rocks but shhh we don't want him to know that!)

Eric and Tanner with Eric's house. The big smarty on the window was Tanner's addition. ;)

My finished house