Christmas 2010

Sonia made lots if these cute aprons and Hillary is one of the proud recipients.

Adelyn was either on Shawn's lap or Marc's the whole time.

Gift cards mean new clothes for Marc who has lost about 50 pounds.

I'm sure this book will come in handy for me!

Gift cards and chocolate. What more does a girl need?

Tasha and Emma with their pillow cases that are a taste of the curtains to come. I found these fabrics just days before Christmas so they had to wait awhile for the curtains.

Sharing a secret look.

Books that came with a dolphin purse and necklace.

"I might even be a rock star!" Tasha is no longer a Hannah Montana fan but that is what popped into my mind when I saw this fun picture.

The quilt I made Sami

The quilt I made Adelyn

The nice luggage we got Marc to replace the kiddy one he's been using. His flights to New York to help with weddings are getting more frequent and he needed something more durable and roomy.

Opening the box of family presents from Roxanne and Leland.

Gifts from James were a big hit... almost literally!

This slinky from James was great. Adelyn has loved it and played with it constantly.

You can see how much Emma would love to play with this. Too bad breaking the lights is a problem!

Pretty necklace from Bar Harbor, Maine. Cruises are great for getting Christmas gifts that aren't the normal fare.

Now it's time for yummy food!

My massive Christmas tree. It's about time to start weathering it to plant out on our property.

Of course everyone visited the cutest Moseley couple in the world to wish them a Merry Christmas.

Thanksgiving 2010

For Thanksgiving, Roger and his kids came to town. It was great to see them all! What started out to be a small cozy and intimate gathering turned into quite the festive, chaotic celebration. I thought it would be way too much for our parents but they did fairly well. It took my Mother-in-law a couple weeks to feel fully rested though.

Benjamin, Matthew, Nate, Roger, & Lonnie;

4 Handsome Generations of Moseley men.

Everyone was trying to get Benjamin to be all excited over this beautiful turkey but he just didn't care.

Samantha, Natasha, Natalie, Emma and Adelyn

Meredith with Grandma and Grandpa Moseley

Marty and Roger. I love this picture!

Benjamin, Natasha, Natalie and Emma

Richard, Roger and Russ/Scott

Samantha with Uncle Russ' magnetic glasses.

Natasha trying to win a wrestling match with Marc.

Nate kept hanging and swinging from the table. It was so cute!

Cousins! Hillary, Matthew, Jamie, Jessica and Meredith.

The day after Thanksgiving a bunch of us went to Temple Square. Me, Meredith, Matthew, Emma, Natasha, Benjamin, Sonia and Tiffany with Nate and Adelyn in strollers and Samantha looking at them. We told Matthew to meet us up in the rotunda of the North Visitor’s Center where the Christus is. We arrived first and as we were waiting, we could look over the railing at all the people coming up that long ramp. Samantha and Adelyn saw past the ramp to a display of the Good Samaritan and begged me to “go see the dead guy”! What a hoot! Grandpa humored them and took them down. After walking around Temple Square and seeing all the fun displays, we all went out to dinner. Yum!

Meredith caught this picture of me doing the dishes on Thanksgiving. It turned out to be one of my best pictures.

The Real Christmas

With our family getting together for Christmas so early this year (Dec 13th), I wondered what Christmas would be like with just me and hubby. It was a very leisurely morning. Although I missed having Roxanne and Leland over in the morning, I cooked breakfast and then hubby and I headed upstairs where the Christmas tree was to see what 'Santa' put in our stockings and open the gifts from extended family. These pictures are of hubby bringing up gifts that were supposed to be in the stocking and then me about to open one of them. This is traditional wrapping in our family! Most years I like to get something bigger that we need instead of a bunch of smaller stuff that gets put on top of the already mountainous junk piles. That's what we did this year but in our stockings/robes/shirts, I received a booklight, gloves, hats and Lindor chocolate. Hubby received a book, a CD, lip balm, his favorite bath gel and chocolate.

Later in the morning we went over to visit Grandma and Grandpa Moseley. Then Hillary's family came by since they were down visiting the Gingell clan. I made a ham for our dinner and then for the rest of the evening we watched movies.

Early Christmas

December 13, 2009 was a very busy day for the Moseley clan. The day began with everyone stopping by with soups to plug in and keep warm during church. That Sunday was the day James gave his 'farewell' talk in Sacrament Meeting. Extended family and several friends came to the meeting and later, to our home to visit and enjoy all the fabulous soup.

Once we were down to just our zany family, we began the celebrations. While we gathered, everyone stopped for some more soup and cookies. This day was Hillary's birthday (29th I'm sure!) as well as Grandma and Grandpa Moseley's wedding anniversary. They bugged out right after church tho. Since our Christmas party was on her birthday this year, most of Hillary's birthday and Christmas gifts were combined. We got her a nursing manual... maybe I should have checked it out for age appropriateness. For her Christmas, we gave Hillary and Marc some food storage that they get to pick out themselves (ok, it was a gift card to Smith's grocery store).

The girls all received lots of things they loved, including the quilts I made for Natasha and Emma. (We gave Samantha and Adelyn shoes... they get quilts next year.) One of Samantha's favorite gifts was a box full of Nerf type guns. I remember one of Sonia's favorite toys being a He-Man action figure when she was little.

Shawn received a nice bicycle lock from James and Sonia is always happy with anything from Vickie's (Victoria's Secret).

James received a few things to help him as a missionary. The turban on his head is really one of the plain shirts for P-day/exercise wear. His favorite gift was probably the Ipod speaker dock Hillary got him and hopefully one day he'll appreciate the condensed family history book he received.

Richard received some much needed slippers and this cool gun/rifle cleaning kit. I've never seen one as nice as this with it's case and all and I'm sure all the weapons need a good cleaning.

James is good. He was making bread one day (which made Hillary totally jealous that her little brother could make bread) and I was mentioning how I needed a new good rolling pin because although still functional, mine had its handles falling off. He remembered and scouted out a new one for me for Christmas so here I am being goofy and acting like I'm some bad dude spinning the thing on my knee. Whaa-shaaw!

We've been trying to find a good time to get everyone together for a family photo for awhile now and it just wasn't happening. Thanks to Sonia, we did get this family photo on our Christmas day but not before the kids had their silly stunt photos!

We all had a very Merry Christmas day and hope that all our of family and friends had a Merry Christmas too... whatever day they celebrated it on. After all, we should really have that Christmas spirit every day of the year.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

Gotta love this one day a year we get to be thankful for all the blessings (and stuff) we have. One of the things I'm grateful for is all the things my kids make and bring to share. It's all yummy delectable food and goes so well with my turkey, potatoes and best ever stuffing (which doesn't get stuffed). We have tables everywhere with 15 of us. We were down one this year with Marc having been sick all week and feeling sicker still. Sure hope he doesn't have the flu. I even got out my nice china plates and was sad there wasn't really anything that would enable me to use more of the china set. We usually set the food out buffet style so all that was really needed on the tables were the plates. Next time.

It seems like when the family gets together, there are always fun tricks to show the little ones. Usually it's Marc that has great tricks but this year Leland filled in. I have no idea what he's doing with the toothpicks but he surely had everyone's attention!

Once the (Gingell) girls were done with their dinner, they were clamoring for Auntie to paint their nails. Sonia dutifully found my supplies and was more than happy to oblige them.

Then comes the part where we celebrate Roxanne's birthday. Roxanne always has to have her birthday celebrated on Thanksgiving instead of having her own day but she's such a trooper. (No worries, Grandma Petersen had the same problem.) Roxanne got lots of gift cards so I see some new clothes in her future!

As the evening evolved, we had an impromptu photo shoot with grandma and grandpa. First with their great-grandchildren and then with their grandchildren. Everyone was being pretty silly.

As we sat around visiting, Buggie had a great time sliding down her mom's legs. She kept climbing up on the couch and then sliding down Hillary's legs for about 20-30 minutes. Phenomenal.