Broncos

Well, although it was a sad game, we still had fun partying for the game. For breakfast, we had Andrew's fam over and had some orange waffles and toppings with some orange Julius (Andrew's forte).

GOOOOO BRONCOS!!! Love this shot of my little cheerleaders.


Love this shot of my little aggressive football players :)

Bronco pumpkin bars...don't be intimidated by the amazing decorating.

Welcoming 2012 In

I have always been a huge goal-setter. I love having goals to focus on. What I strive to do, is every year, I make a huge goal list. In order to obtain the goal, I strive (Strive is the key word - one of my goals this year to be better at my goal obtaining) to have a Goal Session every week in my journal (Sunday). I set goals for the week and make a weekly schedule that can help me obtain my goals. Anyways, love goals :) I thought I would record the family goals we set and my girls' goals this year. Because this is part of our family journal, I think it will be fun to read back on this in a few years. I was really proud of the goals Carolyn and Angela came up with all by themselves. For instance, Carolyn really wanted the goal to read personal scripture study every morning really early. When she first told me that she wanted me to wake her up super early, I made sure she really wanted to do this because she has a hard time as it is waking up for school. But she said she wanted to wake up really early with me every morning for personal prayer and scripture study. When Angela heard this goal, she was amazing and wanted to do it as well. It was been an amazing experience waking the girls up a little earlier for personal time with the Lord. I love this part of the day. Thank you Carolyn for starting this ;)

FAMILY GOALS:
-Memorize the monthly primary scripture together
-Go to the zoo lots (the girls set these goals and I thought this was a great one)
-Each girl - one date a month with Dad
-Daily Gospel Devotionals with mom and girls
-Once a week, plan a fun family activity
-Every week focus on a General Conference talk (and that's where we'll get our FHE topic)
-Continue daily family scripture study, song, testimony, and prayer
- Save money for van so no loan
- Each week focus on a scripture story

ANGELA GOALS:
-Go to the library two times a week (she was the most enthusiastic when she set this goal)
- Say personal prayers morning and night
- Learn the Articles of Faith
- Learn to read
- Preschool with Mom 5 times a week
- Learn all letter names, sounds, and be able to write them
- Personal scripture study early each day

CAROLYN GOALS:
- Mom give me "hard work" to do every day (Learning time with mom after school each day)
- Each time I get money, pay tithing
- Personal morning and night prayer
- Personal scripture study every day
- Wake up early and read personal scriptures
- Learn all the Articles of Faith
- Piano - lesson once a week/practice 5 times a week
- Have lots of friends over
- Personal "thank you" prayer after school every day (I love this one Carolyn came up with)

The next day after we had made these goals, we received a Christmas card from our sweet great grandparent Hansens. The girls each got a dollar with the card. When Angela opened her card and found the money, she could hardly contain herself. She kept yelling "I CAN PAY TITHING! I CAN PAY TITHING!" These girls are such examples to me. I wish that every time I received money I could just think of it as an opportunity to pay tithing.

Here is our "fancy" goal wall (I know - I don't ever claim to make things look cute). But, anyways, the girls like putting a sticker on their little chart in the middle (with the frog picture) each day they work towards meeting all their goals for the day.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

December was so awesome and definitely qualified in my book for the most wonderful time of the year :)

Here Emily is indulging on our raw green smoothies...so happy this girl is a fan, too :) Great way to get those vitamins in :)

Can you tell Angela is a fan as well? (I have to consciously think about how I write Angela's name. I've always been calling her nicknames the past 3.5 years (Ang, Ang-Ba-Nang, etc.) In December, she declared that she doesn't like to be called anything but Angela. It was funny because one day she just all a sudden brought it up. I called her "Ang" like I did most every other day and she stopped what she was doing...looked at me very seriously and said, "Who is Ang? I'm not Ang, I'm Angela." So, it's been somewhat of an adjustment for me to call her by "Angela" and no nicknames :) I love that Angela has an opinion and knows what she wants).
There was a lot of prepping for the big day in December :) Lots of crafting and letters to Santa :)


Angela's picture to Santa. We went to see Santa I think 5 times this year (maybe Mom gets a little too excited to do Christmasy things :) All Angela wanted for Christmas was lip gloss and Carolyn wanted a pogo stick. Santa doesn't have to do much to please these sweet girls. Here is a picture Angela drew for Santa...



One of Carolyn's letters to Santa...
I just want to kiss this cutie.
Gingerbread house making.



Finally - everyone looking at the camera - and almost smiling.


I love these girls...


Christmas Eve!! Christmas Eve is actually my favorite holiday. I love everything about it - the excitement, the wonderful traditions we had (I just LOVE our Christmas Eve program we have every year), and focusing on our Savior.

On Christmas Eve, we had our good friends, the Muirbrooks over. We had some yummy food and then went downtown to see the lights with them. Afterwards, we did our traditional family fun activities on Christmas Eve. Carolyn sang "Silent Night," "Christmas Bells are Ringing," and "Away in the Manger" and Angela sang "Jingle Bells," Up on the Housetop," and "Silent Night" for the talent show. So fun and the girls worked so hard all month to learn the songs so well :) Carolyn said that he most favorite part of Christmas was acting out the story of Jesus. Hopefully our play lived up to her expectations. Carolyn was an angel and Angela chose who everyone else got to be - Angela was Mary; Emily was a sheep; Daddy was Joseph; and I was the donkey.

Here we are with the Muirbrooks. I feel so blessed to have such great friends. It's fun because they have 3 girls that are the same ages as my girls. And Andrew and I love being with the parents (Brindi and Matt) - so we just think the Muribrooks are awesome :)
Carolyn made some awesome name place cards for our Christmas Eve dinner. Eventhough we left for Utah the day after Christmas, we were still a little crazy and made all our traditional food. Treats (orange chocolates, fudge and sugar cookies are a regular - with various other treats that vary). For Christmas Eve, a big ham dinner with rolls, funeral potatoes and the Kim Family favorite jello salad. On Christmas morning we eat breakfast burritos with orange Julius and then Christmas dinner we have Chicken cordeblu. Kinda crazy that we made all this food before a big trip, but Mommy loves to cook and we like good food on the holidays.



Lights with the Muirbrooks...
Love these two cuties...
Andrew thought I was 4 during the holidays. I seriously couldn't sleep for two nights before Christmas because the time I had waited for all year had come :) Christmas Eve Eve I think I slept 45 min and Christmas Eve I got like 3 hours. Just excited. Andrew now knows that I am really 4 - but I just really love love love Christmas :) On Christmas Eve Eve we went to Chris' house to hang out with family - we went out to eat and went to Chucky Cheese. We then slept over at their house - it was a lot of fun! Here I am at like 3 AM waiting for all the kids to wake up so I could read them Christmas books.
Christmas morning was wonderful! We woke up and the first thing we did was focus on our Savior. We read all the ornaments the girls had put on our tree that said qualities of our Savior (our new family tradition we started this year! Such a wonderful way to focus on our Savior and His example all month). We then all gave a gift to our Savior this year. I love the way we start our Christmas day.

Santa was so good to us...brought Angela the wanted lip gloss....

....and Carolyn her pogo stick....





It was funny because the gift I was most hesitant to give was this "Guess Who?" game - Andrew is always the best at picking out gifts - he picked this one for Carolyn and we usually play it at least once a day now - she just loves it. And Angela loves making funny faces with it - so it's a winner for her, too!







I love watching the girls open their presents.





Chriistmas was so wonderful! The next morning (bright and early), we left to Utah!
We first went to my parents house. I definitely felt like I didn't get to see enough of my family, but it was wonderful nevertheless! I have the best sisters in the world. Here Andrea is with Lilly - I was so excited that I got to meet her baby while out there :)
COUSIN FUN!


Michelle's cutie, Jules...


We had another late Christmas Eve program at my parents'. My dad reading his traditional Christmas stories...

The cousins all sang and danced to Grandma's pretty music for their talents...



This girl downed a banana for her talent :) Don't you just want to give this girl a squeeze?


This picture is out of order, but after my parents' house, we headed to Andrew's parents - and they had a wonderful surprise visitor there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My parents gave my girls lunch boxes that they have been obsessed with lately...



I can't tell you how much my girls love Silly Monkey...

We love Grandpa!
Again, I love these two cuties :)
Fun with Nana and Ponka...here we are at the Science Museum at BYU.
Acting like hippos - I think Nana wins :) We sure love Nana.

Daddy feeding the girls to the hippo.
Utah was wonderful and short - I can't wait to get back!

Santa brought us zoo passes! Yay! I used to go once to twice a week when we had passes before so it was a big life change not having the passes - so I for one was thrilled to get the passes! the girls were so exctied as well. We can't wait for the big elephant exhibit to be complete.

Emily is at SUCH a fun age for the zoo!!! She loves making the animal sounds (her favorite is the Lion - she's got the growl down!!) She loves seeing the animals and trying to reach out and grab them. Oh, she's just so cute at the zoo :)

Emily trying to grab the lion.






A happy girl during the zoo adventure.
A tired girl after the zoo adventure.
Now, we have a birthday to look forward to!! One of Emily's favorite things to do is to open her mouth wide and shout "AHHHH!" while shaking her head back and forth like crazy. We all love this girl. Angela and Carolyn just can't ever get enough of her - they love helping her learn how to crawl up and down the stairs, teach her (Carolyn started teaching her preschool), and reading (Angela reads her multiple books every day).