A Very Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
This year was especially fun with Tommy being old enough to participate and being able to move without the pain of postpartum strains. Here is our cute little Christmas family (and 5 month prego belly)

We saw LOTS of Vic's family for Christmas. We did Christmas Eve at Vic's brother's house. We had the elf deliver our Christmas pajamas there this year. Here is Tommy cute as ever in his new jammies :)

Here is a little glimpse of how crammed & crazy it is with the Sutherlands. I always feel like I'm stepping on someone the entire time I'm there! This is 1/2 the kids dressed up to act out the nativity scene while his brother read it from the scriptures.

Here is Christmas Morning. Tommy checking out his stocking. He instantly grabbed the big toy sticking out, but it took some more coaching for him to check out the rest! I thought he'd be pretty excited I gave him a sucker cuz he loves them & I never let him have them, but Vic's stalking had oranges & peanuts in it & he went crazy over them instead! He grabbed an orange & ate right through the peel then did the same with a peanut!

My cute boys dressed up for PRESENT TIME!

Tommy has a unique way to open his gifts. I'll walk you through the

STEPS TO OPEN A PRESENT:

1. Jump & Climb all over it

2. Tear off the smallest pieces, peek inside, & try to play with it before all the wrapping is off! ...and then continue pulling off pieces little by little.

3- CRY because you are so impatient that Dad can't get the toy unattached from the box fast enough. (make sure to cry with EVERY gift for the same reason!)

4- DIVE into boxes no matter what there size is (even if your face is the only thing that fits!)5-EAT the packaging

6- Make a MESS of yourself

7- Find the garbage & try to make a mess.

and finally... PLAY with new toys!!! :)

And here is our happy little camper with most of his presents. He is CONSTANTLY moving these days so its hard to get a picture that he isn't in action!

Later we went to Vic's parents house for lunch and played games that made us laugh the ENTIRE day & evening!

...and games that made 3 grown brothers hold hands, so cute :)

Tommy's Birthday Part 2!

Tommy's party was on Saturday, but his actual birthday was on Monday. I felt like I needed to still do something for him on his actual big day & we had lots of leftovers so we threw an impromptu party with a few of our friends.

We didn't get a picture of him crying at the party, but when we sang "Happy Birthday" to him... he cried again so this time I got a picture!

Waiting for their ice cream to be served:

TOMMY'S FAVORITE PART!

The few days before the party I started putting up decorations & Tommy was dying to tear them down so I thought it would be fun to let him help me clean up. He was in heaven when he realized I was trying to tell him that now it is okay!

After he pulled down the balloon chandelier he was so tickled pink that he went running back & forth with them bouncing around.

Look for that hidden GIANT smile behind the streamers!

My happy ONE year old :)

Tommy's 1st year has been a blast. Tommy has the funnest-happy little charming personality that has just made my life SO much more blessed :)

Cookie Monster Birthday Party

Tommy Turned 1!!! ... so of course I had to make a big deal of his FIRST birthday! :)

(See Whitney's 1st birthday party HERE)

The theme was "Cookie Monster" so here is the invite I sent out:

Here is the background/treat table that I made. It was fun to create, but everything I did took a lot longer than I thought it would, haha! Those tissue poms were a beast at first, but fun & easy once I got it down. I thought they made it feel really festive.

The decorations going counterclockwise:

**The balloons chandelier in the middle of streamers was so super simple, but had a big effect... I'll definitely be doing that again!

**The cookie monster hat was very time consuming so I only made one for Tommy & then put the fuzzies on the other hats. I'm so glad I didn't take the time as the little babies didn't want to wear them anyway!

**The silverwear wraps were fun to create. The tiny cookie on them is cookie crisp cereal

**The cups were made by googly eyes+ 1/2 a cookie glued on. They were so stinkin' cute & I thought it was funny cuz everyone at the party threw away their plates, napkins, etc., but no one threw away their cups... maybe they just thought they were too cute to throw away?!

** You'll really have to zoom to see the lollipops, but I made a really cute label for each of them.

** Then there is the birthday boy's chair

** Bubbles on the treat table were just to give to all the kids as they left since that is one of Tommy's favorite*The Food: We had a bunch of subs from subway, fruit & cheese platter, & chips for dinner to make that part easy, but then I had to make these adorable treats (left to right):

**Cookie Monster Ice cream cake. It had ice cream sandwiches around the outside, oreo crust, & layers of white & blue ice cream that were cookie dough & mint.

**I got my inspiration for the party from the cupcake with the cookie coming out of the mouth. I thought it would be so fun, but I think he looked kind of gross, haha! I much preferred the simpler ones, plus they were way easier to make!

I wanted to give something to all of the adults as a favor so each family got a baby jar full of candy. The twist of course is that it had facts about Tommy on the label :)You'll probably have to click on the picture to read all the fun info :)

CAKE TIME!

Okay, well maybe not. Tommy hated everyone singing to him & started crying! I really thought it would be fun to do a cookie monster party because they whole point of a 1st birthday is to have the ceremonial 1st cake eating & I thought it would be so much fun to have blue & brown all over his cute little face. WELL, he licked the frosting & was done with it! We finally game him some blue jello and that mixed with the frosting made a little bit of a mess. Here he is after about 5-10 minutes.

GAME TIME: I had everyone watch a 5 minute slide show of Tommy's 1st year in order and then had them play this game. They had to put all of Tommy's cute little smiles in order from month 0-12. Most did pretty awful, including Vic, but Jimmy, a friend's husband only mixed 2 up! Then Katie, my sister did 2nd best, followed by his babysitter.

PRESENT TIME! I thought I was so clever making a simple blue bag/wrapping paper into a cookie monster face!

He really just wanted to jump all over the boxes, but I didn't want to bore his crowd so I felt bad forcing him to open them & rush from one present to the next! It will be fun on Christmas to take our time a little more :)

It distressed him that all the little kids wanted to take away all of his new toys so I thought it was time to roll out our main gift to him... a bounce house! He LOVED it! Here Jayda is falling on him, but he just thought everything about this was hilarious & fun :)

Here he is with all of his presents (trying to run out of the picture!) We're missing his big cookie monster & bounce house, plus it's hard to see some books, but for the most part here they all are. He came out pretty good & really balanced between useful & fun stuff.
Here is all of the CUTE PARTY KIDS! It was pretty much impossible to get them all in the picture & looking so this is the closest I got!

A picture of most everyone before it was all a giant mess later!! It was hard to decide who to invite cuz I didn't want it to be so big I didn't have time to play with Tommy at his own party nor did I want big kids running him over, but I thought it turned out perfect :) :) :)

Thanksgiving Feast

TURKEY DAY!!!

We started the day nice & early by first moving out of the hotel Vic's been living in for 2 1/2 months & then going to Idaho Fall's "Feed the Hungry" run. It was 1 degree! Here is me, Katie, & Nele (our Belgian friend) before the race.. oh ya, & the turkey!
And here we are about 6 minutes into the "race"... freezing our face off & trying to figure out how to cover up more! I was hoping to get the giant snow drifts & ice covered path in the picture, but this is what you get when you take the picture yourself! haha!
And here is our group, all smiles after the race & some hot chocolate. Everyone did a 5K, but Evan our step brother did his first 10K and Mark, our step-dad did the 1 mile walk with the turkey... You gotta love the turkey runner! haha!
In a circle from the turkey is: me, Katie, stepdad, Amber(stepsis), Nele(friend), Evan(stepbro), & Mom
After the race & Tommy's nap we went to my Dad's house for Thanksgiving lunch/feast. Vic was tickled pink cuz Lana made his banana cream pie that he thinks he needs every holiday. After dinner Tommy entertained them with his drum skills & scooter skills :)

Then we went back to Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner/feast #2! Here is the table all decked out before dinner.

And here is a close up of our cutel little turkeys at everyone's setting:

Katie invented her own pie this year, s'more. It was super rich & tasked just like one, but with the layer of chocolate we had a hard time digging into it! Vic took a picture of us both trying to break it up!

We were all supposed to do a pie so I did a carmel apple cream one that was SUPER delicious. It tasted like you were eating a carmel apple! It was a new recipe I saw in a magazine & will definitely make again. Katie's smore pie,.... and mom's.... um Cheesecake factory pie! haha. We told her we only wanted a picture of the homemade pies, but she wanted to be included in the picture. This way we'll remember she didn't make pumpkin pie like she was supposed to! haha! Not really, I just like to tease her cuz everyone thought someone else was doing the pumpkin pie so we didn't end up eating one this year. :)

It was a super busy day, but so fun.... topped off with a wintry 3 1/2 hour drive home on the bad roads cuz Vic had to work at 5am for Black Friday! ....which I always love that day cuz I got all my shopping done & most of it wrapped :) I can't wait to finish getting all the Christmas stuff out tomorrow.

I Love SNOW!

I LOVE snow! Vic and I always have to go out & play in the first snowfall, but this year it was an added bonus to get Tommy out of the house & introduce him to snow :)

We haven't bought any sleds yet so we pulled out our water tube & pulled him around in that. He thought it was pretty fun & the faster Vic went the more he smiled so Vic started spinning him in circles from the rope until Tommy went flying & rolling out. Then he wasn't so happy about being pulled around! haha! I was video recording everything & stopped right before the spill. Boo, why do I have to miss those moments on camera?!

When Vic got bored with that he decided to make a giant snowman right out our kitchen window so we'll have a big guy to stare at us while we eat. Here he is:

Vic thought he was so cute he wanted to build one for the neighbors to see so we went up front to put one by our front door. Here is Tommy. He had a ball crawling up & down the front pathway!

Well, after Vic got one built he wanted to build a whole family of snowmen so here we all are by our snowman. Click on the family picture so you can see that mine is holding a little adorable baby girl snowman! This was such a fun day, probably made even more fun cuz Vic is finally home for a few days!!!