Lindsay Update!

We’re so happy to report GREAT news for Lindsay! This week we went back into Primary’s for a CT Scan to see if the surgery is working or if she’d need a shunt. I was nervous that she would hate getting strapped down and that she’d wiggle too much, but she was just perfect! She never cried or wiggled. You can see in her picture that she was even smiling—and the pictures don’t even show her with the straps on her head.

After the scan we met with her doctor and he said that she’d not too far off of where her head size should be for her age and she’s almost on the charts! (When she was born her head was 48cm and now it is 50cm). He also said that her ventricles look about the same size (a good thing), and her cyst looks like it may have shrunk a little (a great thing). Most likely she isn’t going to need a shunt, and we don’t even need to go back to Primary’s until the summer! Wahoo! Thanks for all the prayers! Miracles happen!

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow!

Darin and I received some free tickets to see Annie at Pioneer Theater Company. It was so well done! We LOVED it!

My mom and dad came with us, and they took us to dinner at Noodles and Co. (So yummy!!) And I asked my mom to take a picture of us--and this is what we got! ha ha! (Luckily we have a better one from my dad).

 And a big THANK YOU to Ben and Kristy for watching the kiddos!

Baking Up A Storm

Matthew has been helping me bake dozens and dozens of these cookies for our neighbors. This was the first recipe I ever posted on my food blog. If you’d like the recipe click HERE.

Rub-a-dub-dub Matt and Linds Paint in the Tub!

I saw this cute idea online—but I didn’t realize how much Matt would love it! However, there were 2 bad things about it:

1- It was REALLY hard to get him to stop!--He would have painted all day if I would have let him.

2-I didn’t chose a very good paint—it took me FOREVER to get it all off! (But on the plus side, I have a super clean tub now!)

Sinterklaas Came to Town!

Sinterklaas came to our house and left some yummy chocolates in our shoes.  My sister does this too—but she has some cute Dutch shoes that she leaves out.  Hopefully one day I’ll have some cute Dutch shoes too! 

When I was growing up, each year at Christmas, my great grandma Mimi would give each of us a fifty dollar bill and a Droste Chocolate Letter of our first initial (I was always so jealous of my mom because she got more money and her chocolate W seemed so much bigger than my chocolate H.)  I won’t be giving my kids a fifty dollar bill each year, and I won’t be shipping in Dutch chocolates, but I can melt some chocolate chips and make them a little letter each year!

Reading Count Down to Christmas

Matthew and Lindsay get to open one Christmas book each night until Christmas. I know it's not the most original idea, but they are both really excited about it!

Dinner and a Movie

Last week we were supposed to go to the Bountiful City Light Parade but, because of the windstorm it was canceled. Instead, my family came over to our house for some yummy pizza (provided by mom and dad), a delicious salad (thanks to Heather), breadsticks, and a fancy hot chocolate bar (provided by Ben and Kristy). We also watched “Elf”—Best movie ever made! I was pretty proud of my awesome “stadium seating” to fit everyone—even though most the adults stayed upstairs and visited. It was nice ending to a hard working weekend.

One Reason I LOVE my Neighborhood

I looked out my window to find 40+ men and 6+ trucks cleaning up the tree that fell down across the street. Similar groups cleaned up my parent's yard and my grandpa's yard.

“Everyone knows It’s Windy”

This is honestly one of my favorite songs—I love it!  And I’ve had it stuck in my head with the big wind storm we’ve had (even though this song is not about wind).  It has been unreal up here in Davis County!  I went for a little drive around our neighborhood, and you honestly couldn’t go 1 block before you’d find another huge tree down!

Our problems are diminutive compared to most of our neighbors. Some of our shingles came off, our gate to our back yard broke, our Christmas lights shattered, and one of our rain gutters came off. My mom got hit pretty hard, and my grandpa even worse! He lost probably 15 trees in his yard alone, and he lost his fence to his swimming pool. I think I know how we’ll be spending our weekend.

Here are just a few pictures—we had lots more—and I stopped taking pictures because it was just feeling redundant.

This is the tree directly across the street from our house.  The tree fell and barely missed their house. (We've joked with several of our neighbors that we were going to go cut that tree down in the middle of the night--because we all hated that tree--we're actually REALLY glad it fell down!) 

Two of the kids in my neighborhood standing next to the tree.

This house is about 5 houses away from us.  The house got hit with a light post and a tree.  They're in Poland right now, and don't even know this happend!

Look at those roots!  Almost as tall as the house!

I found this trampoline in the church parking lot!

This tree was blocking the road on Davis Blvd.

The first truckload of stuff from my mom's yard.  And you can also see part of the tree on her roof.

Darin and I were going to go to the Nutcracker this night—but with no shower, we decided to pass it up.  Instead, we cuddled by the fire in our dark cold house.

…the power came on later that night, but we were having so much fun that we just decided to keep all the lights of and pretend the power was out—using candles and flashlights to get around.  It was a fun adventure!

Our prayers to those who have worse damage--and anyone is welcome to come stay in our spare bedrooms if you need a place to stay!

Thanksgiving Weekend in Sunny Arizona!

This year for Thanksgiving we drove 12 hours down to Arizona to stay with Darin’s brother Geoff, his darling wife Jadi, and their adorable kids Kaden and Kaylee! We arrived late Wednesday night, visited for a little while, then headed to bed.

Thurdsay morning their neighborhood does a yummy pancake breakfast which was so fun! Then we went to the park followed by lots of cooking and lots of eating! Jadi is such an amazing cook and hostess! Everything looked so cute—she even gave the kids little Thanksgiving gift bags with treats and toys! Lindsay got a doll and Matt got a Dinosaur—they LOVED it!

After dinner we headed to another fun park—Matthew sure loves his cute cousins!  Darin and his brothers kept trying to do tricks, stunts, and obstacle courses on these cement walls.  They were so funny!  We headed home, watched some movies and looked through the Black Friday advertisements.

I didn’t take any pictures from Friday (nuts), but we mostly spent the day shopping and going to the park.

Saturday Darin, Matthew, Lindsay, and I headed to Mesa to visit my wonderful Grandma Hodgkinson!  It was so fun to see her, and she had just redone her whole house—it was BEAUTIFUL!!  We wished we lived closer because my grandma is so much FUN!!  We went out to lunch, did some visiting, then headed back to Geoff and Jadi’s.

After the kids took some quick naps we went to another darling park, and even got a few family pictures taken.  The kids were still pretty tired so they didn’t cooperate too well.  This is the best one that we got.

And here is one of just Lindsay and me.

After pictures we went to the Mesa temple.  It was so pretty!  They do Christmas lights like they do on temple square, but you don’t have to bundle up!  We LOVED it!

The whole weekend was just PERFECT!  It was really relaxing, but it was really fun too!  Thanks again and again Geoff and Jadi!!  We love you guys so much and miss you already!  Thanks again!!