Chocolates!

My mom has been making chocolates for over 20 years. The last few years she let Tami and I join her in making and giving chocolates as gifts. This year Shelly decided to join us as well. Together we made over 100 pounds of chocolate. For those of you that don't know how much that is, all I can say is it is a lot. So, if you haven't gotten any chocolates from us yet you better make it a point to see us soon so you can get a box of your own.

Caught sneaking some chocolate.

This is how we keep the babies happy while we work.

I am so glad to be done and have our house slightly back to normal. Hopefully I will forget how hard this all is by next year. Sitting here eating them I am already starting to forget.

Christmas Day!

We Had a Great Christmas. We headed down to my parents at about seven in the morning, since that is where Santa left all our presents. We had a great time opening gifts with my family, there is never a dull moment. Our family has the tradition of making our gifts for each other. As with most years there were some unfinished gifts. I made a Kidd Family cookbook for everyone. Hopefully everyone liked them. Jared loves his "board of education" from the Kamerath's. Our kids loved opening presents and seamed to like their new costumes best, what a surprise.

After Opening all our presents we ran up to Jared's mom's for round two. She made our traditional breakfast casserole and pull aparts, they turned out perfect this year. Later that night we returned to my parents house for dinner. This is one of my favorite parts of Christmas. My dad always makes us a feast including, prime rib, salmon, halibut, sauteed mushrooms and shrimp, and of course king crab legs. For dessert he made creme brulee. It was all so good. Much, much later that night after Jared discovered his new game was a Spanish edition, we started watching music videos on You Tube. We were so inspired we decided to make our own. We started out with big hopes and ideas, but eventually got tired. We got Jared to record what we had right before going home. We weren't doing so hot by this point in the night but were still having fun. Feel free to watch, but don't judge my bad dancing, I'm just a lame mom.

Brunch with Santa

We had our annual brunch with Santa this last weekend. First of all I have to vent. Things didn't go quit as well as I was hoping, I wasn't as organized as I was wanted, my house wasn't as clean as I wanted, some of my food didn't work out, but I'm trying not to focus on it any more since I have plenty of other things to worry about. Things are just to crazy for me this year. I guess having another kid, a new puppy, a busy husband, and a full holiday schedule is a little more than I can handle this year. I did try to simplify a little this year. I didn't invite any of our ward friends to the party (I'm hoping I didn't offend anyone). It was nice to have less kids, but I didn't get to spend much time visiting with friends. We'll be making some more changes next year. There I am done. thanks.
So now to the good part, my kids had a blast, and that is why we throw the party anyways. We usually have my brother play Santa, but my kids just laugh and ask him why he is dressed like Santa. So, this year we hired Mr. and Mrs. Clause to come to our party and they were great. The kids really enjoyed singing songs with him.

Grayson told Santa he wanted a small superman, too bad he wasn't telling Santa this last month when Santa got all his presents. Hopefully he'll change his mind back when he sees his transformer.
Lydia ask for Red licorice. I wonder were she got that from, not her mom. I'm sure Santa will have no problem with that last minute change.

All my kids have cried with Santa. I thought Kate would be different because she is so easy going and loves to meet new people, but apparently not Santa.

Christmas Performers

Grayson and Lydia both had a big performance this week. Lydia performed with her dance class on Friday night and today Grayson had his preschool program. We are very proud of both of them.

Lydia was so excited to dance for everyone. When we got to the rec. center where she dances she said, "Oh, mom all these people came here to see me dance." She did a great job, much better than last time. We forgot the camcorder, so all we have are these pictures. She did the splits a few times during her routine, I was sad we didn't get a good picture of it.

Grayson on the other hand kept saying he was tired of singing at school. I was impressed at how quickly he learned all his songs. I've loved listening to him sing while playing, when he doesn't know any one is listening. We do have a little video of some of his program. I know this is something only us and grandparents would probably want to watch, but I put it on anyways.

P.S. If you did want to watch you need to pause our music at the bottom of the page. Also, this is a really bad recording I was trying to take care of other kids at the same time.