The Swedish Fish

Home Again, Zippidy Doo

We are back to business here in Eugene. After the millions of movies that were watched over the break we have been having a TV fast and the girls are really getting some use out of their new toys.

Last night we had a visit from the Tres Reyes. The Three Kings have been bringing toys to Spanish speaking children forever and this year we got into the action, due to some generous hand-me-downs. I hope that they had fun because I'm not sure this miracle will ever happen again for these chicas.

Till We Meet Again

The Favorite Tio Gavin will be leaving on his mission to Pittsburgh at the end of this month so his nieces wanted to spend some extra quality time hanging out. These girls love him so much and he always has them laughing their heads off. We hope that he has a great mission and are excited to see him again in 2 years.

We'll see the rest of you in March.

Sledding

With some help from Oma getting all the kids outfitted and equipped the Howard grandkids headed out to South's hill, which is a little bit strange now that South Jr. High is no more.

The hill worked just fine.

How many Rigby's can you fit on one tube? Answer: All of them.

It was a beautiful day and one of those moments when it is clear that my kids are from Oregon. Brandon said that Daisy was with him in the car and she said, "What are those things?" He didn't understand so she said, "The big rock things." Then he realized that she was talking about the mountains.

Christmas Morning

We left out a piece of fudge for Santa and watched the Shrek the Halls Christmas special before going to bed. When Rocky woke up she just ran upstairs without permission and when I chased after her to make her wait for Daisy she returned to her sister saying, "Daisy, it is GREAT! Santa ate the sudge." I don't know if she hadn't noticed the presents but she tells everyone about the sudge and nobody understands. To me, sudge just really doesn't sound that appetizing but Santa didn't seem to care because he left a bunch of loot.

The princess dresses and castle barely made it out of Utah alive. In fact, the Hello Kitty costume already looked like it was 10 years old after about 15 minutes on Daisy.

Rosy was a little disappointed that none of the dresses fit her and immediately made a resolution to grow. She has been working hard on it too, putting on the pounds. It probably won't help her much though because it all goes right to her chin.

It seems like the holiday and our trips to Utah just go like a big blur and when I get home I can hardly remember anything except the things that I caught on camera. We did a lot of fun stuff with Brandon's family, and hung out with Mark and Emily. We also spent a lot of time working because Kristin was trying to move her dad out of his house. This meant that there was a lot of cousin time and since we have been home Rocky and Daisy both have been talking about missing them.
Jill spent hours telling Rocky scary stories, which led to Rocky spending hours telling those stories to other people. She tends to get kind of confused on the details so if you are in need of a laugh just ask her to share one with you.

Homemade Gifts

I wanted to document the things that everyone makes for the Howard exchange but I forgot to to take photos of everything. Jill made the panda hat for Rocky.

Brandon made thumb wrestling masks for Ethan. They looked like little luchadores.

The felted Gizmo came from Jilly too and it is the cutest thing in the world to hear Daisy say his name.

Matt and Kristin made this AT-AT herb garden for Brandon out of garbage.

Brandon did family portraits of calaveras like we saw in Mexico. He worked away all of his pre-Christmas time figuring it out and they turned out amazing.

I didn't get any photos but I made a couple of cross-stitch family pictures and animal magnets. I was pretty proud of them. It is a good thing that I was challenged to make gifts because sometimes I think it is the only time in the year when I do something creative, and by creative I mean that I go onto Pinterest and copy something that someone else did.

Quinceñera

We put off our trip to Utah for a couple of days because we had some serious business to attend to here in Eugene.

We hit up the ward Christmas party. The idea was that all the families would be assigned to tables and that each table would bring its own side dishes. This was another one of those moments that being assigned to the Spanish Branch section ended up being a bonus because we had the best tamales that I've ever tasted.

It was the first year that I was actually in town to attend the highly acclaimed Cookie Queen contest. Dianna Robinson has hosted this event for a few years now and apparently the competition is getting more and more intense each year. I didn't want to look like a loser so I pulled out the most butter-laden recipe that I could find. It was the Congo Bar recipe that I learned from my friend Katrina and as they say on Sesame Street it is definitely a "sometimes food." Think oatmeal, chocolate and a lot of caramel. It was good enough for first place in the bar cookie and candy category. All the cookies were awesome and it was super fun. Now I've got to start brainstorming for next year. Thanks to Dianna and to Jen the outgoing cookie queen who was truly an ambassador for the cause.

And then we came to the real reason that we stuck around town. Gaby's quinceñera has been the talk of the girls in young women for the last 6 months. I've never been to one and always wanted to, and this was the perfect opportunity to dress the girls up like princesses.

Gaby looked beautiful and it was fun to see her honored.

I've had Gaby, Savannah and Lizzy all since they were brand new Beehives and they are growing up so fast.

We left directly from the party and hit the road, driving all night through a snowstorm. There were a few times that I thought we were going to be stuck out there because we had gone too far to go back, but we were in a big snowy mess. In the end, slow and steady, we made it through to the morning. Rocky and Daisy got the loopy car trip crazies as always.

Rosy was just chillin' like nothing had happened. I think she was fascinated by the glow of the snow.

Last year we didn't even get a single snowflake while we were in Utah and we had made all kinds of promises to Rocky that she could go sledding and make a snowman. Her disappointment last year didn't stop me from making the same promises this year, but luckily the sky came through. I'm not sure that I was so thrilled that we had to drive through it, but it was fun once we got out of the car.