NYE 2011

Kalel

Tasha, wearing MY top I got from Santa, how dare she! Yes, that's started already, the sharing of the clothes

Moi

Playing telephone while eating pizza for dinner:

Kei asked for veggies:

We played the board game Quelf. If you haven't played it, you MUST come to our house and play it.

The Mataoa side of the family wouldn't see the humor in it, but the Applegate side (us) LOVED it.

It makes you do silly things like dance the hula and wear a tie for the rest of the game. At one time we all had to end each of our sentences with "for shizzle" until another card was drawn that said we could do something else. That was... interesting.

Oh, technology. Ask the kids what I did with this laptop after asking Ken to get off of Facebook and actually PARTICIPATE in the game we were playing.
He just needed one more minute! Of course. Of course. We all know how long that one minute is. Our last "disagreement" of the year, documented. Ha.

and there's Tasha not being able to tear herself away from the Ipod touch.

Watching the fireworks outside our front door:

Our Scrabble game, we played til 1 am I think?

Kalel in our bed 10 minutes before midnight, I had to convince him to stay up just a little bit longer!

And there's our New Year, fun, food and your typical family drama. Thanks to Ken for letting us stay in and spend that time together as a family. I know how much he likes "going out" on these nights (Filipinos really party it up on NYE). We actually tried finding a place to go out to, but my advice, never save anything for last minute. Lots of places were booked or too far away (SNOW was a big factor in staying home this year)


Hope everyone has a great New Year. Ours has already been!

Messy Zane

I can't think of a better way to end the year of 2010 than with a post with some of the possible things Zane can do.

He can turn this bottle...


into this.

Thanks Zane, I had borrowed that from a neighbor. I paid her back in Cookies afterwards. Notice he's trying to hide his face in shame once I got the camera to document his naughtiness.

Then, I "think" this is flour. My memory escapes me, but it could have been cornstarch too. I'm thinking cornstarch, because I remember wondering how on earth something so small could turn into this. Ignore the dates on the camera..that was me not knowing how to turn that off until later. It was really 2010. Had to be.




Making the girls help clean it up, they got a mop and even still they couldn't get it all. It actually turned it pasty. Fun, huh. You can see how it went under the couch too. Amazing.

And that was our year, Amazing and MESSY. Wonder what next year will bring.

Cali Christmas

Christmas was spent in California this year, no rushing back Christmas day because that's when the flights looked good, or when I had to work.

Here's the set up for our Christmas Eve Dinner. Grandpa and Lola transformed the downstairs into a beautiful dining room that could fit all 18 of us. There's a kids table back there too.



It takes a small fortune to feed an army this big...I played a guessing game with the girls on how much this prime rib roast cost...let's just say WELL over $100. Who knew your local Costco sold such a thing?


And more side dishes thanks to their marvelous Aunt(I never know she loved cooking, helpful to know :)



They even had these cute little stockings, Paul put those lumps of coal in them. The ones that are really chocolate candy...

More Christmas presents than you can imagine, since each aunt or uncle gives ALL 5 kids a gift. That's 25 gifts there on top of Grandpa and Lola's and the gift exchange the rest of us adults do with each other.


They get big gifts like these two remote control cars:


Then since we didn't have to rush back, Santa had to visit us in this hotel:

Oh look, an orange, what every child wishes for Christmas morning.

Kalel got Scrabble. After bringing it home and playing it on New Years Eve, he mentioned, "Hey Mom! That Scrabble game should have said to the whole family, since everyone plays it" True, true. Maybe Santa thought he'd had enough toys for the year though.


He actually lost his front tooth right before we came. If only he could have lost his other one we could sing the song, "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.


And the best part for me, that we finally have another cousin for them to play with. She's the cutest, cutest thing. Here she is opening her first Christmas present.


and she fell in love with one of the boys toys, which I just had to let her keep after I saw her playing with it.


Thanks to everyone who helped make this trip possible, good memories, good memories!

Trippin

So, since I no longer work for an airline we had to actually DRIVE this time to get to California for Christmas. I spent many, many hours stressing about driving through the Sierra's, seriously contemplating staying behind if that meant driving through the snow again. Last time our van sort of slid down a hill. Ken gained control, but I never forgot the moment of helplessness having no control over what was about to happen next.

A friend of Ken's happened to mention a week before we left, a route he took Thanksgiving weekend (the snow hit the Sierra's hard that weekend) going south through Las Vegas, heading west to Bakersfield, then North to San Francisco) We literally chose to take that path moments before hopping in the van at midnight, ready for a long trip. It adds 2 hours to an already long trip, but if that meant no snow, that made me very happy.

A view from the window:


Tasha getting to open up her birthday presents on the road, yep, traveling on her birthday:


So, no snow, but we hit some patches of FOG:


Oh, and look, that "highway" between Las Vegas and Bakersfield tends to be prone to flooding. Good thing we didn't know that before we left.


I still would have taken flooding any day over snow.


Ken getting a moment of rest while I drove...of course I got the flooding and fog part. Of course.



The kids were great, best car ride I've ever had with them. It helps that they're all close to 5 and above finally.

Tasha's 12!

She turned 12 on the day of our car trip to California. (had to ride in a car the whole day, but I got her this hat she'd been wanting)



Of course, Nancy made another great cake:







and 12 candles on a cake really light it up!


At our church when a girl turns 12 they enter a program called Young Women's. They do activities together every Wednesday night, and so I got her this Young Women Values bracelet to commemorate this moment for her:

Keilani said, "Hey, I didn't get one when I turned 12." Maybe I'll have to get her something similar on her next birthday.

Festival of Trees

Some Festival of Trees pictures for those of you that never get to make it there, we try to go every year. I love to see what brilliant or weird ideas people come up with.

Coca-cola theme:

Twilight, yep, it says, "Christmas in La Push"

Cookie Monster:

Where the Wild Things are:

Winnie the pooh:

Bet you've never seen a tire tree before? Unless maybe you visited a tire shop during Christmas.

I thought this was pretty creative, half the tree BYU, and the other half, their rivals, University of Utah.

Those are ballet slippers in there.

And a sock monkey?

Lots of cute, pink, over the top stuff, I think I see baby shoes in there too.

I always like different themes like this safari one. One year there were two Polynesian ones, unforgettable for me.

And this one has all those paper cranes.


All these trees are made in memory of someone that has passed away, or that has had medical conditions and been treated at Primary Children's Medical Center. So, all these crazy themes actually reflect what was important to that person, whether it be Twilight, ballet or Winnie the Pooh.