A Very Merry Christmas!

What joy! What a blessed Christmas, indeed! 

The festivities began Christmas Eve day - first, with a steaming cup of hot chocolate in Christmas mugs :)

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Followed by some Christmas Pop making for our Helton/Tilton annual Christmas Eve get-together - these were fun to make, I was pretty pleased :)

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Dressed in their Christmas best, we headed to my parent's house for dinner, fun and games with the Tilton family :)

Me and the kiddos! Unfortunately, Josh had to work all of Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve service at North Coast, which I heard was wonderful) - so no Christmas pics with daddy :( 

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I LOVE this pic of my parents with the kids - it really expresses their personalities - M the goofy one, K the sassy one, haha :) And I can't help but love my dad's christmas sweater t-shirt :)

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We love Gigi!!!

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First gift opening of Christmas 2012! They were beyond excited :)

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All ready for Christmas morning!

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Christmas morning - The kiddos got a little note from Santa ;) Loved opening their stockings and gifts (including the cradle josh made himself!) And didn't get a picture, but started the morning with a cinnamon roll birthday cake for Jesus and a breakfast christmas devotion :)

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Follow this with Christmas at the Helton house, complete with gifts and a delicious meal, it was truly a wonderful, amazing, blessing of a Christmas day. 

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And I couldn't resist posting a pic of our sweet niece Shiloh, can't wait to celebrate our Williams/Duron Christmas on Sunday!

1 Day - 2 Special Birthdays!!!

Wow, what a special day December 23rd 2012 was!!! Not only did we get to celebrate my Grandma Violet's 95th birthday (!!!), we also got the news that morning that our newest niece, Emma Rose, was going to be born!! We headed down to the hospital in the early afternoon, got to chat awhile pre-(major)labor with Brittany and Rudy, the nervous/excited parents-to-be, then waiting expectantly in the lobby until she was born at 5:56pm - 7lb 5oz 20in! After Ooohing and Aaahing over the precious new one, we headed back to my parents house for a birthday dinner celebration with my grandma. How fun to celebrate two special birthdays in one day. I've been blessed with such a wonderful family :)

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Doesn't my grandma Violet look amazing for 95??!? I sure hope it's in my genes, too!!

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 I prepared some chocolate peppermint cupcakes with lavender lace wraps and pretty pink butterflies, and hand painted a new vase in her favorite colors, which my dad graciously filled with flowers from his garden.

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Our newest niece, Emma Rose Hodges, so beautiful!

Deck the halls!

Christmas is almost here, so I thought I'd got a little Christmas-y on the blog :) I love how homes look at Christmastime. So cheerful, so bright, so full of warmth and light. I'm not a huge fan of how my home usually looks, so adding some holiday cheer always brightens things up for me :) It's been a craaaaaazy busy December - what, with Tahoe the first week (didn't even start getting into the holidays until we got back, but so worth it!!!) then a LARGE order of cake pops for a church function, and another right after I just posted about - plus staff christmas parties, a cookie exchange, preschool class parties, baking, yada yada yada. . .it's been busy. . .but a blast! (although I think I'll lay off the baking for a few months, haha.) Here are just a few pics of the holiday cheer that are making my spirits bright these days :)

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My mom, Grandma Nancy, is an avid quilter, and has really been making the most amazing quilts. We scored, as she made each of the kids a Grinch quilt. I SO love them - and so do the kids!! Matthew has one on his bed, the other is on the couch - sorry Kaylie, better luck next year ;)

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The new holiday wreath I made this year! I threw it together fairly quickly, so there are a few things I would change - but overall, I think it's a fun and festive addition to our front door :)

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Cookies, cookies, cookies!!! I spent an entire evening (until 2am!) baking some delicious cookies for a cookie exchange, followed by a staff Christmas party. Iced sugar cookies, the melting snowman cookies, and chocolate peppermint. Yuuummmmm!

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Well I don't know about you, but I'm so excited to celebrate Christmas, Jesus' birthday, in just a few days. Each year the kids understand more and more, a lot more excitement, and a lot more to share with them - not only santa and presents, but giving and the most important gift we've ever been given - the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Can't wait to share in their joy Christmas morning!

Ninjago!

This past weekend I got to test my cake pop making skills once again, as I had the opportunity to make them for one of Matthew's best bud's birthday parties - AJ!! His mom *one of my best buds, Melissa* put together an awesome Ninjago themed birthday party, complete with personalized sash for their foreheads and ninja throwing stars! Mel asked if I'd make Ninjago cake pops and so I went for it! 

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Here's what I did:

Step 1 - I created the masks/eyes out of gum paste - fondant would have worked great, too, I just happened to have gum paste on hand. I drew in the eyes with edible ink (Americolor is my favorite), using a toothpick for the marks under the eyes - and dabbed just a bit of white on the eyes with the end of a toothpick. 

Step 2 - I rolled the balls and then made a fairly short cylinder, which I then added half of a Dot (gumdrop) to with some melted chocolate. 

Step 3 - DIP! Then I dipped that entire thing and stuck the mask on right away, then set aside to dry.

Step 4 - Once it was dry, I took a paintbrush and handbrushed chocolate on top of the dipped chocolate, to cover the edges of the mask, fill in any imperfections, and give it more of a fabric feel. 

They were A LOT of fun to make, I was pretty pleased with the outcome - but they did take forever, haha.

Here's a little bit of the party awesomeness that Mel made herself for the party - loved the decor!

Tahoe 2012

Tahoe. My new favorite place! We were SO blessed to be given the opportunity to visit Tahoe as a family - only the second time we've ever had a family vacation! I was a little nervous about going on vacation with the kids - our first family trip didn't go off as smoothly as I'd hoped - and Tahoe, a 10 hour drive to get there. . .hmmm. . .but we just couldn't pass the opportunity up. My parents (the awesome parents they are) let us borrow their van and off we went. Praise the Lord, it was an amazing ride BOTH ways - so thankful for the invention of in-car DVD players (and iPhones) - when they're a little older we'll enforce a little more family car/game time - but not this time around :-P  

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Breakfast at Starbucks in Bakersfield on the way up, still in PJs :)

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As we made our way up the mountain, we started seeing snow on the ground and I was ecstatic. As we made it to our condo in Stateline, NV, the ground was COVERED in snow. Awesome. In fact, here's the view from our front door - AWE-Mazing!! (and a few snowy shots from the road from our snowy day, Sunday)

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A few snapshots of our place - great location, perfect size for the four of us!! Saturday, when we got in, we went to the grocery store and bought food for the week - which came in handy when we were snowed in for the majority of the day Sunday! Prior to being snowed in, we were able to drive through the casinos and walk around the shops in downtown South Tahoe (even visit with Santa, although neither kid really wanted to have anything to do with him :-/). Sunday was the only day we had to put snow chains on the tires, thankfully!

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Sledding! This was our first time sledding, on a driveway next to our condo. Matthew had a BLAST - Kaylie kept saying her tummy hurt at the end of every run, it scared her a bit!

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Heavenly! Monday was a GORGEOUS day, so we decided to take the Gondola ride of the Heavenly run in South Tahoe. It takes you up to an observation point with just AMAZING views (and freezing wind!!!) - it's there that Kaylie discovered her love for eating snow :) After hanging out there a bit, we took the gondola up the steep side of the mountain to the top, where we walked around in mid-calf deep snow, threw some snowballs, rolled down a few hills, and just had some snow fun :)

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Emerald Bay - We had heard that Emerald Bay had some amazing views, so we decided to drive a bit around the lake to see it - wasn't to far from the south actually.  There were some rock "mountains" to climb, some breathtaking views. . .and an adventure to Vikingsholm to be had!

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We hiked a mile downhill to the lake beachfront, and an awesome little castle called Vikigsholm. Apparently it's open to tours during the summers, but it's all boarded up in the winter. Still pretty cool to walk around.  The little island in the lake has a little tea house, or tea "castle" that went with the home. We all loved exploring it down there. . .however hiking up hill for a mile, not so much. We ended up carrying the kids the majority of the way. . .and they are heavy!  And unfortunately, Kaylie must have brushed up against some poison ivy while playing hide-and-seek with Matthew, because I rolled up my sleeves to carry Kaylie up the hill, and by that evening a rash began breaking out on my arms. . .getting worse over the next few days. SO ITCHY! Oh well, at least no one else got it!

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Tuesday we started off by driving around the west side of the lake up to Squaw Valley. Another slightly snowy day and pretty cold, but it was fun to walk around the shops and eat lunch at Fireside Pizza. They also had a gondola ride up the mountain, but we didn't take it this time.

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After Squaw we headed to Adventure Mountain - a place you can go with groomed sledding hills and plenty of places to play in the snow. We got all bundled up and grabbed our sled and snow discs and headed up the hills! Matthew has found one of his favorite activities - he had a BLAST sliding down the hills again and again - whether on the sled with Josh or myself or on the discs himself, he had a blast. Kaylie and I decided to play in the snow and make a snowman - it was so much fun to build a snow man - the first snowman I remember building myself!! We had a BLAST playing there until snow/sleet started blasting us in the face - that's when we knew it was time to go!

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All-in-all such an amazing trip and such an amazing blessing. We had such a wonderful time as a family, and we all LOVE the snow. It would be great to go back every winter, but we'll probably have to alternate with something more local like Palomar :) We'll see - that won't be our last trip to the snow, that's for sure!!!
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