Best Friends

Today we said goodbye to Elle, Lucy's best friend. She is my favorite-well behaved, fun and adorable. 

These two met at the park one day and really hit it off. As luck would have it, she was in Lucy's swimming class when she took lessons so we saw her each morning over the summer.

We love Elle!

Moving/December

I swear, if I wasn't so lazy I would count how many times that has been my post title.

The move has finally gotten going and we are packing and cleaning like crazy.  This time around has been a lot easier because Danny had a pretty easy finals schedule and has been able to help a lot. We try to do some things when the babies are awake, but typically just work as fast as we can during nap times.  The hardest part of this move is sorting everything. We are packing things to go to Grandma's, things to take to the Leiningers where we'll be until Jan. 1, and things to go into storage.  It feels like every box is marked MISC.  Amidst all the packing, we've managed to have a little fun this Dec.

One of our favorite things about living in UT has been seeing our friends. We have had monthly get-togethers and have loved having fun with these awesome people. This month we got to go out to dinner without the kiddos one evening and had a Christmas party at Oz and Lillians'.

 Lucy was the star student one week and I got to go to class with her and talk about her. We made this poster together and then went up and talked about all the specific things she loved to do. My favorite part was at the end every kid in the class asked her a question about herself. It was really fun and I think Lucy liked being the center of attention.

 We packed our kitchen pretty early so we've been forced to go out pretty often:) One night we went out to city creek to go to the Apple store and the kids loved playing at this indoor playplace in the food court.

 The girls have not minded all the boxes. Its like Christmas came early to them!

 Last week our stake hosted a nativity. There is a beautiful bird sanctuary and walking path by the stream a couple blocks north of our house and they take over the whole thing. Brother Asay from our bishopric was a centurion watching the gate into Bethlehem. The "actors" were in period costumes. Women walked around with pita bread and dates, there was hot chocolate and bagels. The path was lined with luminaries and tiki torches leading you to Bethlehem. There was a camel along the road that the kids thought was awesome. Once you reach there stable there were Wise Men, Shepherds with sheep up on the hill and a donkey in the baby Jesus' stall. The Leavitts played the Holy Family. Afterwards you walk up the hill and get to pet some cows and sheep if so desired. It was so well done. With no Christmas decorations up at our house-it really made us feel Christmasy.

We went down to Bajio one last time. Riverwoods is really pretty at Christmastime and we loved waling around. The best part is seeing Becca who is working in the North Pole wrapping presents this season. We went in to the Beach Resort to ride the carosel and only managed a pic on the wave.

 We sold our couch!!! Praise heaven the couch is finally gone. I don't know if I've mentioned here how much I HATED that couch. It was a great, comfy couch and didn't deserve my hatred, but I couldn't help it. I sold it for $100 and someone came to get it hours after it was posted. As a result we brought up the love sac to sit on for the week. It was not as easy to move up the stairs as we expected...but Lucy got a kick out of us pushing and pulling it.

 Lydia loves any attention she can get. Lately she gets positive attention when she kisses things-mostly me:) Yesterday she came up and kissed baby Jesus right in front of me and then beamed like she was the cleverest, most adorable girl in the world. She is.

 As I mentioned, we packed our kitchen on Saturday. Not a great idea when you have to stay home to eat on Sunday. Danny thought he could make crepes for us. With only a bit of left over wheat flour, no recipe, no mixing bowl and no measuring cups he made these delicious crepes. He is amazing.

We went to our ward for the last time. I was surprisingly emotional.  The positive part was that we got to bust out the Christmas dresses. I found Lucy's at DI for $4 and the babies are hand me downs. Sweet. Unfortunately it was seriously windy and cold out and I was the only one smiling.  (Danny was still sick so he stayed in jammies that day).

 And then when it was just about to get cute...

 Joyce lost it.

 Just after we washed all the windows inside and out-we hit a storm. It has been snowing for three days now. Fortuantely I think the winodws are salvagavble with needing to be compeltely re done. We decided to enjoy our last snow of the winter:)

Lydia learned how to make a snow ball.

 and eat one.

 My favorite smile in the world.  I love her little toothy grin. She doesn't often smile much around other people, but I hope she starts showing this grin off more.

 Lucy LOVES the snow and had a great time throwing it and rolling in it.

While I was packing the babies found their Halloween costumes waiting for storage. They don't want to take them off! They finally learned there respective animal sounds and they walk around mooing and quacking.

 I wish I got a better picture of this. For some reason this is always how it is. Lyd hops on/in something and Joyce pulls/ pushes her around. I just love what a kick Joyce was getting out of it.

Rollacopia 2012

I have been looking forward to Thanksgiving (or more accurately, Mom and Katy coming to UT for a week) for months.  Imagine my disappointment when the night before they arrive Lucy starts the croup cough. SO Disappointed!! We were lucky because Lucy saw the Dr. the next day and got the steroid to take down the inflammation.  The Dr even prescribed us the steroid for the babies so when they got it (only Joyce did) we would have the medicine in hand.  Danny, the babies and I quickly got a horrible cold as well. It ruined our week because we didn't want to infect Ruby with croup. Mom was nice and drove an hour to visit us every day. Lucy fell asleep on her every time. 

Fortunately we still got to hang out a little. On Tuesday Danny watched all the sick kids (while feeling pretty awful himself) and let me go to the outlets for some Christmas shopping with the girls. We had so much fun and Ruby was an angel after for shopping for 4 hours.

On Wednesday Mom came up to stay with us and get ready for Thanksgiving. We all met up for dinner in Lehi at Texas Roadhouse and just kept the kids far apart.  Mom was super nice and took the kids home and sent Danny and I out to see Skyfall. I popped cough drops the whole time but we still had a wonderful little date. My dad was able to fly in late that night for the holiday.

On Thursday Mom put the turkey in and we spent a lazy morning watching the parade and playing around the house. Early that afternoon we were joined by Oz, Lillian and Kiara as well as the rest of our fam.  Katy gave us our theme for the year (although no, we don't usually ave a theme, this year was special) Rollacopia.  Traditionally Thanksgiving is a let down for the Anderson girls. We usually just eat the rolls and a little turkey.  So why not have a wide variety of rolls and celebrate our appreciation for them?! Katy made us all shirts and Becca literally made a Rollacopia as our centerpiece. Our table was overflowing with delicious rolls this year. We also had a variety of delicious butters to go with them.

 Kid table!!

 It was a delicious meal. Mom outdid herself. I wish we had put the babies to bed and fed them earlier because that was the only downside-they were sick and cranky and didn't have a great meal. As soon as they were in bed, however, Danny and I could actually eat and enjoy ourselves.

The next day we spent doing whatever Dad wanted to do-which included a trip to Scheels AND Cabelas.  Danny and I sent Lucy off shopping withe everyone and we went home with the babies tor est after Scheels. We all met up that night at Riverwoods for some delicious Bajio (obvs), to visit Becca and work and to meet Santa. It was a beautiful night and we had so much fun feeling Christmasy.

On Saturday we had a mini-Birthday party for Dad. Ruby and Lucy had a lot of fun helping Baba unwrap his presents.

 from Katy

Grandma surprised all the girls with some presents too. Each household got a Little People Nativity. The girls love it and it is currently the only Christmas decoration up in our house (moving at Christmas is so depressing).

Then we headed over to Pat's BBQ. We were right by the stage and got to hear the best blue grass player. We were dancing and bobbin all over the place! Ruby also enjoyed her first rib.

 On the way over to our Jacobs Family Reunion we stopped at Nielsen's Frozen Custard-our favorite place. As we went through the drive through I heard someone calling my name-Grandma, Grandpa, Mark and Kevin were all inside eating before the reunion too! We had an impromptu mini-reunion before the real reunion:)

 Reunion!

 This was during the devotional. We had a lot more fun than we look here.