Grandma's plates

Another project I had this year was with Grandma Shupe's plate racks. I inherited them when no one else's wanted them. When I got them she only had a few different plate sets. She originally had one 4 plate set of skiing snowman, two 4 plate sets of French famous.historical building/sights (which I thought was very fitting considering Sagez is actually French), one 4 plate set of leaves, one 4 plate set of Thanksgiving themed ones, and one 4 plate set of a Nativity scene. 

I was grateful for this little piece of Grandma, but being the way that I am, I wanted ones that I could switch out every month to go with the different holidays. It took me the whole year to do it, but I finally found enough sets to go with each month. I made some and I bought some. Either way, I am very pleased with the final product. I think Grandma is too.

January - Grandma's original snowmen skiing, and snowmen that I made.

February - hearts and sayings that I found at Quilted Bear.

March - clovers and Irish sayings that I found at Gordmans.

April - eggs and bunnies that I found at Gordmans. Sadly they fell straight through, so mom gave me the idea of gluing them to a stick to make them stay. I added the Easter grass to hide the stick and make them more festive.

May- glass flowers and bugs bought from Gordmans. They actually all came from wind chimes. With the extra's I actually mad an extra wind chime and hung it on our front porch.

June - Grandma's original French famous/historical buildings/sights. 

July - American signs that I found at Micheal's and stars from my kitchen decorations. I had originally bought metal stars from Micheal's as well, but they were too big, so I traded them out for the ones I already had hanging up.

August - subway art family themed. I went through a faze of being fascinated by subway art and thought that I could make some of my very own. I went online and found some that I liked them glued them to square plaques. They turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. Not to mention that they are all white, black, and red to match my kitchen.

September - subway art family there. I like them so much I made two different sets.

October - Halloween words and scenes found while at Swiss days with mom. We were at the Barn looking for stuff for Jenny and came across these.

November - Grandma's original leaves and Thanksgiving themed ones.

December - Grandma's original Nativity scene ones and a set that I found online. I actually bought a few other sets from an Amish store when I found these Christmas one. I bought an Easter, 4th of July, and pumpkin carving ones, but they didn't end up fitting in the plate racks, so I had to send them back. I was really bummed, they were really cute. I wish they would have worked.

Now that my year is over, I don't have anything specific left to look for. This was a lot of fun and it kept me, I like to think, a little closer to Grandma. I may not be able to see her anymore, but at least I can think of her every time I look at her plate racks.

Home blocks

This years craft project was one that I did with Shantelle. We saw a version of the word "HOME" with the "O" being different inserts and thought it would be fun to do it together. A few of the pieces we found at Wood Creations the other we actually came up with the pattern and Wood Creations cut them out for us. I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out.

January - snowman

February - lips

March - leprechaun 

April - Easter basket

May - kites

June - sun

July - fireworks

August - campfire

September - owl

October - Frankenstein

November pumpkin

December - Christmas ornament

Lets see what we can come up with next year.

New year's Eve

Here it was, the last day of the year. At times it seemed like the year went really slow, at other times it seemed to speed up, but either way here it was. 

We started our day with a leisurely trip to the store. We had to pick up a few groceries and ended up staying and getting more then we planned. I was surprised in wasn't busier and thankful too.

When we were done we headed home and just relaxed till it was time to leave for mom and dads. Ben and I even ended up taking a nap while watching a movie. Which was nice considering it would be a late night.

at 4ish we left the house for the night. We stopped by Fiiz to get some drinks and then headed to Mom and Dad's. When we got there things weren't quite ready for dinner yet, so we helped were we could and then just talked while we waited. Jeff and Tiffany like our ideas about Fiiz and went and grabbed a drink while waited for dinner to be ready. When they got back, dinner was ready and we all headed downstairs.

We had our traditional Philly cheese sandwiches with chips, veggies, cheese ball, artichoke dip, crackers, cheese, summer sausage, and of course some goodies. Basically a little bit of anything you could think of. It was good. The kids ate pretty good, enough to be told that they could have whatever goodies they wanted as long as they didn't eat to much. 

After dinner was done, the kids colored for a little bit while we cleaned up from dinner. Man those crackers created such a big mess, we ended up having to vacuum. When we were done cleaning, all the kids went upstairs to watch a movie and the adults stayed downstairs to play a game.

The kids watched The Ugly Dachshund. One of my childhood favorites and one that our kids hadn't seen. I was quite surprised that they all pretty much watched the whole things. They came down every once in a while to grab a snack or a treat, but other then that they stayed upstairs and watched the whole thing. When it was over, Dad went up to turn something else on and they choose Once Upon a Time. Gabbi stayed glued on it with Jeff's kids, the boys not so much. They were up and down, Eventually they both stayed downstairs. Owen played in the toy room and William ended up falling asleep in my arms. He was the only one to crash before midnight. Sadly he only had another 35 minutes to go, but he couldn't make it.

While the kids were having there fun, we had ours. We both brought a few different games to choose from and in the end we ended up playing Catan and Spy Alley.

It had been a while since we played Catan and this time Jeff had the extended version that included a pirate and extra things to had to worry about and collect on the game board. Not to mention that it took 4 extra points to win. The whole point of the game is to build roads, city, and settlements to gain points. On each shake of the dice depending on what property your city and settlements were on, you gained resource cards like oar, wheat, wood, brick, and sheep. With these card you could build your roads, cities, and settlements. In this version you could also collect commodities that gave you more privileges and trick cards that helps you advance in the points faster then the rest of the players.

It took forever to play and like normal when someone was ready to win, it felt like it came out of no where. Jeff of course was the winner, but that didn't surprise me and he couldn't cheat either, I was in charge of the cards (instead of money) for the game. It was a lot more detailed but a lot more fun then the original version.

Spy Alley was the next game we played. This one we had only played once before and went by so quick that we were able to play a couple times. This time round was an entirely different story. The point of the game is to try and get all the items needed for your spy without every catching on to who you were. So you end up buying items for all the spy's while trying to hide your true identity. You can also guess on any of your turns who someone is, but if you guess wrong, you are out and you give your board and identity to them. But if you guess right, you get all their stuff. This game had no one guessing unless they landed on that special square that said you could guess for free.

It seemed like no one was getting lucky enough to shake the dice and land on the spots that gave you the opportunity to buy the items you needed. It was proving a little more difficult this time round. When it came down to it, Tiffany and Dad were the only ones left. Then they on their turns ended up just taking a shot. Tiffany ended up winning the game. She guessed three of us in all.

Both the games were a lot of fun. The clock even moved on without us knowing. We finally realized it was midnight when we heard people outside screaming and fireworks going off.

When the game was done, we all pitched in to clean up and then we loaded the kids in the van. Jeff and Tiffany stayed to play a few Wii games with Mom and Dad while we had to head home. Everyone else's church time moved to 11 while our church time moved to 9. Since we had to be up bright and early for church and with hopefully not ornery kids from staying up late, we went out the door and headed home. The kids went down without a fuss, we were both hoping that the morning would go without a fuss as well.

Train ride home

When leaving Temple Square we headed back to the tram station that we got off on. We had to wait 15 minutes for the tram to arrive. The kids were then driving me crazy. We told them not to pass the yellow line on the platform because we didn't want them to fall or get hurt in anyway when the tram was coming. They of course had to push the limits. Thanks heaven the tram came and the worry was then over. We loaded the tram and took it to the North Temple stop.

When we got off at North Temple we walked down to the Front-runner platform. Here we had a much longer wait time. 32 minutes. This was going to take forever especially in the cold. Despite the face that we were all in warm winter clothes, it didn't matter what we did, it still felt cold. The kids sat with Ben for a little bit while we waited. Just sitting there wasn't fun and it made it seem colder sitting on the ground. Sadly I couldn't feel my toes so I gave up and joined them. The kids then came over and huddled with me until the Front-runner got there. I was just glad that William wanted to sit on my lap, he was warming me up slowly.

When the Front-runner finally arrived, we loaded, took the first seats we came across, and sat down. We told the kids to try and get some sleep. After all is was almost 11 o'clock. Gabbi laid on the floor and was quickly asleep. Owen tried to lay again Ben, but you could tell he just wasn't comfortable and eventually joined Gabbi on the floor and he too fell asleep. William took a little convincing. I told him multiple time to pretend sleep so I could take his picture since his siblings were asleep. Eventually enough time of pretend closing his eyes, he finally did and didn't open them again. Ben and I were both in and out of it the whole ride home. The only bad part about them being asleep was having to wake them up to get off the train and head home.

Lights at Temple Square

As the train got closer to our stop the kids began to get excited. I'm not sure if it was because we were going to see Christmas lights or if it was because they got to move down the stairs to the lower level while the train was still moving in preparation to exit the train.

When the train finally stopped we unloaded and waited at the tram stop. The kids were confused but when the tram rolled up you could tell by the look in their eyes, they couldn't wait to get on. When it stopped we loaded the tram and rode to the Temple Square stop. When we arrived at our stop we got off and waited for the lights to change to cross the street.

We walked across the street and we had arrived at Temple Square. We walked towards the gate and entered inside Temple Square. The first sight we saw was of course the Temple, beautifully glowing surrounded by the Christmas lights. Despite it being full of crowds, it seemed like we were the only ones standing there, taken in the scene and spirit of the Temple.

Walking through the square we first headed to the South Visitor Center, the kids had to go to the bathroom. When everyone was done we walked around the visitor center for a minute, it was so crowded we didn't stay long.

After leaving the visitor center we walked out and started to enjoy the lights. It surprised me that it seemed like there weren't as many lights this year as there had been in the past.

We first headed just outside the temple gates to check out the manger scene at the reflection pond. On the south side you had the shepherds, in the center on the pond was Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus, then on the north side were the wise men. It's one of my favorite Nativity scenes. We then challenged the kids to count how many Nativity scene we came across.

In our search we made our way through the crowd and headed towards the east side of Temple Square. As we walked down the sidewalk the kids noticed that bags had lined the walkway. Gabbi asked about them. With closer observance she noticed that they all said different Christmas words like Joy, Noel, Merry Christmas, etc in foreign languages. She thought that was pretty cool and did her best to pronounce what language each word was in. She was even more excited to find one in Cebuano, the language that Ben spoke on his mission. 

After taking in all the bags, the kids then ran to the first Nativity scene they saw. We then took guess as to where the Nativity scene was from. The first one was came to we guessed was from Mexico.

The second we guessed was from China or of some Asian decent.

The third was guessed to be from Germany, but only because we overheard someone saying they thought it was from Germany. After further looking we agreed because one of the shepherds looked like they were wearing lederhosen.

The fourth, my favorite, we guessed it was from Africa. I just liked the different wild animals in the scene. Wild animals being tame because of the serenity of the scene.

The fifth one we came across we guessed as Indian, not sure exactly where it would be from.

The sixth one took us a while. Ben suggested a few clues before the kids guessed they were an Eskimo family. They continued to ask Ben where they were from and all had crazy looks on their faces when he told them they lived way up north where it seemed like it was winter all year round.

We continued to walk around, but didn't see anymore Nativity scenes, so we headed back to the gates to the temple. We walked through the gates and walked around taking in all the lights.

Our walking took us to the North Visitor Center where the kids quickly pointed out that there was another Nativity scene. They were surprised that this one had talking and music with it. When we walked up we got there just as it was ending. So we went inside the visitor center to go and see the Christus statue and we'd try to catch the Nativity on our way out.

When walking into the visitor center, it too was as crowded as the other, we even lost track of William. A little kid in the see of giant trees, was running through my head. Luckily we found him quickly looking at a poster next to the railing showing that there was a line to go up to see the Christus. He must have known that that's where we wanted to go.

At first glance, Ben didn't want to wait in the line, but then it started to move, so we hopped in line hoping that we would make it this time through. Sadly we didn't. They stopped the line two people in front of us. Ben gave me the look of he wanted to go, but I didn't and the kids were behaving surprisingly well, so we stayed in line. Ben then said "At least were at the front and will have our choice of whatever seats we wanted." Always a silver lining.

Luckily the wait wasn't too long and they were letting us up. We sat in the front row. The boys wanted to sit on the floor, which couldn't hurt to allow room for someone else, so we didn't see the harm in it. Once everyone was seated and settled in they began the program. A set of Sister Missionaries talked about Jesus Christ and the role he plays in their lives as well as ours. Then a recording played again expressing the same importance, I was surprised how well the kids were acting, they must have know and felt the spirit that resided in that room.

When the short program was over, we went over to talk to the Sister Missionaries. Gabbi wanted to hear what their Native language sounded like. One of the Sisters was from Norway and the other was from Germany. Gabbi was grinning from ear to ear. She thought they way they talked was so much fun and said that she wanted to learn another language. We then asked the Sister Missionaries if they would mind snapping a photo for us and then we were on our way.

We ran into another set of Sister Missionaries and Gabbi again asked them to say something in their Native language. One was Polynesian and the other was Philippino. Gabbi looked at Ben when the Sister from the Philippines said where she was from. She told her that Ben had served her mission in the Philippines and they began to talk about where she was from in comparison to where he had served. She asked him a few questions in Cebuano and he was surprised that she knew what she was asking, he just couldn't respond. It was a lot of fun. When we were done talking to the Sisters, we headed back down the ramp and out of the visitor center.

We walked over the the Nativity scene because we heard the music playing. We walked over at the perfect time, it was just starting. We sat there and watched as they Nativity scene unfolded and told the story of that amazing night.

When it ended we heard an announcement that Temple Square and the visitor centers would be closing in 10 minutes. We took that as a sign that it was time to go and make sure we could catch the tram and train so we wouldn't be stranded in Salt Lake.