New Year's Eve Celebration

I started out New Year's Eve by attending the 5:30am session at the Boise Temple.  Not only was it dark when I went inside, but it was still dark when I got out!  What a wonderful way to start the morning.

Throughout the day we just did some odds and ends, nothing special.  That night, we decided to watch some Duck Dynasty to pass the time.  Duke and Sexy Farmer fell asleep, leaving Hoss and I to ring in the new year together.

However, while I was trying to find a live broadcast of the First Idaho Potato Drop online (we don't have any TV channels) Hoss fell asleep, leaving me alone.  I never found a live broadcast so I did some genealogy work instead.  Happy New Year!

Hoss & Dad Date Day

The very next day, Hoss decided he wanted to redeem two more dates, this time with Sexy Farmer.  He chose "work on a small building project" and "go on a nature hike/scavenger hunt".

For the small building project, Hoss decided to have Sexy Farmer fix his new grain cart so that it would hook up to his tractors, but instead of helping him, he decided to go out and drive the 4-wheeler and work on his own small project.  Can you guess what type of project that was?

He made a field in the snow!  It's funny how he can take the time to drive the 4-wheeler back and forth so many times to make "rows" for his field, but yet he can't put his socks in his dirty clothes hamper!  BOYS!  Anyway, I'm curious what he is going to plant in his new field.

For the second date, they chose to go on a hike to "hunt" coyotes.  When they returned home Hoss said that Sexy Farmer took him to the wrong place because they didn't see any coyotes!  This picture cracks me up!

The First Date Nights

In the kids' Christmas stockings, Santa gave them each 12 date nights, 6 with Mom, and 6 with Dad.  This quickly became Hoss' favorite gift, and he wanted to redeem them all right off the bat.  We told him that he could use one a month, or whenever he felt like he needed a little extra one-on-one time.  Well, he decided now would be the perfect time to start cashing them in, starting with two on the same day!

For his "date of your choice with Mom", he chose to go pick out a new toy with his money that Grandpa & Grandma Wayne gave him for Christmas.

Then we headed to Fiesta Guadalajara, his favorite restaurant.

Anyone who has eaten with us at this restaurant knows that Hoss loves the bean dip.  He was so excited to have it all to himself, and he kept telling me that he was going to eat 4 bowls all by himself.  Well, our food came so fast that he only had time to down 2 bowls full of the yummy goodness.

While Hoss & I were having our date night, Duke and Sexy Farmer, decided to have one of their own at home.

They popped some popcorn, and cut up some cheese slices.  My dad taught me that you can't have popcorn without cheese.  Sexy Farmer thought that was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard, but he is a true believer now!  Try it, you'll love it!

And found the candy from their Christmas stockings.

From the pictures, it appears that they watched Ice Age and Frosty the Snowman.

Christmas in Vale

My mom is hard to shop for.  She just is, she has everything she wants, at least I think so.  With that being said, my sisters, DJ & Kim, and I pretty much rocked Christmas this year for my mom.  We each picked out the perfect gifts, each with thought and fun.

Kimberly's Gift - She saw a website where people recreate childhood pictures of themselves.  At Thanksgiving, DJ, Kim, and I all took a trip down memory lane by pulling out all the photo albums at our parent's house, looking for the perfect picture to copy.  I came up empty handed, and hoped that I could find one in my own photo albums at home. Luckily for me, I finally came across this gem.

Sexy Farmer helped me create this.  I wish I would have sewn some blue on my shirt or something to make it look better.  I really tried to make my mouth look spot on though.

Here is the finished gift.  I really think my parents love it.

A closer look at Nikki & Danna Jo.  DJ SERIOUSLY had the BEST picture out of us all!  Her son took the picture and totally made sure she looked perfect!  I LOVE IT!!

And a closer glance at me & Kimberly.  Kim said she tried to get her arm further back behind her but she couldn't pull it back that far.  I guess we all aren't as limber as we once were.

Danna Jo's Gift - While we were going through the pictures at Thanksgiving, she noticed that all of my parent's photo albums had seen better days.  So she got my mom all new photo albums!

My Gift - Most of you will think this is the dumbest gift ever, or even a gag gift, but no, it's real and totally perfect!  I got my mom a mannequin hand. Ok, I got her two.

Here's why.  About a month ago, I was at their house and we were talking about her nativity sets. (She has 300+, I believe)  She mentioned that my dad had given her one a few years ago that was a finger puppet set.  She said she really likes it, but doesn't want to display it with them just laying down.  She said that she "needed to find a hand or something" and then laughed.  For some reason that stuck out to me, and I was set to find her a hand for Christmas.  You can find anything on Ebay, and sure enough, I found what I was looking for and made the purchase.  I couldn't wait to give it to her, wondering if she would even know what they were for, and if she even remembered having that conversation with me earlier.  Everyone there knew what my gift was, and we were all excited for her reaction.  She looked really confused when she opened it, so I reminded her of our conversation and then she laughed.  We'll see if she really uses them.  HA!

Homemade Exchange Gifts

Every year for Christmas we draw names for our homemade gift exchange.  This year was really good, we made sure to put extra thought into the gifts we were making each other.  Here's the outcome.

Lilli drew Boone

She is currently working on the value Knowledge in her Personal Progress book.  She has also been asking to learn how to sew, so she decided to put the two together for Boone's gift.  She made him a baby blanket.

We think he loves it!

Hoss drew Lilli

Hoss knows that Lilli loves to read, so with that knowledge, he decided to make her 6 bookmarks!

Three were made from ribbon and paperclips, and three were made with ribbon and beads.  She was super excited when she opened her gift, and immediately put them to use.

Duke drew Hoss

With help from Sexy Farmer, Duke was able to make a feedlot for Hoss' heard of cows.  I'm not sure who is going to end up playing with it the most.  They both fight over who's turn it is to play under the grain auger.

Boone drew Sexy Farmer

Sexy Farmer requested Smore's Cups from Boone, so that is just what he got!  

I drew Duke

Duke loves Lightning McQueen, so I embroidered him two shirts.  One with Lightning McQueen, and the other with Mater.  He asks to wear them almost everyday, and even INSISTED on wearing Lighting McQueen to bed last night.

Sexy Farmer drew Me

I saw this picture on Pinterest a while back and fell in love.  When Sexy Farmer drew my name and asked for suggestions, I pulled out the picture and gave it to him as a hint.  He took that hint and made me one too!  I LOVE it!!

Sledding!

While in Rigby for Christmas we had to enjoy sledding!  We hauled up one of our 4-wheelers and some tractor inner tubes for some snow fun.  I stayed inside with Boone every time they went sledding, so Lilli was in charge of taking pictures.  She's so funny.

Here's Sierra, waiting for Matt & Sexy Farmer to get everything hooked up.

Matt got his turn on the tube with the two little boys. (Dustin & Duke)

While Hoss rode on the 4-wheeler with Sexy Farmer, pulling the tube.

Duke cracked me up, he looked so funny all bundled up in his snow gear.

They unhooked the tubes and pulled around the three little boys, it looked so cute.

Hoss & Duke

And Dustin.  His hat was so cute!

All of these pictures were taken at their house.  There is an empty field where no houses are built yet in their subdivision, so they took advantage of the open space.  Later, they went to a different location and when they came home, Hoss' face was pretty beat up.  I guess he fell on his sled on his face and got beat up by the ground.  I should have taken a picture, his face was scratched up and red all over.

Rigby for Christmas

For Christmas this year, we decided we would travel to Rigby, Idaho to spend the holiday with my sister and her family.  We loaded up the 4-wheeler, and some tractor inner tubes, and hit the highway.  We stopped at Les Schwab to pick up a stock trailer from our father-in-law to help Sexy Farmer's sister-in-law move from Rexburg to Rupert, and Grandpa surprised the kids with road trip candy!  This was their reaction - super excited! 

We arrived on Christmas Eve, just in time to hang out a bit before putting the kids to bed.  My nephew came running back to the living room and reminded us that we forgot to put out cookies for Santa!  What were we thinking?!  I LOVE how excited he was, he even remembered carrots for each reindeer.  Check out his smile!

Once he was back in bed and sound asleep, Santa arrived.

Leaving gifts for all the good boys and girls.

My sister told her kids they couldn't come out of their rooms until 7am.  That isn't hard for my kids, they would sleep in until noon if you let them.  Duke had a hard time waking up, Lilli had to help get him excited for the morning.  She's such a great big sister!

But he perked right up when he realized Santa put his favorite movie in his stocking!

Hoss got his favorite candy, but not the Gator he told 4 different Santas he wanted.  Bummer.

Our little book worm (someone in our Ward in Vale actually nicknamed her "worm") got a Kindle.

And Boone slept through it all.

Later during our visit my brother-in-law told us about some houses in Rexburg that have their Christmas lights programed to match up with Christmas music.  So, we headed north to check it out.  While there we decided to drive by the temple.  So pretty, they even have a white Nativity set up outside.  I had never seen that at a temple before, so gorgeous.

It was great spending time with family for Christmas, especially family you don't get to see very often.  The kids loved spending time with their cousins, and Sexy Farmer and I loved playing games with people our own age.

Spreading Christmas Cheer

At Annex Charter School a special donation is made for what they call a Ho Ho Express.  Each student is given money to spend at the local Kings Department store in Weiser for Christmas gifts.  In previous years the allotment was $30, but this year a new donor donated enough money for each student to spend $40!  We decided to use that money to spread some holiday cheer to people we know and people we don't know.  Parents aren't allowed to go to the store with their kids, so Sexy Farmer took them the night before and helped them pick out gifts we could deliver.  They ended up with 10 items.  We decided to deliver some of them "Secret Santa" style and others we would deliver by Caroling.  However, Sexy Farmer decided he wasn't going to join in the caroling, so the two older kids did it instead.

Gift #1 - We went out to eat with Sexy Farmer's family for his Mom's birthday and left one on the table with our tip for the waitress.

Gifts #2 & #3 - We were driving to the home of gift #4 and saw a UPS truck with 2 guys inside.  We chased them down and gave them some holiday cheer.

Gift #4 - A family in our Ward 

Gifts #5 & #6 - One of our favorite families 

Gift #7 - Another family in our Ward

Gift #8 - An employee of a neighboring farm

Gift #9 - A Neighbor

Gift #10 - One of Sexy Farmer's Co-Workers - This one was hilarious.  We parked super far away behind a shed and Lilli snuck her way to the house.  When she got there, all the sudden one of the cars in the driveway started up and the head lights flipped on.  She dropped off the gift, pounded on the door and ran super fast back to the van.  We never turned on the headlights and drove away fast so they wouldn't see us.

Every year we have done some sort of secret santa.  Our kids LOVE this kind of service.  I love that they are learning the meaning of service, and the warm fuzzies they feel when they are in the spirit of giving.  We had always preplanned who we would give gifts to, but last year changed our direction to letting the spirit guide our giving.  This year was no different.  We just loaded up the car with the gifts and drove around town, not knowing where we would end up until a person or family came to mind.  I think it makes the act a whole lot better that way.