Gingerbread Houses

Building Gingerbread houses is one of my favorite traditions, and since I wasn't going to be home until Christmas Eve we decided we'd do gingerbread houses on our own. We got together with Karissa, Toby, Ryan and Meredith, and Trent and Catelin. Karissa, Connor and I came up with a brilliant idea of making cut outs out of sugar cookie instead of our traditional graham crackers. It was the best idea ever! Not only did they work, they were very very tasty! Here are a few pictures of the fun night!

We made a replica of our apartment!

Catelin and Trent's house was amazing! I wish I had a picture of their finishing product.

Making Gingerbread houses, listening to Christmas music, eating candy, enjoying good company. Can a night get better than this? I LOVE CHRISTMAS TIME!

SNOW DAY!

Dec. 21, 2010 I was scheduled to go to a color class for work in Taylorsville. Taylorsville is about 45 minutes away from Provo with NO traffic, and I had to be there at 9:00am. During the night it had snowed about 7 inhces and was still snowing! So, I needed to leave about 2 hours early in order to get through the traffic and snow and get there on time. When it was time to start the car and clean the snow off, there were other cars in the parking lot trying to leave and getting VERY stuck! So what'd I do?! I started to panic! That's what I did!! I called my manager to see if by any chance the class had been cancelled...it hadn't. But, fifteen minutes after talking to my manager she called me back and told me to not even try going. So i ran outside to get Connor from shoveling out our whole parking lot and tell him that it's officially a SNOW DAY!

After we woke up after going back to bed, we decided we should go to the temple since we both had the day off. And since it was so snowy, we thought it would be fun to walk there, since it's just up the hill.

Then we got there and found out the temple was closed. But it looked really pretty in all that snow

So, we came back and built a snowman

BEST SNOW DAY EVER!!!!

We came back in and spent the rest of the day hanging out, drinking hot cocoa and enjoying the day off

Zekes Program

After the program everyone got to ride the train all around the mall.


One of the times Zeke was actually singing along and not biting his nails.

This is what he usually was doing. Karissa says he only bites his nails when he gets nervous. But he still did a good job and was so cute.

I am so lucky to live close to my adorable nephews!!! The other day Zeke's preschool class performed in front of JCPenney at the mall. And I got to go watch it! Here's some videos of their performances, they are sooooo dang cute!

Things I'm Thankful For

This holiday season I have been feeling very blessed for the things in my life. So, I thought I would write a list of some of them so that I will always remember how good of a life I have.

Things I'm Thankful For: (in no particular order)
1. Connor
2. Family
3. Having family live close so there's hard days or boring days, I always have some of my best
friends around.
4. The Gospel
5. Connor going to a good school
6. Cell Phones
7. Car
8. Job ---And not having to work on Sundays!
9. Apartment
10. Comfy Bed--Thanks Dan and Annette!
11. Computer
12. Slippers
13. Connor's sense of humor
14. The Holy Ghost
15. Washer and Driers
16. Laughing
17. Having ability to see, and hear things
18. Being in a good ward
19. Being able to go home for Christmas!
20. Airplanes
21. Christmas lights (they're some of my favorite things!)
22. Living close to my cute nephews
23. Christ
24. Wonderful, loving and kind in laws
25. Being married to my best friend!

There are several more and I could go on and on and on. I am so lucky and am so blessed! I have a good life and am glad for the holidays to help me remember that.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving at the Willises! Boy oh boy was it a blast! The Willis Family sure knows how to PARTY! Well, I had to work on Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving and Connor and Ryan were done with classes by Tuesday. So they (Ryan, Connor and Meredith) were going to drive to Snoqualmie Tuesday after class, right when the storm hit! Freeways were closing and horrible blizzards were rolling our way and road reports stated it was life threatening conditions. So, they were set to leave early in the morning to let the storm pass. At least that's what I thought when I went to work that day.

I was having a good day at work when I decided I should check my phone to see if there was anything, where I found a text from Connor. This is what it said "So funny story, we're on a plane right now." and THAT'S IT! I just started laughing. I guess they had decided the roads would still be bad in the morning and as Dan and Annette were booking the flights they were over the phone telling the boys the confirmation code as they entered it in to get their tickets. They had decided and were off to Seattle in a half an hour. So, the three of them got there safe and sound, avoiding all of the ice and storms and road closures.

And now I'm sure you're thinking, oh no! what about Janiece! yessss well, I had another day of work,

so once I was done with work on Wednesday I spent the night at Annette's Parents house and was dropped off at the airport early in the morning to catch my flight. I was SO excited to get there!

Every year the Willis Family will fill out the Turkey of the things they are thankful for. That morning at breakfast we all took turns and went around saying our top 3 things we were thankful for. (And you couldn't repeat something someone had already said). This was a fun tradition I really liked.


We had the traditional Thanksgiving feast on Friday so Ron and Elizabeth could join us. And goodness gracious, it was worth waiting for. Annette is an AMAZING cook and everything looked and tasted soooo delicious. She even attempted and conquered making my favorite sour cream and lemon pie. oh yum yum!! And because there were only 6 of us left to eat all of the left overs I was able to have pie after breakfast, lunch AND dinner! Talk about spoiled right?!

The weekend was scheduled around the football games. --By Connor's request. I thought MY family watched a lot of football....well I stand corrected! That tv, I think, was on all day everyday with some football game on that Connor insisted he really wanted to watch. I luckily stole him away to play a few games of battleship and other fun family games. Oh, a fun thing we did was at breakfast that morning, before all of the important football games started, we had to fill out who we thought would win and what the scores would be. The person that was closest for that game got a prize. Connor got two prizes and Meredith got one. I on the other hand, was WAY off!

Saturday morning we were discussing what kinds of activities we wanted to do that day. We all agreed we wanted to go outside for a walk to get some fresh air and maybe walk off some of the food we ate the day before. Well, off we went, down the road. I was thinking, "this will be fun, going on a nice walk around the neighborhood." Well well well, don't be mistaken by the term "walk" around Annette and Dan. And need I remind you they live in Snoqualmie now, where there are trails just right in their neighborhood if they ever felt like hiking around the mountains. And that is JUST what we did! I for one, am EXTREMELY out of shape, and for two, had a horrible cold, and for three, wasn't prepared for Dan and Annette's ability to climb! Because of my cold, I lost my voice, had horrible pressure in my head, and had an extremely runny nose. All of these factored into my inability to keep up with Super Dan and PowerWoman Annette. Alright, I'm exaggerating a bit, the hike was a lot of fun. As Dan would walk he would inform us what each plant was as we passed it and would tell us good stories and jokes. We all had a ton of fun hiking around, laughing at each other, and telling stories.

Before Ron and Elizabeth left after Thanksgiving, there was the "revealing of the lights". We all got outside and waited to see their beautiful new house all light up for the Holidays.

It looked great! This will be their first Christmas in the new house!


Over the weekend we played lots of games. My favorites were Balderdash-Where Annette took first place and I came in CLOSE second! The fun thing about the whole game was, what ever word or story I made up, Connor always thought that it sounded the best! I'm pretty sure he would vote for mine 90% of the time! I guess he just thinks my sense of humor is the best! :)

My second favorite game we played was Pictionary. Dan, Connor and me were on one team. And Ryan, Meredith and Annette were on the other team. And let me just say I learned something very valuable about myself. I am GOOD at pictionary! We SMOKED the other team! It was a lot of fun, definitely a game I want to own some day. That is FOR SURE!

Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Karissa and Toby have a Pumpkin Party every year and this year I was very excited because Connor and I got to attend. I had heard about all of the pumpkin food that gets made, the pumpkin carving, and pumpkin games and I couldn't wait! And my expectations did not let me down, this party was a BLAST! Toby made up a really fun bowling pumpkin game- Not to mention my team won :) And Karissa made some DELICIOUS foods. It was also really fun watching how much fun Zeke had sticking his hand in the pumpkin guts and how much Porter didn't want to go anywhere near that slimy stuff. Thanks for letting us come to your fun party Landers!

Carving away, our pumpkin is the one on the far right in the picture above. I was pretty proud of it :)


Halloween fell on Sunday this year so all of the little kids were going out trick or treating on Saturday. Connor and I didn't have any plans, so we decided to go trick or treating with Zeke. Alright let's face it, we didn't make any plans because we were excited to go trick or treating with Zeke. So, it was about time to go and we still didn't have a costume! Well, by the picture, I'm sure you can tell what ended up happening...I went as Connor and Connor went as me! We thought we were being pretty hilarious. The really funny thing was, after we got to Karissa and Toby's, Zeke kept coming up to me and asking "Connor, will you go trick or treating with me?!" haha I guess my costume was pretty good.


Zeke as a DRAGON! I don't know if I have ever seen a little kid more excited to walk around and ask for candy in my entire life. Even in the Pouring down rain, shivering cold, he'd ask after every house if we could go to another.

Zeke wasn't the only one that loved trick or treating. Even little Porter would go to the door and grunt and lean toward the candy until he got some in his little baggy. Oh man these kids are cute. The funny thing about this picture is that every time I would put my camera up to take a picture, Porter would make this face! It was so hilarious, I couldn't stop laughing to hardly take any pictures of it!

I love these kids! I'm so lucky to live so close where I get to see them as much as I want to!

One year older and wiser too

We had birthdays!!! I thought I would post a little something about how much fun our birthdays were! Mine was in September and Connor's was in October. Connor did such a good job making my birthday super fun for me! He made me a cake, took me out to dinner and gave me presents!! What a good hubby I have! I'm such a lucky girl.

CONNORS BIRTHDAY! I'm pretty sure Connor is making fun of me in this picture, using a cheesy smile. (and don't ask about his tucked in shorts....he's a weirdie:)) Connor's birthday was filled with a lot of fun events too. He had a soccer game, we went to Red Robin (free hambuger on your birthday!), and I gave him his presents and was very successful in getting him one of his favorite games! And I can't forget to mention the presents from Connor's parents. They gave us a very much needed iron, AND SETTLERS!! The presents were wrapped and came a couple days early. They were sitting on our table and the one was just screaming at us to open it. It was the right size, it had the correct shake to it; We were hoping so much for that game. Sooooo what'd we do?! OF COURSE WE OPENED IT! And since then, we've played the game like 100 times! so super fun! Thank you Dan and Annette!

I am so lucky to have Connor in my life, I love him so much and all that he does for me. Glad you were born Hubby!