Christmas day.

This is what Sarah did while we

did this.

Brinley got Legos, but I have had more fun with them. I built this and then let her tear it down so that I could build another one.
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Since most of the family had other things going on Christmas Eve, we had the Erickson celebration Christmas Day. We played games ( Trivia Pursuit and Would You Rather?), chatted, ate a ham dinner, watched movies, ate snacks, put a puzzle together, ate pie, and ate some more.
Gotta love the Holidays.

New Years Eve should be fun. It is my Mom's birthday and it's become a tradition (7 years, I believe?) to go out to eat at Wolf Lodge in Couer d'Alene

MMM...the BEST steaks ever.

It's so worth the 40 mile drive to get there.

Merry Christmas

It is 9am. I am the ONLY one awake...can you believe it? So, I thought while I wait for anyone to get up, I'll blog a little, with a sleeping baby Sarah in my arms. She is getting heavy.

We got home last night at about midnight, after making the rounds, to the sound of cracking and popping. I looked across the street, as we opened the door to our home, to see our neighbors garage roof collapse. Nice Christmas gift, huh? Matt went over to make sure that nobody was in there, but we are waiting for the rest of it to cave in. We helped them move a car from under the carport, located right next to the garage. The neighbor had just gone out about 30 minutes earlier to throw garbage away. They are in their late 70's maybe 80's. We are so glad they are okay. We have heard more cracking and popping throughout the night.

Matt spent the next hour knocking the snow and icicles off of our house. We got to bed pretty, late...well, early. I had to wait for Brinley to FINALLY fall asleep so that I could play Santa. That could be the reason most of the house is still asleep.

Hope you all have a SAFE and happy Christmas!

happy, happy, happy

Anniversary to us.

It has been 9 wonderful, emotional, lovely, beautiful years. I can't believe I've been married that long. I joked to him last night that "nine years is the longest I've ever been with anybody" and, of course, "we have been married 5 times longer than your last marriage", which he really appreciates me bringing that up.

Matt, I love you!

Here is a list of reasons why I am so happy to have you as my husband...

*you are an amazing father...your girls love you!

*you tell really dumb jokes...even though I roll my eyes at you about 90% of the time, it's who you are.

*you have super thick hair,although its grey and prickly now, I can imagine that it had lots of body and was beautiful when you were younger. I hope that Sarah inherits it and not my straight thin hair.

*your earlobes. I love to pull on them. I know you love it too.

*you put up with my moods. I don't know how you can stand it, but you do.

*You provide for our family. It may have taken a few years, but we are happy.

*You bought me a house. It's small and it has it's quirks, but I LOVE it.

*We make beautiful children. I hope to add a few more to the mix...but not too soon.

*You are like a big teddy bear.

*You call me everyday to see how I am doing, even if it's for 2 seconds because a customer showed up.

*Your knowledgeable. Your full of useless information. Brinley loves it. She can ask you anything and you have an answer for her.

*You love the Gospel. I have learned a lot from your Gospel Principles class, more than I thought I would.

*You would do anything for me.

*You like to take drives to nowhere. We often do this on Sundays, probably to keep you from taking a 4 hour nap.

*You watch the girls so that I can take a bath and have some alone time. It doesn't last long with Brinley, but I still get a little time to myself.

*you don't complain. you will eat whatever I make and let me decorate however I want.

*Your easy going. Your happy to just be with family. You don't need a lot of excitement all the time, just like me.

*You love Spokane. It's home and we love it here.

*You work hard. I don't get to see too much of you, but I know it won't always be that way.

*We have the same goals. It's nice that we want the same things in life.

*Laughing in bed late at night. Remembering things in our life.

I hope you have a wonderful day! Hopefully we can get a date in this weekend.

I LOVE YOU!

(I wish I could post pictures right now, but I am borrowing a computer. Ours died...yet again.)

santa

Last night I took the kiddos, including Coders, to see Santa at our Ward Christmas party. It was entertaining to see the little kids react to Santa. This was the 4th time this year that Brinley and Cody had seen Santa. Cody's words:

Santa: "What would you like for Christmas?"

Cody: "I already wrote you a letter Santa."

Brinley didn't want to sit on Santa's lap, but realized that you can't get your candy cane unless you do. This kid LOVES candy canes. She sang with the Primary kids with one in her mouth.

Sarah was easy, didn't complain, just sat there like a good little bean.
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on another note, I am back to volunteering again. Matt stayed with the girls last night while I was at the hospital photographing a sweet little baby. Sarah was good for her tired Daddy, I just pumped a bottle for her and she was happy...SO OPPOSITE of Brinley.

the button tree craft

i have been asked by at least a hundred (okay, not really, but it sure seems like that many) people about where we got all our buttons. Well, we collected them over the year, bought some at Walmart bought some through a favorite site of mine, ETSY.com You need about 500 buttons for a large tree.

The best place to buy styrafoam cones is at Michaels (with the coupon, of course).

The pins are the most expensive, so buy them at Walmart, enough to pin on 500 buttons. we like the large pearlized ones.

Whalaa...hours of fun. It will keep your children, or yourself, busy for a very long time.

As for the pom poms, for the garland, the dollar store is the cheapest place I've found.

Have fun crafting!

what did we do for Thanksgiving, you ask?

My day before Thanksgiving was spent with the flu. It wasn't fun. I don't recall the last time I was that sick. Luckily, Julie and Becca were around to do the prep work for Thanksgiving and I just laid on the couch and got up every few hours to nurse the baby.
Thanksgiving morning I was feeling much, much better and Sarah even let me get a little sleep through the night.

With a bunch of cousins in town, Brinley was in heaven and I haven't seen much of her. She has been spending the nights with them and having a blast.

So, with me feeling better and family in town, the Thanksgiving Day festivities began with me picking up the turkey from Longhorn Barbecue. I will just say that it is so nice to have someone else cook (smoke, in our case) the turkey and leave the oven open for other things to be baked. By the way, the turkey was DELICIOUS and I think it should become a tradition...

Then Matt and I took Sarah out to Olivia's grave for the first time. Actually, she's been out there, but sat in the car with Matt while I visited her site. It was a little...okay, a lot...emotional for me. I guess because when I saw Sarah there, it just brought back a flood of memories from a year ago and the thoughts of where Olivia would have been if she were here.

Since my Mom is staying with my sister, Corinne, until she has her baby and my dad worked Thanksgiving day, we crashed at their house, because it can fit everybody, and made button trees again this year...Do you have any idea what 10,000 buttons looks like? Well, it's a lot and no that wasn't a typo, i really meant 10,000 buttons.It was fun. We also played a little RockBand again, until my dad came home. He doesn't particularly like that game. It's a bit noisy.

We also spent a good chunk of time going through ads for early morning shopping. That's right, we are some of those crazy people that get up at 4am to go shopping with the 8 million other crazy people just to get a good deal. And I took Sarah with me...she was perfect and I bundled her up for the 23 degree weather. I actually ran into quite a few new babies with their moms while shopping. I say" If your going to be up with the baby at 4am anyway, why not go shopping."

When we got home, it started to snow and has been snowing all day...it was perfect for the start of the Christmas season. I got my Christmas decorations out and will work on the outdoor lights tomorrow. Since Matt had to work today, we are going to wait til tonight to decorate the tree. It should be fun.

thank you Merv for watching all the kids so that Julie, Brian and Becca and I could go shopping. And sorry, Julie, for giving you the flu...

sleep deprived

please forgive me for not posting as often as before...my brain remembers only things like...well, nothing. It's pretty blank up there.

Sarah still has her nights and days mixed up. I don't always get a chance to take a nap, however, today I did (thank you PBS kids).

This week is filled with Brinley's school, food shopping, family in town, cooking, baking, crafting, Christmas shopping and sleepless nights. I am sure that I might be able to catch a nap in there somewhere with family in town.

Matt's birthday was yesterday. Did we do anything? Nope. We didn't even make it to church. (I finally fell asleep at about 6:30am) I feel as if I am becoming inactive. I can't see that it is going to be any better in December. My intentions are good, but I really think Brinley should be at Primary on Sunday.

Things that did get done:

We threw my sister, Kami, a birthday party at my parents house. I'm glad my dad enjoys having us come over so that we can make a mess of his house instead of ours. I made navajo tacos and brownies, while Julie provided the ice cream, whipped cream and exploding hot fudge. Kami brought over RockBand...such a fun game. I got to sing a few songs, off tune, of course. (Our family was NOT blessed with music skills...absolutely zero!) We had a blast though. I know this is like the third time you've seen a photo like this, but literally, this is what Brinley loves to do with Sarah...just hold her and give her the binky.
Our lawn is free of leaves.Thank you to the nice man/student that stopped by our house and asked if he could clean our yard...YES! YES YOU CAN! (did I sound a little too excited about the thought of having a clean yard?) He raked our billion leaves from our yard and it was worth every penny! I can't believe it only took him 4 hours to get it done.

Cody was staying with us and LOVED playing in the piles. The man was very nice about letting the kids play in the piles of leaves.

Brinley did not want me to take her picture, but I wanted to show you her loveley outfit that she picked out herself. My personal favorite thing about this particular outfit, the skeleton gloves.