2019 Blue Jeans Week 52

Merry Christmas!  Hope you all had a wonderful one!  Our week was great.  Take a look....

Happy Birthday to this amazing young woman and recent college graduate!  Woohoo!  So proud of her!!!

Ben reading Christmas stories to the kids by the tree.  One of my favorite things!

Christmas Eve at our house with lots of friends and family and music!

and our Christmas Eve Nativity play...the shepards with Mary and Joseph

New PJ's on Christmas Eve.  Ben was in charge of buying them this year :)

Merry Christmas!  Miss E made Ben homemade marzipan and then shaped it into fruit!  So yummy!

Christmas morning---exploring the new stuff and relaxing!

Hope you had a blessed and safe Christmas and hope you have a wonderful New Year!!!

2019 Blue Jeans Week 51

Catching up.....the week before Christmas was great.  We finished up school, basketball and got my girls home!  Take a look...

Community Christmas choir concert.   Mr J played a duet during the intermission, and it was a great concert.

Life right now...making lists and checking them twice as I eat lunch and multitask.

Mr J in his jazz band Christmas concert.  They sounded awesome!

We got snow!  It didn't last, but it was pretty with the Christmas lights on at night.

Two basketball games this week!  Lost one, but won the last one before the break and Miss E did awesome, and her older sisters got to be here for the last one before the break!

Heading up to the city to stock up at Costco before we pick up the girls from the airport!
 

And they are home!!!!  Picked them up from the airport and hit Panda for lunch.  My heart is so happy!

Everyone together again!  We up to the temple to serve as a family today which was awesome!

Enjoying Christmas books by the tree in the evenings.

Making gingerbread houses at my mom's is a Christmas tradition.

Their awesome gingerbread house!

And the house Ben and I made.  Pretty fun!

Thanks for visiting!  Christmas coming up!

2019 Blue Jeans Week 50

We had a good week.  Lots of basketball games for Miss E--it was a tournament week, and her team did awesome!  We did some of our Christmas traditions this week and are looking forward to just 3 days of school this week and our college girls flying home!!!  Take a look at our week...

Making gingerbread cookies is always a must for us in December.  We always make this recipe from Mel's Kitchen Cafe.

Another Christmas tradition we have is making snowflakes to put on our kitchen window.  This is what we came up with this year.  Pretty awesome looking and very unique snowflakes I think!

I was at a school board conference and picked up these fidget spinners that light up which Mr J was excited to get!

Miss E is helping a friend convert plastic grocery bags into mattresses for the homeless.  They connect them together and then her friend weaves them together.  Not exactly sure how it works, but Ben helped Miss E hook them together one night as they watched a Christmas movie.

Music is a big deal at our house, especially on Christmas Eve, so these two have been diligently working on some Christmas duets to play for us on Christmas Eve, and I am excited!

We had this little friend with us this weekend as his parents celebrated their anniversary, and we enjoyed playing Rush Hour.  Puzzle games are the best!

To wrap up a week full of lots of tournament basketball games, Miss E and her team got a very well deserved 2nd place in their tournament this weekend.  Woohoo!  These girls work so hard and never, ever give up.  They are fun to watch.  It is going to be a good season!

Thanks for visiting!  Hope you have a great week!

2019 Blue Jeans Week 49

We had a good first week of December.  My college girls got lots and lots of snow and enjoyed sending us snowmen pictures.  We had Miss E's first basketball game of the season.  Her last basketball season and probably my last season as a basketball mom.  I will miss that.  It was a good week.  Take a look at our week...

Miss A and Miss O at Ben's parents and their Santa snowman.  They got a lot of snow and enjoyed building their snowman while it was snowing!

No snow here, but cold and we are still staying warm and playing some games.

Miss A and some good friends make another snowman this week.

Miss A and her roommate spent one day in downtown Salt Lake and made it to Temple Square where Ben and I were married 24 years ago this month!  So pretty!

Ben and one of his employees at a banquet honoring him. He is blessed with such great employees!

And first basketball game of her last senior season!  Go Miss E!!!

She played hard and had some good shots, but they lost this one, but there are many more to come!

Thanks for visiting!  Hope you have a great week!

2019 Blue Jeans Week 48

We have so very, very much to be thankful for!  We had a great week of service and giving and enjoying our family and amazing food.  We sure missed our two oldest who weren't able to make it home, but who celebrated with other family, and we are so grateful for them and all we have.  Amazing family and food.  Does it get better than that?  I don't think so.  Take a look at our Thanksgiving week....

We started the week off perfectly with serving Thanksgiving dinner at the soup kitchen we always work at.  So grateful that we always have enough to eat!

We had a nicer day and went and played pickle ball.  I am grateful that I have a physical body that I can walk, see, hear, run, jump and play with my kids!

Getting ready for the big day!  Miss E was my pie making assistant.  So grateful for recipes that have been lovingly passed down through the generations to share!  And SOOO grateful for pie!

Our traditional Tree of Thanks that we work on all month. So much to be thankful for!

The group at our house this year.  Family and friends that feel like family.  Amazing people and so much good food!

My oldest girls with Ben's parents and his sister and her awesome family.  So thankful for them for taking care of my girls!

And per tradition, we always put our tree up and other Christmas decorations the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Love seeing this tree up!  So thankful for the Christmas season to remember Christ!

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

2019 Blue Jeans Week 47

Hello!  We have had a good week.  Miss E was burning the candle at both ends with two-a-day basketball practice.  One thing we are thankful for is that is OVER!  She is excited about her last season of basketball.  She has been playing with the same girls since 7th grade, so to see them still together as seniors is awesome!  Cross country banquet this week.  Miss O's roommate got married, and we had a backyard visitor.  SO much to be thankful for!  Take a look....

I am thankful for nature.  We have had a lot of deer visiting our back yard lately. This buck is beautiful, and he just watched us as we watched him out the big kitchen windows.

I am thankful for great coaches that have been a huge influence for good in my life as well as all 4 of my kids' lives!  Cross country banquet, Miss E honored as a senior by the same coach I had when I ran cross country in HS.  He is a gem!  

I am thankful for good friends for my kids.  Mr J and the other freshman boys honored in the cross country banquet. 

I am thankful for strong girls that work hard, and no one has worked harder than these girls on our varsity cross country team.  They supported each other and encouraged and worked SO HARD to get the whole team to state, which hasn't happened for our girls team in over 15 years!  So proud of all of them and so proud Miss E was part of the state bound team her senior year!

So thankful for the good roommates Miss O has had.  She started college with 5 other roommates and knew nothing about any of them.  They have become the best of friends, and one of them got married this last weekend.  Such beautiful, strong and talented young women!

So thankful for good friends that you can have fun with!  Sure love these girls and so grateful for their being a part of Miss O's life!  Lifelong friends!!!

Thanks for visiting!  Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  

2019 Blue Jeans Week 46

 A slower week with no sports practices or anything, nice weather, and it was a good week.  Take a look....

Mr J and Ben doing the dishes together one night.  Love it!

A beautiful sunset on a lake near our home as we walked one evening.  So beautiful!

Making chocolate chip cookies.  A family favorite.  

School board meeting this week, and we were presented with a check from a local business that supports education.  So grateful for the good people in our town!

We had really nice weather, so Ben and the kids took advantage of the 60 degree sunny weather to get the Christmas lights up before Thanksgiving and it gets cold and yucky.  We won't turn them on until after Thanksgiving, but nice to have it done!

Enjoying the fall weather and leaves!

Hope you have a great week!  Thanks for visiting!