Fondue Night

We had another great night of Fondue on Saturday. As usual, whenever we get together there is nothing but GOOD TIMES to be had. We did miss Mel & Pete and Eliza & Jon dearly though. Our night is never truly complete without them in attendance. Of course after dinner we end the evening with a game of Farkle. The funniest dice game EVER!!! Here are some pics of our evening.

Desi, Aislinn, Shannon & Jerran (Table 1)

Carissa, Matt (Dude Dude), Heath, Alyssa, Mike & Michelle (Table 2)

So our dear friend Matt (we discovered) has a bit of OCD. For those not familiar with this acronym, this stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. What Matt did not know about fondue, was that you have to place a piece of raw meat into your left hand and load it onto the skewer of which your right hand places into the fondue pot for cooking. This really stressed Matt out. So much so that he had to wash his hands several time throughout the course of the evening as to not cross contaminate, and as you see from the photos below, was very careful with the placement of his left hand on the table. We salute you Matt, and your dedication to cleanliness and the prevention of cross contamination.


Dinner time!!! Yum Yum!!! As you can see we got a little crazy with the skewers and had to end up taking some out. We were loosing our meat and shrimp right and left off of them. Our potatoes were cooking at the bottom of the pot and took some creative maneuvering to get them out.

White Elephant gift exchange.


Cheesecake fondue for dessert. There are no words to describe how good this is.

Twins Preschool Christmas Program

The twins had their preschool Christmas program Saturday morning. All the kids acted out the Nativity and it was adorable to say the least. Grayson and Lauren were the sheep. It's a little hard to see, but they are kneeling on the right hand side of the stage in sheep costumes. Grayson was very into the entire experience doing all the necessary hand moves while Lauren just sat there.

You can see them better in this pic. They are 3rd and 4th from the far right next to the wise men.

Here the kids are in their regular clothes singing xmas carols. Lauren is directly in the middle in a short polk-a-dot dress and Grayson is to her left with his tie on. Again, Grayson loved every minute of the spot light while Lauren just stood there. Little stinker!

After the program! So proud! How cute!

Before church on Sunday.

Christmas Fun

Grandma Marlene flew in Thurs morning from Virginia. We put her straight to work making a gingerbread house with the twins. We had our church xmas party Friday night and everyone was encouraged to bring one. This was our first ever attempt at one of these things and have to say, I think for leaving the decorating up to my 3 year old children, it turned out pretty darn good.



The church xmas party was actually a pajama party for the kids. While I thought this would go over rather well with my kids, I forgot that my son is currently obsessed with his father which also includes dressing like him. So dress clothes and a tie it was (we were just lucky there wasn't two ties on this day). Here they are making their lap around the cultural hall during their pj parade. My son the ham!!!

All the primary kids on stage singing.


I was really excited that Santa was making an appearance this year at the party. He's apparently been booked the last couple of years. Anyway, in traditional toddler fashion, the twins wanted NOTHING to do with him, although he's all they talk about at home. I literally thought that their hearts were going to beat out of their chests when he took stage they were so scared. Grayson hung on to dad for dear life and the only way I could get Lauren on stage was to bribe her with Grandma. She still wasn't a huge fan.

Darrian's Holiday Performance

Darrian's dance teacher puts on a couple of holiday shows each year just for her tap classes. So since this was Darrian's first year of dance, it was her first performances. First she did her dance "Frosty The Snowman" at a senior center here in town and then the next week took stage at the Rialto Theater. It was really cute to see her dance with her class in front of such a large audience. She said she was nervous the first time but apparently by the second show she was an old pro. Of course we were too far away to get pics of her on stage at the Rialto because they came out to dark, but here are a few cute pics.

My crazy kiddos

So I decided to clean out some junk from the garage a couple months ago and low and behold ran across a box with a TON of my toddler/young girl clothes in it. Let me just say that was a last from the past! Lauren played dress up for a week and I will for sure be getting many pics of her in these various outfits as she looks like my twin when she wears them. Too cute. So as for Grayson, he inherited a pair of old slippers (if that's what you want to call them) which I think are actually called Muc Tucks (Spelling?). Anyway, I snapped these pics of Grayson in them and Lauren in one of my hippy chic tanks from when I was her age. Many more hysterical outfits to come.




The kids hate the car wash!!! Well Grayson more than Lauren. Here is a pic of them going through the car wash last week. Cause we all know that covering your ears makes the scary go away. :)


So we have decided that taking the twins to Sam's just isn't the smartest thing to do. The only way we could get Grayson to stop having an out of body experience in the store last wee was to let him play on the displays. I'm sure Sam's loves us for that one. Here is a rather angered child posing for his mother.

Merry Christmas

My baby boys big boy haircut

Last Friday we decided Grayson's hair was getting out of control and it was time for a cut. Here is a few pics from our 3rd haircut. Lauren did not get hers cut since we are trying to grow out the little bit of hair she even has.

On the way to the hair salon, showing off his shades.



It's amazing how a haircut makes your baby look 2 years older and 2 inches taller! I am still getting use to looking at him with so much less hair. He is so adorable!

Stupid Dumb Heart

So I had my annual cardiology check up yesterday. I don't know why I do this to myself every year, but I go into the appt thinking that this may be the year I get off my meds. Wishful thinking I guess. I typically have an echo cardiogram a few days prior to the appt along with an EKG the day of the appt. The last 3 echos have shown minimal improvement and last years even resulted in a minor decrease in function. This year my doctor opted to not have me do the echo because he said that since I still have extra beats all the time (PVC's) which showed up on the EKG, that it's very hard to read the echo since the extra beats tend to skew the results. Anyway, he felt that there would have been minimal to no change anyway, so we will resume the echo process next year and I will remain on my heart meds.

After I asked him the typical annual question, "so how long do you think I will remain a cardiac patient or have to stay on medicine?" his response was - just plan on it for life! FOR LIFE! What the mother? I'm 33 not 69!!! Whatev!!! In addition to reminding me that my heart works at a "just above normal function", he mentioned that I should be more thankful than what the alternative could have brought and how lucky I was to make it through the pregnancy at all. ughhh Yea I guess he's right! I mean who wants to die after just giving birth to two beautiful children right? I guess there is just an irritant involved with feeling like you HAVE to take these pills EVERYDAY the rest of YOUR LIFE. I realize that people do this for several other reasons, diabetes, cholesterol, arthritis, depression, etc. But they're not me! I'm happy, I'm healthy......Right?

My doctor had consulted with a new colleague who had just joined Kaiser after heading up the Cardiology Dept at the University of VA. He asked him in all his experience, when do you every take a patient off of meds who developed a weakened heart as a result of peripartum cardiomyopathy He said you don't. There are many studies done on patients who develop cardiomyopathy and he could be certain of many things relating to that diagnosis. The "peripartum" trumps that and leaves the answers unknown. Studies and trials can't be done on pregnant women with stupid hearts as these are not typically found until delivery, as mine was, so they have no history to pull from. Stupid dumb heart!

Ok well I am over my rant. I need to just shut up and be lucky for the things I have. I feel stupid complaining about this in light of what other friends and family have gone through with cancer, diabetes, etc. So I will shut up now. But I guess we all have the desire to just want to be healthy right? Thank goodness for medicine and for me having to beautiful babies AT ONCE!

Long weekend

So as I have mentioned several times before, my son is obsessed with looking like his father and wearing dress shirts and a tie everyday. He decided to kick it up a notch and wear two ties this special day. Yes a regular tie and a BOW tie. I'm still having a hard time remembering how he ever ended up with a bow tie in his collection. Anyway, he proceeded to wear this ensemble all day and both ties even made it into his outfit for church this past Sunday. I give up!

Last week we woke up to our first major snow fall of the season. It was great. Of course in Colorado fashion it lasted all of two days. Here are some pics of the kids trying to take advantage of it in our front yard while they could.






Saturday night Heath took the girls out for a Daddy/Daughter night. It was the 3rd annual daddy/daughter dance here in town. They had a blast. Heath said he has never seen so many middle aged white dad's trying to dance with their sweet daughters - looking very wrong in the process - especially to Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and of course the girls have no idea who MJ is. He said it was a lot of fun and will for sure be going back next year. Hopefully with Lauren in tow.

The kids before church on Sunday.

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas

Well the tree is up and the snow FINALLY came. This is what we woke up to this morning. The snow is so beautiful, but such a pain to drive in. Last Sunday, after recovering from a week of illness that went throughout the entire family, we managed to put up the tree. Yeah! Now it really is starting to feel like Christmas.

This past Tuesday, Darrian and Braxton had their school's annual Christmas Concert. Braxton was even able to sing a solo. She was very excited. Here are the cutie pies all dressed up for the evening.


Wednesday afternoon, my mom sent us a family Christmas present. Let's just say the kids were more than overjoyed. It is a Christmas Tree music box from Disney. They loved it! Grayson sat in front of it for a good 45 minutes and they were just fascinated with it the entire evening. And yes, Grayson is naked.


Later that night, Grayson took a shower with his big sister Brax and decided to get cozy in her robe and watch some TV with her. This is what I walked in on last night and couldn't help but grab the camera. He LOVES hanging out with his sisters and wants to be a big boy so bad.