It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

I can't believe tomorrow is Christmas Eve!  (Well technically today, since it's after mid-night) The month has just flown by!  Honestly I'm a little sad that Christmas is almost here - I love the kids' excitement and anticipation all month long, the lights, the music, the parties, the treats, I just love the fun and the feeling of giving and joy in the air!  I love it so much that I'm always a little sad because I don't want Christmas to be over. It has been a fun filled and busy month for sure, here are some our favorite traditions and fun activities that we've had...

Jubilee of Trees!
Our kids love our tradition of kicking off the season with a visit to see Santa at the Jubilee of Trees.  We have been doing this since Pierson was a toddler, I am glad he is still so excited about it.  Pierce was actually a little stressed as we were getting ready, he just could not decide what he should tell Santa he wanted!  I was worried that Jensen would freak out like Pierce did at this age, but he did great.  Not exactly a smile, but he didn't cry, so I'm calling it a success!

This was an especially memorable year at the Jubilee this year, Ryan totally scored and with $5 in raffle tickets won the "Prize Drawing Tree"!  I could not believe it!  The designers from Tai Pain showed up that night to set it up in our living room!  It has been so fun and the kids have been loving it!   A little hard to see the actual tree but it is in there under all that decor.

Ryan wanted to check "put up the tree" off his list after this, but there was no way I could not have our tree up for Christmas.  Even though our tree is somewhat bare and by no means fancy, I love it!  I love all of our family ornaments and the memories that go with them.  It is fun to see it get a  little fuller each year. Plus the best thing is, that it has been so fun to have a tree up stairs and down, our playroom upstairs is pretty bare, we love having the tree up their to add a little cozy!

I have to say that my very favorite thing about this Christmas Season has been Jensen's fascination with the trees and the lights.  He loves them!  He doesn't even try to destroy them either.  He definitely enjoys rearranging the ornaments, but all kids proof ornaments within his reach have made it all the merrier.  He says "tree" and "lights" so cute, when we get him out of bed in the morning as soon as we walk out into the room, if the lights are not on yet he points and says "ah-oh"! then runs to turn them on.  It didn't take him long at all to figure out all the tricks to turning on all the lights around the house.

Christmas Performances

Pierce has been singing in the school choir this year and they got the fun opportunity to sing at the tree lighting for Dixie Escalante.  Such a fun family event.  We had never been so I didn't know what tree they would be lighting, this tree is huge!  So fun to see it all lit up!

The choir kids did a great job!  Ryan and I love watching Pierce get into the songs, he is a great little singer.

Madi's ballet studio  put on "A Christmas Carol" ballet this year.  This was her first year being in the ballet and she loved it.  They got to perform at the Dickens' Festival, at Tuachan and then their studio recital.  She has a lot of fun performing, especially with her best friend, Annie.

Love these two beautiful girls!

Pierce, Madi and Jens having fun after Madi's performance at Tuachan.   Cute little Shepherd and animals if I do say so myself.

Gingerbread Houses!
I think our annual "Gingerbread Houses with the Woodbury's" is the kids' most anticipated Christmas time activity - they LOVE this!  This was our 5th year doing this together and  it was even more special this year, we got to do gingerbread on Annie's birthday!  Here are some highlights...

Kathryn always makes real gingerbread from scratch, (she's amazing like that, we are just lucky she invites us!) and she always makes extra so we can enjoy some fresh gingerbread cookies.  Which I think is my favorite part.

Pierce with his cookies, he was not very happy with me for eating them, better make my own next year.  

Our lovely gingerbread house!  We did a pretty good job this year!  Much better than last year.

Madi with birthday girl Annie!  Happy Birthday Annie!  I can't believe you are seven! 

I was also relieved that Madi's tooth had finally come out that morning!  The poor girl had been brave and let me try to pull it out for her, it seemed so ready, and when I gave it a little tug it did not come out!  One side was totally detached and the other side was not letting go, I felt so bad, I never would have tried pulling it if I didn't think it was ready, I'd never seen such a stubborn tooth!  So after that she was terrified and we had a week of her with the lovely "tooth hanging by a thread".  She would not let any one touch it and did not want to pull it out herself.  Thankfully, it finally just fell right out!  She was so happy and I was so relieved!  Even though she has lost 4 teeth, they've all been on the bottom so this one is the first to really change her smile, I love/hate this.  So cute and so sad at the same time.  They are growing up way too fast.  

Holiday Attire Party

My most hilarious friend, Angie, hosted a couples "Holiday Attire Party" and it was such a fun night for Ryan and me!  Ryan scored himself this sweet sweater at DI in preparation for the big night.  I wasn't as on the ball, next year I'll have to come up with something much better.  Here we are in our Sadie Hawkins pose.

All the girls -

Jen, Kimberly, Lauren, Kathryn, Andrea, Laura, Shelley,
Mel, Kendra, Me, Angie, Kenna

The Couples - 

We all enjoyed some delicious food and had some good laughs.   A lot of good laughs.  We played the candy bar game, (round 1 for the ladies, round 2 for the men,)  and Guesstures.  I was so impressed with everyones acting and pantomiming skills!  We are just surrounded by talented people here!  So much fun!  Thank you Ang, you are the best!  

Thanksgiving

We had such a nice Thanksgiving this year!  We stayed home and had a small, somewhat quiet Thanksgiving with JoAnn/Grandma.  Our niece, Miranda, who's attending BYU, came down to spend the weekend with Grandma, so it was just the two of them from the Robison  Family, and my sister, Ginger, and niece Taylee, came to town for a soccer tournament and were able to come stay with us and get here to enjoy Thanksgiving with us.  I was really looking forward to being home, cooking, and having a small gathering (very small in compared to our regular Robison Thanksgivings, which we have at the church so we can fit all 16 siblings/spouses and 30 grandkids!) It was really nice to be home, enjoy the day and be able to use my china!  

I had visions of the beautiful pictures I would take of the delicious looking food all prepared and of my beautiful children, dressed nicely, smiling and cute for a great Thanksgiving day portrait.  Ya, that didn't happen.  I was too busy bustling around the kitchen getting all the food ready to take any pictures of it, and as for the kids, well  they were too uncooperative, busy for any lovely  pictures.  Imagine that. 

I did manage to capture one of the choicest moments of the day though.  My little man was desperately wanting my attention as I'd been ignoring him all morning trying to get things ready.  So I decided to let him sit up on the counter and see what I was doing - he was as happy as can be!  Here are some darling shots of my little helper...

So cute!  I know.  Have I mentioned I am kind of in love with him?   

Ryan did a great job cooking the turkey and I was happy to get at least one Thanksgiving-ish shot...

Love my boys! 

This was as close as I got to my mental picture...

 Jensen, Piece, Madi, Tay and her friend Paige
Already in p.j.'s,  Jensen, unable to hold still, Madi busy in her notebook (wonder what she was writing?), hey at least Pierce smiled for me, he loved having cousin Tay here to play with! 

After dinner we had our friends, The Binghams,  join us for pie and games, the kids had a ball playing and we had more delicious pie than we knew what to do with.  Well, not really, we knew what to do with it.  We enjoyed it thoroughly for the next several days.  One of the reasons I was most excited to cook Thanksgiving dinner, all the leftovers!  We really had a wonderful day - delicious food, great company, lots of fun!  We are so blessed with a beautiful family, home and the gospel of Jesus Christ!  It was a Happy Thanksgiving at our house! 

Breaking Dawn Part 2 - The End of an Era

 The Twilight Saga - I can't believe it's over!  As much as I was excited for Breaking Dawn Part 2, I just kept thinking how I couldn't believe this was the last movie.  I have had 5 years of Twilight fun and it has been FUN!  I have always blamed Kathryn for my addiction to Twilight, she suggested I read the book (back in 2007) and told me it was about vampires, I said "no thanks!  I am not reading a book about vampires!"   So to convince me to read the book she gave it to me for Christmas.  I started reading it and by chapter 3 I was totally hooked!  I was reading like a mad women and went and bought New Moon and Eclipse before I even finished reading it.  I read all 3 books in 9 days.  And I thought I didn't have time to read with 2 kids.    Funny how vampires who suck you in can convince you to stay up til 2:00 am reading, and read while you stir noodles and read while your kids are playing in the tub and pretty much read any spare second you can.  I had never had so much fun reading a novel before and I honestly hadn't read anything for fun in years, I had forgotten how much I like to read!  I have pretty much always been in a book since then.  I love having a little escape from reality for a few minutes (or hours, you know, depending on the obsession) everyday.  So I'm thankful to Kathryn and I'm thankful to Stephanie Meyer for getting me back into reading for fun.  I have read a lot of great books in the last 5 years, but I will say the Twilight Series have been my favorite for sure.  Nothing like the thrill of reading it for the first time, if you haven't read them yet, you should.   

I have had such a fun time seeing the movies with our friends,  a little trip down Memory Lane....

 Kathryn & Me at Twilight, November 21st, 2008 in our 1st matching shirts, "Twilight Vampires are Forever" (they were awesome!)

Lynds, Kathryn, Me and Mel at New Moon, November 20th, 2009, in our funny matching shirts, "My heart belongs to Ryan (husband's name), but my neck belongs to Edward."  I love this picture, one of my favorites to this day, love these girls so much!

Tonya, Me, Kendra, Kathryn, Staci S., Angie, Lynds, Staci D., Annette at Eclipse, June 30th 2010.  Lynds, Kathryn and I had shirts that said, "6.30.10 Eclipse My Vampire Awaits".  We had had it with the iron on that year, that's when we came up with our awesomeness of Breaking Dawn....

 Lynds, Jana, Mel, Kathryn, Tonya, Annette, Ashley, Staci, Kendra, Me at Breaking Dawn, November 18th, 2011.  Epic, Awesome shirts - "Couples Who Watch Twilight Together Stay Together!" 

And Here is a look at our fun gang for the big finale - Breaking Dawn Part 2, November 16th, 2012!

Shane & Laura, Dustin S. & Staci., Curt & Mel, Darin & Lynds, Dustin W. & Kathryn, Dustin T. & Kendra, Nate & Ashley, Ryan & Me

Love these girls!  Me, Lynds, Mel, Kathryn, Laura, Stace, Ashley, Kendra

Kathryn and Me, love that we have a picture of us at every movie!

Best Husband on the planet right here.  Thanks Babe for putting up with my Twilight obsession, listening to the books on CD, designing our awesome shirts and being so fun for all the movies!   I am the luckiest.  Edwards got nothin' on you. 

Such a fun night!  I loved the movie!  I think this one was my favorite one, they did a great job wrapping it up!  Probably the most intense 10 minutes of my life too!  Ok not my life, just my novel/fantasy life.  Glad everyone can live happily forever!  Thanks gang for 4 years of movie fun!  It's been a blast!  What now??!! 

A Star Wars Halloween

What a fun Halloween we had this year!  Pierce and Madi were very excited to have the whole family in a coordinated theme this year!  Ok they didn't say, "were exited to be coordinating", but they did say how excited they were to have the whole family be "Star Wars"!  We had actually had the idea last year when Pierce was Darth Vader, we though it would be cute to have Jensen as Yoda this year.  So we all got decked out in Star Wars get up...

Pierson as Darth Vader  (glad he was excited to wear the costume again!)

 Madi as Princess Leah 

 And our Jensey Boo (just one of his current nick names) as Yoda

Here they are with "Anakin" Dad.  I am totally kicking myself for not getting a family picture of all of us!  Really, really bummed about that.  

The Powerful Jedi assisting Yoda on his first Trick or Treating Adventure...

Yoda Jensen loved trick or treating, he for sure has the Robison sweet tooth, so I knew he'd be all about the candy, and he was!  

 YUM! 

  And of course, our favorite family Halloween tradition - pumpkin sugar cookies....

 Jensen thoroughly enjoyed his first year participating in this delicious tradition.  He is a fan.  

It was a Happy Star Wars Halloween!  Love my Skywalker Crew! 

Halloween Party 2012!

I have the funnest, coolest friends ever.  Really, I do.  Ryan and I hosted our annual "Couples Costume Party" and I think every year it is even more fun.  I absolutely love having everyone over and to just have fun together, let loose and be silly.  The costumes where FABULOUS, the food was delicious, and the company was the best!

The Costumes 

 Shane & Laura - "Dexter" and his latest victim.  2nd Place "Scariest" Award!
You think you know your friends and then you find out they are addicted to psycho serial killer shows! 

Jon & April - The Father & The Sister.  2nd Place Tie for "Funniest"
 - luckily Father was there for Laura's confession of her secretive obsession with serial killers

 Jared & Amanda - a flash forward of their life in 50 years.  

Greg & Kimberly - Beautiful flapper girl with the Gangster 

Angie & Daron - 1st Place by a landslide for "Best Looking Lawn Ornaments"!  ;)
2nd Place Tie for "Funniest" Award

Brooke & Jona in a box! 1st Place "Most Creative"!

Staci & Dustin - The Dirty Bandits 

Ryan & Me - Anakin & Padme

Derek & Andrea - The Mad Hatter & the Red Queen, Andrea IS the Queen of Halloween!  I could not get over their costumes!
1st Place Winners for "Best All Around"!
Also 1st Place Tie for "Best Couple Costumes"! 

Dustin & Kathryn - 2nd Place "Most Creative"
 - their true identity revealed!

Kendra & Dustin (it's the norm for 3 Dustins to be in attendance)  

Brad & Jana - Vampire-ness
1st Place "Scariest"

Terra & Curtis - Big Bird & Mitt 

1st Place "Funniest"

Lynds & Darrin - 1st Place Tie for "Best Couple Costumes"
The Runaway Bride