Visiting Santa's Elves

As Christmas was nearly upon us I realized we hadn't gone to see the elves at Gardener Village so I planned us to all go on Christmas Eve morning when daddy could join us. We were lucky enough to have our friends Stephanie, Cassie & Jacob join us as well as Grandma/pa Fergy, Aunt Ashley and Uncle Luis.

If you look closely on the Naught and nice lists you will see Camille's name in the middle of the naughty list and Joshua's name at the bottom of the nice list...I'd say Santa got it right once again.

As Cassie and Phoebe refused to stand by each other for a picture the only way we could get them in the same photo was to have a parent hold them both for a picture.

I think Josh just looks so cute in his little hat I had to get a picture!

Miscellaneous Fergy Happenings

In the last couple of months Phoebe has begun to "make believe" with her toys, which has been really fun to watch.  This was one of the first times that I have seen her make believe with her blocks.  She built everything by herself & then told me it was a house, tree (orange circle), table (green block), & our "nice" car (orange & blue blocks).  She is too cute to watch learning and exploring on her own.

Have I ever mentioned Josh has three very favorite things to do? Eat, be held, & bathe. One afternoon when the kids were especially fussy I thought I would bathe them all to calm them down, well Josh was a little over zealous and while I was changing Cami's diaper, Josh leaned right on in and got in the tub with all of his clothes on still.  Phoebe flipped out and began crying about it, but Josh on the other hand was perfectly happy just to finally be in the tub.

Cami is our resident busy climber girl, even more than Phoebe if it can be believed.  She is always looking for something to get into and most of the time it is something naughty. She is also one of our most clumsy children, so the two together often lead to some kind of disaster. This particular time I had the stair gate down while I was getting the milk to fill the kids sippy cups for bed and Cami took the opportunity to scurry up the stairs unsupervised, normally not a problem, but this time as she was going up her hand slipped trying to crawl up as fast as possible and she smashed her face on the edge of a stair, resulting in a black eye.  It is not so apparent in these pictures, but if you note the Christmas pictures that will follow it is MUCH blacker. We now call her our own Fergilicious Black Eye Pea.

The Fergy Polar Express

Every year the Fergy clan has one large progressive dinner where we visit everyones house and admire their Christmas decorations. The food served at all the houses is themed & this years theme was Polar Express, so we all dressed in pjs and ate breakfast-y foods. The first stop was Grandma&pa Fergys where we ate breakfast casserole & OJ. Second was Dennis & Julie's were German Pancakes were served. Third was Charisse & Jason's where we enjoyed a cold cereal bar. Fourth was us where we had lemon blueberry biscuits & glass block Jello.  Last but not least we travel to Amber & Alan's to enjoy a hot chocolate bar. At the last home after enjoying our yummy cocoa we all gathered around and read the Polar Express.

Josh loved the story so much he laughed and squealed in joy, but then again part of that could have been due to the fact we were letting him eat marshmallows out of his own cup.

After the Polar express was read we dressed up all the kiddos and posed for a nativity scene picture. We had planned to act it out, but the kids were tired and all the parents were feeling up to the extra effort of helping their wee ones to act out the scenes. For our part we contributed Cami & Phoebe as angles (although Cami looks more like Tinker bell to us rather than an angel). Josh was a shepherd in the field, in fact he was the only shepherd of the play I believe.

There was no one picture that was perfect when having this many kids pose so I narrowed it down to four pictures and you and see all the kids doing their best in different photos.

The Fergy Clan progressive dinner is one of my most favorite activities of the year and I look forward to it all year long, next year I am hoping Italian is the menu theme!

Fergy Family Date Night

This year the Fergy clan decided to join up while Ashly & Luis were in town and have a large group date night.  We started our date night at Tucanos, a very delicious Brazilian Restaurant, and on a side note they had excellent service!

While dinning we celebrated Mom's birthday a day late, so the waiters came around and sang & played their instruments; we loved it, but of course she was horrified at the extra attention.

After dinner we took the trax a couple stops to enjoy the Christmas light display of Temple Square and walk off some of the painfulness over eating.

Cory & Dad ( I was across from him sitting with mom)

Charisse & Jason, Dennis & Julie

Megan & Blake, Dave & Michelle, Amber & Alan

Ashley & Luis

The whole gang on the square.

This was a pretty fun night & in spite of all the stress we had finding a sitter for our wee ones, we would definitely want to do it again!

Sew Determined: October, November & December Editions

I had a goal this year to have at lease one sewing project every month  in order to become a better sewer.  Here re the last 3 months of my sewing endevors.

October:

I made a little Indian costume which turned out to be hideously large on Cami and all my children for that fact. No one ended up wearing it for Halloween since the twins were sick, I didn't make them dress up.

November: 

In November I did several little sewing projects. The first was a Thanksgiving apron, which is a pattern I have made several time before, but we simplified it this time.

The next project was a dozen of these little babies, imsulated hot cup holders.  I made these becuse I had a Holiday party I was throwing were we served hot chocolate and all I had was cheap dollar store cups, which everyone knows then become too hot to hold, so viola cup holders!

The third project was a Christmas apron which was WAY more complicated and I learned how to make make ruffles on & I actually did wear all of Christmas day while I was baking.

The last sewing prject of  November was a cute Christmas stocking I made for a charity auction.  I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of it before I bundled it with toys, but have no fear, it was SOO cute I made many more.

December:

For the year end project Cory & I decided that we would redo our older Christmas stockings with this fun new pattern I found and had made the month prior for the charity stocking.  I chose to make all different fabrics so we can add kids stocking without worry about finding the matching fabric in the future.  I also embroidered names on the stockings for a more of a personal touch.  I loved how they turned out  and you can see how cute they are hanging by our Christmas Tree!

Now that sewing had become easier for me and a habit I already have more sewing projects lined up for the upcoming year so stay tuned and I will keep ya all posted.

Christmas Utah

For the last 3 years we have taken our kids for one FHE to go see the Christmas Utah light display, which is really just one man who has thousands and thousands of lights synced up to a music from his own short wave radio station you can tune on to in your car.  It lasts about 15-20 minutes and the kids all just love watching it from the warmth of our car.  

This was the first time the twins got to see the show and once we got a better parking spot they really enjoyed watching all the blinking lights.

 

I recommend stopping in to see this show next year if you live around the Salt Lake area, it really is entertaining to watch for kids and adults of all ages. 

TVs: Here today, Gone tomorrow

This year for Cory's Christmas bonus we decided to really splurge and replace our TV.  Our beloved TV is a Potts family heirloom; when I was 12 I  went with my dad and picked it out it was our "big screen" TV and after 18 years of perfect working condition, we decided to upgrade.  After a heartfelt hug goodbye we unplugged it and took it to our local DI (Utah's version of Goodwill).  

With this TV gone it was time to go shopping for a new one, which was so exciting wore poor Josh right out. While hooking up our new TV it quickly became apparent that we also had archaic TV cords so we had to make another trip out to the store for cables and we even splurged again and bought a cheap antenna so we could watch TV once and a while.  Note the level of excitement Cami had for the first shopping trip vs the second.

Here is our new TV all hooked up and you may even note we also bought a Xbox & Kinect bundle to enjoy & get in shape with, which Cory has had many hours enjoying already.

Rockin' around the Church House

One of our favorite activities every year is our church's ward Christmas party. This year didn't disappoint.  The food was exceptionally excellent this year!  The program was short and funny, here is a picture of 4 of the bishopric members, if you are confused....the arms pictured do not belong to the heads of Buddy and Peppermint Patrick in the pictures.  

Even though the food was great and the program was hilarious the true highlight was getting to see Santa. Phoebe was really excited for Santa this year we have been asking her what she wanted from Santa this year and every time she has answered "A Present" if you try naming some kinds of presents she gets upset and yells, "No, a present!"  So Santa gets to picks what kind of present I guess, she just wants to be surprised.  When Phoebe finally did sit on Santa's lap, however, she instead of asking for a present, asked Santa for a treat.  Being the magical person Santa is he did not disappoint, he gave Phoebe a candy cane right then; so as far as Phoebe is concerned, Santa is magical and she got what she asked for.

The twins are very much like Phoebe and have no qualms about sitting on strangers laps so when they sat on Santa's Cami was more interested in his long beard than the fact that he was a funny dressed stranger.