Merry Christmas 2016

Merry Christmas to all!

Ward Party

At trunk or treat, Dave Hill pulled me aside and asked Garry and I to be on the committee for the ward Christmas Party coming up in December. We said yes and a few weeks into November, we had a meeting.  Jodi Thomson was in charge.  She had a vision.  She put Garry and I over decorations, Vans and Valles over food, Barlows and Bakers over the program.  We decided on the theme Light of the World and blue (dark and light) and silver as the color theme.   I immediately had ideas and started to work on it.  I wanted snowflakes and lanterns.  Cynjyn taught me how to fold and away we went.

I originally wanted to do 50 blue and 50 white.  But I ended up settling on 40 blue and 4 white. 

I begged borrowed and stole for lanterns and got to work making them up.  I only ended up having to buy 6 of my own.  I was decorating 25 tables. 

We got the snowflakes done and boxed up the night before we were decorating. 

We set up on a Thursday night.  I had a Stake Primary meeting that I had to speak at 6:30-7:30, but we started setting up at 5 and so I was in and out that night.  We got done around 10. 

I bought these two stars from IKEA and Stephanie Baker had the material that she let us borrow. 

I set these up on either side of the stage and put two of my nativities on them surrounded by lit candles. 

This nativity was in the entryway as the guests walked in.

The lanterns looked beautiful on the tables with the battery operated twinkle lights in them.  I had light blue and silver sparkly, glittery tulle underneath them and sprinkled dove and Hershey candy around them. 

I had bought brown package wrapping paper and had the Valles put this stable up while I was at my meeting.  We used our star.

I couldn't help taking photos of those lanterns, they were so beautiful.  We had our 4 halogen lamps in each corner of the room and that and the lanterns were the only lights beside the spotlight we had on Jesus and the stable on the stage.

We had the primary children color white lunch sacks and put a battery tea light in them and lit the path into the church. 

It turned out just like I planned and it was beautiful. 

We had Diana's homemade Italian food:  Chicken Marscapone and baked ziti and garlic cheese bread and Cesar salad.  We had everyone bring a dessert to share.  We also had a kid table of chicken nuggets, tator tots, goldfish and grapes and apple slices.  After dinner, we watched a video from mormon.org and sang a few songs and it was over.  Another ward was having their party the next night and wanted our tables, chairs, stable and snowflakes, so clean up was super easy and we were cleaned up and home by 9:00pm!!  What a whirlwind few days it was, but I survived (had a bad back through the whole thing, wearing a brace and having it kill me by the end of each night!.)but it was worth it!

Sweet 16

 This was the invite to her party. It was printed back to back and she handed them out before Thanksgiving.

 Cynjyn really wanted a masquerade ball for her birthday. We were planning a big sweet 16, so we said, let's do it. We decided on peacock color theme and went with it.  I started early ordering stuff on Amazon because sometimes it takes up to 4 weeks for some things to ship.  Everything got here in plenty of time and I was able to play around with centerpieces in plenty of time.

I made a banner of her birth -15 and we hung that. 

 I reused the wooden frames from Talon and Mikel's wedding and put some scrapbook pages of her up. 

I decided to do some balloon bouquets.  Tanner and Garry were a huge help.  I had reserved the Maryland/Serene church and we started setting up around 3:00 with the party going from 7-11 pm. 

Tanner was  huge help putting the photo booth together. 

I love how it turned out.

This is how the centerpieces ended up looking.

We set up 5 tables.  She had invited just about 45 kids.

We had a food table and a dessert table and a drink table and a cake table. 

I had bought a 2 layer cake at our scout fundraiser auction from Jen Hill and she did not disappoint  I had sent her pictures of things I liked on certain cakes and she went to town.  I thought the cake was absolutely gorgeous.  It was extra special because she was super busy and not feeling well and still took the time to make the cake for us.  She is such a good friend!

I  bought a chocolate fountain and we tried it out for the first time there.  It wasn't working too well.  The chocolate wouldn't flow.  One of us kept standing there stirring the top and that kept it going, but you could still dunk the stuff in it.  Plus it's not the best time of year to do on because strawberries are like $5.00/pound and you have to have them with it.  I also did marshmallows, pretzels, pineapple, bananas and angel food cake.

Mikel got the party started by leading the kids in a couple of line dances.  We then did a couple of quizzes.  They worked on them as tables.  The first one was a year 2000 quiz:

1.        The Year 2000 was kicked off with huge anticipation about Y2K, which was:

           a.The Mayan calendar concluding

           b. The fear computers would not shift from 1999-2000

           c. The return of Jesus Christ

2.       Who was elected President of Russia in March 2000?

a.       Dmitry Medvedev

b.      Vladimir Putin

c.       Boris Yeltsin

3.      This “boy band” had the #1 selling album of the Billboard Year, who was it?

a.        N’Sync

b.      Backstreet Boys

c.       98 Degrees

4.      The then-largest corporate merger in history happened on January 10th, 2000 between what 2 companies?

a.        Disney and Pixar

b.      Sirius and XM radio

c.       America Online and Time Warner

5.      This famous Nickelodeon kids educational cartoon show debuted in August 2000, eventually becoming the Nick Jr. series with the most episodes:

a.        Dora the Explorer

b.      Blue’s Clues

c.       Rugrats

6.      Where were the Summer Olympics held in 2000?

a.        Athens Greece

b.      Atlanta Georgia

c.       Sydney Austrailia

7.      This Santana song, feat. Rob Thomas, was one of the hottest songs of the year 2000:

a.        Breathe

b.      Smooth

c.       Higher

8.      Which film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in the Year 2000?

a.        Gladiator

b.      Erin Brockovich

c.       Traffic

9.      Who was this famous movie character from the Year 2000?

                                          

a.        Spalding

b.        Wilson

c.        Russell

10.  What extremely popular reality show, which maroons a group of strangers (as one or more tribes) in an isolated location with the goal of competing to earn a $1 million dollar prize, debuted on May 31, 2000?

a.        Lost

b.      Survivor

c.       Big Brother

11.  Who was the President of the United States in the year 2000?

a.        George W Bush

b.      Bill Clinton

c.       George H W Bush

12.  This golfer was the PGA Tour Player of the Year, having become only the fifth golfer in history to achieve a “career grand slam”, who was it?

a.        Tiger Woods

b.      Phil Mickelson

c.       Vijay Singh

13.  Bush v. Gore, on December 12th, 2000, was the United States Supreme Court decision that resolved what dispute?

a.        The accuracy of An Inconvenient Truth

b.      Campaign finance laws

c.       Recount of the Florida votes

14.  Comic-based superhero movies are a staple of cinema today, but it was this film that was launched in 2000 that many critics say kicked off the latest resurgence in the popularity of superhero flicks:

a.        Spiderman

b.      X-Men

c.       Hulk

 The second one was a how well do you know Cynjyn quiz:

How well do you know Cynjyn?

Fill in the blank: 

1.        Favorite Color__________________________________

2.       Favorite food___________________________________

3.       Number of siblings_______________________________

4.       Favorite animal__________________________________

5.       What she wants to do career wise____________________________________________

6.       How many pets has she had growing up________________________________________

7.       What was her first broken bone_______________________________________________

8.       Favorite movie_____________________________________________________________

9.       Favorite season_____________________________________________________________

10.   Favorite Holiday____________________________________________________________

11.   Fear of ___________________________________________________________________

12.   Favorite candy_____________________________________________________________

13.   How old was she when she started dance lessons__________________________________

14.   How many sports has she done (name them)_________________________________________________________________________

15.   How old was she when she got her ears pierced_____________________________________

16.   How many instruments can she play (bonus if you can name them_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Multiple choice:

1.        What happened to her while visiting Disneyland when she was 3?

a.       She met her favorite Disney Princess Mulan

b.      She got a bead stuck up her nose

c.       She pouted the whole time because she wasn’t tall enough to ride Indiana Jones

2.        What happened to her in Oregon while visiting her grandparents when she was 4?

a.       She jumped over a rattlesnake

b.      She got bit by a horse

c.       She fell out of the back of her Grandpa’s truck while going over the creek

3.        What happened when she lost her first tooth?

a.        She swallowed it

b.      Her dad pulled it out with fishing line

c.       She got $5.00 from the tooth fairy

 Ryan brought Gus, and so he was participating in the quizzes to see how much he knew.

 We took a group picture with and without the masks.  We then showed a slide show of Cynjyn.  I had so much fun putting it together, but it ended up being like 12 min. long. We played the stick game and that got everyone loosened up so they were ready to dance. 

Here is my sassy sweet sixteen year old. (Actually, she's not quite 16, we had it the day before her birthday!)  We also got her dress on Amazon.  It was beautiful and fit her perfectly except it was a little long. 

We played musical chairs with the guys doing one and the girls.  When we got to the top six in each, we has them pair off as they were eliminated and they had to dance the next dance together.  They ended up dancing all together after a few minuets.

 But Cynjyn and Jacob finished 2nd and they danced together.  Danielle and Daniel (peach and blue shirt) were the first place finishers. 

After some more dancing we played couch of power with three teams.  It took 45 min, but the kids loved it.  They left at 11:00pm and we were cleaned up and on our way home about 12:15.  We got the Suburban loaded and the battery was dead, it couldn't even be jumped.  So me, Cynjyn, Becca, Garry and Tanner went home and unloaded the Matrix and the Honda and then Garry and Tanner went back to WM and bought a battery and got the Suburban started and got it home and unloaded.  They got into bed about 2:30am!  
Here are some random pictures from Cynjyn and her friends cameras:

I'm so grateful for this little spitfire of a daughter of mine!  Here are 16 reason's why I love her:
16.  She's beautiful
15. She's kind
14. She always has a positive attitude
13. She lights up any room she's in
12. She is a wonderful dancer
11. She is a wonderful actress
10. She is a good friend to her friends
9.  She gives the best advice
8.  She is compassionate
7.  She is competitive
6.  She sets goals and achieves them
5.  She loves her family
4.  She loves the Lord
3.  She gives great compliments
2.  She is very knowledgeable
1.  She is wickedly funny and fun to be around

I just love her so much!