Family Talent Show and Maximum Bonding

 Someone (not me) had the idea to have a family talent show.  My big brother and his son Alex played a really cool duet on the piano.

I of course fretted for days and at the last minute had us do a quick version of "When Santa Comes to Mexico"  which is one of my favorite silly Christmas songs.  It was cute because we pointed to Tayevion as being "Pablo" (you know, the reindeer that helps Santa out in Mexico).  Jonas had to work that night so he wasn't there.

Here's my other brother with is family singing a cute song, I can't remember the name though.

Even little Jasmine did a song on the piano.  It was sooo cute!  Since she has never taken lessons, she just played a little tune she came up with. It was like 3 keys played over and over from one end of the piano to the other.  She was so concentrated too.  The rest of us were listening to her, but trying not to laugh because Taye was dancing in front of the piano.  It was so funny.

Here's Sidney and Kailee, they did a song.  My other niece Carina also played but I didn't get a good picture.

Then we forced, literally forced, my parents to come up and share a story from their childhood.  I don't know why they were so reluctant, well mostly my dad was.  In the end, he shared a story about the first Christmas present he received.  He was 12 when he got it!  He told us about how special he felt.  It was like a little matchbox car, I think a jeep.  It was cool for the kids to put all that they have into perspective.  I wish we could have recorded the stories that they shared, especially because I am trying to remember what my mom told us and I can't!  Good thing I have this blog, or I would forget my own family history!

Okay, after my mom and dad were done, it was my turn to take the lead.  I had asked for some time to do a "mystery bonding activity".  Ever since I missed the opportunity to do this at our last family reunion three years ago, I have wanted to do this the next time we were all together.  I was kind of embarrassed but I got up the nerve to initiate it anyway.  I don't know why but I started crying even as I was explaining it to them.  It's an activity that I did in my first year of college with my FHE group.  And it made a profound impression on me, all these years.  It's easy, all you do it sit in a circle with one person taking turns sitting in the middle and everyone in the circle tells that person one thing they love about them.  Or a memory with them, or anything nice about them.  I knew that some people would not be too excited about doing this, that it might sound boring but I felt really strongly that it would be a good experience.

Boy was I surprised by some of the reactions as we got going.  Especially the kids.  I thought for sure some of the kids would be giving generic answers just to pass on to the next person.  But no, they really thought about what they wanted to say and several of them cried every time thinking about that person!  It is really an amazing thing, when you are looking at that person that you love and thinking of all of the things that you love about them, the spirit was sooo incredibly strong that night!  And pretty much everyone was crying.  It was so great to hear kids say to parents and vice-versa, things that they might not ordinarily say.

It was such a bonding experience.  The only problem was that it took a REALLY long time.  There are like 24 of us!  In fact, we only got through half of the circle.  But that is okay because somehow I think that the people who got to have a turn were the ones that really needed to hear what was said about them.  And it is an experience for the person sharing as well as the person hearing anyway.  I felt bad because we were supposed to go to temple square that night and we didn't get to because this took so long, but I was still so glad we did it.  Several people expressed to me how glad they were that we got to do this, so that made me happy.

Christmas Eve Part Two

At the end of the trip (well it felt like I was on vacation too), we all put our pictures from the entire holiday and put them on one computer so we could share them.  This was so nice, so that if we didn't have our camera for a certain occasion, we could still have those pictures.  Anyway...I was browsing those pictures and found these other ones from Christmas Eve and couldn't resist posting them.  I was still using my old camara at this time because I got a new one on Christmas Day (yay!!) and these are all much better quality pictures.

I love Taye peeking out from behind on this one below.

My niece Kailee made these matching flower clips for all of the girls to wear on Christmas Eve!  It was such a nice gesture, and we all got to match.  This is my sister in law Cat and my two cute nieces.

And the kids also did this fun dance as part of the program.  It was awesome because ALL of the cousins participated, and this is where everyone first got a glimpse of Tayevion's dance moves. 

He loved the attention!

It was so fun to see my 18 year old nephew Alex participating in the dancing.  He is was not too cool to join in.  Love that!

And here's a couple of overhead views of the crazy opening of presents!

How can I express how wonderful it was to have everyone together? I can't, it was just beyond happiness.

Here's Jonas, up to his sillyness as usual--he reminds me of my dad how he lets us take pictures of him posing in funny ways.  I think he is doing the "wrapping paper recycle" dance here.



Sibling Bonding and other Christmas Eve Events

All of my siblings were here for Christmas!!!  And the siblings in laws and the cousins all together for the Holidays for the first time in a LONG time.  The only person who was missing was one sister in law due to divorce, and that was very sad.  We missed you R! 

Well, of course I was pretty proud of myself for initiating some sibling bonding.   So on Christmas Eve my sister and two brothers and I went out to have a bite and bond.  It was funny because in the middle of eating I announced "okay so the reason I called this meeting...".  Everyone looked up at me like "I knew it!" but then I said "just kidding!".  So we talked.  And we laughed.  And we got closer.  And we realized that we couldn't even remember the last time the four of us were out together.  So nice.  And I can't believe that in all of the days that we were together, we never once took a picture of only the four of us together.  Unless someone else got one but we all shared pictures so I don't think so.

Okay wait here is one picture that we took while we were out.  It's of my brother Derick since we sat next to each other.  The enders, because he's the oldest and I'm the youngest. (we even have a dance)

Every year the kids do a nativity.  It was especially fantastic this year because all the cousins were together.

Next came eating Guatemalan Paches but somehow I don't have any pictures of that either.  That's another big tradition of ours.  Then we got started with the madness, er--I mean opening presents.

This year Shayden made "God's Eye's" for each of the cousins.  He learned how to make them in Spanish class.  And Jasmine made picture frames, but they are not pictured.

Every year we celebrate Christmas Eve at my sisters home and then we go home late at night to wait for Santa.  But this year was different.  This year every single other cousin was going to be waking up together on Christmas morning.  So how could we deny our kids that super important pleasure?  So we decided to spend the night and wake up there on Christmas morning!  Jasmine wanted Jonas to go on the roof and leave a note for Santa that said "Closed.  Please go to cousins."  Haha!   Stay tuned for Christmas Day.

Visit with Santa

I was sooo sad that this year we were not able to go see Santa in NYC.  It is the first time in my 5 years of working at Jetblue that we haven't been able to go.  But this year the only opening that our photographer had for family portraits fell on the week that we would have gone.  We tried to go the next weekend but by then the flights were too full.  Anyway...these are the only pictures I have of the kids visiting with Santa, and it happened while Jonas' mom was in town.

My Only Childhood Dress

This is the only dress that I have from when I was a little girl.  I was so excited when Jasmine could fit into it!  She wore it proudly many times, but now it is too small.  So she is going to get to keep it for when she has a daughter that can wear it.

Back To School Time Capsules '10 and Carina's Birthday

Carina's sweet 16! ~ Wow this is a big deal!

Every year we make Back to School Time Capsules.  It is so fun for the kids to go back and read their answers from the previous year and write down what they are anticipating for the coming year.  We usually do it on the Sunday before school starts, which always seems to land on Carina's birthday celebration. It's fun to have cousin traditions!

Cousin Shirts 2010

I love having the cousins make shirts that are all matching and taking pictures! I just think they look so cute and even though most of us live far apart, they can remember each other each time they wear their shirts! We did this at our big family reunion a few years ago, and I decided to use some of my festival money to buy the stuff at the last minute and have them make some. It would have been a lot cheaper had I had a bit of for thought, but it was totally worth it! I had to leave early and did not get to see them all pose together, so I stole these pictures from my sister's blog. Don't they look awesome?

I did get to take some pictures of them making the shirts though. We did like a paint spray to get a fake tye dye look. It was so much fun!

I will post some pictures of my kids' shirts closer up in other posts.

Easter 2010

In our family we celebrate Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday as two different holidays-kind of.

Basically on Saturday we do all of the worldly fun stuff, and on Sunday we do all of the great spiritual stuff.

Before Easter we went to an Easter Egg Dive for the first time. I had been wanting to go to one of these and Jasmine had a great time. Shayden didn't make it in time, but he still got to swim.

We also went with some friends to another Ginormous egg hunt at This is the Place Monument. Not going to do that again! The kids were lucky enough to get one or two eggs, there were so many people.

On Easter Saturday we went to an egg hunt at these gardens in Salt Lake. The kids had a fun time and got a lot of candy. The funny thing is that they were making everyone wait in this line to get their faces painted in order to hunt. To which my kids were like "lame" because, well, the magic gets lost a bit when your face is painted 3 times per week. :)

Then come to find out they were using this crappy craft paint on kids' faces. Parents Beware!

In the end the let everyone choose, and the kids had fun. Taye was sleeping in the car so Jonas stayed with him.

Then on Saturday night we always make "Resurrection Cookies" and leave them in the oven until morning. I love this tradition, especially as the kids are growing up and remembering more, and participating more too. This is Sunday morning:

On Easter we always have dinner with cousins of course. All of the older cousins always do an Easter Egg hunt for the younger ones, with the candy that they got the day before. It is more of an "Easter Saturday" event, but I let it slide because it's just so darn sweet of them.

Even Taye got to participate with the help of cousin Kiki!

And now that this post is done, I realize that I didn't even get one picture of the kids in their Easter clothes...what did they wear again??? It's a hazard of blogging months behind.
And I am also reminded that I HATE blogger!!! How do you make long posts like this with tons of pictures without it taking an Eternity??? Not to mention that huge gap a the beginning and all of those side margins of words...yuck! I think I have some big plans for this blog coming soon, and it involves moving to Wordpress....can't wait...so stay tuned!