Dick family

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Mom to the Rescue and Ryan's Birthday!!

Just like last year, Ryan was out of town for his birthday. This year he was gone to DC as part of an administration rotation during his residency!! He was gone for two weeks this time rather than two months- thank heavens!! However I still found myself getting lonely and worn out. Luckily, my sweet mama had planned a trip to visit us during the last few days of his absence. Her presence was a much needed break for me.

We were all SUPER excited to see her!! Very first, we all wanted to watch her open her very late Christmas presents

She seemed to like her bracelet!! And she was very excited about the traditional calendar we made her:)

The kids did not leave my mom alone for a second the entire time she was here!! They had so much fun with her!

My mom planned to go to each of the kids' classrooms to read some fun stories with puppets!! I wasn't able to go watch, but from what I hear, it was quite a cute little production she puts on!! All the kids LOVED it!! My mom was extra sweet and ate lunch with Jane, spent the entire recess time with her (where she unfortunately got bombarded by all the kids in Jane's class and she had to entertain them all!!) and then read to her class for a good long time!! Jane was in HEAVEN. Also, she spent the entire 3 and 1/2 hours with Beckham at his class and read to them as well!! He felt pretty special!! I am totally stealing this tradition when I have grandkids!!

Here they all are creating the monster puppet for one of the stories :)

Here is everyone sitting down to a nice dinner of homemade gnocchi minestroni soup while the sun was setting behind us :) Lovely!!

One night we went out to eat at Fentons- the kids favorite restaurant her. Aaaaaand we got their monthly epic ice cream sundae!!

There is a Jelly Bean store right next door which we stopped in. I was sure to buy a game of bean boozled that we could play for a little evening fun- hehe!! This game is a box of assorted jelly bellies. There were many sets of matches in the box which look exactly the same except one is delicious and the other is a nasty flavor. To play you each grab one of the same Jelly Bellies and eat and you either get the delicious one or the yucky one!! It was disgusting but super duper funny!!

Here are some funny pics of people reacting to the disgusting ones- haha!!

bwahaha!!

hehee!!

giggle giggle!!

hahaha!!

I had way too much fun with this gross game!! Glad no one was taking my picture :)

Some of the flavor matches were:
peach vs vomit
tutti fruity vs stinky socks (my personal least favorite-yuck!!)
coconut vs baby wipes
juicy pear vs booger
chocolate pudding vs canned dog food
etc.

snicker snicker!!

Yes...we had a spit out bowl...

Here is the gang watching Night at the Museum 2 before bed :) Mom stayed awake for maybe 1/3 of the movie :)

Ryan came home and was able to spend one day with my mom before she had to leave. Since we had missed his birthday AGAIN, we had a small celebration for him.

The kids each filled in a fun questionnaire about daddy!

My mom gave Ryan a nice card and an assorted mix of unique sodas- one of Ryan's favorite treats:)

I got him a small momemto from several of the places the kids and I visited while he was gone so he could see that we were thinking of him. We got this shirt for him when we were at Old Navy, I got him a chocolate bar from World Market and a Happy Birthday pack of Jelly Bellies!

Then we had delicious cupcakes:)

I was so grateful to have some company for the last little while that Ryan was gone. And we just had such a blast with my mom!! LOVE THIS LADY :)

Monday, January 5, 2015

Christmas In California!

Christmas this year has been special. A wonderful thing happened several days before Christmas. All my brothers, sister, my mom, dad and I were all in Utah together for the first time in years!! The unfortunate circumstance for our reunion was the passing of my sweet Grandpa Harper. He was very old and sick and was feeling ready to reunite with the many people waiting for him on the other side. So though it is never easy to have a loved one pass, it is nice to think of him happy and healthy again. I thought it was sweet when my dad said that this was my grandpa's Christmas gift to us all- his passing was the reason for our monumental reunion. And boy did we have a blast :) We went out to eat all together just like the old days! We had a game night where we all talked about the crazy, funny times we've had together! Christina and I got to sing together again. My grandpa requested that we sing at his funeral and it was such an honor to do it. The icing on the cake was that Ryan's parents and sister got to spend some quality time with Elsie since they were so sweet and watched her for me while I was at the funeral. It was just such a dreamy weekend :)

After my dreamy, family weekend I got to come home to my sweet husband who took care of Jane and Beckham while I was gone. It was so nice to be with my little family again. We had some fun at the mall during Christmas break :)

Ryan had to work on Christmas Eve, but the kids were super excited to see that our Elf Eric had left his traditional Christmas Eve gift for them...

Jane got My Little Pony jammies and Beckham got The Lego Movie jammies!! They loved them and wanted to wear them all day :)

Of course, we had to decorate Christmas cookies for Santa.

They turned out pretty good!! Santa really did enjoy them :)

Elsie likes her beauty sleep and goes to bed early. So we said night night to our sweet babe...

And read our two favorite Christmas Eve books, The Nativity and Twas the Night Before Christmas, before it was off to bed :) We had to skip our traditional shepherd's dinner this year...it pained me to do it...but we got invited to a friends house for Christmas Eve for a party. Jane was Mary and Beckham was the star in a Nativity reenactment that they did there. It ended up being a lot of fun...but nothing is better than just spending Christmas Eve with my little family having shepherd's dinner.