Christmas at the Cabin!

CHRISTMAS EVE WITH THE CHECKETTS

This was the first year since 2000 that all of the checketts were together!  It was such a great dinner to have everyone there and sharing fun stories about the year and about their childhood.

Here is the GORGEOUS christmas tree up here at the cabin!  It brings such a great mood up here.

Here nate and I are in our christmas PJ's that we get every christmas eve.  We are holding up the christmas PJ's that they bought for baby gabe when he comes.  HOW CUTE!

It is a tradition with Nate's family that we all get assigned our parts in the nativity scene and we take a couple of minutes to go and get our "costumes" with whatever we can find up here at the cabin. Then we come out to the barn singing "oh little town of bethlehem".  It is so much fun to see the costumes and also to say the script and sing some christmas songs.  It is a great christmas eve tradition!  (try to guess by their costumes who played what part.....animals are included in the script!)

After the nativity scene we really liven it up and push the ping pong tables aside and dance to some fun christmas music!  They got in this kick where they all tried to do an "eagle" and to see who does it the best.....I am going to be a little biased and say that the next picture is the best!

Here is nate!  I never even knew he had it in him!  AMAZING!

Here is abby tackling connor during the dancing!

Even though I was sitting on the sidelines trying to avoid having a christmas baby, he was still joining in the fun dancing inside my belly.

Here are the boys in their christmas PJ's.  This year they had a theme so they picked out their favorite soccer "kit" or jersey and some matching pants.  Look at their GQ!

Here are the girls lookin' all stylish.

my last posting of my belly!

My last belly shot that I am posting.....

Here I am at 36 1/2 weeks...ok the belly is HUGE, also our room isn't finished being decorated so it looks a little "lopsided" if you know what I mean...But there you go, hopefully the next posting I make will be of baby!

caramel chocolate apples

CHRISTMAS TIME!!!!

Every year since I have been married I have made caramel chocolate apples for either halloween or christmas...so we kept the tradition alive and we made 30 of them for my mom's neighbor gifts!  

We just finished the caramelizing part and now we are moving onto the chocolate dipping!

Here is the first layer with the white chocolate....I have to admit we had a little problem with the "red" food coloring so they didn't turn out as well as past years.....oh well, sorry mom's neighbor's!

Here is the final stage!  We wrap them up and hand them out!  YUMMY!

I had to put this one in.....this is Nate's masterpiece!  My mom was having a hard time putting the chocolate on the top in a decorative fashion and so nate wanted to see if he could do it.......what do you think?  Cute?  I mean, come on, its the inside that counts right!  I STILL LOVE YOU NATE!

Meet Adee!

Here is adee, or adelaide.  She is an Austrailian/German Shephard and she is adorable!  We chose the name because is it Germanic and also there is a city in Australia called Adelaide so it touched both places she is from!

We were in park city for black friday trying to get some good baby deals and we walked into this adoption pet agency up there "just for fun" and my parents decided they wanted a dog!  (yes, I am sure when you first saw this you thought Nate and I bought it....well, we can say we are partial owners of her because we are currently living with my parents, but alas, she is not ours!)

She is only 10 weeks old and such a people dog!  She follows us wherever we go, but she knows when it is night time and she needs to sleep!  I love this shot of her because it shows how inquisitive she is.

This shot shows off her adorable paws!  She is such a fluffy cute dog!

This one is my favorite.  It shows her little white "cross" on her chest and then how cute she is!  You all have to come over and see her, she is so much fun!  (and she is helping me get ready for baby!)

PREGO PICTURES

I feel a little funny posting these pictures, but here they are anyway!  I am 32 weeks or 8 months in this picture.  Only a little ways to go!

I wanted to take some pictures of nate and I with the belly before I got HUGE (I am already heading that direction).  So after my baby shower my mom, nate and I went to this fun place to take pictures!

I figured that I should take belly shots with the first baby because I am going to get bigger and bigger with each additional child, so oh well right!

This is nate's favorite shot.  I felt really funny because they kept telling me to move my head, tilt my arm, and things like that.   It was fun though.

This one is my mom's favorite.  I was looking in the direction of nate, who was also taking some pictures, and my mom got this one.  Man, look at that belly!

BABY SHOWER!

My awesome friends from my ward threw me a baby shower on saturday and it was great!  My sister and sister-in-law are throwing me another baby shower in december so those of you who didn't get invited to this one (you should know who you are!) just know that I am for sure inviting you to that one!

This is me, my mom, venna, and baby evan.  Venna was one of the girls who helped throw the shower for me!  SO NICE!

Here is the group of girls who were still there at the end of the shower.  A few people had to leave near the end but I am so grateful for those who were able to make it at all!  (and for those of you who came who are reading this, thank you!)  The people here are:  Me, Amber Barfield, Amy Rogers (and baby Kaylee), Mary Martha Checketts, Maren Tuker (and baby Evan), Then down below me is Allisan Looman, Janel Francis (who helped throw the shower as well!), Maria Creek (who also helped throw the shower), and Venna Ferguson (who as I said before, helped as well).

Here we are just chilling and talking.

Here Amber, Mary, and Venna are trying to cut a piece of yarn off to guess how big my belly was....Karen Harris and Venna Ferguson were the closest!

The girls also did this really fun thing where they filmed Nate answering these questions, but before they showed the video, they asked us all the same questions and we were to see who got it right.  Mary Martha won!  (she even beat me!  How horrible is that!)

CHRISTMAS PROJECT

My family always does a Dickens christmas village at our house, but this year my mom and I decided to make mountains for it and put it on a platform....so we did!

This is my mom cutting out the "rolling hills" part of the mountains

We put it in the front room, so we have to take out all of the furniture that was in that room and then build this platform to put the houses on!  It kind of looks like a giant stocking.

Here is where I become the assistant and let my mom take over!  She is so good at placing things where they need to go, so I just hand her the pieces....but look at our fun mountains in the back

This isn't the best shot of it, but it gives you an idea of what it looks like......Oh, and the random little tree on a stand will be replaced by the real christmas tree once we go and cut it down  :)

Just picture this with all of the lights off and there is a revolving santa in the back that you can't see.....it is amazing!

HALLOWEEN!

Halloween!  Nate and I were trying to utilize my belly this year in a fun costume and we thought of this!

Nate was Peter Vankman from the Ghostbusters and I was the Stay Puft Marshmallow man! :)

We threw the costumes together last minute and Nate's was a little snug! :)

I was trying to "get" nate and he was using his special pack to kill me!

Dinner in a pumpkin!  It is a family tradition to cook a meal in a pumpkin and it tastes SO GOOD!

Here is our not so halloweenish table for our dinner in a pumpkin....but it was good and fun!

OUR TRIP TO BOSTON AND THE DIABETES CLINIC

A few months ago we found out Nate had type 1 diabetes....yuck.  But fortunately we were accepted to the Joslin Clinic in boston and we were able to help him get a handle on his diabetes!  It was such a great experience to be out there learning all that we could about how we can help him and his diaetes.  

While we were there we had the opportunity to go out for a couple hours at night to see some of the sights!  Here I am at quincy market showing all of the restaurants inside!  YUMMY!

Here is an outside shot so you know where I am!  I LOVE BOSTON! (but not ANY of their sports teams....sorry patience and chris!)

Here nate is in front of the plaque that says we are at Faneuil Hall....since we didn't get out until after 7:00 it was too dark to take any good shots of the buildings, so this will have to do!

If any of you haven't seen Waking Ned Divine you have to go and rent it!  Nate and I LOVE that movie and so when we saw this bar we had to take a picture of it!  Go out and rent it!  Its an irish movie and we LOVE it!  :)

Here we are in Harvard Yard!  Again since it was dark the only way we could prove that we were there is grab some clothing that said harvard on it and take a picture!  But the campus was gorgeous!

Here we are at our favorite restaurant that we found when we lived in London.....WAGAMAMA'S!  It is so good!  If you have one close by....try it!  We love it!  Especially the dish that nate is eating which is the yaki soba!  YUMMY!

Then last but not least, here is a picture of us and the other participants in the clinic.  Some of them are nurses and doctors, but the rest were there learning right beside us!  It was such a great time and we made some good friends out there!

WE MOVED!!!!

After thinking long and hard nate and I decided it was best for us to pack up our things and move!  We actually are in my parents house right now until we figure out if we are going to be moving out east or staying in utah, but this way I didn't have to find out we are moving with a brand new baby or just about ready to pop!  So this works out great for the time being!

Here is a picture of our house as everything was packed up and ready to take to our storage shed!  Goodness I never realized how much stuff we had!  

Thanks to the strong muscles of our brothers and friends we were able to move everything in our house in less than 2 hours!  Way to go!

Here I am wrapping up our couch...I didn't want anything happening to that!  I love that couch!

As the men were heavy lifting, we were so lucky to have some of our good friends come and help us clean!  THANK YOU! THANK YOU!  THANK YOU!  This is venna cleaning our bathroom.....sorry venna!

Here my mom is helping venna clean the bathroom, what a trooper everyone was! 

Also, for those of you who are in our ward reading this, don't you fret, we are still able to come to the ward until the end of the year so yea!  I still get to see all of you!  :)