New Year's Eve!

This year we went to Alli's for our New Year's Eve party.  It was so fun!  We did the traditional balloon tree my mom started years ago when we were young.  It's become quite a popular idea I guess, even being featured on Our Best Bites by my sister's sister-in-law.

The idea of ringing in the new year at our own "midnight" (5:00 p.m.) is in my opinion one of the best ideas ever.  I have never enjoyed celebrating the new year so much as I did this year.  We ate yummy food, counted down to "midnight", made lots of noise, yelled HAPPY NEW YEAR, popped balloon after balloon full of prizes, set off indoor fire works, made a mess of Alli's house will silly string, and the kids still got a lovely night's sleep.  Thank you Allison and Dave for inviting us!

Although Mark and I were not planning on staying up until the real midnight, we ended up talking to Mandy and Brian until then anyway, and celebrating again with a bit of sparkling cider.  We expressed to each other our resolutions for this year hoping that by telling others we'll be more likely to accomplish them.  Mark said he is going to work out at least twice a week (which he has definitely done so far with all the basketball he's been playing.)   I wanted to get back to reading the Book of Mormon together as a family.  Since then Mark has helped so much with this by coming and reading to us while I get the kids breakfast and eat breakfast myself.  Mark hates to eat breakfast so he reads while we eat and I fulfill the kid's requests for more milk, more cereal, napkins, etc.  It has been working out very nicely for us and I hope we can keep it up.

Sweet Song

It seems that this version of Coldplay's song Paradise was made just to please me.  It includes some of my very favorite things: African flair, Swahili, Steven Sharp Nelson on the cello, and Utah's red rock landscape.  That's it, I'm getting my cello out of the closet right now!  If only I could play with those guys in that location.

Christmas Day 2011

Christmas Day was relaxing and enjoyable.  The boys woke at their usual time and it was so fun to just watch them enjoy their presents.  After sitting around in our pajamas we casually got ready for 10:00 a.m. sacrament meeting and enjoyed a nice Christmas Program at church.  Mark did a great job singing in the choir.  With our two little guys we can't both sing in the choir, so we decided Mark would go because they desperately need men.  I liked going to church on Christmas day.  It helped to keep us centered on what Christmas is all about.

My boys hit the jackpot this year.  Santa got them a train table!  They didn't even notice or have a clue that he/she got it off of ksl classifieds for a super duper good deal and that it is very used.  They love it and I love it because it entertains them both for long periods of time.  The only place it fits in our small one story living space is in Timmy's room.  Even tonight Brian was so sad when Timmy had to go to bed because he had to stop playing with the trains.  

Meg loved the rawhide bone Santa left for her.

The boys were so excited about the little things they got in their stockings and so intent on them that I didn't get any good pictures.

Following church we all took a really nice long nap.  We took such a long nap that we completely missed the 3:00 p.m. call from Mark's brother Luke from his mission in L.A.  Ooops.  We'll make sure to catch him on Mother's Day.  We did make it in time to Mark's parents house though for a delicious Christmas dinner and loads of family time together.  We even stayed overnight there to extend our time with the Hsiao family.  It was so fun and wonderful.

Christmas Eve 2011

My parents are still on their mission in San Diego (they will be home in about 11 days!), so my lovely mother was not around to throw the traditional huge, amazing, and magical Christmas Eve extravaganza at the Ranch.  My house is located right in between Melanie's and Allison's houses, and Mandy lives in our basement, so we had the Evans family (minus my parents and Emily) Christmas Eve party here at the Hsiao house.  I don't know exactly how everyone else felt about it, but I thought is was wonderful and even a bit magical even though we couldn't act out the nativity in a real barn.

While my sisters and I finished getting the dinner set out, Mark and the other men helped the kids make marshmallow snowmen.  Mark may not be happy with me telling everyone this, but it was all his idea.  He even drilled holes in pieces of wood to put the snowmen in to create center pieces for the tables. 

All my sisters are really good cooks and with them sharing their delicious talents, we had an outstanding meal.  It included ham loaf, amazing salad, vegetable and chip dips, cheesy potatoes, rolls, real Mexican tacos, eggnog, cheesecake bites, and yummy sugar cookies.

After dinner we listened to Vivien and Clara sing some great Christmas songs including Grandma Joyce's own Have An Old Fashioned Christmas This Year.  After that it was time for my all time favorite Christmas tradition, dressing up and re-enacting the nativity scene while reading the story from the scriptures and singing the appropriate Christmas songs.

This year the oldest of the grandchildren, Evan, designed and brought all of the costumes.  It was definitely the highlight of the night to see what he came up with.

Timmy was the littlest shepherd.  He was so happy to be a part of the program that he didn't even mind wearing his head dress for the entire thing.

The three wise men's outfits were the most creative of them all.  Brian, Jordan, and Matthew were the three wise men and I could not keep a straight face while watching them.

The program went so smoothly mostly due to the written program Emily sent me.  She has the whole story from the scriptures all typed out with the songs interspersed.  THANK YOU EMILY!  We missed you so much and appreciate you sharing your talents with us too even though you weren't here with us.

Mark and Timmy were the shepherds, Clara and Caitie were the beautiful angels, Evan was Joseph, Vivien was Mary, the three younger boys were the three wise men, and Big Brian was King Herod.  Everyone played their part well and sang beautifully.  I know that this part of the night solidified the story of Christ's birth into Brian's mind and it was fun as well.  I hope to always keep this story the center of my Christmas celebrations.


Later we had some fun with a pinata just to keep some of that Mexican flare my Mom brought into the Christmas Eve party after their mission to Mexico.  Brian was so excited to have a pinata.

My Grandma Joyce's big plans for Christmas were for Christmas morning with other family, so we were so fortunate to have her come to the party as well.  I'm grateful Mel was able to pick her up and we could have her company.  We all LOVE Grandma Joycie.

We wrapped up the night with a bell choir and the song Away In A Manger.  Thanks Alli for bringing the bells and the song.  I loved it!

The night ended early enough to get the kids a bath, calm them down, and get them in bed at a decent hour. No one even got overtired or too cranky.  Thank you everyone who came and helped and had fun with us.

Reflections on the Blog

I'd thought I'd add a few things to Mark's previous post about deleting all my blog pictures.  He was helping me switch over to to a gmail account so I can start syncing everything together between my computer and tablet.  He was in the process of changing my Google account over and somehow he deleted my Google account.  My entire Blog disappeared.  One of the saddest moments of 2011 was when I realized my Blog was gone.  I burst into uncontrollable tears and the last four years of our lives flashed before me.

For about 20 years of my life I tried to keep a journal unsuccessfully until I started the blog when we had Brian.  Finally I was at least recording some things for my children to read.  I haven't kept a baby book for the kids, but I did write about both boys on the Blog.  I know it is not much in terms of a journal, but it was all I had for the last almost four years.  I have probably almost all of the pictures backed up in other places, but I had not backed up any of the words.  All my thoughts, details about holidays, simple things we did, details about the boys growing up...ALL LOST.  I was devastated.  Luckily Mark had the wherewithal to contact Google right away and they were able to restore all of the posts without the pictures.  I am very sad that four years of posts with words plus pictures are gone, but I am so so so relieved that I at least have those words I wrote, and the pictures, even though they are not put together.  At least I have them.

On that night when my Blog was gone from me for what I thought was forever, I realized how important it really is to me.  I don't care if anyone else sees or reads what I write.  I care for me and for my family.  It is my record and my journal.  I love that I can record things in pictures and in writing so easily and quickly.  I love that I can look back at certain times in my children's lives at the click of a button.

Mark has put a few pictures back on.  The post about The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year has pictures, but if you scroll beyond that you'll find black squares where all my pictures used to be.  Every time I have looked at my blog for the last few weeks I have gotten very very sad about it.  Mark feels horrible, so I have tried not to act too devastated.  After a few weeks I finally feel alright to move forward with it all.  I don't know if I'll ever get the time to go back and add all the pictures back into four years of posts, but I'm ready to continue posting our lives at this time and to BACK EVERYTHING UP as I go.  I even want to treat this Blog as more of a journal.  I might write more of my thoughts and people may not want to read it all, but now I see what is really important to me.  It is important for me to get the information there.  It is important for me to just have the record.  I don't want to worry about clever writing, cute awesome posts that people love to read, or even having correct grammer.  I just want to record those Hsiao house happenings because they are not being recorded anywhere else.