Little Tidbits - Part 33  

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12 02 15 - Henlie decided we all needed one of Dad's hats.
12 03 15 - Henlie now can eat real cereal, besides Chocapic (in fairness, she got over that ages before we moved from Peru). She loves Lucky Charms and calls it "Colors."
12 04 15 - Andrew got to start eating food for real. He's a huge fan, and likes to play with the spoon after :)
12 05 15 - Playing with Dad on his phone :)
12 06 15 - Henlie helping Daddy shine his shoes :)
12 06 15 - My birthday at Larry and Carrie's house :) 
12 06 15 - Andrew nomming on some play bread at Grandma's.
12 08 15 - Grandpa and Grandma Erdmann stopped by for a visit :)
12 08 15 - Andrew and Henlie helped me walk Mocha. It was a nice day, and Henlie always wants to go to the park, so we hung out for a bit while Sis played.
12 11 15 - Andrew hanging out on the giant caterpillar in Henlie's room.
12 12 15 - I told Henlie to find some clothes......this is what she found.
12 13 15 - Laundry basket baby
12 14 15 - I gave Andrew another faux-hawk :)
12 14 15 - Andrew loves Munchkin. Also, he loves to see himself in the camera or a mirror :)
And he loves to stick out his tongue :)
12 14 15 - Henlie and Daddy dancing to Pandora.
12 15 15 - 9 months old!

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Sugar Cookies  

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In my Christmas decor, I had some cookie cutters/stamps. Henlie found them and thought we should make cookies, so we did on Sunday, December 13th. Church was a 1pm, so we made them before church. We used Pillsbury dough...and I had to add SO much flour in order to actually roll it out and cut it. Also, because the stamp cutters were so shallow, they got a little overbaked, but they were still yummy. Besides, the important part was making the cookies and decorating them with Henlie, which we totally did :)

Cooling Cookies

Henlie with our frosting.

Adding sprinkles.

Fun story about the bottom middle picture and the bottom right cookie....Henlie decided to try to do the sprinkles herself. And they didn't have a shaker. And she's three.... Most of the rest of the cookies got decorated with rainbows after that.

Trying the fruits of our labors.

When we got home from church, we discovered we'd lost a plate to (most likely) the dog. Stinker. The rest we took to Grandma's house to share. They went pretty quickly after that :)
Bonus - we also had popcorn at Grandma's house :)

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Christiansen and Ward Christmas Parties  

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Saturday, December 12th, we had the Christiansen Christmas party. The tradition goes food and then presents. This year was no different :) That being the case, I'll let the pictures do the talking :)

Andrew wasn't too happy about going to Aunt Kayla.
Michelle and Braden
McKade laying behind the tree reading a book.
Great-Aunt Janelle and Andrew.

Food!
Aunt Camile and Andrew
Present time!
Henlie getting a hug from Great-Grandpa Chris.

Ryan and Andrew
Emily and Andrew
Me and Kasen

 We were able to stay through presents (the grands and great-grands got BYU shirts. Henlie liked her "present shirt." Luckily, it has Baby Cosmo on it, or we'd have to return it ;) The adults got backpacks with 72 hour kits in them.) However, we had to rush home to swap out our jello salads (lucky for us the assignments were the same!) and head to the ward Christmas party. We did pretty well with being on time :)
Henlie and Auriel

Andrew liked the spoon.

 We sat next to the Flores family to feel "at home." I still don't speak Spanish, but at least I can still pick up on some of what is being said haha. Henlie had SO much fun running around and being a crazy with her friend Auriel before we got started. We had dinner and then we had a program. Then we packed up, got our salad, which came home full with the leftovers of another person's jello too...., went home, and put the kids to bed. A very successful day thanks to happy scheduling on the party planning end. 
Primary nativity
My friend, Deanna, singing a solo.
Henlie and Mommy funny faces :)

Deanna singing
Daddy and Andrew (playing with the spoon, of course)
Walkyria holding Andrew and her daughter, Sadie

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ZooLights 2015  

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On December 11th, we met up with Jason and Camile to go to ZooLights! at Hogle Zoo. We were running behind our planned schedule, so they'd done probably at least half the zoo before we got there, but they went back through everything to hang with us. Henlie was super excited to see her best friend Charlie. She misses Charlie since they've moved to Layton.  It was cold and wet, and due to the cold, wet, dark, late nature of the outing, we didn't see many actual animals. If we did, they were sleeping haha. But we had a fun time wandering through, looking at the lights.

 Snow leopards...asleep.

 Henlie and Charlie in front of the Tiger exhibit.

 Henlie heading toward the tunnel.

 Jason with Charlie, Henlie, and Danica on the polar bear statues.

 Seahorse lights.

 Henlie checking out some lights.

 Charlie and Henlie on a rhinoceros statue. 

Adding in Camile and Danica :)

 We got back around to the front of the zoo and said goodbye to Jason and Camile. We opted to eat dinner in the Beastro. Henlie was super tired, but we had a pretty fun outing enjoyed warming up inside before heading back home.
 She was so sleepy.
Also, that orange was awful. Super hard to peel and very slippery.

Tired Henlie and Daddy at the ZooLights! sign outside the zoo. 

Family shot! (Andrew was in his stroller, hence he's not in any of our photos.)

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The big 3-0.  

Posted by Amber in ,

I'm officially old. I mean, even at 29, one can say they are in their 20s. Which is like the beginning of being an adult (read: young). But 30? Ugh. I'm like, middle-aged. (Okay, I know this is not true, but when I take a second to think about this new decade, these are the things I think.)

 Truthfully, I think this was one of the most (if not the most) low-key birthday I've had. It fell on a Saturday, which was nice because Matt was home. Matt made pancakes for breakfast. Matt and Henlie sang Happy Birthday to me. Henlie's rendition went, "Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you." Later in the day, we went grocery shopping. haha Then, I'd found a Christmas tree farm in West Mountain, so we headed out there to look at trees. We picked one, and they delivered it a few hours later. We let Henlie go play at Grandma's house. (Read: She was driving me crazy and Grandma had offered to watch her.) Matt took me to Sip-N and I tried out their hot cocoa (would purchase again...and I am a bit of a cocoa snob) and fries. Matt had a yummy tangerine smoothie and a peanut butter bar. 

 We got home as our tree was arriving, so we got that in the house, got out our brand new live tree stand we just bought at the store, and set our tree up. Turns out it has too skinny of a trunk and we needed to shim it haha. It is mostly straight now :) We hung out for a bit. Found a ladybug in the tree. Well, Munchkin found it when it was out of the tree. I checked on it on the floor and was pleased to discover it was only a ladybug. 

I spy...tree!

Ladybug

 We went back to Grandma's house to get Henlie and acquired the necessary tree shims and hung out for a bit. Henlie had dinner at Grandma's, but Matt and I hadn't had any (not that we were super hungry after our Sip-N snacks), so we stopped at Arby's for dinner. I got a Pumpkin Perfection shake. It was pretty tasty, and super thick. Came home, ate dinner, which Henlie of course had to share, and put lights on the tree. I was out-voted, so we got colored lights. They are LEDs, and they are super bright! Like, if one is pointing at you, it's blinding. At least blue and green are. I haven't noticed any issues with yellow or red. Go figure. Then we all spent the evening hanging out with our lighted tree and enjoying the discotech in our living room.
Grandma has this ornament on her tree. I asked Henlie who it was.
She responds, "That's my Daddy....when he was a baby."
hahaha

Discotech!

 So, super low-key and relatively lame birthday in terms of celebrations, but it was a pretty good day anyway. Especially the yummy snacks! I love Sip-N, and to have Sip-N and get a super sugary shake a few hours later? Unheard of! But I allowed it since it was my birthday haha.

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Mapleton Christmas Market and Salem Pond  

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I decided I wanted to start making a sort of seasonal bucket list, fun things (either recurring or one-timers) to do during each season. What better time to start than Christmastime? Carrie gave us an advent calendar a little while back, and so we finally used it this year. First on our list was the Mapleton Christmas Market. 

 The Christmas market was the first weekend in December. The 4th was also Mapleton's Christmas lighting ceremony, complete with Santa, reindeer, and food trucks. We first went through the market and chatted with my cousin, Natalie, who was manning a booth with a friend. Then we headed out to get some dinner from the food trucks. The reindeer were just pulling in when we went outside :) They had three trucks, Fiore Pizza, Charlie Boy's BBQ, and Waffle Love. I opted for the pizza, and Matt and Henlie got some Waffle Love. The pizza took much longer than they anticipated, but at least Waffle Love offered cocoa :) Matt and Henlie finished their waffle before my pizza was even done. Then Henlie shared a piece of my pizza :) It was tasty, if a bit oily, though. 

Oh hey, the lights turned on! :)

Family selfie with pizza. It was super cold, poor Andrew.

While we were waiting, they lit the lights and Santa arrived by fire engine. Santa was gone by the time we made it out to see the lights, but that's okay. It's not like Henlie really cares about seeing him anyway. So we wandered the park. Henlie got to swing for a minute, and then we checked out the reindeer before getting in the car.
Swinging!

Looking at the lights.

Reindeer!

 We decided to drive through a random neighborhood a little to look at more Christmas lights, and then Matt decided to drive through town instead of taking the freeway. We headed to Salem and drove around the pond to check out their lights. Salem residents win for most festive houses, too :)
So, we just drove around it. We didn't actually stop to get out.
It was really cold and snowing a little.
They had some fun things in the pond, though, like those swans.
Unfortunately, since we were driving, all of my pictures are a little blurry. :/



Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable night and a good start to our Christmas season!

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