Anderson Family: December 2009

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Monday, December 21, 2009

Gingerbread Houses

One of my favorite family traditions at Christmas time is making Gingerbread houses. My mom does such a good job of making all the gingerbread! Last night we had round one of gingerbread house making. All the cousins that live in the cul-de-sac got to make their houses. It was a lot of fun and of course I took a lot of pictures. So here are a few of them.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Video clip of my glass blowing

Here is a little clip of me making my glass vase at my class on Saturday. I cut it down to about 6 minutes so I took out a lot of the repetitious stuff. If you haven't read the post below you might enjoy that one too since it has pictures of the finished products. I sure had fun and was definitely glad the instructor was there to help me out. She saved my bacon a few times that's for sure!

Glass Blowing...

Christmas came early for me this year, and it was AWESOME!!! James gave me a glass blowing class as a present and my class was this past Saturday. I have wanted to try glass blowing for a really long time. So I was extreemly excited for the chance to try it. In preparation for my class, I spent hours watching the professionals do it. Of course they make it look so easy. I had a really hard time going to sleep Friday night because I kept thinking about the class and what I wanted to try to make. I even printed up some samples of things I like to show to the teacher. The class it taught by an instructor named Gay Wynn and there are two students per class. The instructor was really nice and when I showed her the samples I liked she said she would teach me how to do it. So she did a demo piece that was a small version of the vase I wanted to create. Glass blowing is a two person job a lot of the time so she had me assist her on the demo vase. It was fun! Here are a couple of pictures of me working on the demo vase and the completed project.

After the demo was finished, she set us loose to play around and get familiar with the tools and equipment. While I was doing that I made a paperweight. Then she had me try blowing air into a project. I was doing great until I pinched off the air pocket in my project. So rather than scrap the whole thing she had me blow it as big as I could and then stick it back in the glory hole to shrink it back in on itself. So the picture below is the big bubble I blew.Then I put it in the glory hole and it shrunk back in on itself and made lots of cool air bubbles.Here is the finished product. I think it's pretty cool, even though it really isn't functional.After all that messing around it was time to get down to business and start on my big project. So I picked out some colors and started to work on it. I gathered some glass then touched it in the color I was using for the piece (white, blue and green). This is called blocking...it's where you use the wooden tools to center the glass on the pole. This is just a random picture of me with some glass. Here I am blowing the air into my vase. It was tricky to know how much to put in at a time. So thankfully the instructor was there to tell me when to stop.

It was so much fun to make my project! It was pretty intense there for a while once it started getting big and heavy to work with. I was glad the instructor was there to help me because I needed an extra set of hands a few times durring the process.

Here is my finished product getting ready to go into the annealer (an oven that gradually cools the projects).

And here is the final piece...I love it!

Here is a shot of all the pieces together. It was such a great day for me. I loved every minute of it. The only downside was that I was so excited about it that I had a hard time going to sleep that night because I kept thinking about it all night. Thank you James for the amazing pressent!

Friday, December 11, 2009

Random Fun

I have a bunch of fun random pictures to share from the past couple of weeks. Here is Shelby on Thanksgiving. Can you tell she loves Olives?

We decided to start a tradition of Candy Making over the Thanksgiving break. Here are the kids putting together the peppermint bark we made. Yummy!

James went to the Elders Quorum Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving morning. Here he is catching a pass from Mark.

Here is Darcy, watching her Dad play football.

Cody and Shelby had a great time also.

Check out these dance moves! We had a dance off Friday night. I think Dallin had the best moves.

I love this one though...what timing!

Shelby got some good air on this one.

I think this one of Dallin is my favorite!

Hours of fun...

Monday, December 7, 2009

Dallin's Baptism

Dallin got baptized this weekend on December 5th. It was a really special day for our family. James baptized and confirmed him. The spirit was strong and I knew that Heavenly Father was proud of him, just like I was. After the baptism we had a lunch party for all the family who came to the baptism. It was a really fun day for us. Here is Dallin's 8 year old picture...isn't he so handsome!

Here is our family at the stake center where Dallin was baptized. By the way, this is the same stake center I was baptized in. Small world.

And here are Dallin and James before the baptism.

What a great day it was. Thanks to all of you who brought food to the party. It was really yummy. We missed those of you who couldn't come!

Funny Quotes

Darcy came up to me the other day with a permanent marker and said, "Mom, is it okay if I use this pregnant marker to draw a picture?" January 2012
Darcy was in a bubble bath the other day having a great time. She made a beard out of bubbles and put bubbles on her head to make herself look like Santa. When it was time to clean off the bubbles I parted the bubbles to get down to the clear water and she said, "Oh, I didn't know there was water down there!" December 2011
Darcy calls hangnails or snags on her nails "Pinchies". She says "Mom, can you get this pinchie off my toe?"
Whenever we do something fun Darcy always says, "Lets to dat adain." I love her little voice when she says it.
Every morning Cody comes into my room while I'm still in bed and tells me, "Mom, it's light outside. It's time to get up." To which I reply, "Okay, let me get dressed." So now when Cody is getting dressed and I call to him his response is, "I'm getting my dressed on!" I love it. No more getting dressed at our house...its now know as "getting our dressed on".
I like to make fruit smoothies for breakfast sometimes. Cody calls them Smoot Moolies, so that has become the name for them at our house. The other day when I was making a smoot moolie Cody asked if he could help me make it. I said he could so he jumped up on the counter and picked up a banana. He proceed to peel it and then handed me the peel and said,"Here's the armpit mom." I wasn't sure if I heard him right so I asked him what it was called. He said, "The armpit...you know the thing that the banana is in." November 2009
This afternoon when we were driving to the store I had a funny conversation with Cody. “Does Matt have a house?” Cody asked. “Well, Matt is here to buy a new house.” I replied. “Ooooo, that sounds fun!”Cody said. About a minute passes and then he says “How is he going to carry it?” I’m trying my hardest not to laugh. “I think he needs a big rope.” Cody said, happy that he figured out a good solution to the problem. I just love Cody…he keeps me laughing all the time. January 21, 2010
I was really tired one afternoon so I flopped down on the couch and said, "I'm pooped out!" Cody came over and snuggled up to me on the couch and said, "I'm having poop time too!" July 2009
When I told the kids that James was going to be going to California, Cody sat up straight and excitedly said, "Like Lightening McQueen! He went to California!" October 2009
The other day James said to Cody, "How's my buddy?" Cody got a very serious look on his face and said, "Name's Tody!" (He still can't pronounce C's very well.) The only things he will let us call him, other than his name, is big boy or funny kid.
When we were first potty training Cody he said he needed to go to the bathroom during sacrament meeting at church. So I took him to the bathroom and sure enough he did his business in the toilet. This was one of the first times he ever did poops in the toilet so he was really excited. When we walked back into sacrament meeting (we were sitting near the front of the chapel) he loudly proclamed "Daddy, I did giant poops in the toilet!" December 2008
Cody comes up with cute names for things. Mostly because he has troubles prononcing some of his letters. Some of my favorite names are "Daddy's Toke-Toke" for Coke, "Dr. Seuse" for Dr. Pepper, the "lurnal" for urinal, and "peanutbutter jam" for peanutbutter mixed with honey in a bowl.
Shelby had a hard time saying her G's when she was little. So we were working with her on how to say Grandma. She could make a growling sound pretty well, so we we had her growl then say grandma, so she used her best growling voice to say "GRRRR AMA"
The sun was shining in Cody's eyes the other day and he pointed at it and said, "Mommy, that circle is burnin' my eyes!" January 2009
Heres a list of funny words our kids have come up with for things: Fwaps (Cody's word for patting Darcy's back), bednight snacks, square noodles (ramen noodles), peeps, giant poops, dishwasher (Cody says this is where we wash clothes), low-low (lawn mower), regular grandma (Shelby's way of describing the difference between Great Grandma and her (regular) Grandma, oopadaisy (Shelby)
When we were building our house Shelby and Dallin spent a lot of time here with me working on it. One day when I was putting up the finish trim I couldn't find the hammer. I was looking all over for it and just didn't have any luck finding it. Shelby (2 yrs old) made two fists with her little hands and said, "It's okay Mommy, you can use my bammers!" November 2005
When Dallin was 1 yr old, he used to love making car noises. His favorite noise to make was the sound of tires screeching and then a crash. So EVERY time we would apply the brakes in the car we would hear his little voice from the back seat..."errrr kshhhh"
When Dallin was about 3 years old, he always liked to sit between James and I on the couch. But his way of saying it was cute. He would say "Can I sit in the tween of you?"
When Dallin was about 4 years old, I let him and Shelby skip naps because we needed to go somewhere. As we were driving on the road Dallin said, "Wow, look at all these people who are skipping naps too!" I guess he thought everyone had naps during the afternoon! Summer 2005