What's Your Favorite Christmas Movie?

A week or so ago at work my co-workers and I were having a discussion on Christmas Movies and the question going around was "What is your all-time favorite Christmas movie?". I didn't have an answer. So later that night I asked Ray what his favorite is. He didn't have an answer either. So as an effort to do something "Christmassy" we set out to solve this very important mystery.
How do you figure something like this out? Well you have to watch a bunch of Christmas movies. We made a list of 16 movies then ranked them and put them in a bracket (you know like in the March Madness playoffs).

Here is our list of Christmas Movie match-ups
The Santa Clause vs Jack Frost
The Grinch vs It's a Wonderful Life
The Christmas Carol vs Babes in Toy land
Elf vs The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation vs Miracle on 34th Street
The Nightmare Before Christmas vs Holiday Inn
Santa Claus The Movie vs A Christmas Story
White Christmas vs Fred Claus

The ones in red are winners so far and will compete in the final 8.
Rules: We don't have to watch the same movie more than once unless we can't agree on the winner. The winner of each match-up is decided by the quality/ quantity of Christmas content & Christmas Spirit. (Holiday Inn is a great classic movie but The Nightmare Before Christmas was overall more Christmassy). Winners will be decided by a unanimous decision by Ray and Julie which may require a re-watch of more than one movie.

It has been fun so far and hopefully by Christmas we will know what our favorite Christmas Movie is.

National Adoption Month

Among many other things, November is National Adoption Month.
For the fourth straight year, in honor of November being National Adoption Awareness Month, Portrait of an Adoption is running a special series called 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days. Designed to give a voice to the many different perspectives of adoption, this series will feature guest posts by adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, waiting adoptive parents, and foster parents-turned-adoptive parents. Painful and beautiful, these stories will bring you a deeper understanding of what adoption looks like, allowing you to appreciate the many brushstrokes that comprise a family portrait. (copied from their site)http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2014-30-adoption-portraits/
I have read through a few of the stories and love this one written by an adoptee.  
http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2014/11/i-was-never-bothered-by-questions-about-my-adoption-it-was-just-my-story/
My favorite quote from her story is "Is adoption all black and white?  No.  There is so much gray.  But am I Happy? Grateful? Thankful?  Yes, I am.  Because, though many parts of adoption can be bittersweet what I have known in my life is LOVE."

I look forward to adoption being part of our child(ren)'s story. " A story I don’t ever remember not knowing"

Crazy, Busy, Fun Weekend / Halloween Parties

This is the story of Julie's crazy, busy fun weekend. In primary at church the kids have been practicing their songs and speaking parts to prepare for our sacrament meeting presentation where we show the rest of the ward what we have been learning in primary. The presentation is coming up and we have one final practice on Saturday before the main event. We decided to reward the kids with a treat of "dirt cups" (pudding with crushed Oreos and gummy worms) to celebrate getting the bugs out of the songs. So Friday night Julie and Ray made dirt cups.

Saturday morning is the final practice and decisions made for the presentation. It went pretty well and the kids enjoyed the treat. Saturday evening is the church Halloween party that we were asked to bring cut up apples as part of the dinner. Thanks to some neighbor boys for picking a big box of apples for us we didn't have to worry about getting them just cutting them. (this required some research of how to keep cut apples from turning brown. Thanks Pinterest!) We also volunteered to take a pot of chili to the party. So after the presentation practice Julie finished up some details on our Halloween costumes, made some chili, made peanut butter cookies, and started cutting apples. The trick is to put the cut apples directly into a big bowl of water with a little bit of lemon juice, when the bowl got full we put the apples into zip-lock bags and put them in the fridge. Our niece Kaitlynn was there to help and when Ray got home from work we were an apple cutting/bagging machine. 

The Halloween party was fun. Julie and Kaitlynn helped out with some games for the kids and Kaitlynn ended up with a bowl full of candy from the trick-or-treating parade. 

Sunday is the big day we have been preparing for. The kids are excited and leaders are nervous. The best parts of the presentation were that the kids wrote their own speaking parts and the special musical numbers involving sibling groups. The spirit was so strong and I was so proud of my primary kids! And because of the excitement and nervousness we decided as a presidency not to try to teach a lesson during primary and have a movie & cookie party instead (thus the peanut butter cookies mentioned earlier).

Sunday evening is the family Halloween party at Ray's parents home. Julie was asked to bring donuts, invite her sister Jennifer and Kaitlynn and plan some games. Where am I going to find time to plan games? So sometime last week Julie calls her sister, 

Julie: What are you doing Sunday evening?

Jennifer: I have to work until 6.

Julie: Dang it!

Jennifer: Why?

Julie: Because I was going to ask if you could plan some Halloween party games for Ray's family party Sunday.

Jennifer: Why is this my problem?

Julie: Well you and Kaitlynn are invited...

Jennifer: Oh! well you could have told me that first.

Julie: Right, I will still take Kaitlynn if you can't come.

Jennifer: I can see if I can change my schedule so we can go.

Julie: Yay! Thanks!

So Jennifer planned some games and changed her schedule so they could come to the party!

 

Julie as the Queen of Hearts and Ray as the Mad Hatter

Our nieces and Nephews.
A pirate, Pikachu, teenager and baby no costume, a Newsie,
 Elsa and Anna from "Frozen", a Grannie,
a Butterfly (forgot wings) and Sacajawea 

 We all had a lot of fun with the games and costumes. The indoor trick-or-treat is always a big hit at grandma's house on Halloween.
I am so glad everything turned out well and thankful for the people that helped me get my crazy, busy, fun to-do list done.

The End Of Summer

Today is the official first day of autumn which means summer is now over. I do enjoy the cooler weather and fall colors but I don't like that the sun goes down so early.
Let's take a minute to review our summer bucket list:

• Go camping (at least twice)- Done 3 times- once to Strawberry, once to Schofield, and once to Yuba. Julie also spent one night at Young Women's camp with our church.
• Finish painting the deck- not done
• Plant flowers- Done- With the help of our niece we planted our front flower bed.
• Go on a bike ride- not done
• Catch a fish- Done- At Schofeild on our camping trip. Julie ended up cleaning and cooking 8 fish for dinner.
• BBQ with neighbors- not done
• Go to a rodeo- Done twice- once to the Lehi Round-up with Ray's mom & dad and nieces & nephew from Colorado. And once with Julie's sister on Pioneer day.
• Take a road trip- Done- We drove our nieces and nephew back to Colorado after they spent 2 weeks in Utah with cousins and grandparents.
• Girls day out- Done- Ray's sisters and I went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse, Bowling, and shopping.
• Have a water fight- Done- At the park on Pioneer Day we got free water guns and had a water fight.
• Go on a hike- Done- We went on a beautiful hike to Stewart Falls near Sundance. 

We did get a lot of our list complete and we had a great summer. There is still time to do the rest before it snows.

Pioneer Day

Pioneer day is a state holiday in Utah when we celebrate Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers entering the Salt Lake City valley in 1847. We were both lucky enough to have the day off of work to celebrate together.

We started our day off with a parade!

The weather was a nice overcast that kept the heat away.

After the parade we walked around the craft fair and festivities at the carnival. We got some lunch and lemonade at the food vendors there. They had entertainment by local theater companies and we were able to watch some of our neighbors preform. A business was giving away squirt guns so of course we had a little water fight. 

We finished off our Pioneer Day at the rodeo with my sister. We had a lot of fun spending time with each other and the festivities of the day. 

Camping 2014

We went up to mud creek above Strawberry Reservoir last weekend and had a great time camping for a couple nights. These camp spots are rugged spots with no services (that's right....none.) Julie said she would rather not have a bathroom than have neighbors while camping and we all agreed. What's the point of camping if you're just paying for a designated spot with neighbors 30 feet away? We could stay home and have neighbors farther away than some camping sites!

 

Julie's dad, Julie's sister, and her daughter joined us. It was beautiful the whole weekend and we were so proud of our dog Toby! We took a leap of faith and allowed him to roam free with no leash or tether. He stayed close to the campsite the entire time and came when we called him. The only time he tried to run off is when I took our niece up the mountain for a 4WD adventure in my truck and he tried to follow. Also on this trip we learned the awesome power of s'mores made with Reese's peanut butter cups. Try it!

 

-Ray

 

Reese's s'more. Try it! 

Toby is such a good boy as he reminds us what camping is about.

 

 

Julie's dad and our niece making s'mores. 

 

Toby and I being lazy.

Julie's sister

Julie's dad's camp trailer.

Julie fishing.

Us down at the reservoir.



Our niece caught a butterfly.

#TBT

Okay so I'm not really into the hashtags or throwback Thursday stuff but I was cleaning out the closet in our office and came across our wedding album and it seamed to fit since today is in fact Thursday and this is a "throwback".

The first snowfall of the year happened to be on our wedding day, November 1st 2003. A Korean friend told me that if it snowed on your wedding day you would be financially wealthy, though that isn't exactly true we have been blessed to always have what we need. 10 years and 8 months ago we had no idea what life had in store for us. We have made it through many good times and some bad times and look forward to what lies ahead.