Honey's Houses

It's gingerbread day!  One thing I love about the holidays is my house always smells like gingerbread.  I had no idea how much I loved that smell.  I asked Mike's family back in July if they could plan on this day for gingerbread.  Why this day?  Mike's mom died 10 years ago today. We didn't focus on her, but I thought it was great the family could be together.  Preston also got baptized one year ago today.  My how time flies!

Ready for gingerbread!

I have a slight obsession with buying gingerbread candy

Audrey came with us to church today.  She stayed at our house afterwords until gingerbread time.  She decorated a house and left after pizza.  She was thrilled Shannon brought vegetarian pizza.

Audrey

I had a great time today.  I love being around Mike's family.  I wish we could get together more often.  His family is so creative.  Each year everyone's houses are completely different.  This year I was prepared for Xander.  He loves to do horror houses.  I stocked up on candy at Halloween for him.  I used red frosting to put his house together, although the frosting didn't turn out blood red....oh well.

Miah, Jorja, Maysen 

 Lisa

 Brandon & Tage

 Weston

 Aimee

 Stockton & Miah

 Maysen

 Steve & Sherry

I didn't get a picture of Tage alone with her finished house, but her house was so adorable!  The google eyes were a big hit this year!

Tage's house

 Preston & Jorja

 Shannon

 Nathan & Lisa

I try and get family and individual pictures every year.  I missed many people this year!  They are slippery!  If I missed them individually, at least I got a family picture of everyone.  I think Erica is the only one who wasn't here who was in town.  Spencer, Connor, Taylor and Michael didn't come of course.  Spencer is at Harvard.  Connor, Taylor and Michael are all on missions.  Two of them will be back next Christmas!  Yay!

Aimee, Nathan, Lisa  

Aimee decorated her house with Nova.  Their house turned out so cute! I don't think I have one picture of Nova though.  For the record, she was there.

Lisa, Aimee, Flying Leo, Melissa

 Lisa & Aimee

 Nathan

 Lisa

 Melissa & Derek

 Derek

 Nice broccoli!

 Melissa made a stable.  Hard to tell, but it was great!!!

 Jacob, Brandon, Weston, Shannon, Steve

 Brandon

 Jacob

 Weston ~ LOVED the monster house!

 Tage, Matt, Miah, Xander, Sherry

 Miah

 Miah & Jorja

 Stephanie, Preston, Jorja

Mike, Maysen, Stockton

 Jorja

 Preston

I didn't get a picture of everyone in my family even!  At least I took a close up of their houses after they went to bed.

Maysen's house

 Stockton's house

 Jorja's house

 I thought the back of her house turned out cute.

 Preston's house.  Looks like he's been taking classes from Xander.

 My kids.  Love it.

 Mike's house

 Stephanie's house

Mike and I stayed up pretty late getting the kitchen put back together. I'm glad we did because it looks great now!  I don't want to put up the candy, because we will just be getting it out again next week.  I hope my scouts can handle it!  This tradition is a lot of work, but I love it.  I also love that my family loves it too.  Tage told me this is her favorite time of the year.  She might just be saying that to make me happy.  If that is the case, it sure worked!

High Stakes

We had a LONG day today!  It was fun though.  We got to UNLV pretty early, right at the beginning of warm-ups.  We were one of the first people in the parking lot, which made it a lot easier to park the motorhome!  I totally forgot to pack a towel for Stockton.  Whoops. After we got Stockton in the right place, I walked to CVS a few blocks away and bought a Las Vegas towel for him.  Preston was cute when we walked by the awards stand and wanted his picture taken.  Stockton walked by and said, "That's where I'm going to be."  He pointed at the 5th place spot.

Preston

Stockton's first competition was the 1 meter novice category.  The age range was 14-18 years old.  Some of these boys were huge!  They also were great divers!  Stockton did all of his dives very well. We also learned a lot.  For example, in the novice category you are required to do a front jump and a back jump.  Totally weird.  Stockton did a front jump pike.  He scored 5s on that.  A lot of the boys did a front jump straight.  They literally just jumped in the pool.  They scored 7s on that. We think the degree of difficulty might have been the same.  If Stockton ever dives in the novice category again, we are going to look at that more closely when registering.  Still, I'm glad we found away around diving on Sunday.  Also, notice Stockton got 5th place, just like he predicted.

Stockton, Mike and Preston went back to the motorhome while I stayed at the pool.  I texted Stockton when I thought his warm-ups for the 3 meter were starting.  I didn't understand that they split the group ahead of Stockton into two different groups.  I texted Stockton to come too early.  Only by an hour.  At least it is better early than late! Stockton did his dives really well on 3 meter.  This is the Junior Olympic category.  There were some amazing divers there!  So fun to watch!  We are not sure what place Stockton got because we hurried out of there as fast as we could, but he wasn't towards the top.  His degree of difficulty was not as high as a lot of the divers.  That's okay.  This was a great experience, and it is nice to know we have our travel meet done.  We might go to another travel meet in the spring, but at least we won't have to.  Especially if it interferes with AP testing.

Mike drove to St. George where we stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel.  I then drove for about an hour until Mike took over.  He drove most of the way home.  We stopped about an hour and a half away in a parking lot somewhere.  It is really nice to be able to do that!

Vegas Bound

Mike, Stockton, Preston and I drove to Las Vegas today.  Stockton has a diving competition tomorrow.  It is a three day competition.  He is in the JO category and should compete 3-meter on Saturday and 1 meter on Sunday.  We are not big fans with competing on Sunday.  The novice competition of his age group is 3 meter on Friday and 1 meter on Saturday.  We are also not big fans of missing school.  Stockton is planning on competing 1 meter novice and 3 meter JO on Saturday.  I wish it were the other way around.  Mike drove the motorhome down. He did all the driving, which was nice for me!  We ended up stopping at a truck stop about thirty minutes away from the competition.  I was already asleep when we stopped.  Once 9:30 hits I have a hard time staying awake.  Maysen and Jorja stayed home by themselves.  They seemed pretty happy about that.  We had our ward Christmas party tonight.  They went over there for dinner.  Jorja said she fell asleep on the pull out couch watching a movie.  Glad they felt happy and safe.

Festival of Trees

I love the Festival of Trees.  It is one of the things I missed most about the holidays when I lived away.  This year there was absolutely no time when I could take my entire family.  I decided to just go by myself.  It was still awesome.  This tree was decorated by my friend Allison and her daughters. Allison is Josh's mom.  Josh is Stockton's diving buddy.

This tree had a giant plane that went with it.  Plus I liked how it had an Alaska ribbon on it.

It would be easy to spend all day here.  Especially if you wanted to look at everything.  These next few pictures are some fun gingerbread ones.

 Blurry, but I loved how they made bird houses

 This one was amazing!

 This reminded me of my niece Mallory.

 Seriously!  This tin man was HUGE!

I didn't get a chance to look at the little trees, or the wreaths, or even the quilts.  This quilt did catch my eye as I was walking out.  How fun is that?

I stopped by Walmart and bought A LOT of powdered sugar, along with a few other things I needed.  I didn't have time to go home before I needed to pick Maysen up, so I went straight to school.  This took me a completely different direction than I would have gone if I went straight home.  I was waiting in the parking lot when it dawned on me that today was a B day.  Maysen stays the entire day on B days.  Whoops.

I took Stockton to diving at BYU.  Josh couldn't come.  He is still sick. He has walking pneumonia.  He has been sick since Halloween.  Josh came yesterday, but it hurt him to dive.  Stockton's disappointed because Josh won't be coming to Vegas.  There were only three divers at practice.  Stockton got a lot of attention.  He doesn't like it when there are so few divers because practice is exhausting.  Tyce was the only coach there, which was nice.  Tyce is so good!  Towards the end of practice Tyce had Stockton put the belt on.  They worked on back 11/2s. Stockton hates those.  He also hates the belt, but I love watching him in it.  Two different times Stockton flipped in the air and then ended up landing on the diving board.  I don't think I'm explaining it right, but it was pretty funny.

Mike and I had planned on putting the rest of the gingerbread houses together tonight.  I was starting to get the frosting out when he asked if I had put the stained glass windows on them.  I totally forgot! This is the first year I decided to try that.  My plan was to melt jolly ranchers down.  I didn't have any.  I ended up melting peppermints down.  I will glue them to the houses tomorrow and then, hopefully, tomorrow morning we will get the houses put together.  Yikes!

Powdered Sugar Fail

I woke up Stockton and Maysen before my exercise class.  I had Stockton sign up for his dives for the Vegas competition.  I left him with my credit card and had him figure out everything himself.  He is diving 'novice' one meter.  That is because 'junior olympic' or 'JO' 1 meter is on Sunday.  He is required to do a front jump and a back jump.  Weird.  You would think it would be at least a front dive and a back dive.  At least he won't need to dive on Sunday.  He is going to dive 'JO' for the 3 meter.  That way he won't need to miss any school.  I wish the two events were reversed.

I have been trying really hard with the no-sugar challenge with my exercise class.  We had our body fat measured back in October with a BodPod.  Some weird machine you sat in that measured it.  I'm pretty sure I have no chance to win the competition.  Some people have already lost 20 pounds.  There is no way I could lose 20 pounds.  That would be really bad.  Anyways, I am interested to see how well I did. Before class Michael Banks said that the final measurement will take place on Saturday.  I yelled, "NO!!!!"  The one day I can't come!  I had asked him earlier when it would be.  If I was going to be unable to attend, I wanted to enjoy Thanksgiving!  I still enjoyed it, I just didn't have any rolls or pie or anything with sugar!!!  (He also had us cut out dairy and grains.)  At the end of class I found out it is not this Saturday, but next Saturday.  I will be able to make it to that one.  Although, that means longer with the no-sugar.  I need to make it through gingerbread houses, the Smith family party and the Relief Society dinner.  I can do this! (I hope.)

Mike and I had planned on putting the gingerbread houses together.  I had picked up tons of egg whites awhile ago.  That is my favorite way of making the frosting, it is so easy!  I got back from BYU and Stockton's diving a little after 7:00.  I started making the frosting and realized that I forgot to buy powdered sugar!  Fail on my part!  We were able to get 11 of the houses put together, but I was pretty annoyed with myself.

Tea Sandwiches

I finished the rest of the gingerbread houses today!  I also made 'tea sandwiches' for my friends dad's funeral.  I signed up for dessert, but was asked to change.  I had no idea what tea sandwiches were.  I went down to Harmon's and got some chicken salad sandwiches.  My neighbor, Robyn, gave me a loaf of Great Harvest bread yesterday.  I just slapped the stuff on the bread, cut off the crust and cut the bread into fourths.  I hope that is what they wanted!  I also got caught up on my blog!  Yay!  Hopefully I won't let myself get so behind again. Maysen had statistics, Preston had piano, Jorja made Christmas cookies with the Young Women and Stockton went to Nicklecade with the Young Men.  He was excited because he earned 300 tickets.  He spent them all on Airheads.  I didn't know he even liked those.