Christie and Emily

Here are some of my favorite friends:

Christie and Emily 

(and Emily's pants-less kid, D.C.)

They were my bridesmaids at my wedding..... 

Mostly because they had a lot of stuff to blackmail me with so I had to keep them under close supervision.

The one in the middle, Cristie, is about 8 months pregnant with her first child, a boy. 
I know.....  she looks amazingly hot you can barely tell she is knocked up. Don't worry, I secretly hate her for it too. 

Dang my friends are hot. 

 You may wonder why I am holding Emily's kid while she is holding Pee-Baby. The truth is that Pee-Baby followed Emily around all night. I didn't know he liked large breasted blondes so much. 

I am holding her kid, D.C.,  because he is hilarious and I adore trouble-maker kids.

You also may wonder why D.C. is not wearing pants. This picture was taken after D.C. took a dump in the toilet. He is not potty-trained yet so this was kind of a big deal. It took close to 20 minutes, but you better believe he delivered. 

He was inspired to use the toilet after he walked in on me peeing.

Emily's older boy, Kyson was a sweet angel who protected Ryan while D.C. tried to play with him. Then Kyson nicely put himself to bed when he got tired.  

They boys ate pizza while Emily and I scared the crap out of Christie with our motherhood stories.

I apologize for all the horror stories Christie. Please hang out with us again the next time I'm in town. 

You can read Christie's funny blog here.

P.S. Lisa Glista is awesome and funny too.

Keep Calm and Gift On

This Christmas I was stuck in another conundrum..... What should I get my parents for Christmas?

Every year I have the same problem. Consequently, I end up having to make them something awesome.

2012 was no different.

I busted out some old chalkboards I stole from a box at work. (Lisa, if you tell anyone, I will kill you.)  

They were the nasty green color that they used for chalkboards in the 1970's. We all know anything from the 70's is dirty, so I painted them with black tempera paint.

My low I.Q. only permits me so much wittiness/creativity per year and I was running on empty.
So I ended up using this print as inspiration:

Such a novel idea, I know.

My mom's was easy. She loves to sew and quilt:

  "Keep Calm and Quilt On"

That is a long-arm quilting machine pictured behind her. If you know what that even is, I should probably make a sign for you too. 

My dad likes to chemically engineer stuff, hence his sign:

"Keep Calm and Chemical Engineer On" 

Doesn't that have a nice ring to it? I thought so. 

My favorite brother Jake's sign took the most energy. He only appreciates gifts that are lovingly crafted and personal. Jake is an avid survivalist, fisherman and all-around outdoors man.

"Keep Calm and Bait On"

If there is one hobby I know Jake likes, it's baiting. 

Told you. 

BTW, Notice in both of Jake's pictures, my little brother Daniel is giggling with glee at Jake's antics. 

Gingerbread Competition

Usually when I am in Utah and my family gets together we sit around the table, talk some trash, and see what sibling cries first.

This year I decided to switch things up a little bit. 
After an embarrassing amount of time on pinterest and blog-stalking, I decided to throw a gingerbread house building contest.  
I convinced my parents to pay for everything. I bought a ton of graham crackers and WAY MORE candy than necessary. (After the contest the extra candy was promptly hidden and then packed in my luggage and returned home to California with me.)

I made a butt-load of frosting. So much frosting that "butt-load" is the only adjective that can describe the amount accurately.

The rules:

People can build in teams or do it by themselves.
After everyone builds their Gingerbread Houses, everyone will get to vote on their favorite house. 
Each person gets 2 votes. You cannot vote for yourself.
Prizes were awarded accordingly.

My dad and Grandpa received the most votes by buiding a  mini-replica of my parent's house:

The Best Construction

Award

Congratulations! Your gingerbread house is well constructed that we all suspect you have secretly been practicing for this contest.

The house with the least amount of votes got:

The Pity

Award

Congratulations! Your gingerbread house is so ugly that people feel sorry for you.

Clearly, my 18 year old sister Sara was taking this contest seriously.

Then, since I was in charge and could do whatever I want, I picked the Gingerbread house that was awarded this: 

The Sexiest

Award 
Congratulations! Your gingerbread house is sexy. Awkward... This was supposed to be a FAMILY competition.

If this gingerbread house isn't sexy, I don't know what is.
I think the 1/2 banana in the middle is what really sealed the deal. 
3 year old Aiden was stoked to win the Sexiest Award.

Other notable entries included: 

 

My mom and Grandma Alice's Ocean Liner

Megan and Zac's perfectly constructed home

Daniel and Erika recreated  Rapunzel's Tower

Jared and I made a trailer house into a home

P.S. I stole a bunch of these pictures from my sister's blog because her's are 50x better than mine.