4th of July Week

Wow.. it's been a while! I'm a slacking on the blog department. My computer is so slow now and I already do a lot of work on it so I get frustrated (ya know.. with the slowness..) and the last thing I want to do is get back on here but here I am.

My parents decided to come visit us the week before the 4th of July! I was SOOO happy! They got in late Friday night and we woke Emma up to see them and it took her a minute to realize who they were but then she was so crazy and excited to see them! ESPECIALLY her grandma. Her and my mom just love each other so much! But she love love LOVES my dad too! She kept laughing and it was so adorable! The next day we kind of just wandered around the city and shopped. It was so fun having them see Kansas City a little bit.

Monday my parents, Emma, and I traveled 3 hours south to Arkansas to my brothers house! Trevor had to stay in KC and work so we spent the week apart which was so hard for us! We had an amazing time hanging out with Mike and his fam! I just love Arkansas! Its so country yet where they live its still a city. My fav. I loved hanging out in their backyard and playing yard games. It was the epitome of summer!

The 4th of July is actually my mom's birthday! So its a pretty special holiday for our family besides it being our country's birthday! Trevor came down that day and it was a joyous reunion! ha! We basically just hung out and then in the evening we ate tacos and did LOTS of fireworks! The babies were a little scared but so cute. My parents ended up leaving that night which was super hard. Especially for Mike and I. It was so good to see them. I miss them a lot. It was such a fun week!

St. Valentines Day!

I had the best Valentines Day ever! We started off the day by going to get some (nasty) Del Taco and enjoyed the wonderful sun by sitting outside and eating. We then went to Best Buy and looked at cameras and wandered around. After we went and got our food for the night and dropped it off at home. Then we went across town to the park by the library in St. George and basked in the sunlight again. It was seriously the most beautiful day. We threw around the frisbee and watched Emma crawl on the grass. It was heaven. We went to some shops around that area and grabbed some cupcakes from 25 Main. Then we went to the dollar store and Ross and shopped around. After we went home and cooked some hibachi style steak and zucchini, mushrooms, and onions. Sooooo good. We ended the night by watching a movie. It was such a good day just getting to spend it with Trevor and Emma. It was so simple but I couldn't think of a more perfect day.

Sorry for the lame iPhone photos!

Christmas festivities!

Merry Christmas! It came and went so fast and I had such an amazing time with my family! On my dad's side of the family we have Swedish blood running through our veins so we have many Swedish traditions! Almost all of our traditions are during Christmas Eve (except when we sing the Swedish birthday song) and basically all of our Christmas festivities are Swedish.

We usually get together during the evening around 6 and have dinner. It is a very humble meal. It definitely is not my favorite! I remember asking my dad why we couldn't have good food and he responded by telling me that we eat these foods as remembrance of our ancestors and that it was probably an amazing dinner to them. He also told me we eat the humble meal as remembrance of Christ's humble beginning, so I try not to complain too much. Some of the things we eat are Korv, (a sort of sausage-like food) Lutfisk, (which is a fish), and boiled potato chunks. The bottom left photo is Swedish Cake. We usually cook those all December and when we were younger we used make a TON of them and hand them out to everyone in the St. George Police Department and our neighborhood. They are my favorite!

After dinner we eat rice pudding and everyone has to say a poem. It usually consista of something like "Rice is nice especially with spice. Thank goodness I don't have lice!" Some of us go all out and some of us are totally lame (me). My poem this year was.. "This rice is fantastic.. there is a new movie coming out about a park called Jurassic". Lame right? haha! Once you say your poem you can dig in to your pudding. There is an almond in one of the bowls and whoever gets it gets good luck for the year! This year Luke got the almond! Lucky! 

After dinner we gather around the tree and have a Christmas program. Everyone has to participate or NO presents! Someone usually reads in Luke 2, my dad usually plays the guitar, I read "The Three Trees" book, and everyone else does something Christmas-like! 

After the program we open presents! Yes we open presents on Christmas Eve! Well half of them. Basically we open gifts from each other on Christmas Eve and the rest from Santa on Christmas Day. My dad is the unofficial official distributor of the presents.

Its Emma's first Christmas! Christmas with a child is so much better! It was so fun to watch her tear into the presents and look at all the fun gifts. My family got her some great stuff!

I really didn't want to go home Christmas Eve night so I slept on the couch while Trevor slept on the floor at my parents. I couldn't sleep AT ALL! I seriously slept like 1-2 hours.. I must have been excited for Santa! ha.. So we all woke up around 7 and went upstairs to see what Santa brought us! Santa brought Emma a walker! She doesn't know if she likes it or not yet.. We had breakfast and played with all of our new things! It was such an amazing Christmas! It was so fun to have my Uncle, Aunt, cousins, and grandparents there! My nieces and two families came to our Christmas Eve program, too. 

I'm so grateful for our Savior, Jesus Christ. I love Christmas and the spirit of Christ that we all feel during the holidays. I hope to keep that feeling all year long. I'm so very grateful for his atoning sacrifice that he made for us so that we can return to live with him. I love my Savior. Merry CHRISTmas!

Emma's 1st Christmas!

After putting up the tree I snapped a few pictures of Emma underneath the tree! She kept eating everything! 

P.S. Besides the black and white one and a little brightening I didn't really edit these.. the one of the tree just by itself, I didn't edit at all! It just turned out like that! Pretty cool..

Merry Christmas From The Thompsons!

A Christmas video we made :) I think you can only watch it on a computer.