A blur.

The last week has gone by in a complete blur. In fact, as I uploaded my pictures to blog them, I couldn't believe that these pics are all only a week old. It feels like some of them happened a month ago...

I wrote in my last post that my dear Grandma had a stroke last Tuesday leaving us broken hearted, worried, and emotionally drained. Our family spent hours in the hospital, my mom never leaving her room. She passed away on Saturday morning around 2:30.
It seems a bit unreal, and life is sure gonna be strange without her. We all will miss her so much.

Along with doing our best to support my mom, and be there for Grams, this week was just chuck full of STUFF. We had so much going on, and I'm not really sure how we fit it all in.

Adyson had her Christmas recital at school on Thursday. It was delightful to watch! My little Adyson is one animated little girl! After the recital her teacher even commented on how much fun she was to watch.

Here she is sporting her lovely reindeer shirt. She was sooo excited.

She's look over at us and grin every few minutes. Proud as she can be. To add to the craziness, before my Grandma got sick my sister had planned on bringing her kids to my moms for a few days while she flew to Texas to pick up Jody and drive back to UT. (yeah!) So, my mom needed to be at the hospital, leaving me and Cody with 4 extra kids. (If you add them all up, you get 7.) 7 kids? 7, really? Cody and I aren't the most patient people, and it's a small miracle they all survived! We actually made quite a good team, taking turns having all of them sleepover, taking turns buying them lunch, and taking turns breaking up the little quarrells they get in.

Here are my 3 favorite pictures of the weekend. Cody decided Brielle needed a nap, so he put on Strawberry Shortcake for her. A few minutes later I walked in on this:

Cody, out cold.

Sienna, out cold. (In a princess dress, natch).

And Brielle, wide awake. It just cracked me up.

I'm either really ambitious, or just plain stupid, but I decided the kids needed to have a little Christmas fun while they were all together, so I mixed up the BIGGEST batch of sugar cookies known to man. (I didn't realize that my recipe was already doubled, so I doubled it. again. You do the math). They were all so cute decorating their cookies, that I thought it was totally worth it. Till I had to clean up the mess.....



Simon and Tray. I sure wish I would have got a pic of Simons cookies. They were loaded with sprinkles. I mean LOADED!

A fuzzy one of Brielle and Breje.

Kutter, Adyson, and Sienna.
Brielle, just a little sticky....
That night Travis and I had all the kids here to sleep. They went downstairs and watched a movie, then snuggled up and amazingly, went right to sleep. They were angels!
Seeing them all lined up wall to wall, snuggled in blankets, just reminded me so much of being little and having sleepovers with my cousins. I'm so happy that they will have those same memories when the get older, and just love the bond these cousins share.

Doing all of this, plus finishing up Christmas shopping, baking, and making time to go to one of our favorite family Christmas parties, pretty much did our family in.

And today we headed to Ogden for my Grandma's funeral. It was a beautiful tribute to my Grandma. There were tears over how much we would miss her, and yes, it is so hard to say goodbye, but it was just so lovely to hear stories of her and see how many people's lives she has touched. My Grandma was really an amazing woman full of spunk, and heart. We had so many dear friends, and extended family members there for her, and us today. And her whole entire family was gathered (no small feat, I can't remember the last time each and every one of us were all in the same room). I could feel her joy because of this all day long. I'm sure gonna miss her and wish we would have had a few more years together!

Now, even with all the loose ends I still need to tie up, the Christmas holiday will feel a bit more calm. I'm ready for a great night of sleep, and ready to dive into my favorite couple of days of the year! I wish you all a Very, Merry Christmas.