It all started with a play kitchen. Sophie loves her kitchen and now fancies herself quite the chef.


She has had a few incidents with the spices in the house. First, I caught her eating green sprinkles while standing on the counter (after climbing up on the opposite side, crossing the sink and the stove - bad girl). When I busted her she simply looked at me and said "it's good!". The next time was right before we left for California - she pulled a stool over to the stove and added full bottles of cinnamon, red sprinkles, and basil to a soup I was simmering. We didn't hear or see her do this during the hustle and bustle of cleaning and packing but she left 2 of her binkies in the spice cabinet. The last time she wasn't as fortunate as the first and dumped an entire bottle of season salt in her mouth. She was screaming and spitting like crazy. Then I put her in the bath to clean her up and rinse out her mouth, fed her milk and bread and she was feeling much better. But when she stood up to get out of the bath she just slipped and went down hard. I was right there and there was nothing I could do! I hurried and covered it with the towel, yelled for Todd, put her in jammies, covered her wound with a band-aid and we left for the instacare.



When we got there she was happy as could be and kept saying "doctor". I'm sure they thought I was some over paranoid crazy mom since she had a barbie band-aid on and seemed perfectly fine. The nurse wanted to take a look before they even had me sign in. She definitely needed stitches - she just has a high pain tolerance and loves the doctors office. She knew the drill - weight, temperature, finger in the thing to check something...I guess she goes there a lot. Then we went to the "procedure room". She watched youtube on my phone sitting on the big chair waiting for the doctor. Todd and I both had to help hold her down while they gave her the numbing shots. Then the doctor put the paper over her face and she laid perfectly still during the stitches. After the first 2 stitches he asked if she was still breathing because she was laying so still and we could see her binky moving - she was sound asleep. She got 8 stitches total and was happy as could be when we woke her up to take her home. The next day she got in trouble for being on the counter twice and trying to slide down the stairs face first. The girl just will not stop!

Every time we have all the kids together on Sunday we get a swing picture. There are too many kids getting too big to all fit but they still look so dang cute. Tayson wouldn't smile ...this was the best we could manage.

We made the kids wait until 7:00 am for Christmas. Sophie was the first one awake and it was around 6:50 - so they didn't have long to wait.

We went to California for Christmas. There were some crazy storms going on but we managed to get there with little to no issues. We made good time and didn't have very much snow but lots and lots of rain from Vegas all the way to Cali. We stayed at Danny's house on the way down and he made us a delicious dinner of course then we stopped at Amy's house to see them. We had lots of issues getting to her house because the roads were flooded and closed. The kids ran around for a few hours then we went the rest of the way.

Christmas Eve was a little stressful for me with the kids - especially Sophie - but all in all it was great. Dinner was delicious, as always, and the company was great.

This year we decided to have a girls night out over Christmas. Jan, Amy, and I took Claire, Emma and Corey out to dinner then to see the Nutcracker. The girls were so excited to get all dressed up like princesses and go out with NO BOYS. I was happily surprised at how well Claire sat and watched the performance. Her favorite part was the Arabian dancer - the girl could bend and move like crazy. Claire leaned over and with awe in her voice said "she is AMAZING". It was so funny. This will definitely be a new tradition. It was so much fun. And to top it off John Stamos was in the audience because he niece was in the performance (too bad I didn't manage to get a picture).

Since most of the family was still here after the wedding we had Schultz Christmas after church. We opened the presents from my parents and the ones from the family gift exchange. It's amazing how many people and presents there are. There were lots of "Schultz Shirts" worn and we actually started the festivities with Alex playing guitar singing Christmas songs. I never thought I would see the day that my family would sit around singing songs - but it was really fun.









It's always fun spending time together and having Sherry, Danny and Aunt Carol there made it even more fun. Later that night we headed over to our house and played games.

My baby brother got married. It's a little crazy to me since I was a Junior in high school when he was born and he will always be my baby brother. The ceremony was amazing. It was so incredible to be in the temple with my entire family - all 10 kids, my parents and all the in-laws except 1 were there. The spirit of eternal families was so real to me. The sealer talked a lot about prayer and cleaving to your spouse and nothing else (not another person, thing, profession, etc.)



Tayson had the camera at the reception so most of the pictures are a little crazy.