Christmas Newsletter

CHRISTMAS

C hrist- We Believe in God the Eternal Father and in His son Jesus Christ. Church is a big part of our lives and keeps us very busy with callings and family activities. We are grateful to have Christ as the cornerstone of our family


H ome is Fallon; We’re back and we love it. It’s wonderful to be united with dear friends and a community that we love with great schools and even better teachers.


R iver living is great fun! We get to swim, enjoy the coolness from the trees and catch pollywogs in the summer and see deer in the winter. Life doesn’t get better than that!


I nches, Minnie, Natasha, Kylee and Chelsea are all taller than their mom!


S occer is still a big part of our lives. Having finished a great fall season we have moved on to indoor soccer and are looking forward to the spring season for the older kids. We’ll get to do a bit of traveling which will be nice. I love the city and Tahoe!


T axi service; I don’t understand, what happened to the home in stay at home mom??? It seems that I’m always carting someone somewhere. If I charged my passengers I’d be rich!! Soon I’ll have an employee or two as Minnie gets her license in a short while and Tasha has a permit.


M oved, not our favorite past time but we’re glad to be back home.

A ctivities, we are never challenged with finding something to do, with school, church, sports, pigs, family and friends we are always blessed with something to do and someone to do it with.


S now, we are enjoying the world blanketed in white. This is a rare and appreciated treat for us. We have had snow for over a week now and are hoping it will stay for Christmas. We had two snow days off from school and we spent the time sledding and drinking hot chocolate, it was awesome!!!!


We want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a great 2010.
Love Always,
The VanGorder Family
Myles, Dena, Minnie, Natasha, Kylee, Chelsea, Madison, Lindy, Britten, Clayton and Allen

What we like about Lindy

Lindy is................
1. She is showing a lot of potential as an artist. She can draw very well and has a great sense of color. The kids at school love her artistic abilities.
2. She is great to talk to. She is a great philosopher and listens to your ideas as well as presents her own.
3. She enjoys playing with her baby brothers Clayton and Allen and tries her best to be their friend.
4. She is learning to cook and loves to be in the kitchen helping her mom with whatever she is asked to do.
5. She has worked really hard and is becoming a good reader and enjoys reading as much as the rest of the family.


On December 21st Lindy celebrated her 9th birthday. It was a bit of a rough day for us as a family and she handled everything with good grace. I had just taken Minnie and Madison into the Dr. for simple little things I thought and it turned out to be an all day thing going from the Dr. to the lab, to the Dr. and back to the lab. It turns out that Madison had shingles, this has not been a fun experience for any of us especially Madison as they are very painful. As for Minnie, she has ebv plus her heart has been beating irregularly and the Dr. took that a lot more seriously than we were. (Its not as bad as it sounds!) On top of all of that the lab made a mistake the first time and the Dr. was thinking that we were going to have to admit Minnie to the hospital. At this point I called home, had Chelsea make brownies and frost and decorate them for Lindy and Natasha wrapped the presents so that we could have a quickie celebration before heading to Reno for the hospital. After the mistake at the lab was discovered we went back to the lab for another blood draw which gave us good news, we did not need to go to the hospital and we scheduled an appt. with a cardiologist. All seems to be going fairly well with Minnie at the present, other than she has been in bed a lot recovering from her illness, and we were able to have a very nice birthday celebration with Lindy. She's a great kid. We don't give her enough credit for her strengths as it is so easy for us to focus on her weaknesses. I, as her mom, am thankful to have my beautiful, talented, loving, big brown eyed little girl in my life and in our family. We all love you Lindy. Happy Birthday.

One thousand three hundred

Have you ever wondered what 1,300 hundred lights would look like? Let me show you,

I'll explain, the girls have been hassling me for the last couple of years to begin decorating the tree in a more modern fashion rather than the 'sloppy mess' that we usually decorate it as. You see, I have Christmas tree decorations from when I was a kid living at home with mom and dad all the way up to the present. Some of the decorations are those that I've bought here and there representing some aspect of our lives like a paint horse for Myles and a saxophone for me. Some that I remember making with my brothers and sister, some that mom made and had on our tree all my growing up years that I can remember. We have a lot of decorations that my kids have made, usually at school, and these are my favorites! We have several that the primary leaders in Billings would always make every year for each primary child, these are also some of my favorites. I love these decorations but they certainly don't make our tree look neat, sophisticated or modern by any means. Well this year I thought that I would indulge my older girls and let them have a modern tree. Last year I bought a lot of gold ornaments, plus we have our gold temple ornaments and our gold Angel Moroni tree topper so we obviously went with gold.
Now if you are going to have a gold tree you can't just put a bunch of multi colored lights on, you need to have white lights. So, I went to Walmart to price lights in order to see if this was even a possibility with our budget. A strand of 100 lights was only $2.38 so I felt like it was a possibility and threw in 5 boxes. Well, 5 boxes of lights are only enough to light up half of a tree. I went back to get 5 more boxes which would have been fine except for the big black hole in the middle of the tree on the right hand side. I did think about turning that side around to face the back but instead I sent Minnie and her friend back to Walmart to get me 3 more boxes making a total of 13 strands of 100 lights. That is one thousand and three hundred white Christmas lights on our tree, Doesn't it look great!

The Day the Tree Fell on My Head

The Day before we decorated the tree Clayton, my miniature monster with gigantic accidents, kept playing behinde the tree. Other than telling him to stay out from behinde there I didn't think much of it until.......
The next day after the tree was already decorated and beautiful I was on the floor in front of the tree changing the baby's diaper when I hear a whoosh and then plop right on the top of my head was the tree! I did not feel good! It actually hurt my neck more than my head after all a tree is not light. Thankfully Minnie was home and was able to move the baby and lift the tree off of me so that I could get out and away. Then we were able to pick it up and redecorate it after propping it up with a board. When Myles got home he was able to figure out what was wrong and get it whipped back into shape so that it wouldn't tip over again. It turns out that Clayton may have loosened the screws in the tree stand a bit!
Like I said, my miniature monster with gigantic accidents!

Where did the Es - Car - Go ?

In our tummies!!!! Yes, Myles and I had snails!
December 11th was the Christmas party for Paramount Nevada. We met at the Atlantis Casino for dinner. It was AWESOME! We had a great 7 course dinner and spent 4 hours eating! Beginning with wine for some and diet soda with a cherry added for others (Hey, I don't drink wine so I had them fix something special for me, hence the cherry!)There was a bread basket with a variety of breads, all were great. For appetizers we had fire roasted artichokes, butternut squash ravioli(this was the best) and escargo. Myles liked the escargo more than I did. They did not taste bad, they were actually pretty good with a texture like a whole cooked mushroom, for me it was just the mental block of not being able to get past the fact that I was eating a snail! By the way, they are not slimy! We moved on to soup and salads, Myles had the Lobster Bisque which was heavenly, I had a very nice salad. For dinner we had salmon, steak and lobster with a variety of hot and cold king crab legs served on the side. By the time dessert rolled around we were all pretty full but what the heck I had of course my favorite, creme brulee! They did serve a dessert that was pretty cool though, it was a chocolate burger and fries. Want to hear more? It was a chocolate cake served on a muffin with strawberries and kiwi on top to represent tomatoes and pickles. A side dish of raspberries for ketchup, sliced up mangos for fries and a mini rootbeer float. It looked exactly like a hamburger meal!Dinner ended with dessert wine and coffee for some and diet soda with a cherry for others!
It was an awesome experience. The waiters were SO professional, it was like we were the only people in the world. I gained a great respect for the profession, they were so impressive.
We had a great time with Myles work associates. It was nice for me to be able to meet people and finally be able to put names with faces and learn a bit more about everybody! A very enjoyable evening.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!
On December 6th it began snowing and snowing and snowing. It didn't stop and it didn't melt.

Some of us were far more excited than others!



As a result of all of the snow we had 2 snow days off from school, which for you fellow Montanans, I know that the snow we had was piddly stuff but down here where we don't get snow like this too often (like every 15 years or so), well a lot of people just don't know how to drive in the it! Any ways, the kids and I had a blast! We spent 2 days sledding (getting pulled on a sled behinde the van) and drinking alot of hot chocolate. We had a great time. One of the snow days was on my birthday and I honestly could not have asked for a better birthday present! I spent the day with my kids having fun and enjoying their company and we got to end it with cake! Pretty awesome!







By the way, I turned 39 this year, and no, I'm not freaking out about my age and no, I don't feel old. My kids help keep me young and on the move!