Merry Christmas!!

Wow! All that waiting and now its all over! We had a great Christmas this year with know major illness! Last year we all had the flu. We would open a present, run to the bathroom, open another present, run to the bathroom. Aubree woke up Christmas Eve morning with a huge grin on her face. I had the whole day planned so it would keep them busy. We made a Gingerbread House, made & decorated cookies, and then they made their Christmas presents for each other. We had a yummy dinner and then it was time to open Christmas Eve Pj's from Grandma Jensen. We then watched The Polar Express which I think is the ultimate Christmas Eve movie. I won't let my kids watch it until Christmas Eve. Finally it was time for bed. We put them to bed right at 8pm but they were so worked up they didn't fall asleep until 10pm! Dave and I laid presents out (put that darn kitchen together!) and went to bed around midnight. Then the girls squealed into our room at 12:50am. They didn't fall asleep until 2:30 and then were up again at 7:15 which was much better. We called G/Grandpa Cheney and they rushed over to tape the event. The girls got a jewelry box, a puppy in a purse (they're favorite), a kitchen set, a cooking set, a tea set, barbie clothes, each got a Barbie, a Lil pet Shop set, and a dress up trunk. Austin got a Rocking Horse, a race car set , and a train set. (He doesn't have any toys of his own otherwise this would be a lot for a 20 month old who has no clue what is going on!) I got Dave a signed John Beck & Ty Detmer football card and I told him to count our yard plan for mine (which was probably a huge relief to him!) I made Cinnamon rolls and peppermint hot chocolate for breakfast and its now 4pm and I am still in my pj's! I've been playing with toys! Also it snowed on Christmas Eve! I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas as much as we did! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

Summary of Pictures

The slide show blocked out my captions so I'll do a quick recap: The pictures are from Aubree's 1st grade Christmas Party, Addie's preschool party, treats for the neighbors, the kids before church, and the Nutcracker Ballet at Capital Theatre (everytime a new dancer would come out on the stage, you would hear a big gasp from Addie,"I want that dress!"

Merry Christmas!

CHRISTMAS CARD 2007

~ Cheney 2007 Newsletter ~

I didn't send out a newsletter with my Christmas cards this year so I'll just post one.

Nothing to exciting with us this year other than the move. Since David worked an hour & 15 minutes away the commute was driving him nuts so in February we put some money down to reserve a lot. In April we sold our house (in 3 days!) thats really the only thing I can brag about because David had it listed for the lowest price possible because he didn't want to risk paying 2 house payments so we broke even. But the new owners let us rent it back and stay in our house until our new one was done which was HUGE for me. On April 29 they started digging the hole and on July 30th we closed. Someone broke into our house the night we closed and damaged some walls, but our builder had it fixed within days. We were the 2nd ones to move into the neighborhood and now we're surrounded by neighbors with lots of kids.

Dave has been at American Express for 18 months and is doing very well there. He says he will never leave the company. His old boss from Disney also works there and his wife reports to David. Also in the last couple of days one of Davids good friends from BYU was just hired on and will be working right next to Dave. David & 2 of his friends have started their own accounting firm. I've kept quiet about this one cuz I thought it was all talk for awhile and you never know when you go into business on your own, but now they have an ad in the yellow pages and have 2 clients already. He's also very busy with school and has class once a week at Westminister College.

Aubree loves her friends at school but hates to do schoolwork. She actually does very well in school considering its so hard to get her to do her homework. This past year she has enjoyed soccer and dance. Sadly she doesn't want to sign up for soccer anymore because she wants the ball the whole entire time and wants to score all of the goals. So we're still looking for her sport.

Addie is in preschool and LOVES it and adores her teacher. Addie is my challenge right now. She is so different from Aubree. She is extremely shy and likes things done her way. The other night she woke up screaming at 3am (this is her usual routine. Theirs always something bugging her) she didn't want to sleep in her bed because she said it was "poo-poo" but I couldn't get her to sleep in the trundle because it didn't have pink sheets. Or she gets upset if Aubree doesn't sleep on her pillow. Or she has to have 3 bowls of cereal in 3 separate bowls and she assigns certain cereals to certain bowls and heaven help me if I put the cereal in the wrong bowl she assigned it to!!!!

Austin is your typical 20 month old: into everything and throws everything-mostly food. He loves playing with Aubree and adores his blanket. All 3 of my kids have been attached to their blankies but nothing like Austin's. He's probably been one of my best babies and is more like Addison socially. He is definitely a mama's boy and will sit on my lap for a very long time (for his age) and watch TV clutching his blanket and sucking his index finger (also a new one with my kids!) His favorite thing to do is to shoot hoops with his BYU hoop in his room.

As for me- my new hobby is a hot bath with a pint of Ben & Jerry's. I try to keep up with my scrapbooks (Aubree has 9, Addie has 3, Austin has 2 and the family has 10) I think I'm going to start doing a digital family album. The latest family album looks pretty boring cuz I"m kind of sick of scrapbooking by that point. I'm excited to start planting flowers and working on our yard plan and thats about it!

Merry Christmas to me! Thou shalt not covet Pottery Barn! I have been waiting months for this quilt to go on sale! So with some help from Ebay my bedroom is a little less boring. Aubree & Addie's room was clean so I took some pictures.