Kase’s 6th Birthday!

We whipped up some homemade birthday invites using the picture below. The invitation read…

KASE WANTS YOU to come to his 6th Birthday Party!

We decided to celebrate Kase’s birthday a little early this year; before school let out for Christmas break. His birthday is actually 2 days after Christmas so it was nice having it a week early because lots of his friends were able to come and it didn’t get lost in the shuffle of Christmas festivities.

We celebrated another great B-day at Garland’s Gymnastics with all of his friends, cousins, and siblings. A gymnasium is an awesome birthday venue in the dead of winter, it is just one big indoor play land. All of the kids had a blast!

Kase’s favorite part of the day was, of course, the BUNGEE!

Making a WISH!

The big SURPRISE from Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and Leslie’s family.

Happy Birthday Kase-A-Boy! Love Ya!

A Christmas from the past.

I was looking for a Christmas story to give as part of my young women lesson this week at church. I was reading through a few stories online and found tons of great ones on service and the true meaning of Christmas. As I read them, I started reflecting back to Christmas' from my childhood and one in particular when I really discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

Thought I would record it here for journaling purposes...

Up to the age of 11 Christmas was mostly about getting, but on that Christmas I came to understand the true meaning of Christmas. I truly discovered for the first time that giving feels better than receiving.

On this particular Christmas our family, and a couple other families, decided to provide Christmas for a family in need. We were told what the family needed and everyone was given assignments of who to buy for. Christmas Eve came and we gathered to wrap the gifts in preparation of the grand delivery. The family in need had a girl my same age, and for some reason, as we wrapped the gifts, we noticed that her pile of gifts looked much smaller than all the rest of the piles that evening. Our parents began wondering if they forgot about her, and feeling bad that she wasn’t getting as much, the conversation then shifted into one that suggested I should go into my room and find something I thought this girl would like, wrap it up, and give it away. My heart sank. I felt so selfish, because I really didn’t want to give anything away. The things in my room were my prized possessions and the last thing I wanted to do was give it to some girl I didn’t even know.

Well, long story short, the adults in the room convinced me that we were so blessed and had so many things; the least I could do is share “something” with her. I went to my room in search of something I could easily give up. I was considering things like, old stuffed animals, opened fingernail polish that I didn’t use anymore, a picture hanging on my wall that I was ready to take down anyway, and a pen holder from off my desk. But then my heart softened and I considered for a moment what the savior would want me to do. I left my room with my FAVORITE jewelry box under my arm and marched straight to the living room to wrap it before I changed my mind.

When we showed up at the family’s home to deliver their Christmas to them, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was in total disbelief at what I saw. The mom and dad with several small kids were in a house that had absolutely NOTHING in it. No furniture, no microwave, no tree, no toys. NOTHING. My heart sank for them. I saw the surprise in their faces when we poured through the door with armloads of gifts, a decorated tree with lights, and food. I could feel their appreciation; they looked at us like we had saved their lives, like we were their “Saviors” for this tough season of their life. My heart swelled in ways that I have never forgotten. It is hard to describe in words, what an experience like this will do to ones heart, but to this day its brings tears to my eyes thinking about how special that evening was for me. At that moment, I was so grateful that I gave this girl the most prized possession that I had in my room at the time. My favorite jewelry box. I was so glad I listened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in choosing what gift to give. Can you imagine how rotten I would have felt if I had chosen to give her a half empty tube of chap stick or a half ripped poster of “New Kids On The Block” from off my wall? My thoughts were full of gratitude to God for this experience. All I could think from that time on is “what else can I give away”, “how else can I help families like that”, “what can I do to have those special feelings again and again”? It definitely taught me that Christmas is about the spirit of giving and of doing to others as Christ would want you to do.

Dan and I work so hard to keep the true meaning of Christmas in all we do around the holiday season. We hope our children understand it and learn to love it for the Christlike Love that can and should really shine though this time of year.

Cooking with a 2 year old

Tonight Hudson wanted to help with dinner. Sure... Great... I thought, I need to involve the kids more and teach them as I work around the home. I usually just want to send the kids outside and tackle the house chores or family projects on my own because involving kids usually leads to frustration on my part. I like things done RIGHT, and QUICKLY, and WITHOUT DRAMA OR PROBLEMS.

Dan usually has the patience to deal with the kids while doing household chores. But me....Not So Much.

Anyway... I thought that this time around I better just let the kid help and use it as a bonding moment for he and I. WHAT WAS I THINKING??!!

I had 3 pots simmering on the stove with different foods going into each. Hudson was anxiously waiting to help with his packets of seasoning and potato mix. While I stepped away from the stove to get the phone....It happened. The helping began and so did my frustration.

Jax took one of the packets of potatoes and ripped the package in half, at full speed, pulling one arm to the left and the other to the right. It was just like in the movies when the item gets ripped apart so hard that nothing but a giant puff of floury cloud envelops the room as the dust flies everywhere. OH MY GOODNESS.....not funny.

I had potato mix spread throughout all of the wrong pots. It contaminated 3 different recipes I had going and as a result of the powder falling on the burners....flames started jumping out of each burner putting me into panic mode and filling our house with that lovely burnt instant potatoes stench that only a mishap like this can produce.

So....super mom comes to the rescue. I clear the pots, stop the fires, fix the food the best I can, and keep my cool with my son, sort of.

But....as I bend down to start sweeping up the mess on the floor at my feet, to my not so happy surprise, here comes another cloud of exploding potatoes over my head and all around me. Oh Yeah.....you guessed it....he wasn't done helping and he thought it was time for that second batch of potatoes to get started. I evidently was taking too long.

Uggggghh!!!!!!!!! Here is the mess AFTER I had already done a bunch of damage control and cleared off the initial mess of pots and fire.

UGH..."You're killing me smalls."

I think I will leave the teaching moments to Dan. At least he chooses his teaching moments more wisely. For instance, when I told him it was his turn to work with the kids on dinner the other day, he showed them the right way to order McDonald's thru the drive thru. The time before that, he showed them the right way to do it at McDonald's in the restaurant. He tells me his next opportunity he will show them how to do it at a Mexican restaurant. He is so good. :)

Borgen Family Christmas Party

Our family had a great time tonight at Aunt Kathy’s house. It’s always fun to get together with the extended family around the holidays. We had a yummy dinner, played “survivor” relay games out in the garage, watched an awesome video made up of everyone's funny family pictures, and then we just hung out and visited. It was sad not having grandma with us this year but great to spend time with grandpa and all of the other family who could attend. Thanks for the fun memories.

Christmas Chorus and Orchestra Performances

Alaina joined the Orchestra back in September, at the start of her 5th grade year. She chose to play the violin and has really been enjoying it. Tonight was her first performance and she did great.

After the orchestra preformed we were able to watch Ky's 4th grade Chorus.

Thanks for a couple of really fun Christmas performances tonight guys!

A new Christmas favorite for the kids this year...

...Holiday Specs!

I found these little 3D type glasses at Lowes a few nights ago and decided to grab a couple for the kids. This is what the label read...

A SURPRISE FOR THE EYES! Holiday Specs holographic lenses mysteriously transform ordinary Christmas lights or any bright point of light into six different magical messages delighting people of all ages.

I didn't actually think they would work that great but decided to give them a try.

Once home we tried them on and this is what we saw....

Here's looking at the tree with the star glasses on...

Looking at the tree with the Snowman glasses on...

These photos were taken by holding the glasses up to the lens of the camera and hoping it would work. Pretty cool huh?!

After trying them out we rushed back to the store to buy them in all 6 kinds.

The real trippy part of using these specks is when you put them on while driving down the road and EVERY tail light, headlight, sign on the buildings, lamppost, or anything else lit up, looks like Santa, Snowmen, Stars, candy canes or some other weird shape. Really cool.

Definitely a family favorite!

2009 Christmas Card

Ostler get together

We didn’t see the Ostler side of the family on Thanksgiving Day so we decided to get together on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I reserved the church gym for the day and we spent a good chunk of our time together working on a service project we are doing together as a family Christmas present this year. Instead of Christmas gifts for each other we decided to make humanitarian aid school kits for less fortunate children in other countries. Our goal was to get 50 school bags sewn today so that when Christmas came we would have them ready to go and be able to stuff them with all of the supplies we had purchased. We were able to get a huge part of them done today thanks to David’s awesome abilities on the serger, Linda and Mom “The sewing Queens”, David manning the iron board (can anyone say “IronMan”), My awesome cutting skills, Dan and David’s speedy hands on turning 100 handles inside out, and last but not least Dad and his ingenious invention, which only took 1 hour to create :) Thanks for all of your back breaking work today guys!

A lot of the boys time was spent turning these 2 foot by 1 inch handles inside out. David was the fastest at it hands down. In the picture above you see Dan and David in a race to see who could do it the fastest. David won by a long shot.

In Dan’s defense he did win in the matchup shown in the pictures below.

Kase didn’t have a chance :)

To keep the kids busy while we worked on the service project, Linda and I set up some fun activities for them to do. We had a movie room, toy room, play dough table, sugar cookies to frost, board games to play, Christmas ornaments to make, coloring pages to color, and chalkboards with chalk. OVERKILL?? I think NOT!! :)

The kids had a blast playing with their cousins today!

After putting all of these pictures together I noticed a reoccurring theme throughout all of them. See if you can guess what I’m talking about.

We finished out our evening with a lasagna dinner that we pot-lucked, and then moved onto the taping of our annual family Nativity video. This has been a fun tradition that David and Linda started a few years ago where we dress the kids up in costumes and video tape them acting out the Nativity Story. It makes for some fun Christmas Eve’s when we get to see the end result of all the taping and editing thanks to David Bruns, our resident video specialist.

It made for a long day. But totally worth it. The memories made will never fade.

Good Times!

Turkey Day Bowling!

We spent Thanksgiving with my parents this year. It’s a Rose tradition to go bowling after eating our big turkey dinner, and before everyone sits down and falls asleep. The kids love it and look forward to this tradition each year. Here’s a few snap shots from today. What Pro’s!

Daddy Daughter Dance

Tonight Dan got to spoil the girls with a daddy daughter dance date. They all got dressed up and went out for a night on the town. Starting with dinner at The Outback, and then it was off to a dance hosted at Kamiakin. The DECA program puts on a daddy daughter dance as a fund raiser and it makes for a perfect venue for some great memories. Dan enjoyed showing the girls a few of his old school dance moves, while the girls enjoyed showing him how to "dip" them. The dancing was fun and the girls can't wait to do it again.

Here's a few pics from their fun night together.

New Moon Pre Release Private Screening Party

Yup, we did it again. To be honest, up until recently, I didn’t actually think we would be hosting another Twilight party this year. The one we did last year was fun, and was truly a hit with all the lady friends we roll with, but I didn’t really anticipate that I would take part in putting another one on. But, as the release of New Moon got closer it was made clear to me that most of the ladies from last year were planning on it and couldn’t wait to see what we would come up with this year.

With some pressure from many of my friends, I got to thinking….what the heck. Let’s make it happen.

My friend Mamie from the Fairchild Movie Theater called to let me know that Summit Entertainment was letting a few groups view the movie New Moon the day before it was actually released and offered that opportunity to us. Can anyone say SWEET!

Jenne made our awesome passes this year. She is a superstar with this kind of stuff and did the most fantastic job we could have imagined.

Jenne, Kathy, and I had a ton of fun emailing all 185 women we invited. We made sure that each email was sent in character. Literally, IN CHARACTER. It was a blast. Once we wrote the email as Bella. Another time we wrote as Charlie. Another was as Jessica. Alice even got her turn to say a few things. We made sure they were full of fun and wit.

We even sent out a quiz asking trivia from the book. Based on answers, we created some prizes for the gals, which added to the fun of the event. Linda made a quilt that was raffled off. It was a hit!

Here are a few of our prize winners. “Come on Down!!!”

Let the show begin!!!

Here are a couple extra special passes Jenne created especially for me.

(I think I may keep this top one around as my motivational weightloss picture:)

Thanks for all of the fun this month ladies, Maybe we’ll see ya again in June when Eclipse is released:)

Girls catch-up weekend

I invited a bunch of girlfriends up to Camp Zarahemla this weekend for a little ladies retreat. The purpose of the trip was to get caught up on unfinished projects and at the same time have fun, unwind and relax up in the mountains. I have done a couple of these kinds of get-a-ways in the past and have totally loved them.

I had to take the back row of seats out of my van to fit all of our crafting stuff, bedding and food for the weekend. We even filled up the car topper on the top of the van.

Usually when our van is packed this full it is because we are packing for a family of 7. The sad truth about this weekend however, is that there was only 2 of us in this car :) Now that’s a whole lot of fun!

After unloading and grabbing a bunk bed :) we wasted no time getting down to business. Everyone broke out their projects and got started. There was a little bit of everything going on… Scrapbooking, coloring FHE lessons, re-touching photos on the computer, sewing, guitar playing, digital scrapbooking, wreath making, knitting, homework, organizing recipes, wooden family blocks, making count down to Christmas candy chains, and a few ladies just read, watched movies, and visited.

We stayed up late and when I got up the next morning this is what I saw out the window next to my bed. YEAH!!!! IT'S SNOWING!!!!

It snowed all day. It was so pretty. I loved being in a cabin, in the mountains, with a fire going, drinking hot chocolate and snow falling all around.

Jenne brought up a couple of camera lenses to play around with and test out. She asked for models and had lots of volunteers. She ended up taking almost everyone out in the snow for their very own photo shoot. All of the pictures turned out great and everyone had a lot of fun posing like a super model.

Here are a few of my favorites.

At the end of the day when we were just about ready for bed I started feeling bad that Jenne had gone out and took all of these pictures of everyone else but she didn’t have any of herself so I grabbed her for a little 1am, impromptu photo shoot of her own. Here are a few of my favorite poses.

WORK IT, JENNE.

The next day was back to work. I was able to start and complete two digital photo books, one for Alaina and one for Hailey. I was also able to make each of them a new blanket. Both of these are Christmas gifts for them this year. After all the hard work, I really hope the girls like these things.

By the 3rd night most of the ladies were ready for a little break from their projects so we finally broke out the games. We all got a little Wacky playing Wacky 6. But the real wacky side of us came through when we combined it with Truth or Dare. Now that was fun!

Here’s a group shot of most of the ladies from this weekend

Thanks for all of the fun memories girls.