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.

Veteran's Day Program and D.A.R.E. Graduation

A lot going on over at Ridgeview Elementary today.

This morning at 10:00am Alaina graduated from the D.A.R.E. program along with the rest of her 5th grade class. Alaina has been coming home all month informing us of new facts she's learned from Officer Meyer about drugs and how bad they are for our bodies. Mom,"Did you know that 400,000 people die each year from smoking cigarettes and that another 3,000 innocent people die each year due to second hand smoke?" "Did you know that there is tar in cigarettes? Tar? Like the stuff they make roads with???" "YUCK" "Just Say NO!"

Congrats Alaina!

Ky and the rest of the 4th grade chorus performed in two Veteran's Day performances today, he even had a small speaking part. The funny part of the program, as always is watching all the antics going on in the bleachers. Ky and his trouble making buddy made for some nice comic relief at dead center, top row. Guess that's what being in 4th grade is all about huh? Great Job Ky!