Help me!

This is a cry for help to all my crafty and color coordinated friends out there! Dave claims I'm "nesting", but for whatever reason I am feeling an uncontrollable urge to redecorate our nursery (yes I realize the baby won't even use it for the first three months) as well as Ellie's room. Here's the deal. Right now in Ellie's room she has yellow furniture with green accents- I think it's pretty but it doesn't go with her periwinkle blue walls. So, we bought some very old dressers that I want to paint white and replace the handles to update and put in Ellie's room. Periwinkle and white, pretty, right? However, that leaves the yellow and green furniture for the baby's room. Not a problem you say? Well, it is. Her room currently is a bright baby blue. So, do I (Dave) repaint the baby's room? What color? If I had more white furniture I would just keep it blue and add pink accents, but I don't really want to repaint the yellow furniture. Every day I change my mind on what I should do so if anyone has any recommendations, that would be great!

Christmas 2009

Well, what a great Christmas! We went up to Utah for Christmas again this year-it's hard not too when ALL our family's there. We started things off with a Hardin (my side of the family) Family Reunion. I was "in charge" of the planning for this reunion so I really was hoping it would go smoothly. Dave, Ellie, and I flew out to Salt Lake City, got to visit with his parents for a few hours (thanks for dinner!) and then got picked up by my parents to drive up to Island Park, ID where we were having our reunion. My parents have a 12 passenger van. They also have 10 kids. 5 of which are married. And 7 grandkids. And Toshi. And Eric and Kellie. Most of whom were in the car. Actually, we only had 12 people in the van, but they all had stuff. Food to feed 30 for 2 weeks, winter gear, clothes, toiletries, and a keyboard. And a violin. And a guitar. And a drum set (well, only one drum.) And about 20 ipods/laptops/electronic devices we can't live without for 3 days. So it was very crowded. Poor Dave was one-cheeking it off the edge of his seat pretty much the whole way.

We made it there in one piece and had a great time playing in the snow, hot-tubbing, eating great food, and hanging out together. We had a fun and goofy talent show in the great Christiansen tradition as well as a devotional and testimony meeting on Sunday that was really special. We also got to be there for my brother Matthew opening his mission call- Philippines Cebu Mission!



It was a great time together with the family and made me realize how blessed we are to be part of a family that loves each other and enjoys being together.

After the reunion we went back to Provo and spent a few more days with my family. We got to go "extreme sledding," a family tradition where you tie the sleds on long ropes to the back of the van and drive up and down a snowy road in the mountains. It is a blast! I couldn't do it this year because of the pregnancy, but Dave and Ellie had a great time. Ellie especially couldn't get enough of the snow and the sledding.


We had a great Christmas morning and brunch with my family, then it was off to spend a week with Dave's family.




We had a great week with Dave's family. Dave got to see some of the movies he wanted to see with his family, Ellie did buckets full of craft projects with the supplies Grandma and Grandpa got her for Christmas, and I got a massage! Yea! We also had a couple of very entertaining game nights together. A highlight of the trip for Ellie was going to the ice rink and having her Aunt Jessica and Uncle Steve and John teach her how to ice skate.

Ellie got really frustrated in the beginning because she just wanted to be able to skate really fast and obviously couldn't since this was the first time she's ever been ice skating. Jessica, Steve, and John were really patient with her and actually had her skating short distances by herself after a few hours! She was so proud of herself and had such a good time.

It was a great Christmas vacation! We appreciate both our families going out of their way to make sure we were comfortable and helping with transportation, etc. We love you all!

Girls

So on the last day of my vacation in Utah, I woke up in the morning and took care of Ellie while my parent's house was still quiet and the rest of the family was all still sleeping. After a little while she came up beside me and hugged my leg. Then she started whimpering and saying that she was going to miss me. I was going to fly home that evening and she and Charity were going to come home two days later. This whole scene made me feel bad that I was going to be apart from her. It was hard to look at the beginnings of tears in her eyes. Then as she was still "performing", she looks up at me with those eyes and said "Daddy, maybe if you gave me a gift card that would help." At this point of stunned unbelief, I couldn't help but start laughing. She had recently gotten a gift card to Toys R' Us from a friend of mine and now associates gift cards with getting toys. I just had to write this down since it was 0ne of the funnier things that have happened to me. Happy New Year to all.
-DZ-