Dancing with the Stars!!

My birthday is on Dec. 27th, and my little sister's is on the 29th, so my mom got us tickets to the dancing with the stars tour for our birthdays! We went last night, and it was so awesome! Almost all of the professional dancers from the show were there, and they had Toni Braxton, Marlee Matlin, Maurice Greene, and Lance Bass. The music and dancing were incredible - Michelle and I had such a fun time! It was my first time leaving Rachel for longer than an hour. My mom also came up and babysat the girls until Jason got home from work, which was so nice!

Happy Birthday to ME

I'm officially 29 now... the last year of youth... I had a really fun birthday. Jason took me out for sushi for lunch, and it was really excellent. My favorite is the caterpillar roll, which has eel, cucumber, and shrimp rolled in rice, wrapped in seaweed, rolled in more rice, and wrapped in thin slices of avocado with sweet sesame oil drizzled over the top. We also had a tuna roll, which was just tuna, rice, and seaweed; and also a spider roll which was softshell tempura crab rolled in rice and rolled in soy paper. If you've never tried sushi, you really should. It's so delicious! My family came up to our house for dinner, and we had linguine and shrimp with lemon oil and chocolate orange mascarpone cake. (Both recipes for those are on my recipe blog - http://sarahsfavrecipies.blogspot.com) Then I opened my presents. I got some great new books, the movie Mama Mia, some new clothes, a completely awesome 90's mix CD - boy it takes me back - and the best of all - tickets to the Dancing with the Stars Live Tour at the e center on the 30th!! My sisters and I had a lot of fun dancing to my 90's CD. We taught Lizzy the macarena. It was SO cute! Lizzy sang happy birthday to me, too - it was the sweetest thing ever! I hope you all get to have a birthday as fun as I did someday!!

Merry Christmas!

We had a really wonderful Christmas! On Christmas Eve, we had most of Jason's family over for dinner and presents. There were 37 people here at the house, and LOTS of food. I bought a honeybaked ham, and made parmesan and black pepper mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. Jason's brothers and sisters and parents brought sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, jello salad, rolls, pies, and drinks. On Christmas morning, I made Jason's favorite German puffed pancakes with sausage and an orange sauce. We opened presents with the girls, and then headed over to my mom's house. We opened presents with my mom and sisters, and then my mom and I cooked a terrific Christmas dinner. We made a maple brined pork tenderloin roast, steamed artichokes with hollandaise sauce, oven roasted fingerling potatoes, cantelope wrapped in prosciutto, and spring salad with raspberry vinaigrette, bleu cheese crumbles, and candied walnuts. After that, we went to my dad's house and opened MORE presents. Then we headed home in the early evening to keep ahead of the terrible storm that was forecasted to hit. The snow hit just as we were pulling in to our neighborhood. It was a really fun holiday!

Happy Anniversary!

Jason and I celebrated our 8th anniversary yesterday (the 20th). Jason had a beautiful bouquet of sugar plum lilies sent to me, and we went to the melting pot for dinner. (Thanks mom for babysitting!) We had a cheese fondue that was a blend of butterkase, fontina, and bleu cheeese, served with apples, vegetables, and bread cubes. Then we had salads, and for dessert we had chocolate turtle fondue - a chocolate, caramel, and pecan fondue with marshmallows, bananas, strawberries, rice crispy treats, pound cake, and cheesecake for dipping. It was all so delicious! I can't believe we've been married 8 years! I always thought that couples who were married for this long were old, but I still feel like we're just starting our lives - probably because our kids are so young. Imagine - we could have a 7 year old if we hadn't waited for Jason to finish school! Yikes! I don't feel old enough to have a 7 year old, though! My birthday is in 6 days, and I'll be 29... sigh... the last year of youth! :) Poor Jason is already 30 - over the hill!! Personally, I still feel 20 - it's weird to think of myself as a grown up woman. Do we ever get to the point where we feel completely mature and confident? Or do we always feel like kids inside? I guess this is why we always have a need for our Heavenly Father! Especially at this time of year, I feel so grateful for my Father in Heaven, and for Jesus Christ and the sacrifice He made for us. I hope this Christmas will be a wonderful one for all of you, my family and friends. Love, Sarah.

First Time Sledding!

Since we had a nice snowfall today, and we had recently bought a snowsuit and snowboots for Lizzy, I decided to take the girls across the street to the empty lot and try out sledding! The lot is like a shallow bowl, and bunches of kids were over there sledding down. It's perfect because you slide down into the middle of the lot, and not onto a street or something. And it's very shallow and small, so it's not scary for little first timers. Even so, I was worried that Lizzy would think it was scary. We watched the other kids go down for a little bit, and then Lizzy said she wanted to try, so we borrowed another kids' sled and Lizzy went down. She loved it! She went down a bunch of times, and then I decided we should go in, because even though I bundled Rachel up in about 50 layers, I still worried about her getting cold. Lizzy did NOT want to come inside! I had to drag her back across the street and into the house. She's still mad at me, and wants to go back out! We've got to get her a sled - I have a feeling we'll be over there sledding a lot this winter!

Santa!

I took Lizzy to the mall to meet Santa today. She was not scared at all. She sat on his lap and told him she wanted a coloring book for Christmas. She even said "Merry Christmas" to him! It was so cute!