YoU'rE iT

*PS - Friends and Family...there is a new post with pictures from yesterday, but I've been wanting to do this so just scroll down to see it!

I haven't seen a Christmas Tag at all, so I thought I'd start one! I wanted to write a few of my Christmas favorites down and want to hear from you too! If you have a link to your blog on my page, or if you just visit and I haven't linked to you yet...YOU'RE IT! Can't wait to hear what you LOVE about CHRISTMAS!

My 12 Things at Christmas...

12. Best Childhood Gift - Super Nintendo for the family or four story barbie house with elevator

11. Favorite Christmas Song (traditional and on your current CD) - Hark the Herald Angels Sing and "Believe" by Josh Groban

10. Favorite Christmas Treat - Butter Toffee

9. Favorite Christmas Movie - New version of Miracle on 34th Street and Home Alone

8. Favorite Tradition Growing Up - Staying home all day with my family and enjoying our new presents!

7. Favorite Place to Buy Presents - Target

6. Favorite Current Tradition - Christmas morning with our little family...having a child makes Christmas so awesome!

5. Open Presents: Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning - Christmas Morning

4. Time You Wake Up Christmas Morning - When Peyton gets up

3. Favorite Hot Chocolate Flavor - Peppermint

2. Best Gift You've Given - I loved the Greg Olsen painting we gave both sets of parents the Christmas before we had Peyton. It's the one of the little boy sitting by the Savior looking up at him.

1. One Christmas Wish this Year - A healthy baby! And a Wii :)

Merry Christmas!

Holiday Fun

Oh MY...this last week was so busy and this week will not disappoint either. Here is a list of last week's events (with pictures).

Well, I forgot to take a picture at the Kurt Bestor concert, but it was awesome. We went with Davy and Lisa for a great evening out. Thanks Mom and Dad for watching Peyt!

My Grandpa and Grandma Johnson have been in town the past few days so we've been able to spend some time with them! We had dinner together Wed. night at Thanksgiving Pointe, and then they took us to California Pizza Kitchen Friday night! Fun times.

Saturday night McKay and I were able to go up to SL and eat at the Roof. I've never been there during Christmas and it was an AWESOME view from the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The snow was lightly falling and it was beautiful! Thanks AGAIN Mom and Dad for watching Peyton!





























Yesterday we had our annual Christmas shopping trip with my Grandpa Johnson. So fun! My cousin Ryan (tallest boy...but not Jack) will be leaving on his mission on Wednesday! Best of luck to him! Peyt got two Cars toys (50 percent off at Disney store...yeah!) And I got a really cute winter coat from Gap. We all ended up at California Pizza Kitchen again for dinner! Thanks for a great afternoon Grandpa! We followed last night up with a dinner at our house for all of McKay's team members from work. I was happy with how it turned out...you can never go wrong with ham and funeral potatoes!















Last night we had a great snow storm so today was the perfect day to try out the new sled! I think Peyt really liked it. I am really BUGGED though because I can't find his nice Gap warm coat...and I REALLY don't want to buy another one. I hope it's just hidden at my Mom's house. I also have a video of this which will be posted at the bottom of this long post :)















Peyt doesn't care what the temp is outside. He just LOVES being outside.




















And finally, per a few requests, here is a few pictures of our Christmas tree. I really love it and I'm so glad we did the tall one. It fits perfectly in our tall room. I'm so grateful for this time of year. It makes me SO happy!







































As for the rest of this week, we'll continue to have lots of fun things! Tomorrow night we get to go to the Voicemail concert, followed by my 16 wk appt. at the doctors!, Erks coming over Friday night and the Shoell family party and fancy Prosper party up at Grand America Saturday! Whew! More pictures to come!

Festival of Trees

I think the Festival of Trees is becoming a tradition with my Mom and sister. I love going every year so it's great by me. I'm not so sure about Peyton on the other hand. He tolerated it for about 20 minutes and then wanted to go. At least he got Pei Wei's Honey Chicken out of the deal :) Here were some of my favorites...




















Ode to High School Musical




















I would have bought this tree and awesome Santa if I had money to spend there. It was awesome. My tree has these colors in it so maybe that's why I was drawn to it...and that Santa was so cool.





















Twilight tree!




















This was the sweetest little princess tree. There was a picture of a darling little girl by it but no story to go with it. I hope she was one of the survivors...The top of this tree was so incredible but I didn't want to post TOO many pictures.




















Very inventive golf tree




















Because Peyton had enough, I forgot to take a picture with everyone! So one of him in the car will have to do! I had a great night Mom and Chels! Thanks! We're off to the BYU/Utah State game tonight and Monday night we get to hear Kurt Bestor! Fun things ahead!

Elder Wirthlin

I will miss hearing from this apostle at General Conference. I always looked forward to hearing him speak. He always had a special phrase or story that sticks with me long after conference is gone...one of the most recent I loved is "Sunday will come..." and his most recent talk where he told the story of his daughter mistaking her date for her little sister's babysitting job :) I know he is so happy with his wife, but he will be missed!

Delicious Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was wonderful as always. We get two dinners each year...turkied out! We started in the afternoon with the Ercanbracks at the big Ercanbrack Thanksgiving. There are a lot of Ercanbracks because Wayne comes from a family of seven siblings and each of them had 4-7 kids each! We really don't see them too often besides the every other year Thanksgiving so it was good to be there.





























Loving his dinner!















Next it was off to the Neigers for the evening. Duh...I forgot to take a picture of the delicious dinner, but this is our usual hang out spot after dinner. We play Aggravation (a marble game) with my family quite a bit. Boys against girls and the boys won out this time.














My Mom and I took Peyt on a walk around our neighborhood. Behind our house there is a culdesac with just a few houses in it. Two of the houses totally deck the halls. They should win awards for all the work they do! I love going around to their homes and looking at them every year!














Up the street another one of our neighbors puts a huge display in their living room and opens up their big windows. It's so neat! She has a different theme each year and it was Santa on a four wheeler this year. They've gone so far as to put Santa on a helicopter one year!















After being completely stuffed, we rolled on home, put Peyt to bed and rented Hancock...OK to see once rented from Redbox. It was a great day!

This weekend we've put Christmas decorations up! I love how my house looks with all the decorations. I am going to enjoy December so much! Happy Holidays!

Liked Twilight

I've heard so many mixed emotions about Twilight. I went into it with NO expectations and was pleasantly surprised. We had a huge group from our ward go and it was a lot of fun. The movie left me wanting to see New Moon so I would say it was pretty good. I would tell you to see it if you haven't yet. It also made me excited for a chic flick about competing brides coming out in Jan. There are are least 8 or 9 movies coming out that I want to see!

I want to wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving. I am excited to spend the day with both of our families. I'll miss my family who is out of town, but we will be thinking about you and love you! And no I am not going shopping on Black Friday. My Mom and I went up to Park City today and I got some shopping done...I'll wait to finish on a weekday around 3 p.m. Hope you have fun if you go though!

Picture overload coming

Part of the reason I have this blog is to keep my wonderful grandparents who live out of state updated on the life of Peyton. As you can tell from my blog this hasn't really happened lately. I've been laying around feeling sorry for myself that I am sick and haven't been LIVING. So yesterday I became determined...sick or not...to get up and get things done each day. Things may or may not change for the next 5 and a half months, but at least my attitude can!

We have LOTS of fun things coming up starting Thursday and well into the beginning of the year. You will be seeing many pictures to come and many memories made at the Ercanbrack household. I am really looking forward to this holiday season...really...

The only sad note to the beginning of it all is that the beloved BYU football team lost. There's always next year at home I guess. Can't win them all at the last second right :) And the Jazz lost a last second game last night...nothing I dislike more!

Today I'm going to gear up and find a few finishing touches for my Christmas decorating. It's all going up Friday! Yeah! And I get to see Twilight tonight (I think I'm one of the last women on the planet to see it though). I'll give you my review tomorrow.

Deck the Halls

So we found a tree. And not the 9 foot tree I was dreaming of...no no no. This is a 12 FOOT TREE! I am so excited! It pays to bring your loving husband along who convinces you that it's OK to get the much larger tree because it will look so much better in our two-story family room! So yeah for Christmas. I just hope I have enough decorations this year to fill it enough. Oh and one more perk...it's pre-lit! If you are in the market for a tree this year, we bought it at Taipan...they have a 25 percent off coupon on any Christmas item and trees are included! We saved a ton of money!

ALSO...I am on the lookout for the 20 percent off coupon for Toys R Us. It came in the holiday gift book which I DIDN'T GET! Sad day. We are buying the big kid Little Tikes slide for Peyton for Christmas and I'd love to save some money on it. If you aren't planning on using your coupon and have one, let me know!

AND ONE MORE THING...I am still yucky sick and I'm trying to figure out how to help myself...Things not working so far: Unisom and B6 and Prevacid. I think Zofran is my next step and I don't know what the next steps are after that. I really just need to feel good for the holidays! ANY SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME!

Love you all!

Is it that time again already?

I am SO looking forward to the holiday season. I really think there's not much I love more than a home filled with Christmas decorations. I am THRILLED to have a high ceiling and room this year to put up a big Christmas tree! I bought a round of decorations soon after my birthday (I know...a little excited :) and I just need one more round probably and it will be ready to go! My house is pretty much ready the day after Thanksgiving. I LOVE IT! Now if I can only teach Peyton to leave it alone...that will be the challenge this year.

Also, can't believe it's time already for baby #2. Will be born end of May/first of June! (Due date is June 4th but if I'm given the option to be induced at 39 weeks, I'm taking it!) Aside from being sick, we are so excited and can't wait for a brother or sister to join Peyton.

Happy Halloween

I love thinking of fun things to dress Peyton up in. I better enjoy it while he doesn't have an opinion.




















Little Peyton Manning















Peyt's little cheerleader Addie. Jessica made Peyt's cute football pants for me and her little baby Eliza also had a darling cheer outfit on that matched her sister. So talented!
















Kids minus Peyt. He always seems to be sad at the Halloween party! These girls are all so cute though!
















Our visit to Dad's work on Halloween. These two cute boys aren't too far apart from Peyton.















The cousins at Grandma and Grandpa Shoell's.

Hope you had a great day too! We had SO many trick or treaters I couldn't believe it. So much fun to see all of them though!