Happy Birthday McKay!

Yesterday was McKay's 29th birthday! 30 is going to creep up fast on him :) I've only got 3 1/2 years until I'm there too! My hard working husband didn't get home until after 11 p.m. last night so we weren't able to do much celebrating...hopefully tonight will be better! We love you so much and are so grateful for the wonderful man that you are! I love watching McKay interact with Peyton...he loves his Dad so much! And when McKay is available, he's so willing to take Peyton so I can get out for a bit. Thanks for all you do to make our family so great!

Also...I've been meaning to put a congratulations note on my blog to Barack Obama...our new President. I'm hoping he can get this country on the right track and get us going where we need to be headed. I understand that it's not just his responsibility but all of ours to play a part in keeping our country great! I'm very proud to be an American and love where I live!

I'm also excited because I finished my first blog book yesterday and it should be coming in a few weeks. I'll let you all know how it turns out. It will be nice to have a hard copy (also known as my journal!) I've heard eventually blogs run out of space and you either have to clear it out or start a new one! I don't want to lose all the things I've documented here...what a great family history right!

We've Got A....

Little BOY on the way! I am so excited for Peyton to have a little brother! They are going to be little buddies! Everyone who knows me knows I'm pretty feminine, so it's pretty funny I'm learning all about boys (and will soon be outnumbered 3-1 at my house...) but it's great! I will take healthy and happy children any day!

Baby Boy Erk #2 looks great...is strong and healthy and is measuring 5 days ahead of his original due date! Looks like I'll probably have a May baby! Because I've been pretty sick I kept saying if it was a girl it would be two kids for quite awhile...now that it's a boy it will motivate me for #3 thinking that maybe the girl will be coming...but if heaven decides I'm suppose to be a mother of all boys, I'll take it too! I'm just grateful to be able to carry children and have them develop healthy! I took a few pics of the ultrasound pics (I'm too lazy to scan them in!)














His profile















The 3D pic of his little crossed legs (I'm glad he uncrossed them for a bit so we could see what he is!)

I've always loved the name Chase so we'll see what happens in the name discussions!

Best Age or Worst Age?

I can't decide if Peyton is in my favorite stage or worst stage as a mother. He does and says the funniest and cutest things, but he can be such a little tornado sometimes too! Of course we love him the same no matter what...it just makes my job a little harder sometimes. Here are some funny things he's done/said lately...

I was getting ready for church on Sunday and had just finished getting dressed. Peyton comes walking by me in the bathroom and says "Coot (cute) Jacket"

McKay has his deer head sitting in our bedroom until we find a better place for it. Well, it's actually just the antlers and a paper mache type head. (The man who was working on it actually died! Sad!) Anyway, Peyt lays on the nose of the deer and says, "Aw...Puppy!"

Whenever something crazy/funny/weird happens to one of us or on T.V. he says "Oh My Gosh" Another favorite is "Goodness Sakes"

He repeats the ABC's with me and when he gets to Q he says "Coot"

I had to get a few of these things down so I don't forget! I love Peyton so much. He's such an awesome little boy!

It Leaves as Quick as it Comes

The best time to be pregnant is in December. It's the fastest month of the year and before you know it you're a month further into your pregnancy. That's the only good thing I can say about December being over. It was a sad day last week to take the Christmas decorations down. My house feels EMPTY. I'll be over it in a few weeks I guess.

We had a great holiday season. Other than our camera decided to act up and only work sometimes. So we didn't get a whole lot of great pictures, but enough to remember the year. We have been SO busy in December I've decided I'm not going much of anywhere in January. So if you'd like to see me come visit!

I want to thank our families SO much for the great Christmas you provided for us. We were spoiled again (too bad I have to say this every year :) The best part was the time we were able to spend with everyone. I love it...it should be more a focus throughout the year to get together! I got my beloved Wii and it's as fun as I thought it would be. I really enjoy it. McKay also spoiled me with a laptop which we've been needing so it was a very nice surprise. Peyton has a whole fleet of cars now and enjoys his slide. Porter came over to play and the two of them went down it at least 50 times each. I'm glad we bought it :)

I'm really hoping for a great year in 2009. First and foremost I pray that this baby comes healthy and strong...a little active firecracker just like Peyton. What a blessing to be a mother. We'll be finding out on January 15th what this little sweetie is. I can't wait.

I hope this year brings lots of happiness to you too and if it doesn't...I hope you're given the strength to endure it well (as I hope I am as well :) Thanks to all of you who take time to read updates on our lives in our little corner of the world. I love to read about your lives too and see how you are doing. Blogs are one of the greatest inventions!

Anyway...enough of my rambling. Here's a little recap of Christmas in pictures.














So I guess Santa is a great person as long as you don't have to sit on his lap




















This is how Peyton plays with his cars...loves to carry at least five around at a time...using his chin as an extra hand!




















Christmas Eve at the Ercanbracks. My parents treated us earlier that evening to Outback! Thank you!















One of the many cars he opened Christmas morning.















The slide became a better gift a few days after Christmas. That day he just drove his cars down it!




















McKay and I have a picture in front of my parents Christmas tree every year from the time we started dating! So of course we had to attempt a photo, but Peyton didn't really want to. Oh well! I found the cutest Christmas shirt for 6 bucks. It's an old fashioned Santa and reindeer.

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!