Christmas

Each year Santa comes to my parent's house on Christmas Eve. Most kids are terrified of Santa but not Bailey. She couldn't get enough of him and she just had to have his glasses.

and touch his beard...

and she had a list a mile long. (pretty impressive for a 9 month old.)

Bailey had a pretty good first Christmas.

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween this year. We painted and carved pumpkins, had a halloween party at Sue's, did a little trick or treating to Grandma and Grandpa's house and of course watched Hocus Pocus.

Our cute little ladybug.

Baths, Pigtails and Father's Day

I finally downloaded some pictures from our camera so I thought I'd put up some cute pics of Bailey. She gets more and more personality everyday and it's so funny how much she loves her baths! She gets so excited and kicks her legs the whole time.





We tried some pigtails one day and they were cute. She reminded us of Boo from Monster's Inc.


This year Dave got to celebrate his first Father's Day. Our ward had the Primary kids decorate some material in the shape of ties. They passed them out before Sacrament Meeting and all the father's wore them throughout church. It was really cute.

Happy Easter!

Bailey's first Easter.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas...

Last week was Thanksgiving. Dave and I both took Wednesday off from work so we basically had 4 Saturdays in a row and we loved every second of it! Some of last week's highlights...


- Thanksgiving dinner (specifically: mashed potatoes and gravy).

- Spending time with my whole family.

- Black Friday shopping with my sisters.

- Watching the BYU v. Utah Game (I may have worn a red U shirt but my heart was with BYU).

- Watching the beautiful snow and not having to drive in it.

- Decorating our little apartment for Christmas.


and my very favorite part of the weekend:


Snuggling up to my hubby while we ate an entire loaf of poppyseed bread and watched this:

Coconut Cream Pie

Each year for Christmas my mom asks me to make the pies. I usually try to make a new kind each year but the Coconut Cream is a staple. My Uncle and his family come over every Christmas for pie and this one happens to be Uncle Clarke's favorite. I tried a new recipe this time and he asked me to post it here... enjoy!

Coconut Cream Pie

1 can coconut milk

Half-and-half or heavy cream (enough to add to the coconut milk to make 3 cups)

3 egg yolks

¾ cup white sugar

1/3 cup cornstarch

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup flaked coconut, toasted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon coconut extract

Whipped Cream

In a medium saucepan, combine half and half, coconut milk, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch and salt. Bring to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring constantly. Mixture will become very thick. Remove from heat, and stir in ¾ cup of the toasted coconut, coconut extract and the vanilla extract. Pour into baked and cooled pie shell and chill 2-4 hours or until firm. Top with whipped cream and the remaining ¼ cup of toasted coconut.

I got this recipe from www.mykitchencafe.blogspot.com and tweeked it just a little. I love this recipe blog!

October

October is over (sigh of relief). Between a broken leg, surgery, an appendectomy, a sprained ankle/hairline fracture (we don't know, Sue won't go to the doctor) and massive blood clots in the lungs all I can say is thank heavens October is over! The Bradshaw's can't take anymore!

Sue looks a little stressed in this picture... little did she know that her opportunity to be on crutches was about 2 weeks away!


We spent a few hours in the ER. Dave and Tom found ways to entertain themselves.

We love 30 Rock! It's so darn cleaver and it's no drama... just pure comedy. Now I will admit, I was never a fan of Alec Baldwin (besides Beetlejuice) until now... he's awesome. My friend Connie hosted a 30 Rock party at her house and we all made hats (in honor of Frank) and Dave's hat won! It was so clever! Thanks Connie for such a fun party!

The next day was Sue's birthday and we all know that Sue has Diet Pepsi that runs through her veins, so I thought I would make her a Pepsi cake.

Dave loves to carve pumpkins. I haven't carved a pumpkin since I was little. We always just painted them because they lasted longer. In fact, I had a pumpkin last year that stayed on my front porch through December. Dave finally ended up carving it for me with a Merry Christmas message (that's a story for another time). So we decided to be festive and carved pumpkins this year. Mine is the creature on the left and Dave's is the awesome castle with the ghost in it on the right. We got so caught up in carving that we forgot about the roasting pumpkin seeds in the oven. The next thing we knew, there were large orange flames in the oven. Whoops, next time we'll have to keep a better eye on them!


We decided to go on a Sunday walk through Mueller Park Canyon and enjoy the changing leaves. Aren't they beautiful? I was nervous we'd run into a mountain lion (someone already did that this year) or rattle snakes. Dave told me that he had never seen a snake up there before. Well, there's a first time for everything because we saw one! Well, I saw it, screamed and that was the end of our walk... we hightailed it out of there!

Labor Day... A Little Late

For Labor Day this year Dave and I decided to use up what was left of the warm weather and go camping. We found a cute spot up Logan Canyon by Tony Grove and it was beautiful! We had such a great time. We set up "Hotel Carlson" (aka, the air mattress), made a fire and cooked tin foil dinners. They were delicious!

Not sure if flip flops were the best idea when using a hatchet...

But everything turned out alright... all toes are accounted for.

The next day we went up to Bear Lake and visited the little shops and of course went to La Beau's for a raspberry shake!

We came across this in a gas station/ gift shop... We weren't quite sure what to think of it. I told Dave it might be a good idea to get a tetanus shot after touching that... gross!

Later that weekend Scott invited us up to his cabin by Sundance. This cabin is in the cutest little gated community. We played games, went boating, played on swingset and floated the Provo River. I didn't get any pictures of the river but that was definitely the highlight... Let's just say that after boating and floating the river Sue was done with water sports for the day. She may or may not have fallen in the lake by accident...twice, ran into a tree on the river and lost her shoes, flipped her tube and crashed into an innocent bystander (apologetically of course, before and after she hit him) who had lost his tube on the river... all very good reasons to have a camera ready.

This is one of my favorite pictures. Sometimes you just need to play on the playground...