Bergeson Family Fotos

Here are our family pictures for this year. . .

Thanks, Jamie! We love them!
You can see more of Jamie's work at accidentallycreative.blogspot.com.

Polar Express Trip 2009

THE POLAR EXPRESS

This year we decided we would give the Polar Express a try. We headed to Flagstaff with the Hill Family.

What, no Raegan? She refused to have her picture taken. Just a little glimpse into what the trip was like (and we'll just leave it at that).

Here are the Hill's. Happy and ready to ride the train.

Jonathan was all bundled up and ready for the cold. And COLD it was. There was a LOT of snow. We went sledding the next day.

So happy to be on the Polar Express!

Daddy and Jonathan

Singing Christmas carols. Oh, wait. Maybe she's saying, "Noooooooooo! Don't take my picture!"

Yummy chocolate chips cookies were passed out on our way to the North Pole

as well as some hot, hot, hot, hot chocolate.



Guess who boarded the train at the North Pole? Boy did her attitude change when she saw him!



Santa gave each of the kiddos a bell.

Jonathan LOVED his.



And, of course, Raegan did, too. :)



Hangin' out at the Little America. What a beautiful place! They had beautiful lights all over in the trees. We wished we had spent more time around the hotel area.

"Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me as it does for all who truly believe."

Do you believe?

My 40th Birthday--The Best One So Far

What a fabulous day! It couldn't have been better!

I started off the day by picking up my niece and nephew (Macey and Nicholas) and headed to Krispy Kreme donuts with my beautiful daughter for my free dozen. YUM. (Out of the 12, I think I had 5.) Macey presented me with a beautiful portrait and Nicholas a necklace with a poem "To Jennifer. You shin more then the moon. I love you Deaer Jennifer I really do!" OK, so if that didn't make my WHOLE day! I cry every time I read it. What sweet children.


For lunch, I headed to Bertha's Cafe (my favorite place for lunch) and ate with my mom, my three sisters, Jane and Sonja. I had an asparagus and havarti panini with chicken and a roasted red pepper and goat cheese salad. Everything there is fresh and homemade. It is DELICIOUS!

After that, we headed back to get ready for the BIG BASH. So many people came to help me celebrate. I felt so loved! I especially appreciated those who came long distances just for my big day. Thank you Heather, Jane and Dana! I have such amazing friends. I am so blessed!


Friday night Blake came home with five bouquets of flowers. Sonja combined them into two vases for a beautiful splash of color. I LOVE flowers, and Blake knows that. :) I am so spoiled!

Getting all of the food ready--that was my mom's department. She is definitely the hostess with the mostest. And, as you will see in the pictures that follow, she can get down with the best of them. There was a TON of food--all of it fabulous. My mom knows how to throw a good party! (My wedding reception was KILLER thanks to her--of course, I deserved it. :)

Julie, Ryan and I
So hard to believe I'm forty!

We had fun things to do-Rock Band, ping pong, pool, air hockey and a home theater.
Here is Dana (the most yellow person I know) rockin' out.

So sad Jonathan and Raegan couldn't stay for the party. Wait--who was sad? Not me! :) Blake took the kids home (THANK YOU) and put Jonathan to bed while I warmed up my moves.

Ready to GET DOWN

Did I say I just wanted to dance for my birthday? Yep. And that's what I did for two and a half hours. I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!

This is the second time in my life I have seen my father dance. The first time was at my wedding reception.

John and Sonja are pro's.

Alisha and Julie. Julie only danced to one song--that would be ABBA's "Dancing Queen." She just couldn't resist it.

Here's Jane, my BFF from high school, my Duran Duran buddie and eternal friend. She flew down from Utah just to help me celebrate and danced with me the whole night. Jane--we look FABULOUS for forty an' we still got it! LOVE YOU!

Here's d.j. Tim. He did a WONDERFUL job (in spite of the various power outages throughout the evening--at least it gave me time to rest). If you need a great d.j., just let me know. Worth every penny!

One of my "fab four" friends, Sheila, and I. All four of them were there, but we did not get a picture of us all together--darn it.

April, Ryan and Ayden

Not sure what Blake did on these few pictures, but they sure look cool. . .

Dana and Amy's duet. Jane, Serena (another of the "fab four") and I on background vocals. If I'm not mistaken, we were singing to Bon Jovi's "Livin on a Prayer."

No doubt this was a Duran Duran number. (Jane and I singing every word and no one else really caring. . .)

Blake and I dancing. It kinda looks like I'm shouting at him. . . Hopefully I'm just singing here. :)

This is a great shot of my sweaty head. I got up the next morning and got on the scale. I had lost two pounds! Of course, it was all sweat, and after drinking some water, I gained those two pounds back. Blake tells me he made a fool of himself dancing, but he was the only one who thought so. I think he looks DARLING. Like I always say, he is a perfect husband. And I mean it!

And here is my almost 70 year old mother boogieing with the best of 'em. And people wonder where I get all of my energy from. . .

Jen and Larry. You are BOMB, Larry! Love you!

All the single ladies
All the single ladies
All the single ladies
All the single ladies
Now put your hands up!
(OK, so I'm not single, and neither is Renee, but Dana and Julie are. And aren't they beautiful? What's wrong with all the men out there?!!)

A little salsa with my Creighton friends. Let me just interject here with this: I have the BEST co-workers EVER. Honestly. They have been so supportive of me and my family for the last fourteen years. I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know what I will do when I am no longer a part of the Creighton Family. Hopefully that won't happen for awhile.

And speaking of the BEST, here is my best friend, Heather, dancing with my sister Julie. I couldn't ask for a better friend or a better sister!

Spencer and Alisha

Cori and Daniel

Jane and I trying to find the perfect Duran Duran song to karaoke to. We finally found "Planet Earth." It was actually a video, and neither Jane nor I had ever seen it. (I found that VERY hard to believe.) We were so distracted that we didn't do such a good job on the song. But we sure had fun singing. Speaking of singing, Karen and Ashlee also did a great karaoke number "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." No one could believe that those two had it in 'em. They did AWESOME and I loved every minute of it. What a great birthday gift to me!

Now--here is proof that I can actually dance with teenagers. These are two of my laurels (well, ex-laurels), Ashlee and Cali. They were impressed that a 40 year-old could keep up with them. That's right. And don't you forget it.

Looks like those girls needed a rest. But not me! :)

And last, but not least, Spencer's "one move."

Thanks to everyone for making what could have been a terrible day, my best birthday so far! And I appreciate all of the donations made to the homeless shelter. I took them all to Paz de Cristo, and they were delighted. I love you, my friends. And, most especially, I love you, my dear family!
Now on to at least 40 more fabulous years!

Preschool

This year a group of my friends and I have a pre/play school every Wednesday. There are seven of us, so I teach every seven weeks. Raegan loves it. I thought I would include a daily schedule just to give an idea of what goes on in a typical day:

Today we studied the letter H:
We did calendar activities and read some H words.
Then we sang some H songs (If You're Happy and You Know It; Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes; He's Got the Whole World in His Hands)
We played a memory game with H words.
We drew some hair on a smiley guy.
We played the "Who Wears This Hat" guessing game.
We played an H matching game.
We played with hula hoops.
We made Halloween bats out of our hands while we did centers (legos, puzzles, blocks).
We decorated and ate some Halloween cookies.
We read some H books.
We made some Halloween pumpkins.

Here are just a few pictures:

This is the matching game--we matched hats to the people who wear them. And speaking of hats, the next few pictures are from the "Who Wears This Hat?" activity.

a soldier

a firefighter

a safari leader

a cowboy

a magician

a king

We had such a good time!

Bergeson Family Halloween Party

After the Gustafson Family Halloween Extravaganza, we had another party. Boy, do we love to party!

Outside on the swings waiting for a scrumptious dinner of

chili in bread bowls (Basha's makes really good ones, I found out--thanks, Shay)

and of course, our witch's brew--always a hit at Halloween.

I thought the chili was pretty good, if I do say so myself. I seem to be able to have a talent for finding good recipes from talented people--like Sonja. :)

Grandma and Grandpa Bergeson (aka GiGi and Grandma Linda)



Aunt Meagan brought cupcakes to decorate. There were rats, eyeballs, skeletons and other repulsive things to add to the cupcakes. I stayed away. . . This is Dane getting working on his.


Creating masterpieces.


Aunt Meagan and Drew


Cousin Britta


Johnny Boy


Baby Lindsey

Gustafson Halloween Family Home Evening

Monday night we spent at the Gustafson's for a fabulous family home evening.

We started off the night with a bean bag toss.

Then we had a delicious dinner--Papa Murphy's pizza and homemade root beer. Yum!

After that we painted pumpkins.

Raegan painted such a cute face on her pumpkin (as can be seen here) but then covered it all up with black paint.

We had a special guest that evening

who read some spooky stories. Thanks, Aunt Julie! After the spooky stories we played "Don't Eat Pete."

We decorated cupcakes

so we could have a cake walk.

YUM!

Our Week in California and Raegan's First Trip to Disneyland

Wow! A long time has passed since I have posted. I'm going to do my best to catch up. This particular post is going to have MANY pictures in it. Blake is going to print out a blog book for me as my Christmas gift, so I want to have as many pictures in there as I can (then I won't have to scrapbook as many :).

What an AMAZING time we had in California with Meagan and Mark and their family (Blake's sister)! We left on Blake's birthday, October 2nd. We spent most of the day driving (in our fabulous van that we LOVE--SO glad we got it). We stayed at the Marriott Villas at Newport Beach. Meagan and Mark have a time share in Maui (which has excellent trading power), and they were gracious enough to let us stay there with them. It was beautiful! The weather was in the 70's every day and there was sunshine aplenty--a wonderful break from the heat.
On Saturday Meagan and I went to the swap meet in Costa Mesa--AWESOME DEALS. My buy of the year is my $1 jewelry. One dollar for a necklace and earrings. Needless to say I stocked up. We stopped to get something to eat on the way home, and I had the best carne asada taco I have ever had in a restaurant. Yummy! I think we went back to that restaurant three times while we were there. We got home from the swap meet about 3 (honestly, I could have spent two full days there), and Mark and Blake left for Magic Mountain. They drove two hours, stayed until midnight getting their fixes of roller coasters (so hopefull they wouldn't want to ride any at Disneyland) and were home by two or two thirty am. The kids spent time at the beach (why don't husbands remember to put sunscreen on children?) and doing activities at the resort. Blake came home from the beach with a bruise all along his forearm. "How did he get it?" you may ask. Well, he was walking along wet rocks on the beach with Jonathan in the Baby Bjorn and FELL. He "sacrificed his arm" to save Jonathan. When I heard about that stunt, he was lucky the only thing he ended up with was just a bruised arm, because I wanted to strangle him (remember the fact that both of my kids were also bright red, they were sunburned so badly?). It was a good thing he left for Magic Mountain so I had some time to cool off. :)
The next day, Sunday, we tried, but failed to listen to Conference. You would think that at a Marriott in California, you would find Conference on the television. Nope. And the volume on the computer did not go up high enough to drown out kid noise, so no Conference for us. So sad! For dinner that night, we went to Meagan’s friend’s house (her name is Jennifer, too). The kids played, we ate a FABULOUS dinner and made some new friends. Jonathan was coughing terribly, so we left early from our new friends’ house and headed to Urgent Care. What’s a vacation without a trip to Urgent Care? Unbelievably enough, Jonathan did not have an ear infection, the flu (or the swine flu), pneumonia or even a sign of asthma! A miracle!

Monday we listened to the time share presentation at the hotel and got two free Disneyland tickets so we could go back. J After that we all loaded into a tandem bike and rode up and down the boardwalk along the beach. We drooled at all the beautiful beach properties as we rode by. That night we celebrated Blake’s birthday at a local pizza shop.

Tuesday and Wednesday were Disneyland. Jonathan was a trooper—poor little thing. Disneyland was everything we thought it would be—it truly was magical. We had a “pass” that got us to the front of every line, so needless to say, Raegan got to ride plenty of them. I am not a big fan of rides, so her dad went with her on most of them.

We spent our last day just hanging out. Meagan and I went shopping at a very expensive mall, and she almost convinced me to spend $180 on a pair of jeans. What was I thinking?! :) We spent our last night at Joe’s Crab Shack and had a fabulous dinner—yummy!

Lindsey, Raegan and Jonathan (Lindsey and Jonathan are two months apart)

Rocket Launching

A hug from Tigger. Apparently, Raegan was a "favorite" during one of the parades. Many, many of the characters in the parade came over to her and involved her in the parade.

Raegan in the conga line

A common look we received throughout our visit at Disneyland

Dane, Raegan and Drew with Belle

Snow White and the three dwarfs

Sleeping Beauty with Drew, Raegan and Dane

The Old Hag and Raegan

And everyone thinks she gets her antics from me. Here's proof she does not.

Uncle Mark, Drew, Dane

So happy to be on the Carousel

Waiting for the Dumbo ride

Jonathan's first french fry

So happy to be in Disneyland

Classic Castle Picture

Uncle Mark, Aunt Meagan, Drew and Lindsey on Pirates of the Carribbean

My sweetest boy!

The men of my dreams

Look at those choppers!

Scared of the Jungle Ride, Uncle Mark???

Raegan and Princess Jasmine

Getting Princess Jasmine's autograph

Day two of Disneyland--we got smart and rented a stroller for Raegan. Of course, it was her idea.

My little trooper. He was such a good boy!

California Adventure was almost closed, and we spotted Dopey. As we approached where he was standing, his character helper told us he was going home for the night, and we would have to leave. We were so sad! The next thing I knew, he whispered to me to wait a minute. After everyone left, he told me Raegan could not only get Dopey's autograph, but walk Dopey back to his "house." Raegan was THRILLED. This is a picture of the worker that made our Disney experience just wonderful. Thank you, David!

Getting Dopey's autograph

Walking Dopey home

Now this is a Disney smile

Lovin' the parade

Her first face painting. Of course, she fell asleep on her daddy's shoulder about 30 minutes later and smeared it everywhere. Oh, well.

I couldn't believe she could hold still that long. She really wanted her face painted.

Bumper Cars with Daddy

My Angel Baby

Such fun!

Mommy's FAVORITE Disney character-- M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

A picture of where we stayed. It was posh. Thanks again to Meagan and Mark!

Mama's sweetest boy

Raegan trying to escape the flash on Daddy's camera

Fun on the tornado slide

Lovin that lolipop

Ready for Disneyland!

Riding the tram was the only ride that wouldn't make Mommy sick

Getting Pluto's autograph