tooooooooooe piiiiiiiiiick!

Tooooooeeeeeeee Piiiiiiiiiiick!!!

Tonight was magical ✨🎄⛸❄️‼️ My mister and I twirled ⛸ around this rink with the #Christmas 🎄🎅🏻 lights all aglow. One song after another, we belted our hearts out 🎤 with a hundred other skaters ⛸ like Christmas Cheer you've never seen before. 

Also we ran into our cute neighbor Sage.❤️❄️ it's a small world after all 😂‼️

All iwant for christmas and White Christmas ❄️🎄 were my personal favorites 💁🏼🎤, and I still can't wipe the smile off of my face. Sean warmed up my fingers holding hands round and round, and we didn't even fall 😂👏🏻😜. Then we met up with friends for sushi 🍣🍥 and laughed our faces off all night long 😂😭. I love this life, and the this December 🎄🎅🏻 birthday 🎁🎉 of mine #34 .

 {the end.}

Good Morning America!

If you're tuning in from 

Good Morning America, 

WELCOME! 

So glad you are here, 

and thanks for stopping by!

...

Grandma Max’s 

Gingerbread Men

1 egg

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 c butter, melted

1/2 c molasses

1/2 c sugar

1/2 c milk

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/8tps ginger

Preheat oven to 400*. 

Mix egg, sugar, molasses, butter, and milk. 

Sift together dry ingredients and add to sugar mixture while mixing. 

Sometimes I have to add more or less flour, depending on the weather.

You want it to be like Play-doh.

Roll out dough and cut into desired shapes. 

Put cut out Gingerbread Men into your FREEZER for 5 min

{so they hold their cute little shape when they cook},

and then...

Bake for 8 min., cool, and decorate!

I like to buy the tubes of frosting

from the grocery store to make things simple,

and I LOOOOVE to just let my kids at it 

all by themselves.

These little cutie pies were the perfect afternoon snack,

and my Gibbies gobbled them up the minute they walked through the door.

Got milk?

NOTE: 

There is an adorable 

children's book called 

"The Gingerbread Pirates" 

by Kristin Kladstrup that we read all Christmas season long. It's especially fun to whip out the night we've made 

Grandma Max's Gingerbread Men. 

Cheers!

how it took 5 hours to make a 26 second clip.

That one time when I called Bree 

and yelled 

"THE PRODUCERS at 

GOOD MORNING AMERICA just called me,

 and said I'm going to be ON THE SHOW tomorrow!!!!! 

Can you come over right now and help me make gingerbread cookies?!"

true story.

i

kid

you

not.

 So she dropped EVERYTHING to pick up tube icing and Christmas sprinkles 

(thank you Teresa for your 1 cup of Molasses!!! and Julie for your rolling pin bc mine is still at Good Things Utah AND your gingerbread man cookie cutter. 

{Was that a runon sentence? I'm not sure if my brain is still here right now???} 

Then we masterminded a 2 min recorded clip that ended up being a miscommunication of time length, which we didn't know until after I had left for carpool and let chase eat😛 TTWO of the cookies 

AT WHICH POINT 

the ever great Millie {my 15 yr old babysitter} enters the story, 

who sat on my counter and told me what to do with my hands🤗 and eyes, 

while we bribed Max and Teagan with more cookies😂

 to keep Dean downstairs with them 

so we could do 16 more takes to get the clip down to the 26 allotted seconds. 

HOLY COW

it might have been one of my most fun days of my entire liiiiiiiiife, 

and I can't wait to see my BLINK of a 26 second clip on the real

LIVE

GOOD MORNING AMERICA

☕️IN in the 

BIG APPLE 

of NYC 

bright and early 

TOMORROW MORNING!!! 

So set your DVR folks, and don't blink or you might miss it.

I'll be on there with my signature "E" apron, 

and now you know the story of how it took 5 hours to film a 26 second clip💁🏼. 

You can find my recipe on the GMA website. How BOUT THEM apples?!🍎

love notes

Love finding Max's little #love 💌📬 notes around the house 🏡 for us all day 😍💕. 

Just wait until you see the one chase had me write her back #siblings👫💕 #SOMETIMEStheygetalong 🙊😜.

baby it's cold outside

I mean reeeeeealy 😂😭🌨☃️❄️, who on earth is their mother??? 😳🙊😜🙋🏼#raisingsnowloversonesnowstormatatime

15 cat week {black plague}

Still to this day my ALL TIME FAVORITE #comedy act on this planet is Jim Breuer's "why mother's need their rest"!!! GOOGLE IT, and laugh until you pee your pants 😂😭🙊💦‼️My #kids still wake us up all night long most nights {revolving door--can i get an amen from the mamas and the papas who can relate!?}, most days i wonder if they'll ever all #sleep 😴💤 {everyone tells me eventually they do}, and i dream about this fantasy of everyone going to bed and staying asleep bahaha. I remember before Plexus feeling like i would never feel rested again. like i was#tired inside of my bones. my covers weighed a THOUSAND pounds every morning, and i would only get out of bed because i promised myself i would take a nap 😴💤 #naptime #longlivethenap at 11am, which never happened. by the time 1pm rolled around, i would crawl myself to the couch after everyone was napping or watching a show, and try to sleep until i picked up carpool at 3pm, which never made me feel anymore rested {go figure}, and then by 9pm the processes began again. i was SO happy in doing this, and despite feeling like i was a 95 year old grandma 😆👵🏻and wanting to "kill some cats" 🐱😹most mornings {watch the video and you'll understand}, i had accepted that this was just part of the job. i'm so glad that i don't feel like that anymore, and guess what? there are no bonus points for being a tired mom. who knew!? do the kids sleep perfectly? nope! do i wake up feeling rested and have energy almost every single day? YES I DO 🙋🏼. is plexus for more than just tired mom? YEP ;), but today, i'm just giving a shout out to the mamas and the papas who are feeling like grandmas 👵🏻and grandpas 👴🏻because last night was a 3 CAT NIGHT😹😹😹 in our house {and last week was a 15 CAT WEEK 😷🤒🤕🙈bahaha}, but i didn't have to kill any cats 🚫🐱💕#PETAyourewelcome because PLEXUS pulled me through. BOOYA ;)

click here for the full video if you want to die laughing.

warning: you might pee your pants.

you can order PLEXUS from me here:

www.whathealthyfeelslike.com

{ID: 1169048}

i started with the triplex combo and the xfactor multivitamin.

i joined as an ambassador ONLY to get the least expensive price.

then it worked me like GANGBUSTERS, and i couldn't shut up about it,

and now here we are. just call me your crazy plexus lady ;).

i also take the MegaX and Ease every day now too, but the triplex and xfactor are a great place to start. you can email me with questions at emilygibson82@yahoo.com or message and/or add me on 

Facebook: Emily Ryan Gibson.

because a lot of the time they're just screaming and fighting.

Maxine was pouting in the corner because we don't know why, but the rest of the #gibsonhouseofchaoseventually sucked her into our #toystoryDREAMLAND 🏀⛵️🚂🚁😍. Chase Ray's face though 😂😭👏🏻 #thebabyman . Soaking in this little slice of #heaven tonight because a lot of the time they're just screaming and fighting, and I wonder if I'm doing this#motherhood thing right. 

This is pure #JOY🙌🏻👏🏻💙right now, and I'm in #LOVE 💕🙏🏻!

LIT.

When the prelit #Christmas🎄 tree has half its lights out 😂😭, we improvise 🙌🏻✨😜 #iwannabedean 👶🏻💙

in case you were under the impression that this was the greatest thanksgiving ever.

things i asked out loud 

while cooking my first 

thanksgiving dinner by myself

{like without sean bc the 

black plague hit him}:

1. how long does it take? the turkey. {max said "ask siri"}
   
2. where’s the tie thing for the bag? i don’t see it in the box. 
3. where’s the baby? {found him in the flour bag in the pantry}
   
   
   
     he offends easily. of course i told him it was all my fault, and cuddled him while he gasped for breathe for the next 15 minutes sobbing on my shoulder. this baby makes me melt. we are doomed.
   
   
   
      
4. how do i get the wings under the turkey? {watched a youtube video. way overthought that one.}
5. when does the stuffing go in the bird? am i supposed to cook it with it? {called mom}.
6. does the neck come out? boy…that looks like a...turkey neck.
   
7. am i supposed to follow the recipe online, the oven bag one, or the stove top stuffing one? i’m doing all three, and i don’t know which one to follow. i feel like there should be one with everyone combining themselves together for the big day. 
   
8. where are the giblets? i don’t think my turkey has any? are they supposed to be with the neck? they’re not with the neck.
9. i found the giblets.
10. they were in the butt. i texted my mom to let her know.

 

{let's be honest. 

i show up for thanksgiving mostly for the baked brie. 

everything else plays second fiddle.}

 in case you were under the impression that this was the greatest thanksgiving ever,

i thought i'd let you know that sean was sick the entire day, and rallied for dinner to help carve.

dean barfed in the beginning, and maybe that night again too?

i can't really remember anymore.

i was exhausted from being sick the entire two days before.

oceans of puke like you've never witnessed before from this gibson house of chaos.

me included.

and then my sweet mother who came to help us all messaged me today saying she's now barfing and is achy all over too.

stay away everyone!

STAY AWAY!
please note: at least one gibson has barfed every single day in this house for the last 15 days.
that's got to be some kind of record somewhere.
just when you think someone is in the clear,
they have a mystery puke pop up!
or a poop. it's not pretty.

also chase broke a wine glass INTO my sweet potato dish i had just finished and had ready to go into the oven, so i had to dump them all and start again bc heaven knows we didn't need to add glass cutting our intestines from the inside out to this week.

nevertheless, the turkey was amazing, and the gravy was like nothing i'd ever tasted before.

must have been the double salts.

P.S.

i stretched the skin bc dad's text came too late before my hands got to rubbing.

it was probably my favorite part of stuffing that bird.

OH THE STUFFING.

it was soooo good.

and we really are very very blessed.

THE END.

but we've never really arrived.

"The homemaker has the ultimate career. 

All other careers exist for one purpose only- 

and that is to support the ultimate career. ” 

-CS Lewis

...

i love that my accidental career 

has supported the one career that i've always wanted to do.

homemaking.

mothering.

there is nothing i love more than walking through my house, 

with the laundry put away 

{this is the second time this has happened in the last year,

and i just felt like i needed to tell someone...ha!},

the toys picked up,

and my babies all nestled into their beds.

dishes done.

i think the only thing that has ever given me that same satisfaction was that one semester before we got married and i took 21 credits, got straight A's, planned a wedding, and worked 20 hours a week.

that was the best feeling of finishing something EVER!

the biggest lesson that this last year has taught me 

is that life is not about finishing.

finishing feels nice,

and i'm not saying that "finishing" isn't important.

what i'm saying is we've never really arrived.

"finishing" is an allusion.

it's time that we've put on things.

it's something our brain likes to do to compartmentalize.

maybe more like a coping mechanism?

real joy comes from moving along.

helping people along.

the laundry.

the kids.

my business.

my relationships.

even when we think we've finished something,

it's really just the beginning of starting something else.

it's eternity to me. 

when i think about it all.

and it reminds me about the temple.

in the sealing room 

{where we are married for time an all eternity}, 

there are mirrors facing each other.

to symbolize that time is ever ongoing.

forever.

before.

now.

after.

there is no end from one direction to the next.

just like eternal marriage.

the laundry is never really done.

our children are never really not ours to parent.

our relationships are never really done growing.

we have never really arrived.

we're always just getting started.

everything is in constant going, always.

and as someone who has spent preeeeetty much my entire life 

chronically fixated on "finishing" and "being done,"

so i could move onto the next,

this is a new concept.

but then all of a sudden today,

i was walking around my house feeling so accomplished and finished.

caught up on the house,

toys picked up {thank you chase},

and just relishing in the calm before the thanksgiving storm,

and that's when i had this moment of not worrying about being finished.

not worrying about being done.

not needing to be done.

like i'm so content with everything, 

that i don't have to think in terms of

"when will this be finished?"

do you know what i'm saying?

'cause today, i really like what my brain is saying.

and i'm really just grateful to be here right now thinking this.

and feeling this.

amen.