MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

Dear family and friends,
We hope that everybody has had a great and fulfilling year. It’s been a fun year for the Frazier family.
Derek had a busy last semester and graduated from UVU with a BA in art and visual communications (graphic design). He does some freelance graphic design and continues to work in the CNG car dealership that he and his dad started in 2007. He is still the Sunday school president in our ward. Derek has recently started running and is training to run a marathon next year. We’re proud of him.
Mandy is a busy stay at home mom. As if that isn’t enough of a full time job, she continues to dedicate her time to her calling in the young women’s presidency as the second counselor. She also enjoys working on many different projects such as baby shadowboxes, mini-albums, cards, and anything crafty that she can get her hands on. She has plenty to do, but always puts her family first.
Emma is fifteen months old has been hitting all sorts of milestones. She began crawling at nine months. She took her sweet time learning to walk, but finally started on Thanksgiving day. She’s now cruising all over and keeping us busy. She’s been learning new words both vocally and in sign-language which Mandy has been teaching her since day one. She LOVES to dance and always points to the cd player while saying “das! das!” She is her mother’s daughter. She is such a blast and we love her to pieces.
You can always stay updated with us on our blog at derekandmandyfrazier.blogspot.com. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2009.
Love, Derek, Mandy and Emma Frazier

more christmas time and snow celebrations and Emma likes pickles

We've had lots of fun celebrating the Christmas season. Last week we finally got over to see the Temple Square lights. We knew Emma would love it because every time we are driving we always point out the christmas lights at people's houses and she LOVES it. Boy did she LOVE the Temple Square lights. We were able to see the Christus as well and she really enjoyed that. It's so peaceful in there. She kept wanting to go up and look at the Christus and also point at all the stars and planets on the walls.

We had a fun Christmas party with Derek's family before most of them left to Germany for the Holidays. We had fun eating, opening presents, nice lesson from Mama, entertained by the cats, Emma and Dylan. :)

Each of us had a sibling to give a gift to. I (Mandy) had Dylan and we decided to get him a guitar strap for his guitar. Dylan is so musically talented and loves to rock, he basically wants to be Jack Black from the movie "School of Rock." Awesome. On the guitar strap we had his name embroidered Dylan "rock on" Frazier. It took him a minute to figure out what it was exactly but once he did, oh my gosh that was the most classic reaction we've all seen. We've got it all on video :)
Derek had his sweet sister Britta and we gave her a cute purse and pretty earrings. We as well got some great gifts.

We just discovered that night that Emma LOVES pickles. Who would of known? She downed it.

There is just something SO stinkin' cute about little toddlers in their snow suits and with those cute little snow boots, I LOVE it. Emma was so excited to go into the snow yesterday when it poured like crazy. She was happy...for the most part ;) (I think Emma looks a lot like her Mommy in this picture)

"Just don't put the yellow snow in your mouth Emma"

Daddy got a little too excited and wanted Emma to feel the soft snow. Umm...less effective. She SCREAMED! I don't blame her :)

So then Daddy showed her that he wanted to do it too.

She was just watching him, still mad at him.

After he was done laying in the snow, she wanted him to do it again. She also wanted to give him a hug to let him know she was quick to forgive. :)

Daddy was impressing us with his snowman building skills. Emma loved watching him. I love this picture. She is just too sweet.

Emma wanted to pat on the snowman

"Well done Daddy!"

Tonight we went and saw the Thanksgiving Point lights which were cool. Then we were able to see a couple reindeer, Emma was watching them intently. Then we enjoyed ourselves a nice hot chocolate and Emma enjoyed her sucker that was given to her in the gift shop candy store.

And...Emma loves pickles

Avoid the Doghouse!

My friend Coleen sent this to me and it cracked us up! ENJOY!!

Christmas time!!

So we have been extremely busy so I haven't been able to update the blog with our fun events in this Christmas season thus far.
The day after Thanksgiving we put up our Christmas tree and decorations. Emma LOVED the lights of course and tried helping Mommy put them up....sort of.

"Look, I'm wearing Daddy's shoes. CHEEEEEESE!!"

So I attempted to do an art activity with Emma where she can finger paint with chocolate pudding. Yeah, she didn't want anything to do with the hands spreading on her piece of paper. I tried helping her by dipping those little hands in the bowl of pudding and showing her how to finger paint and boy was she mad. After much screaming, I finally washed off her hands and gave her a small bowl of the chocolate pudding. All she wanted to really do with it is EAT it. Of course, what was I thinking :) We went to a fiesta at the Provo City library with our friends, the Lintons. Santa was there but as you can tell Emma and Ava wanted nothing to do with him. He was so sweet, but they weren't going to have it.
On MONDAY we had a family home evening with a few friends and their little families. We made ginger bread houses. It was lots of fun! You can tell Derek was concentrating pretty hard. :) TONIGHT was fun, quite the adventure but fun. So we Young Women leaders and the girls went on annual Temple Square trip. Derek was so nice for letting us use his company's 15 passenger van. We loaded EVERYONE in it for our fun trip to the square..."ALL ABOARD!!"
Let's just say we had a very scary incident on the way to Salt Lake with a moronic person who was stopped in traffic while we were going 70 mph in the carpool lane and he decided to veer illegally into the car pool lane from STOPPED traffic may I remind you while we are going 70 mph. I had to SLAM on my brake, turn the wheel to try and dodge the moron or we could of totally killed the guy, if not us. On top of that there was construction going on in down town Salt Lake which made me nervous since I already hate driving in Salt Lake. Then when we got to the parking garage I wasn't sure if we were going to fit under it. So as I'm slowly driving through the entrance I'm screaming and crouching down hoping we wouldn't hit the top of the van. Why is it that we think that would make a difference, like the van would crouch if we do? We did it. Everyone was laughing because I was sweating bullets, including my upper lip. We made it though and most importantly we made it safely. We enjoyed watching the Joseph Smith movie, I think this was like my 7th or 8th time seeing it. LOVE it. I always feel so enriched after watching it. Then of course we enjoyed seeing the Christmas lights. I love our young women so much, they are such a great group of girls. I also love our leaders, I've made some great friendships.

by the way......

Our Thanksgiving was WONDERFUL! I slacked in taking any pictures of our great day. We were able to spend it with both of our families. First we went with my family including extended family. We were with my cousins the Ashworths and with some of the Phair family. It was so fun. The food was wonderful (wish I had pics of it) and most importantly it was wonderful being with our loved ones. We then went to Derek's Aunt Karen's house to celebrate. They had a TON of food and fun. Later in the evening we went to my in laws and enjoyed looking through black friday ads (hahaha) and playing games.
Here is a picture of Emma in her little Thanksgiving outfit. Funny story...so I put some church shoes on Emma that she had never worn before and she absolutely HATED them. She wanted nothing to do with them. After I put them on her she would lift her leg and whine that she didn't want the darn shoes on. After I took them off of her she crawled into her room grabbed her pink shoes and handed them to me. I guess she knows what she wants, the girl just needs her pink shoes. I put them on her and she was a happy little lady. She knows what's comfortable. It's too bad that the shoes will need to retire any day now because Emma's feet grew this week. Crazy.

THE BIGGEST news we have from Thanksgiving is....yup you guessed it. Emma started walking! You thought I was going to announce I was pregnant or something didn't you? Well we are so thrilled that little munchkin is FINALLY learning to walk. She just hasn't had any desire until NOW! I will be putting footage of it soon. It's so cute of her walking back and forth to Daddy and I.

Black Friday? No Thanks.

Derek's turn today. I might make some enemies with this post, but I'm not a big fan of black Friday. There might be some good deals out there, but most of it is stuff I don't need or want. Below is another reason that I was in bed at 5am this morning and not freezing my butt off in front of Wal-Mart or Best Buy.


Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

The unidentified victim was rushed to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m., police said.

The cause of death was pending.

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was knocked to the floor during the mad rush. She was hospitalized for observation, police said.

Three other shoppers suffered minor injuries, cops said.

Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk's life.

"They were working on him, but you could see he was dead, said Halcyon Alexander, 29. "People were still coming through."

Only a few stopped.

"They're savages," said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. "It's sad. It's terrible."

Source: NY Daily News

Tribute to Dr. Gregory Gordon

This is Mandy speaking. Minutes ago I just heard the sad news of the passing away of a dear family friend of many years and wonderful doctor who delivered our sweet baby Emma. I am still in quite a bit of shock over it even though I knew he has been sick for some time. Then I just think to myself, he wouldn't want us to be down. Anyone who may have known Dr. Gordon knows that he was just a ray of sunshine and lit up any room he walked into. He was my Sunday school teacher when I was a young teenager and he always had an awesome way of teaching. His wonderful wife Kris was also an amazing leader of mine in young women's and we have remained dear friends since. I remember when Derek and I were married, Dr. Gordon and his wife Kris came to our wedding reception. They mentioned to us as they were congratulating us that they drove all the way down from Aspen Grove from Youth Conference just so they could attend our reception. I remember just feeling that that meant the world to me. That's just the kind of people they are. I came across one of Dr. Gordon's sweet daughter's blog and these were her sweet words to her father,

"The most selfless, kind, loving, Christlike person I have ever known.
He has touched the lives of everyone he has ever met.
I miss you, but I will see you again.

I Love You Dad!!!!!!"

We will miss you Dr. Gordon. You have definitely touched our lives immensley and you will always have a place in our hearts. Our prayers are with the Gordon family at this time. May God be with you.
You can see Dr. Gordon's obituary here


It's Thanksgiving today. It's times like these that help me to meditate and see more of an eternal perspective on life. In celebration of thanksgiving I express my gratitude for family and friends who are and have been in my life. I am so grateful for the love of our Father in Heaven. He loves us SO much that He provided a way for us to ALL be together again even after this life. What an amazing blessing it is to have this knowledge.
Happy Thanks giving to all.