A Merry Christmas

I love Christmas Eve. All the anticipation of Christmas Day is more exciting than the actual Christmas Day. Here are a few pictures of our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. A few fun gifts were: Orion got footie pjs- he has been wanting these for awhile, Shawn got a DS-i, Ethan got a trash can for his desk - that is all he could think of every time I asked him what he wanted, the boys got a game table and a Knex track, Zac got a little barn and figured out that if he sucked on a wrapped candy cane that he could get the flavor out of it-yummy!, and the girls got American Girl dolls - Julie and Felicity. Jessi and Meri LOVE their stuffed animals. They have never really been into dolls all that much, especially Meri. But they LOVE these dolls. They dress them and fix their hair every day and put them to bed each night. I taught them how to put a ponytail in their hair and the other day Jessi said "mom, can you help me, I forgot how to ponytail". It was really cute. We did a tea party the other day with them and are enjoying the books they came with. I think I'm having just as much fun with them as they are. I love dolls. A friend let us borrow the Felicity movie to watch tomorrow so the girls are excited about that. We hear that Julie will be getting her own movie soon too! I'm so glad the girls like them! The only problem is, now I want more of these dolls!

We had a very relaxing Christmas Day. One plus of having no family close by is that you don't have anywhere to be for Christmas dinner, or make the rounds to everyone's houses. We just stay in our pjs all day and lounge around playing with our new stuff. I do miss our family during these times, but it is SO nice to be lazy! Merry Christmas to all!

Secret Santas

For the last several years we've had the kids draw names and play secret santa. Last year we made the gift instead of buying and it was so fun that we decided to do that every year. No one knows who each other has until Christmas Eve when they present the gifts to each other. Brayton made several bookmarks for Meri because she is our little book worm. Ethan made a big "B" for Brayton and painted and decorated it with stuff that Brayton likes - including honey nut cheerios :). Zachary put his hand and feet prints on a little apron for Orion - Orion loves to do any kind of project. On the apron we wrote "big brother, lead me, guide me, walk beside me" Orion loved it! Orion made a stuffed sqirrel for Jessi. For the last few weeks all Jessi has been talking about was how she wanted santa to bring her a plush squirrel - seriously, so random! So Orion and I worked on the squirrel together and Jessi was giggling like crazy when she opened it! She LOVED it. Jessi painted and decorated a pencil box for Ethan and made little alien pencil toppers for the pencils. She had a great time making the faces on the aliens. And Meri made a set of blocks for Zac - Shawn helped her cut and sand the blocks and then she did a couple coats of paint and then modge podge over them - it was a lot of work! But they turned out so great. Anyway, this has become my favorite part of Christmas because it's so fun to see the kids thinking about each other and wondering who has their name.

O Christmas Tree

Shawn and I have always been fans of the real tree for Christmas. In New York we'd always take the kids to the farm and cut the tree down and it was always such a special event. Since moving to California we have gone to just picking up our tree where ever it's cheapest - we tried a tree farm here one year and all the trees were like little bushes - so that year we had "the christmas bush". Anyway, we got our tree at Home Depot this year. We were all so excited to decorate it and get it set up. And the smell- yummy! Well we couldn't get it to stand straight. It kept leaning this way and that. I tried to fix it with Orion when Shawn was at the robotics tournament. I got under the tree and was messing with the screws and man that thing is heavy! Well we still couldn't get it straight. So Shawn tried again to fix it several days later - still leaning. A couple days later I came home and Jessi shouted "mom the tree!" And this fallen tree is what she saw! We tried to get it to stand - tried and tried. It kept falling over. Finally I decided to just forget it. I took Jess to school and Zac and I undecorated our tree and I dragged it to the side of the house where it still lays. Then we headed to Kmart and bought...a fake tree. And I have to admit - I LOVE IT! There are no needles to clean up and we don't have to water it and you can bend the branches to how you want them to look with the ornament on it. And you can get the ornaments all looking spaced about the same apart easily. I am now converted to the artificial tree. And it looks really pretty! I just need to get a pine scented candle and we'll be set! Orion kept trying to get us to buy a fake tree saying it "would save us money in the long run" and I guess he was right. Now we can just pull this one out each year and not have to pay anything, just fluff the branches and we are good to go. Who knew I could write so much about a tree! More to come about Christmas.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Piano Recital

Last week we had our Holiday Piano Recital. It was our first time performing at the church and it went really well. All our kids played as well as my other students. Brayton even played his sax. I was so proud of all of them. They are such great kids and have worked really hard this fall. Brayton had his first band concert tonight and did really well there too. It's amazing how much they can learn in just a few months! My favorite part about Christmas is the music!

Award Winning Girls

Meri and Jessi both earned awards at school this month. Meri for Reading and Jessi for Citizenship. Way to go girls!

Robotics Tournament

Brayton and Ethan were on one of the middle school robotics team this year. They were on the Super Sonik Syborgz team. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun for them too. Shawn got to be one of the coaches too! They had two tournaments - the last one was this past Saturday. Over 80 teams were there competing and we got 21st place out of all those teams. They were also given a trophy for being the most gracious competitors because another team was missing some parts during one of the their runs (which is timed) and without hesitation the Syborgs quickly gave them the parts they needed. Way to go Syborgz!

Merry Christmas

Every year we go to the Lancaster Creche Festival at our old ward building with our good friends, the Goodwins. Lots of people from the community turn out for it. It is amazing. Hundreds of nativity sets all set up and choirs singing while you walk around. They also have an "eye spy" paper the kids can do. They go around and find certain nativities. It's actually really hard, but it's fun when you find one on the list. In the Primary room they have it set up for kids to do coloring pages, play with little nativity sets, and costumes you can dress up in. The last few years I have wanted to do this picture, but Jessi refused to dress up. Well, today was the day, because she did not want to take that angel costume off after the pictures were done! I had hoped to maybe use this picture on our Christmas card, but it didn't turn out quite as good as I hoped. But atleast I got my Christmas wish though! 3 wise men, Mary(Meri in our case), an angel, and baby Jesus. What more could I hope for! Merry Christmas everyone!

Giving Thanks in Arizona

For Thanksgiving we went out to the Arizona Teare's home. 16 kids, 11 adults, having a ball. The food was amazing and we loved seeing all the Teares. Thanks so much to Shannon and Cody for having us and all the delicious food. We had such a great time. One thing I'll always remember about this Thanksgiving is that Zac learned to crawl at their house!