Friday, January 7, 2011

Christmas

Since we had just been home to AZ we decided to stay here for Christmas this year. We definitely missed family but we had such a sweet Christmas here with just our little family. A couple of days before we had a big CRNA student party with a bunch of friends. There was tons of food lots of running around and Santa even stopped by for a visit.
The huge kid's table

The adult table

All of the food


Timmy on Santa's lap


Maura and Santa


Topher and Santa


We decided to incorporate Christmas traditions from both sides of the family this year. It was so much fun. On Christmas Eve we had a big taco dinner with Drew and Cass, we opened our jammies, and then loaded into one car to look at Christmas lights. Once we got home we read Twas the Night Before Christmas and Dad read the Christmas Story out of the scriptures. On Christmas morning we made the kids line up at the top of the stairs and came down one at a time, youngest to oldest. We slowly opened all of our presents and took the time to see what everybody got. Once we opened presents the kids ate their tiny boxes of cereal while T.J. and I cleaned up some of the mess. Then T.J. made biscuits and gravy for lunch, we opened exchange presents via skype with both sides of the family, and after naps we ate dinner at Drew's and Cassie's We had a great holiday and really felt the spirit of Christmas.

The kids just put on their new jammies.



Timmy and his pillow pet (These turned out to be the favorite of all the gifts)



Maura and her pillow pet


Topher and his monkey



Santa came!


Dressed up in our new church clothes




Aren't I lucky to have such cuties?

Winter Time

Winter is here again! The kids love the snow. It means sledding and shoveling and snowmen. Well the kids are still enthusiastic about sledding but the novelty of shoveling has worn off and the kids haven't had much success with a snowman yet. At least they have quite a few months to figure it out! Here's to at least 2-3 more months of snow!
Topher after sledding

Maura and Jada playing


Timmy braving the slopes


Topher shoveling snow



All three kiddos shoveling all the way down the sidewalk.



Topher helping dad push the snow blower.