Up until Christmas 2014

I made some little Christmas pillows with the activity day girls. I stuffed them for the girls who got them done, but Neil thought the stuffing could be put to better use as snowballs to throw inside. He has some 40 made.

Emma got to play with some of his snowballs too.

Yesterday was a day of great excitement for Abbie. The unicycle she's been wanting and saving for for a year finally came in the mail. Neil ran down to the bus stop to tell her it had come and they both ran home together to open it.

Santa and his reindeer all ready for the last day of school before Christmas break.

This cute baby is loving the stairs.

Isaaac and Emma thought the reindeer antlers were hilarious. They wore them to eat lunch one afternoon and laughed and laughed.

Rachel invited us to come eat soup with her on a cold winter's night. Playing with the geckos was fun too.

Jessie's Appaloosa in her giant sketchbook Rachel got for her.

Opening presents with Ken's family. Jesse gets to make a dress with Grandma. Mark opened a??   Abbie got some knitting  needles and an invitation to learn to knit. Spencer got a tree house Lego set; Neil and Isaac both got jumbo Legos. And Emma got a fun peek a boo farm set. Ken and I are headed off to the Bombay house on a date lucky us!

I love pictures of the kids reading with Grandma. The girls made snowflakes while the rest of us had a snack. Grandpa shows off Randy's new hat. Abbie got all decorated,  and Scott was kind enough to help Spencer with his tree house for the rest of the evening.

Our sleep under the Christmas tree tradition.

After Spencer got his Lego Tree House built he took probably 30 pictures of it; he was so excited.

We delivered some goodies to the neighbors and Isaac insisted on wearing this bag around his neck as a decoration. Emma in her cute teddy bear coat.

We started a new tradition this year. I made up a bunch of little note cards thanking people for decorating for Christmas and helping us to celebrate the season and we drove around and placing them on front doors of the houses where the kids like the decorations. It turned out to be great fun and a tradition we hope to continue.  Trying to squeeze in a few more random acts of kindness to celebrate the season.

Ken took Mark and Jessie to the Timpanogos temple over Christmas break, and then out for a treat afterwards.

Another Christmas tradition, dipping pretzels. Tasty!

David and Lisa met us at Temple Square to go look at the lights. It was freezing that night. After a walk around we went to their house for some potato soup and games. It was fun to be together.

This is a moment where you just take a picture to laugh about it later.

Mark is an amazing big brother. He is always happy to play with the little boys.

On Christmas Eve Rachel invited a friend and her husband to join us for a barbecue. The burgers were amazing. Afterwards we played a game and then they had to go home but we acted out the nativity and then had a little sing along.

Last December…better late than never.

One last thing from the Thanksgiving holiday.  I made 16 pockets with different categories of things to be thankful for and we filled out slips of paper to fill them. Then we played a guessing game of who wrote what.

Sneaky little Emma learning to climb up the stairs.

Neil and Isaac were so excited to make their Christmas trees for our Christmas store. Now we will fill them with ornaments on which we write kind things that we do for others and then use the ornaments for our “money” to buy things from the Christmas store for all the people in our family.

Emma loves to walk around the house with something sticking out of her mouth – kind of a dangerous habit.

Rachel joined us at Mark’s band concert. He had a solo in the song Santa Baby that the Jazz Band played.

Rachel called me one morning while she was out Christmas shopping and Emma and the boys and I met her at the Pizza Pie Cafe for lunch. The boys love to do anything with Rachel.

Neil drew some fancy flowers for us.

A Pinterest find that actually worked. You cut shapes out of craft foam and get them wet and they will stick to the shower walls or a window. We also discovered that they stick to people. We made some ice cream cone, cupcake and snowmen parts.

I love watching little kids look through books. That just makes me feel happy.

We made a cold trip up to Thanksgiving Point to watch an ice sculpture event. As usual it took us longer to get out of here than we thought so we only got there for the end but it was still amazing.

The kids enjoyed looking at the reindeer and reading all the facts and then we went for a short walk to look at the lights.

For school Abbie was in the wax museum as Brigham Young. She did a bunch of research on him and memorize a short oral report. Getting a cool looking beard was the hardest part but ours didn't turn out too bad.

Isaac loves to be like dad.

Our budding musician.

Neil always surprises me with how much he knows. We went out to run errands and he found a piece of chalk in the driveway, while I was buckling the little kids in the van he drew math problems in the driveway 1 + 5=4 and 1 + 1 equals 2, and then dad’s name so we took a picture and texted it to him.

It's time to put up Christmas decorations and the favorite one at Grandma's house is the bear that sings jingle bells much to Grandpa’s chagrin.

As I came downstairs with a load of laundry Neil was loading up our Advent Calendar. He turned around and told me, “Look mom, now today is Christmas!”

Mark helped out with the Scouting For Food drive; which was a success.

Ken’s friend Mike hosted a Christmas Hello Kitty party at our house. It was more pink than I've ever seen in one room at one time. It was fun to get together with some of Ken’s old friends from high school.

Scripture reading time at our house.

Emma loves to play peek-a-boo.

The Sunday before Christmas we went to Ken's parents house for a sing-along. Each of the kids played a Christmas song for us. And of course we had treats too.

The poster for this school project got put off until the morning it was due. We really try not to do that very often but it turned out okay and we learned a lot of interesting things about Wayne County.

Abbie and Spencer after their chime choir christmas concert.

Little Emma practicing walking while we fold laundry in the front room.