Our annual holiday tradition - Gingerbread Sleighs!

Like we do every December, we set aside one evening for decorating our Gingerbread Sleighs!  The kids had so much fun. Benjamin got do decorate his first Sleigh this year. (In past years, he decorates Gingerbread Men.)  We took his sleigh (packed with homemade Christmas candy) over to his friend Eirik's house a few days later.  :)    (If you are interested, the Gingerbread Sleigh recipe and directions are here.)

Here is Eliza, happily decorating her Gingerbread Woman. :)

And Jed, concentrating on his artwork. Notice that sleigh that he finished - it is a sledding hill with people (and even a puppy) climbing up it and sledding down the other side. I love the winter scenes and designs he does on his sleighs! 

Sammy enjoyed sucking on the Playskool nativity and army crawling around while we decorated.  Surprisingly he never got into the presents, all month long.  That was nice!

Eliza's Tea Party

Jed took his two weeks of vacation over Christmas, so we were able to spend time as a whole family, just relaxing and being together.
One day Jed came downstairs while Eliza and I were having a Tea Party and videotaped a little of it. She was being so cute. My favorite part is at the end when she hollers up the stairs for Ben to come down. When she doesn't hear a reply, she heads up the stairs, saying with a longsuffering sigh, "Okay... I have to go up there..."
haha!  :)
(To make the video larger, click on the little square with the arrow on it, in the bottom right corner.)

It's a SNOW DAY!!

 Benjamin woke up to his very first snow day on December 15th!  Boy was he excited!!  Jed took him out to shovel the walks first thing, and when I popped my head out the garage door, he was busily pushing the snow off our driveway.  What a cutie!  They both deserved a warm cup of hot chocolate when they came inside!

After lunch the four of us went outside again to play in the snow. Actually, Jed was taking the kids out and I was planning on staying inside, doing my thing and staying warm.  But after a few minutes the fun of playing in the snow beckoned me out there to join them.  

Jed dragged the kids around in the sled.  (They are pictured here with Flat Stanley who is visiting us from Tennessee. (I think he is having a great time with us, Coleman!)  :)

I've tried pulling them in the sled before, and I can't even budge them! This definitely counts for Jed's workout for the day!!

Eliza is like the boy in A Christmas Story. If she falls down, she is so bundled up that she can't get back up. :)  But at least she never complains about being cold!  (Thank you, Emily, for making her those amazing snow gloves that never come off! They are miracle gloves.)

I confess that after about 15 minutes I ran inside because it was SO COLD out there! Jed and the kids played in the snow for quite a while longer.  What a good daddy they have.  Seriously, he is one of a kind.

Sammy's favorite friend

I have to share a cute little story about Sammy and his favorite friend at church. I wrote about this in his baby journal, and so I'll copy what I wrote:
Around the end of September a sweet lady in our ward asked to hold Sam at the beginning of Sunday School. After a few minutes I asked her if she would like me to take him back, but she was still enjoying him.  I could tell that she truly wanted to keep holding him, so I just relaxed and let her hold him for the rest of the class. After class I discovered that he had fallen asleep in her arms. (Incredible! I mean, yes, he was exhausted, but he never falls asleep in my arms- never!) I offered to take him and put him in his carseat so she could go to Relief Society, but she looked like she really didn't want to do that. So she took him to Relief Society with her. I made sure she knew where I would be (in the Young Women room) and that she could come and bring him to me any time. After church I found her in the foyer with Sam, awake, in her arms.  I thanked her profusely for holding him during 3rd  hour because I had had to teach YW, so it was nice for me to have someone taking care of him during my lesson. She told me that she just loved cuddling Sam and having him fall asleep in her arms. She said that she has some health problems that cause her pain sometimes, but that holding him today was a blessing to her because it kept her from having a 'pity party' in her car. I thought that was sweet, that having him cuddle and sleep in her arms had been a blessing to both him and to her.
The next few weeks we didn't see each other - there was General Conference and then once I fed him during Sunday School, etc. But about a month later we were in Sacrament Meeting again and he was so tired that he was fussing during Sacrament Meeting. After the meeting, she offered to  hold him. I told her where I would be and she just snuggled him and walked into the Gospel Doctrine class. He smiled at her when she took him.  After Sunday School I saw her in the hall and she had him in a baby sling in front of her, and he was fast asleep, snuggled right up to her. The sling was just 5 yards of stretchable fabric that she expertly tied around herself to create a safe sling to hold a baby. It was the absolute cutest thing I have ever seen.  He looked so angelic, warm, and happy, just peacefully sleeping. And she was just glowing, loving it.
After 3rd hour I was in the foyer and she came out of Relief Society, still with Sam in his little sling. He was awake and looking out. She said he had woken up 15 minutes ago and that he had smiled up at her when he woke up. That was a very long nap for being out of his crib and at church! I thanked her again because this time had been even more helpful than the previous time - I had gone to the missionaries' class for Sunday School with two investigators and had been able to sit by them and help them understand the class. Then I had talked to them between classes abut the feeling they had felt during the lesson. Then I had gone to YW and taught a lesson to the Laurels. So I told her "thank you so much for taking care of Sam!" She said again that she loved it, and her husband, who was helping her take Sam out of the sling said, "Oh, she just loves it. She brought this just for him!" and she smiled and nodded. I thought that was so sweet that she loved Sammy so much that she actually brought her baby sling to church with her, on the chance that she would get to hold him during church.
Ever since then she has held Sam during the 2nd and 3rd hours of church, and he has taken his morning nap snuggled up to her.  Once I had to feed him right after Sacrament Meeting, so I hurried to the nursing room after the meeting so he would still have time to snuggle up to her for a nap. After a few minutes, she popped her head in the room to see if we were in there, just wondering where he was. I thought that was adorable!
He is nearly 10 months old now, and getting kind of hefty, but she insists that he is not heavy at all when he is in the sling. They have a sweet little relationship - He loves being held by her and getting a warm nap, and by so doing, he is bringing her happiness and getting her mind off her discomfort.  Isn't that sweet?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Immediately after Thanksgiving we set up all our Christmas decorations and welcomed the beginning of the holiday season!  I just love Christmas time! Hip hip hooray!

This year Jed went and bought icicle lights and braved the freezing temperatures outside to hang them from the house.  I went out to take this picture and got trapped into helping him straighten out the hanging icicles - and I returned to the house half frozen! :)  Thank you, Jed, for making our house so cheery during the holidays!

We had a great time over the break playing with toys and enjoying each others company.  Ben and Eliza play so well together now!  I think Eliza just hit the age where she can interact and have fun with Benjamin.  It is so nice to see them playing together and being friends.

The kids watched the movie How to Train Your Dragon while Jed and I watched the BYU bowl game on the couch together.  We took Ben to the movie theater to see it when it came out, and they have both seen it since then. There are a few tense moments in the movie, with big dragons and such, but Eliza surprisingly doesn't get scared. Ben, on the other hand, would jump behind his chair and peak through to watch the scenes (and Eliza would join him for fun). I had to take a picture because it was kind of funny. We kept asking them if it was too scary and they would say no, but I think Ben just feels safer behind his chair than sitting on it. :)  (Did you notice the scene they are hiding from? This is when Hiccup is trying to muster up courage to kill the dragon. This is such a great movie!)

Cute little Sammy loved sucking on the Playskool Nativity set that his Grandma Walker sent him and Ben and Eliza. I kept it on the ground at his level the whole month and it was a favorite. :)

Eliza loves to sit on the couch and sing songs from my Young Women Personal Progress booklet.  I guess she thinks it looks like a song book, because it must be this particular book. She makes up her own cute little songs.

Boy, did we love having Daddy home so much! He took two weeks of vacation right over Christmas, and I have never felt so spoiled having him around!

(Oh, and did I mention a great perk about his being around so much? He finished off his 'honey-do' list! What a good sweet husband he is!  :)  Granted, he had a lot of help.... Sam was his right hand man through the thick and the thin!)

Last of all, a picture of sweet little 'Liza, reading to her dolly.