Post-Christmas Break

What's Christmas break without a day in the snow?  We were so happy to get some snow this time. Jed and I always shovel the driveway together and then Jed drags the kids around on the sled for a while. They love it!

 Sammy lasted this long and was still smiling at this point, but he soon wanted to go in. :)  I've taken him out in the snow a few times since, and he isn't super fond of it. I think it's because he doesn't like to wear mittens, but then his hands get cold. :) 

Jed made a jump with the kids and they took turns getting pulled over it. Jed is their work horse! :)

 

Over the break, our good friend Jamie came to visit from Kentucky. A couple of us were able to get together to hang out one afternoon.

 (Erin, Anona, Jamie, Jenny)

All month leading up to Christmas, Eliza kept planning a live nativity. She kept reminding us that she would be Mary, Ben would be Joseph, Charlotte would be the baby Jesus, etc. Somehow Christmas came and went and we never did it! So one Saturday we squeezed it in between coming home from a baptism and leaving to go to the movie theater together. :)  Charlotte was sleeping, so Eliza decided the Teddy Bear would stand in for the baby Jesus. Here are the wisemen, Jed and Sam, bearing gifts.

And Mary holding the baby Jesus. :)  She is so cute to have planned this for so long. She is a sweetheart.

We headed to the theater to watch Wreck It Ralph with the kids. It was a fun outing together.

This was Sam's first movie going experience (I think).  He never got scared, but Eliza sat in my lap and was scared a bunch. It made her really anxious when they were breaking things and going against the rules and stuff. She is so much like me! I was just like that as a kid. I remember feeling so stressed in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Charlie broke the rules.  So funny to think about that now!

 Later that week, we took the kids to see Monsters Inc, 3D at another movie theater. We had two free tickets that Eliza and Ben won at school. Lucky kids to get to go to the theater two times over the break! :) It was a lot of fun even though no one is smiling with me. :) Just take my word for it. :)
(Sam was tired by then. He still takes long naps every afternoon, and he was fading.)

Christmas 2012

 Merry Christmas!
We got our picture taken at the top of the stairs before we got to run down and see what Santa left for us.

Cool! Sammy got a racetrack!

Dad got a sweet remote controlled helicopter!

Santa gave Eliza a set of real sparkle lip glosses, including a tube of makeup glitter! That was definitely a hit.

Ah, love at first sight. A Marriott feather pillow! Yay!

Sweet shades and some stylin' running shoes!

 Wow, who's the hunk in the cool coat?

Break time for Breakfast! We had our traditional Christmas eggs, bacon, berry muffins, fruit and orange juice. Charlotte got to chow down on rice cereal with a smidgen of green beans. Lucky lady!

It's time to open presents!  Charlotte got a fun snail from her Grandma and Grandpa.

Grandma Walker gave Ben a circuit board. He absolutely loved it! 

Ben and Eliza gave Sam a singing toothbrush!

I gave Jed a BYU sweatshirt.

Eliza got a real camera from Grandma Walker. (Every so often she has us download her pictures onto my computer. Jed made a folder on the desktop just for her titled, "Eliza's Pretty Pictures" and it is full of pictures of toys and fuzzy action shots of siblings.:) )

 
Grammy and Papa gave Ben a new journal. As soon as he opened it, he ran over to the table and inscribed his name into the front cover with a pen. Then he wrote his first entry: "12-25-12   Today was Cristmis! Yay!  I got a journal, a remote car and a remote bug and books, movies, crackers and a set of cool circuits Plus two pairs of pants Yay. I have more stuff" (I revised some of the spelling :)  Pretty cute that he didn't even wait a moment before he wrote in his new journal, even though we were in the middle of opening presents.  I was kind of surprised! :)

We saved the best for last - a giant blowup bouncy castle! Jed put it up in our 3-Season Room off the back of the house. The kids loved it!

 Attack Daddy!

 Uh-oh, Eliza hit her head on the bricks that line the back sliding glass door. She got a huge goose egg on her forehead. :(   We covered up the bricks with a long body pillow after that.

Reading her new book, Amelia Bedelia, from Grammy. Reading stories in Mommy's lap is the best treatment of all. That goose egg was huge. We thought she would end up with a black eye, but she never got one.

Tea parties make everything feel better. She got a new set from a sweet lady in our ward, Sister Jennifer French.  It's very dainty and made of glass, with pictures of Tinker Bell and her fairy friends on the cups and saucers. Eliza loves it.

Yum, yum! Time for Charlotte's lunch!  Gotta love how she sucks on those fingers backwards like that. Usually she also has the thumb from her other hand crammed in there too. Which is funny since she can't get a suction when she has all three fingers in her mouth. She's a cutie. (If you noticed she is wearing different clothes, that is because she is a pro at spitting up and I had to change her.:) )

I thought this was funny. Sam is having a lot of fun playing with Charlotte's new toy from Santa.

Oh, and here is Eliza busily opening up a set of play vegetables that Santa gave to Sam. It makes me chuckle to see them intent on presents that aren't even theirs. That's the beauty of having siblings. :)
To the right of Eliza you can see the new Story Reader sets that Sam also got. To her left you can see the ballet mat, bar and movie that Santa gave her. She has done ballet along with her DVD a few times and it is so cute!

Sam got playdo from Santa and Jed helped all the kids make Super Hero masks!

Here's our little angel with one of her new toys from Santa (on the left). 

Ah, Christmas night. New toys everywhere - blissful!
Sammy was dancing to the music from Charlotte's toy and it was so cute! I caught the tail end of his dance.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2012

It's Christmas Eve!

We spent the previous Christmas Eve 2011 with our good friends the Davis', Aanderuds and Balmforths. This year we got together again the night before Christmas Eve, along with the Childs and one of the Davis' neighbors. We had a little gift activity for the kids, lots of treats and visiting, and then the adults sang carols together while the children watched a Christmas movie. We had a great time. We have such great friends here.

Dan Child, Paul Aanderud, Jed, Randy Balmforth, and Trevor Davis.

On Christmas Eve we had our traditional dinner of Chicken a la King (Chicken for the King) served in bread crowns, with our candles and Christmas tablecloth. Last year one of the candles lit the cloth napkin on fire that held all the bread crowns. Sammy, who was only 21 months old at the time, was the one who notified us all that the napkin was on fire! It makes me laugh just remembering it! :) My wood bowl still has a few scars on it from the episode. Needless to say, I kept a close eye on the candles this year. hehe!

 We received a Christmas package form my Mom on Christmas Eve, and she included a foam Gingerbread House craft for us to do. We had fun doing it as part of our celebration that night. :)

 Charlotte sucks her two middle fingers with her hand twisted backwards. Isn't that funny?

We read Christmas stories together, including The Man Who Missed Christmas and Christmas Day in the Morning, which are the ones we always saved for Christmas Eve when I was growing up. :)

We listened to the audio of the book The Polar Express while Jed turned the pages. 

Usually we each have our own bell to ring at the end of the book, but this year I had taken all our jingle bells off our Christmas tree to use in Primary during Singing Time and had left them at the church on accident. So we had to take turns with this one jingle bell!

 

We went outside to sprinkle reindeer food on the grass. This is a MUST for leading those reindeer to our house! We had so much of it from friends and classroom parties, that the reindeer would have probably still been grazing in our lawn in the morning if Santa hadn't urged them onward after he got through with our house. :)

When we went outside, we discovered that it would be a white Christmas after all! Yippee!

Leave it to Dad to start a snowball fight! Ben quickly forgot about wanting to feed reindeer for the more immediate desire of retaliation!

 

The kids got ready for bed and then we watched the five-minute Nativity video produced by the Church, that is so realistic and wonderful, and we read Luke 2 from the Bible. Then we said prayers, set out our Christmas stockings, and tucked the kids into bed.  While we waited for the kids to fall fast asleep, Jed and I watched 'A Christmas Carol' with George C. Scott playing Ebeneezer Scrooge. I absolutely love that movie! I was so excited to watch it again, snuggled up with Jed! I look forward to that so much every year.

We had a great Christmas Eve!