Christmas Eve 2012

 This picture has nothing to do with Christmas Eve, but I thought it was adorable.  Two sleepy kids crawled into bed after getting the older kids off to school.  Someday I'll be able to do that!

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 We were able to go to Chad and Tarilynn's house for Christmas Eve.  Their tradition is to make gingerbread houses and my kids were so very happy to join in .  Caleb had fun building and adding and giggling, he had several little vignettes going on, including the Santa that landed on the top of that sugar cone Christmas tree over on the right side of the picture.  Yes, my boy has hit boyish phase of humor, help us.

 Wow, Joseph has eaten a LOT of candy.

 Farris helped Seth and as soon as Farris said "Done!" Seth started eating it.  If he ever gets lost in the woods and finds a house made of candy, he is so toast.  And you can see in this picture that Joseph was still on a sugar high.

 Sweet Rylee's house!  She did a great job even though her candy was being stolen by Joseph and Seth and maybe me.

 And Reid's creation, he even added pretzel sticks to make it look like a log cabin. 

 And Jacob's Asian inspired, Frank Lloyd Wright-ish, Tahitian Palace of a gingerbread house.

Tha candy was gone at this point.  Sorry Jacob.  And Blake didn't get hardly anything.

 Felicity's creation, I loved the details she added and thought out in hers.

 Joseph loves to play with Abigail, she usually likes it too.

 Until she flattens him and sits on his face.  Happy Christmas Eve, everyone!

 We came home and let the kids open their Christmas PJ's, which is one of our Christmas Eve traditions.  And Abby was so very happy, as you can tell.  She loved her cute pajamas.  Well, the next morning she did anyway.

Merry Christmas from our family!  

(only a couple months too late)

December? Nope.

Yes, this post has pictures from the busy month of December.  But, no, none of them about the festivities going on.  They are all because of THIS little girl. The one with the stinky face.  Who's sitting on the table and eating all the popcorn. She's not so innocent.

Farris was called to the Bishopric awhile ago and when he was called my first thought was "HOW am I going to be able to get through Sacrament meeting with Seth without a back-up parent?"  And I was justified in that, he was awful at first, but he's gotten better.  Most of the time, anyway.  And then that cute little girl in the picture up there decided to step into Seth's very noisy shoes. 

 What?  I'm too noisy?  Whatever.

So anyway.  One day in Sacrament meeting, or the weekly wrestling match as I sometimes call it, I was trying to get Abigail to look through these cute quiet books that my sister-in-law Cindi made for us.  They are little plastic photo albums with pictures and text from the Book of Mormon and other Church topics.  (By the way Cindi, I love those!)  Abby wasn't too into it, they really are made for Seth and Joseph's age level.  And then the idea (probably inspiration!) of taking pictures of some of Abigail's favorite people, her siblings, doing quiet, reverent, nice, Church approved activities and putting them in a photo book.  So as soon as we got home I stopped everyone before they ripped off their church clothes (the cyclone that happens before lunch) they all had to pose for me.  And I got a lot of cute shots, enough to mostly fill up one of those dollar store albums.

 Doesn't he look reverent?  Of course, if this was a video, you'd see that he was actually jumping up and down in place.  With a reverent face.

 Reading nicely from scriptures and being nice to each other, perfect!

 Reading other Church material.And cute Caleb in the background with his arms folded! Just remember to use your Church Voice. OR...

 Shhhhhhh!

 SHHHHHHHHH!

 SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Hmmm.  Well, it's close.

BYU Christmas Party

Every year on the first Saturday of December, BYU has a family party for employees.  The kids look forward to this all year long.  There are games with little prizes, a craft room, letters to Santa, donuts and punch while you watch local dance teams or choirs do their things, a movie, a huge long line to see Santa (we never have stood in it), and the boy's favorite is a taking pictures with Cosmo.  This year was lots of fun because we had Mom, Melissa, and Nicki with us.  It's always good to have a little crowd control help with five kids.

 One of the favorite with the little ones is the balloon pit.  Seth beelines for it every year.  This year they added a prize if you could pop a balloon.  And amazingly enough our quiet boy Seth managed to do it.  Yes, sarcasm implied.

 

 Another favorite is the fish pond.  Joseph always tries to see inside the hole.

 

 Felicity enjoying the fish pond.

 

 Abby's first go in the balloon pit.  She loved it.  And this is why I say that the easiest and best parties for little kids have something to do with balloons, it'll always be a hit!

 

 Joseph won a compass at the cake walk.

 

 Caleb spent such a long time at the cake walk trying and trying to win.  He was so close several times, but never quite won.

 

 Pin the red nose on Rudolph was new this year.

 

 Felicity trying to get the nose in the right spot.

 

 Abigail wasn't very happy about being stuck in the stroller for most of the time.  But it's so much easier when they can't move unexpectedly!

 

 Seth taking it all in.

 

 Caleb showing off his prize.

 

 Seth hates being blindfolded, he'd just rather swing as hard as he can while looking at it!

 Caleb getting ready to whack it!

 

 Felicity hitting it delicately.

 

And the famous Picture With Cosmo!

Getting ready for the Holidays

The bad thing is all this happened so long ago that I don't remember the details!  The good thing is that the camera catches the spirit of what happened, and (wonderfully) all the digital pictures have the date taken as part of the data saved in each picture.  That is how I know that:

 

On Sunday November 18th we decided to make Christmas decorations.  I had seen a few fun ideas on Pinterest and the kids are always ready to get out the glue sticks and scissors.  Even if what they came up with was different than my idea they still had good times.   Felicity cut out the words on some of my Christmas paper and glued it onto various projects,

 



Joseph liked the stars from Popsicle sticks and the folded-into-a-fan-then-stick-the-top-end-together-to-form-an-accordion-Christmas-tree,

 



Abigail enjoyed the spectacle from her perch.  She loves the glue sticks so we had to be very careful to keep them out of her chimpanzee reach.  Yes, it might sound mean to compare my cute little girl to a chimp, but she has the longest reach ever in a human baby. 

Seth concentrating very hard.  He gets very intense about arts and crafts.  Well, he gets very intense about life.

Overview.  I was making those 3-D folded stars that have been popping up everywhere.  They turned out cute, but not as cute as my kids because I didn't get any pictures of them but lots of the kids.

Caleb hamming for the camera.  He can be so quiet in public I don;t think people realize how goofy his personality really is.  He makes us laugh with his fun sense of humor.  Thankfully, he has and most boys do move past the "anything with a banana in it is hysterical" stage. 

Now we're skipping forward a few weeks past Thanksgiving.  I don't have any pictures, but we did have lots of fun.  On the day after Thanksgiving Farris went with my dad and mom and sisters up north to cut Christmas trees.  It was pretty cold so all the kids stayed behind with Tasha and me.  Chada and Tarilynn's family went to Twin Falls to see friends from before they moved to Nephi.  We are still selfishly glad they moved closer to us.  Anyway, back to the picture above, we came home on Sunday and put the tree up on Monday, and decorated it for FHE.  The kids love diving through the boxes to find ornaments.  This year I only brought up some of the ornaments and kept the even somewhat breakable ones packed up out of sight.  One year olds and four year olds will do that to you.  Someday I'll have beautiful artistic trees...but now we just have a ball with the fun ones they get every year that have memories attached to them.  Which I really do love, too.

 



Abigail's first Tree Decorating Experience.  I have to say, she's much better at the UnDecorating.  By Christmas Day, all but a few ornaments were as high up as we could squeeze them in, and there was a constant pile that we were finding all over the house.  She loved every second.

 



Calebs favorite ornament:  signed by Cosmo the Cougar himself.  All the boys have one now, they love them.

 



My mom has given us several pairs of theose glasses that change every light you see through them into tiny snowflakes, stars, or santas.  Once the lights are on the trees it's fun to see it.  I keep forgetting, but they would be awesome to have at the Festival of Lights.

 



Abby with one of my favorite ornaments.  We got it on the Rez, a navajo lady was selling these tiny navajo ladys in traditional costumes made from yarn at a gas station.  I've wished many times that we had bought more than just one.

 



All done!  Except for the re-decorating we had to do every day after Whirlwind Abby went by the tree.