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.



Felicity is busy!

As I was looking through pictures so I could figure out what I needed to catch up on, I found lots of pictures of Felicity!  Busy girl, she's been taking piano lessons, school choir, an after school 4-H theater class, plus Activity Day for church.  Basically, she has something every day before or after school, plus lots of homework. I don't remember this when I was in fifth grade!  But she does like to be going and doing and learning.  So the end of November/beginning of December she had some fun things.

 The fifth grade at our school does a DARE program that's pretty extensive.  They have activities with the DARE officer, learn all kinds of things, write papers, and eventually have a graduation.  

 

 Felicity was excited about choir and sang, sang, sang for the weeks before her concert.Her teacher from last year is the director for the choir this year and she's done a great job with the kids. 

 

Before the concert.  She really was very excited.

 Felicity was very excited when her 4-H class chose to do Tangled.  And when she got the part of Maximus she could hardly contain herself.  As she said, "I don't have any lines to memorize!" She did a great job and had lots of fun.  She's even signed up for the theater class this semester--they're doing Sleeping Beauty, she's hoping for a part as a fairy.

Maximus with a her friend, the Thug. 

Over all she had a blast in her busy few weeks.  She's started up again, and now she's singing songs for her upcoming America concert and getting ready to practice for the next play.  She's our busy girl and I have a feeling it's just beginning. Oh, high school, what are we going to do!