Christmas Day 2011

This year for Christmas there were some first for our family. First, Christmas was on a Sunday. I don't remember having a Christmas on this day before. Luckily for us we had church at 1:00 so Christmas morning wasn't any different. Although we only had an hour of church, not only were my kids tired but everyone else's were as well. The primary sang 5 songs for the Christmas program and I had 3 kids fall asleep in their chairs on the stand! It was very amusing.
Second, every kid got a present from Santa and P.J's from us the night before but all the other presents were homemade. I really enjoyed making scarves, hand warmers, white boards and with Denyces' help quiet books for the three little girls. Each kid also precipitated in Secret Sibling. We started this in our family last year. You pick a sibling's name and make a homemade gift. We had so much fun last year and it is what inspired the homemade theme this year. Garrison made Denyce a wall hanging with her initials, Kwynn gave Lily a garden snow globe, Mason made a pillow for Garrison, Lily had Kwynn and made her a match game, Aubrey made Mason a big Jenga set and Denyce made a box for Aubrey that was filled with musical instruments. My favorite gift was from Dwayne and the kids. They took my 12 favorite pictures that I've taken and put them together in a calender. It looks great! The boys favorite gift had to be the bottle rocket launchers that Dwayne made them. We all had fun working the pump and watching the 2 liter bottles rocket into the sky.

As you can see from the pictures, it was still dark outside when we got up because it was at 5:30 in the morning! Normally we make the kids wait until 6:00 but for some reason we let it go this year. Maybe we were all excited for Christmas this year. After opening presents we had our traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast and watched A Christmas Story. Garrison found it real funny this year. Hopefully memories were made and everyone had a great Christmas. My kids are already looking forward to next year!

Snow Day!

The most amazing thing happen this last Friday Dec. 2nd. It snowed..a lot! We have lived here for 8 years and I have never seen this much snow before. School was canceled, nobody in town had electricity and we were so unprepared my kids didn't even have gloves. We had to wait until that afternoon when the power was back on to pick some up. But we had so much fun that day. Our neighbors down the street the (new) Hatch's brought out their horses and towed everyone up and down the street on a sled. The Hall's were there too which prompted a big snow ball fight. My kids stayed out as long as they could and they weren't the only ones. Driving through town you could see kids everywhere building snowmen, making snow angels and at Hunt park some very resilient children made a huge snow duck in the field. Since Dwayne was home he got to help us put up outside Christmas lights. It has been a long time since he has done this because he is usually at wrestling finals. Garrison and Lily were helping him put up the lights on the fence and I need to know what kind of end he had at the end of the string. I asked and he reply ed that he had a male end. "A male end? Dad what does that mean?" Lily asked. Garrison answered "Don't worry Lily, you'll find out when your older. But its not as exciting as you think it is." Oh how that kid makes me laugh! We built our own snowman and colored him with food coloring. The kids loved that part. To top off the the weekend we also put up our Christmas tree. This year we are trying something new. My sister found a Yoda tree topper and was kind enough to send it to us. We bought Star Wars good and bad guys colored ornaments to go with the theme. Everyone agrees that the coolest thing is that Yoda's light saber glows. Nothing say holiday cheer like a scowling Yoda. We love it anyway!