Christmas!

 This cute girl came up with a great outfit for Christmas!

 We had the Roylance's over for Christmas cookie decorating.

 Christmas morning!

Nora wanted the 10 foot teddy bear from Costco, but we told her our house is way too small. Santa surprised her and brought a 5 foot one instead. She was pretty happy.

 Miles really wanted the Ultimate Hotwheel car garage for Christmas, so we made it the boys gift from Brian and I. They were all pretty excited. A few days later Wesley told me he didn't really love playing with cars and I asked him why he'd been so excited when they opened this gift. He said, "Because Miles was!" Cute boy. He did love the super hero and play-dough stuff he got!

 We got a giant Monster sack for our new awesome family room and everyone loves it.

 Brian made Nora a balance beam and she's enjoyed practicing on it. Miles loved his Lego's

Sophie got some headphones and a bluetooth speaker for her kindle. She was pretty excited and she's fooling no one with this sassy tweenager look, she's the sweetest kid around.

We had a lovely Christmas together. We started a new tradition with this adorable baby Jesus and the manger. It came with a book called, "Soft Enough for a King" and we loved doing kind deeds and filling up the manger with hay for baby Jesus. What a beautiful time of year!

Christmas day!

I love Christmas, it's such a fun time to be a parent! At our house the kids each get 3 gifts from mom and dad (like the three gifts the wise men brought to baby Jesus) and the kids leave out a Santa bag and stocking. Santa usually leaves them one or two things in the bag, some candy and such in their stockings and leaves some special cereal, too.

Miles got some legos and a joke book from Santa. He loves telling jokes!

Sully got a toy bus from Santa!

Nora got an Elsa Barbie and a Bitty Baby dress from Santa.

All Sophie could think of this year that she wanted, was a basketball. Santa didn't let her down!

Brian and I got all the kids a gift card to go to Build-A-Bear. Miles was thrilled!

Scooter got some new balls!

Sullivan opening a present with some help from dad. 

Nora made gifts for everyone and painted this portrait of Brian.

Wesley's main gift was this awesome Imaginext Bat-Bot. He looks a bit concerned in this picture, I'm not sure why, but he has really loved it. It has a remote control and talks - pretty awesome for our Batman loving kid.

Miles really wanted a Hotwheels Streethawk flying car. It was the only thing he wanted. So he got it from Brian and I. We took it out flying on Christmas day and after about 15 minutes of crashing over and over again the wheel broke off. He was pretty sad about it, but after looking on-line at other options we decided to return it and ordered a different flying machine. Fingers crossed it lasts longer.

Nora's main gift was a big craft box! Nora crafts every day and our supplies were running low! She was pretty excited.

Sophie got a Kindle Fire! She is such a sweetie and would probably have never asked for one, thinking she'd never get it. It was fun to surprise her. After school every day she needs to use my phone or the computer to access homework information for school, so we figured it was time she had something of her own. Plus, it will be good practice for her to be responsible for something like this before she gets a phone in a few years. She was very excited, but was a bit sad to let go of the title "the only 6th grader without some form of technology of their own"

Brian's family always had a Christmas puzzle and Brian bought ours this year. It was a doozy. Out of 1,000 pieces the kids and I probably did less then 50 of them! I was all for getting out last years puzzle, but Brian persisted and stayed up late a few nights to work on it. I finally helped him and we got it done.

We made a real gingerbread house from scratch on Christmas day, which was pretty fun.

 A nice Christmas nap for Scooter. I gave Brian a calendar on Shutterfly for his office and I made him a tie rack for our bedroom. I got a handheld vacuum and an arm band to hold my phone when I run.

What a lovely, lovely day!

Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve was a lovely day at our house! We invited the Cornia and Coburn families over to have an early dinner and then decorate cookies for Santa. The Coburn's brought a set of chimes with a book of carols so we had a great time playing carols on those.

The Cornia's! Shelley, Reed, Beatrix and Callum

The Coburn's! Cami, John, Daniel, Clara, Aaron and baby Lily

After our friends went home we had our family gift exchange, opened Christmas jammies and ornaments, talked to family on the computer and did the extended family gift exchange and read Christmas stories and the Christmas Nativity before bed.

 

Wesley got Sophie a book for the family gift exchange

Brian had Miles' name and got him a game he liked as a kid called, "Two-Cushion Bumper Shot". We've all loved playing it!

I had Nora's name and got her a Care Bear book with playmat and Care Bear characters.

Nora had Sullivan and made him this mobile to hang over his crib.

Winter Break!

The kids had 2 weeks off of school for Winter Break and we had a great time. Which is good because the first 2 days they were supposed to head back to school got cancelled because we were having the coldest weather we've had in years, and the coldest weather I've ever experienced. Only - 41 wind chill. Yikes! We didn't do too much besides hang out at home and play, but the kids all got along really well for the most part and I wasn't anxious to send them back to school. 

Here are a few things we did:

Went to our favorite Ice Cream Parlor, Ella's Deli. We had coupons expiring so we went there on New Years Eve. Although we couldn't actually find the coupons before leaving, we had already told the kids we were going, so we still went. Later the coupons turned up under Nora's bed...

Nora loves to snuggle up with Scooter on the couch and hold him while he naps. It's pretty cute and Scooter loves the attention.

This is our friend Chia, he is a college student going to BYU-Idaho and comes home in the summer and winter break. He's good to our kids and took the older 3 to McDonald's and the Dollar Store before he drove back to Idaho (he didn't quite dare take Wesley and really, who can blame him? 3 year olds are tough!) I'm not sure why Miles is looking so surprised in this picture, but it's funny.

The boys spent plenty of time looking at cool stuff on the computer, mostly playing pbskids or looking at all the lego sets they want to own.

The girls spent plenty of time goofing off, crafting, doing their rainbow loom and reading.

We have to try to wear Scooter out since it is too cold to walk him right now. Wesley loves playing with that green toy and keeping it away from Scooter.

Wesley got a good bump on his head during a dad and 4 kid high dog pile. Ouch! But the fun never stops until someone gets hurt, right?

 

The last night before heading back to school the kids got a little stir crazy so Brian sat and read a Roald Dahl (one of our favorite authors) book to them.

Considering all the time we spent cooped up together in the house, the kids did so well and we had a lot of fun. A few other things we did with no pictures are: built snowmen (before our cold front came in), went to see Frozen (LOVED IT) and played the Wii (we got one for Christmas!) And the most shocking part of the vacation, my house wasn't completely trashed when they left for school today! I'm still not sure how we managed that. What a great winter break!