Back to December

This is the first in SEVEN years that we actually failed on the Christmas calendar! That was a sad defeat, but I feel okay in the fact that this was also probably the craziest December we've ever had since we've been married and we still managed to get a lot of Christmas activities in and more importantly, feel the peace and love from our Savior and celebrate his birth!

The beginning of December took us back to the Valley for Avery's baptism and more doctor's appointments.

We love you Ave! Thanks for letting us be part of your special day!

 We made a last minute decision to squeeze in Temple lights and I'm so glad we did! It felt magical to be there with our little family, celebrating our faith and the Savior's birth!

We went Christmas tree hunting and made the quickest, most productive trip ever! I think we were on the mountain maybe two hours and came back with three trees!

Tammy is way funner than me, as evidenced by this picture! I sat in the car with Remi most of the time and reassured her that we're buying a tree next year! Meanwhile, Tammy happily packed up all three trees and brought three of her girls to help out with our kids!

More evidence of Tam's fun-ness...she made us dinner and gingerbread ornaments for the kids to paint that made our house smell nice and Christmas-y!

 

Surprisingly, this was about the only time Saw-Man tried to get into the tree! He did great! He would always break out into "Oooo"s every time we turned on the lights! He learned a new word in December because of all the Christmas lights. A very enthusiastic "WOOOOOOOW!"

 I love all the Christmas programs at church! Our Ward Choir had a beautiful sacrament meeting planned and then the Primary kids performed a Nativity for the ward. It was crazy seeing Grant amongst the primary kids singing the songs he'd learned throughout the year. Our kids are getting big!
Sawyer also went to nursery for the first time and fit right in when we peeked in on him (especially since it was snack time!)!

I guess I failed miserably at getting any more pictures, because we also went to the live Nativity, watched LOTS of Christmas movies, the kids saw Santa in Quemado, baked Christmas goodies, and survived the inevitable sickies that always show up around this time of year!

Luckily, we were all (mostly) well enough by the time family started rolling into town and still managed to have a fun Christmas!

Grant has been looking forward to Star Wars for MONTHS, it was almost written as big as "Christmas" on his calendar in his room. He was SO excited and the movie did not disappoint, especially since he got to watch it with some of his favorite people!

This girl reminds us a lot of her Uncle Chase with the crazy get-ups she's always wearing. She looked like this almost every day after Christmas for about a week!

EVERYONE (except me!) was SO excited for snow!! Sawyer kept toddling over to the glass doors so he could look out and yell "Ooooooo!". Remi was happy to add an umbrella to her ensemble.

I worked more than usual in December (which still wasn't much, but it still seemed to take up a lot of the month!) and by the last shift, I really got to missing these guys! One morning before I left, I went a took a quick picture of each of them so I could look at them throughout the day when I got to missing them.  Their sweet little sleeping faces made me miss them all the more! I'm one lucky lady!