Thursday, January 7, 2016

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!








Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Happy Fall!

FALL 2015 was good to us!

In no particular order, here are just SOME of the things that made our fall special!

We celebrated Thanksgiving!


Sawyer took his first steps!!!

We enjoyed the gorgeous scenery and weather!
 

 

We worked to prepare for winter

We celebrated our Veterans

      


 We celebrated celebrating our Veterans! :)
  

We got to spend time with some of our favorite people and Zacky got BAPTIZED!!)




We passed time at home...

Grant had his first Primary Program
We raked (and played in) leaves
 We learned a bit about medicine...


 Remi FINALLY gave up her paci!!

We checked out potential Christmas presents


We spent more time in the Valley, doing "Valley" things (like hitting up the mall for a carousel ride)


We did fall activities with Grandma

We celebrated Remi and Zacky's birthdays

We shared lots of love and counted our blessings!

Monday, December 21, 2015

Halloween and a Japanese Princess Tea Party

I wonder how much longer our kids are going to let us do themed costumes for them? This year took a little convincing with Remi, but it all came together pretty well. Grant's been wanting to be a ninja all year and Mike was so excited about the idea of making him and Sawyer characters from Mortal Kombat. He got Grant excited about the idea of being SubZero (because he wears shiny blue) and having Sawyer be Raiden. Once I found out what Mortal Kombat is, and what female options there were, the project was almost trashed! :) Mike's sister suggested a Japanese Princess. Rems was pretty disappointed she didn't get to be Elsa, but once we told her she could wear a pink dress and be a "princess", she agreed!

 

We also got to go trick-or-treating with Batman! :)
 
 Raiden tried to get away

Remi had said she wanted to have a princess tea party for her birthday. I saw this awesome idea on Pinterest to do a Japanese tea party so we did a Japanese Princess Tea Party. We tried to go smaller this year and just invite a few girls from her nursery class at church and it was much less stressful than in the past and still just as fun!

Mike made little kimonos for each of the girls and we hung sheets from the thrift store to look like those fabric room dividers.

 My dad served his mission in Japan and brought back this doll for my mom. She let us use it for decor. I also saw the idea on Pinterest to make "sushi" out of Twinkies and Rice Krispie Treats
 The girls had a little Frozen karaoke party afterward so Remi still got a dose of Elsa! :)
(Mike had wanted to stuff their kimonos with pillows and do sumo wrestling, but we didn't know how to pull that off in our tiny house!)