We are only about half way through December and already we have been so busy with fun Christmas activities.
First of all we decorated our house for Christmas. Caden and Kayla posed for pictures by the stuffed Santa.
Elmo had to join Makayla in the picture.
Makayla was great to help us decorate the tree. She loved putting the ornaments on the tree then taking them off over and over again.
Caden got the honor of helping Daddy put up our headless doll decoration.
Here's our downstairs tree all decorated
And the fireplace...
Here's our upstairs tree in the piano room. I love this tree because you can see it from our front window.
Daddy has been serenading us with some Christmas tunes. The kids love to play under the piano when he's playing and sometimes they even get to play along with Daddy.
Last week Tracy and Jeremy invited us to go with them to Discovery Gateway to see a Christmas movie in the IMAX theater. It was Makayla's first time in a movie theater and she loved it! She got to sit on Grandma Terry's lap the whole time. It was Caden's nap time and miraculously he slept through the whole movie and more!
After we walked around to look at all the space stuff. Makayla was amazed at everything.
The kids got to walk on Mars
And Tyler and Terry showed us their moon on the moon.
After that we thought it would be fun to go look at lights on Temple Square. Our original plan was to be there right when it got dark and leave before it got busy. We took too long at dinner and we missed one of the Trax trains, so by the time we got to Temple Square it was so busy and crowded. We still managed to have fun looking at lights.
This little girl is just growing up way too fast! I love my little girl.
Makayla loves hanging out with her cousins!
It was hard to drag Makayla away from the water. She wanted to keep putting her hands in it.
The Jones Family!
And my cute family (Cute Caden slept almost the whole time)
The whole group (minus me, taking the picture)
And us again (minus Terry taking the picture)
Makayla and Daddy. Oh I just love these two.
Yep, this is pretty much like what he looked like the whole night. He was one tired little monkey!
I love going to Temple Square. I think the temple looks so pretty with all the lights at Christmas time.
So I made my family pose for yet another picture in front of the temple.
Some of the other fun things we have been up to this month include:
Going to see the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional with one of Tyler's co-workers. It was such a humbling night to hear their talks about the true meaning of Christmas. One of our favorite moments was when the presidency walked into the room and every single person (about 10,000 people) went completely silent and stood up to honor him. It was pretty special to be there in the presence of the president of the church.
Making a countdown to Christmas chain. We put both kids' hand prints on it then Makayla got to color it.
Caden played with Makayla's blankies. What Makayla doens't know won't hurt her! :)
We thought it would be fun to do Angel Tree with the kids. We picked out two kids who were the same age as Makayla and Caden. Makayla picked a little girl named Mabel. We got her clothes, a tinkerbell doll that Mabel wanted, and Makayla picked out a baby doll that she wanted! :)
Caden got a little boy named Humberto. He wanted music toys, so we got him a few toys that he would like and some clothes.
The kids are too young to understand the whole idea of helping out others in need, but I hope they can look back on this someday and realize how important we feel it is to help, not just at Christmas time, but all throughout the year.
One of my favorite traditions now is to have our lasagna/Ginger bread party. We started this when we lived in Richfield 4 years ago. Everyone would come down to Richfield to go to the Light Parade. Since we moved we wanted to continue the tradition. We had so much fun this year. All the families got a gingerbread to decorate. As you can see we were all hard at work.
Our ginger bread house had a few bite marks in it before we could decorate it... it may or may not have been done by this cutie!
Makayla had so much fun decorating. I think she ate more candy than ended up on the gingerbread house.
She was so proud of her house. I think our house turned out the cutest!
Although the award for creativity would have to go to Ryan and Aubree. They made a "crack" house complete with boarded up windows.
Caden turned into Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer at some point in the middle of decorating. I think Grandma and Grandpa even let him taste the frosting.
Our family is growing pretty big, but I love that we still get together all throughout the year.
I love my little boy!
And my cute family! I am so blessed to have such a great family!
All the kids started to watch a movie and somehow Grandpa became the couch to lay on. I think he was in heaven.
Can these cousins get any cuter with their Christmas jammies from Grandma and Grandpa?
After we were done decorating and cleaning up, a few of the family stayed to play card games. We were laughing so hard until midnight when they decided they were partied out! Seriously one of the funnest nights!
Only 16 days left until Christmas and we have so many more fun things planned! I love this time of the year!!
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