Gingies

Our gingerbread house tradition started 5 years ago when we lived in Richfield. We had Tyler's family down to stay with us, go to the light parade, and make ginger bread houses. When we moved back to South Jordan, we wanted to continue the tradition (minus the family sleeping over) :)

I made my traditional lasagna dinner, then the kids got to open their Christmas jammies. Here's all five grandkids!

Then we started our houses. 

 Daddy helped Caden make his gingie house.  Caden may have made more messes than he actually helped.

 But how can you resist those two cute faces?

And he may or may not have eaten more candy and frosting than ended up on the house. 

 I helped Makayla make her house. She lost interest in the first part where I tried to put the house together multiple times. Seriously, I had to rebuild it at least three times because it kept breaking on me.

 Once we were ready to put the candy on the house, Makayla got right back in the action.

 And just like Caden, Makayla may have eaten more candy and frosting than ended up on the house.

Here's the kids' final houses. Caden's is on the left and Makayla's is on the right. I love that both of their houses only have half of the snowman in the front. It was asking a lot of the kids to not eat it.

 My favorite house was Tammy, Bruce, Karly and Rico's house. It was inspired by the recent Typhoon in the Philippines.

Here's all the houses... Grandpa Collard and Gayle's house didn't quite make it (on the far left)

 To end the night, Grandma got to read the kids books and get them snuggled in bed.

One of our traditions down, and many more to go! I love this time of year.

Kitty the Elf

This year Santa sent a special helper to stay at our house until Christmas. 

On December 1, he showed up on our front door and rang the door bell. The kids ran to the door to see who was there. 

Right by our Santa was an elf, a book, and donuts!

We went in the house and read the book together to learn all about our special elf. We learned that as soon as we named him he would start his magic. The kids decided to name him Kitty the Elf.

While reading the book we learned that Santa sent him to us to watch the kids and report back to Santa whether or not the kids had been good or bad that day. He leaves our house every night and then comes back in the morning in a new hiding spot and the kids have to find him. 

We were so excited about the donuts Kitty brought us... Makayla's face says it all. 

Since then we have found Kitty the Elf in all sorts of fun hiding spots, like the shelf

One morning he brought the kids some fun drink cups and decided to invite Jasmine to join him.

We caught him trying to fly over Makayla's ginger bread house.

And getting a piggy back ride from Santa.

I think the concept is working. Makayla did something the other day and I got mad at her. Makayla got so upset at me and said, "Mommy, say sorry! Kitty the Elf is going to tell Santa you were being mean to me!"

Stay tuned to see the other interesting hiding spots and mischief Kitty the Elf gets into!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

We love Christmas around here. We love the new new traditions we are starting with our little family and the traditions we have done with our families for years. We started off the holiday season by decorating the house.

The kids were great helpers for about 5 minutes, but then they lost interest and just made a mess the rest of the time.

Caden learned to say a couple of cute sayings for Christmas: 

-If you ask him about Santa Claus he says, "Ho, ho, ho houz" (Basically Santa's at our house).

-He loves the snowman decoration that sings "We wish you a Merry Christmas." He turns it on, then runs around in circles. He even learned how to say "new year"

-

 Her face doesn't show it, but Makayla loved getting wrapped up in the tinsel.

 Once we started putting ornaments on the tree, both the kids wanted to jump in and help.

 Our finished upstairs tree

 Then we moved downstairs to finish our other tree. The first ornament Caden found was the headless doll. He got the honors again of putting it on the tree this year.

 Makayla loves decorating the tree. She has redecorated our tree downstairs multiple times now... needless to say, all of the ornaments are only about three feet high on the tree.

 Here's our downstairs tree!

I love the way it looks with all the lights on it. I love going down there at night and just sitting in the dark with the lights on the tree. 

I bought new stockings and I absolutely love them! It is so crazy how fast our little family is growing. It was only five years ago on our first Christmas together that we had two little stockings on our mantle... now there's four!

 Ever since we moved into our house Tyler has wanted to put lights on the roof, but our house is so tall that he doesn't dare. We haven't had lights until this year because Tyler decided to decorate the trees in front. Plus we got a cute blow up Santa on our front porch. I think the highlight of the kids' day is when we go outside to turn on the lights and Santa.

 Now that the house is decorated, we can start with all of our fun traditions! Let the Christmas season begin.