Christmas 2015

It's been so long ago, I don't know if I remember everything from Christmas, but I'll try!

Here are some pictures of the kids after we put up our tree.

We also took the kids to see Santa at the Riverwoods Shopping Center in Provo. Anna fell asleep on the way. Then when we woke her up she was all excited to see Santa...until it was actually our turn, then she screamed and cried anytime we asked if she wanted to sit on his lap. Paul didn't mind though.

We celebrated our 6th anniversary a few days early, also at the Riverwoods. We got a sitter for the kids and went out to dinner and took a little winter walk to see all the Christmas lights.

The next day was our ward Christmas party. The planning committee went all-out with the decorations and we had a full cardboard Bethlehem backdrop. The evening included dinner and a program with songs and messages about the Savior. It was a change from the usual Santa visit, and I really loved it.

Anna testing out the cookies I made for the Christmas party

The day before we left for SD, Derek took the day off work and we had a little early Christmas with just our family. We opened our traditional pictures of Christ and the gifts we got for each other (excluding Santa gifts). The kids loved their new cars and car tower, and Anna played with it almost all day. (Paul couldn't really put the cars down the track, but now that he can stand up on his own, he loves it a lot more.) We built Anna's first snowman in our front yard, using baby lid jars for eyes and a jalapeno pepper for a nose. :) We just had a really fun day together as a family.

We left for Mitchell the next morning (Saturday before Christmas). Paul thankfully did really good on the drive. We were nervous because he didn't do so great on our San Fransico trip, but I think he figured out that it was going to be another all-day trip and just resigned himself to being stuck in his car seat haha.

My whole family was home for Christmas which was so nice. We got to see Maggie for the first time since she got home from her mission (and, for Paul, for the first time ever)! Our week in SD was pretty laid back. We went to see a Christmas concert by Point of Grace at the Corn Palace and Maren and her choir got to perform couple songs with them! That was fun. We got family pictures taken OUTSIDE and they turned out really good despite the fact that our teeth were all chattering. We baked and (intricately) decorated Christmas cookies...seriously, some of those cookies were works of art! Grandma watched the kids one night while the rest of us went to see the new Star Wars movie. We went ice skating. We played lots of games. Anna played lots of Littlest Pet shop and doll house and Pretty Pretty Princess (mostly with my dad haha). Paul practiced standing on his own, learned to climb the stairs, and tried (unsuccessfully) to corner the cat. We all ate way too much food. And just enjoyed being all together for a whole week. I was terrible about taking pictures, but here are the few we took.

Our beautiful cookies

Playing Pretty Pretty Princess

The Reindeer food and poem my sweet dad put together for Anna.

The ball pit Paul got from my parents was a hit!

Anna riding the tractor in the lobby of the Corn Palace

Just having a little heart-to-heart with Aunt Maren!

The day after Christmas we were planning to drive to Denver to spend a few days with Derek's dad and stepmom, but we got about a foot of snow Christmas day and were stuck in Mitchell until Sunday. Luckily, the kids had lots of new toys to play so it wasn't too bad sticking around an extra day. Anna also had a blast playing in the snow with Uncle Trevor and Aunt Megan. Luckily, Megan is awesome about taking pictures, so I was able to steal these from facebook.

Being pulled in the sled

She's the cutest

The next day was Sunday, so we went to church and left right after sacrament meeting to drive to Denver. The roads were pretty clear, and we made it in just over 9 hours. We enjoyed spending a few days with Mike, Joy, Kyle, and Amanda, and also enjoyed seeing Emily and Quinn as well as Derek's grandparents. We also took the kids to see The Good Dinosaur...Anna's first movie in the theater, and she loved it! And technically Paul's too. He wasn't too interested in the movie, but LOVED the popcorn. He ate about half the bag and then promptly fell asleep haha. And I don't think I took a single picture the whole time we were in Denver. Sad! I really need to be better at taking pictures!

For New Year's, we had lots of Derek's family in town for his cousin Kailey's wedding. We had his mom and aunt and their husbands stay with us and had the whole crew over for New Year's Eve (again, no pictures!) But here are a few from the wedding reception, which was Jan 2nd.