Christmas 2016

Christmastime is always favorite time of the year, but this Christmas seemed especially magical as I watched my kids really catch hold of the Spirit of Christmas. This was the first year Anna remembered Christmas from the previous year, and it was so fun to see how excited she was for all the Christmas traditions. We also were able to participate in the Church's #lighttheworld initiative, which helped keep our focus on service and the Savior. Here are only about half of the thousand pictures I took during December. ;)

We put up the tree the first day of December. The kids loved hanging the ornaments and they only rearranged them about five times a day. :)

Cleaning the church building was one of the ways we chose to serve for #lighttheworld.

Our church Christmas party was lots of fun and had a cute photo booth.

Anna wanted to take pictures by the Christmas tree.

We hosted Anna's little preschool Christmas party.

Another service we did for #lighttheworld was choose an ornament from the angel tree at church and donate a gift.

We welcomed our very first niece, Sadie Lu Smith into the world! She was born on December 12th, and is the sweetest little baby. I love that both my kids always call her "Sadie Lu".

Baking Christmas cookies is a favorite tradition.

Derek and I celebrated our 7th anniversary! Haley watched the kiddos for TWO whole nights for us while we stayed at a bed and breakfast in beautiful little Midway, UT.  While we were there, we went to see Rogue One, went ice skating, and attended a local Christmas concert. It was a wonderful and much-needed little getaway.

It was like 10 degrees when we went ice skating so we were FREEZING but it was still so much fun.

We gave the kids an early Christmas present...a kitten! We named him Milo, and he's been a lot of fun. Well, the kids and I think he's fun, Derek thinks otherwise. He would much rather have gotten a dog, but I keep telling him, Milo is almost like a dog. He loves being around people, scratches himself with his back foot like a dog, and loves to play fetch! His favorite toys are socks and the outlet safety plugs. He will chase those all around the house and if you throw one for him, he will fetch it and bring it back. It's the funniest thing!

My parents and Maren came out the day before Christmas Eve, so we had my whole family together for Christmas. We had a nice Christmas dinner on the 23rd at my grandparents' house where we also had our traditional nativity pageant as well as visit from Santa!

 Paul refused to wear a costume, but I got him to hold a sheep instead.

We had Billy and Josette's family over for  the afternoon on Christmas Eve, but I unfortunately didn't get any pictures with them. Later that evening, we assembled tamales for our traditional Lontine Christmas dinner.

Making tamales is a team effort!

The horde of presents under the tree.

Cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. The card says, "Dear Santa, I Love you Santa. We're using your crayons. The cookies are for you. The carrots are for your reindeer. Love, Anna and Paul." :)

Christmas morning!

Paul's gift from Santa was a firetruck. 

Anna asked Santa for a toy blender and was thrilled to find one Christmas morning.

All dressed up for church.

The kids got these cute hooded towels from Grandma Karry..

My big surprise gift from Derek was a DSL camera. I'm still figuring out how to really use it, but even on the automatic setting, it takes pretty awesome pictures. Here are some Derek and I took Christmas Day.

Anna made smoothies with her new blender for every single person. :)

Nap time :)

  

Making smoothies at the new kid table from Grandma Karry

Anna with her letter from Santa

We had planned to travel to Denver the day after Christmas to spend time with Derek's family, but with all the snow we got on Christmas Day, we decided to wait a day for the roads to clear. Then we discovered head lice on Anna's and my hair, causing us to cancel our Denver trip all together. We spent most of the next two days shampooing our hair, combing for nits, vacuuming, and washing bedding, clothing, and car seats. It was not fun. But once we got the lice problem under control, we were able to do some fun things as a family.

We took the kids for their first time sledding (on a real sledding hill and not our yard). They had a blast.

We spent a day at the aquarium. Anna loved the sharks and penguins, and Paul's favorite were the otters. He kept running along the glass chasing the otters as they swam back and forth.

This octopus was really active and it was fun to watch it climb up the glass.

Touching pools

Chasing the otters

She is always so animated, I love it.

Crossing the rope bridge

Not really sure why they have ocelots at an aquarium, but they were cool!

We had dinner with Kyle and Amanda and Jordan when they got back from Denver and exchanged gifts with them.  They also brought back presents for the kids from Mike and Joy and so it felt almost like a second Christmas.

Anna was really excited about her Frozen suitcase from Mike and Joy

Matching pjs!

Playing with the dump truck Paul got from Mike and Joy

Despite the lice fiasco and being really bummed about not making it to Denver, we had a pretty good Christmas break overall. It was so nice to have Derek home for a whole week and to just spend time together as a family!