Christmas Eve

We always spend Christmas Eve at my parents house witht he whole family, and the kids open gifts(like, a million!), and the adults do a white elephant gift exchange. It's always so much fun. here's always lots of yummy food, lts of laughter, and lots of love. It's one of my favorite parts o the year.

Kaylin, Sydney and Kaydence cuddling:

So my  Dad has this creepy santa statue, and of course Micah and my brothers thought it would be hilarious to make him look even crazier by putting sunglasses on him and a "cigarette" in his mouth. The kids didn't liek it for sure. But we got a good laugh from it!:

 White elephant exchange, we regifted a present we got a  few years back, a photo of my brother Kevin that he signed. It hung on the wall behind our bathroom door, but we decided it was time to share the joy, so we started a photo collage and added Micah to it(that;s him jumping by my brothers face in the photo):

                                                                      The whole family:

                                                                       The grandkids:

                                                    Well, hello!

Rory and Gene

Rory's best friend is Gene. They have been friends since the were babies, and get along really well. We had Gene over for a day during Christmas break, and they spent the day playing video games, and going to the train museum. Pretty much a perfect day for a couple of 5 year old boys. And we topped it off with pizza for dinner. Pure bliss.

December fun

December was full of fun for us. We were really busy, which made me feel a little overwhelemed, but we love Christmas time so much, and try to enjoy it as much as possible.

Sydney did a little Nativity for Joy School at a local retirement home, which was really sweet:

 Sydney was Mary, which she loved! She went around all month pointing out pictures of Mary and saying"there I am!"

                                               Sydney got her first haircut, they cut off about 8 inches of beautiful curls(which i saved), and it has saved so much time and tears in the morning when combing her hair. She wasn't very happy at first, but loved the experience, especially getting her hair washed. The lady doing it was really nice, but really scary looking with tons of tattoos all over her. We might skip that place next time.

 We did the gingerbread house thing as usual, and decided to have our friends, the Park family, over to make it even more fun. And I sent it home with them, too! Thanks guys! ;)

 And we did some more gingerbread house making after, thanks to all the work of my good friend Mel. She put together something like 20 houses for a bunch of the little kids from church to decorate at her house. We had so much fun:

Lots of hot cocoa drinking goes on during the cooler months at our house, and of course that menas lots of whipped cream and marshmallows, too:

 My cookie baking always gets way out of hand. We start out saying we will just bring some to our neighbors, but then that turned into 30 plates of cookies somehow. I baked over 300 cookies in one evening(this wasn't all of them, there were more on the counter!):

 We did another nativity program for the Joy school parents, Sydney got to be the center of attention again, too:

 Mema and Aunt Kathryn got to come and watch:

 We went out to dinner and looked at Christmas lights with our friends the Bourne's(Chase, Syd and Rory are obviously excited):

And at the request of Rory we celebrated Hannukah. We talked about it, and I made potato latkes with apple sauce and sour cream. They were really yummy!

Thanksgiving at Knott's

We decided to head to Knott's Berry Farm on Thanksgiving this year. We went up the night before and stayed at the Knott's hotel(which is nice, but the beds are the most uncomfortable I have ever felt, they were like concrete, which made for a very long night). Otherwise, we had a really fun time.

                                     meeting Snoopy at the hotel, and he came around at breakfast too.

 This was about the only time they slept all night...thankfully no one was crabby the next day(well, except me ;):

Grandma and Grandpa Kim, and Aunt Tara and Uncle Jay came up and played too. It was really fun to have them there with us.

                                                   Grandma and Syd on the Ferris wheel, I think that was the 5th time in a row she went on:

  On the way home, we were hungry, but being Thanksgiving there wasn't much to choose from, so we stopped at Carrow's and had Pancakes:

I think we might try to do this again next year!