December Happenings

Well, Christmas came and is almost gone. Sad. It has been one of the best Christmas season's I have ever had. The kids excitement is so contagious! They love everything about Christmas. The lights, the tree, the Christmas stories, hot chocolate every night, completing our advent calendar! We have made many memories this year and here are a few of the many pictures from December......(fyi....lots of photos ahead!)

My mom was planning on spending Christmas with us but she surprised us a few days early! The doorbell rang and Izy answered the door, "Grandma"? We both stood there with our mouths wide open as we were shocked to see her! My first thought was "glad I made my bed today :)" It made my day. Life has been pretty hard lately and there is nothing like a "mom hug" to make things seem a little brighter! Her main reason for coming early was so that she could see the girls singing performance. Which they rocked it out!!!

One of my favorite things about Christmas time is receiving cards from our friends and family. It's such a pleasant detour from the mundane everyday mail.
We display all of our cards in the kitchen. I love having all those faces I love so much staring at me while I do dishes :)

Another tradition that we look forward to is baking treats to deliver to our friends. This year the lucky recipients received my mother's famous poppy seed bread. It's heavenly. I think I've eaten 5 loaves all by myself this week.

This time around was perfect because my little helpers did all the grunt work for me while I sipped on my Thirstbuster and jammed out to Justin Bieber's "Under the Mistletoe".

Avery and Grandma made the cutest little Santa pretzels for all of her classmates. She proudly handed each one of them out!

Her teacher gift was so dang cute this year...if I do say so myself :)

Our little Christmas angels.

A few nights ago we set out in our pajamas in search of the best decorated house! This is our 4th year doing this tradition and we LOVE it. The gift that we gave to the winner was a darling snow globe and cookie mix.

After driving around for 2 hours this was the house that got our vote!! The picture does not do it justice, it really was amazing!

Awww.....the temple lights. It wouldn't be Christmas without a visit to the temple. We went with a few other families and it was so much fun. Isn't it beautiful?

I had to take a picture of this tour bus shuttling people to the temple!! Ha.Ha. Ha.

As a Utah native, I couldn't get over the fact that you can have Christmas lights wrapped around flower bushes! Oh, how I love the desert!


Part 2 coming tomorrow..............