Christmas 2014

Christmas Season is my favorite!!  I love the month long festivities and the traditions we enjoy.  I love being together and spending as much time together as possible.  I love dressing up and taking our pictures as a family.  I love having a reason to celebrate the birth of our Savior. 

Family Pictures!!

We are a serious bunch!

Gingerbread Houses

Baking Cookies (making the girls do the hard work)

Decorating the cookies!

Seeing Beautiful Christmas Lights

Visiting Temple Square on Christmas Eve

 

Reenacting the Nativity scene. 

Christmas Morning finally comes, which makes me a little sad...All the build up has been a blast and now it will come to an end.

The end of Christmas was curling up together and watching White Christmas. 

 Tianne was worn out from all the festivities throughout the month

The best part of this season was the girls sleeping together ever night 

throughout their break from school.

 They loved to be together and hated to separate at night.

December aka Recital Time

December is always busy with the Christmas holiday.  There are parties to throw and attend, family gatherings, shopping, service, traditions.....and recitals!  Along with our normal activities we decided to add two choir concerts for our girls, a band concert (no picture, only a video in which I'll spare you), and a dance recital.  Here's a brief recap...

Cambree's school choir (she's in that picture, I promise)

Shayla's school choir and band concert (of course on two different nights)

 All three in a dance recital.  

The girls looked beautiful and did a great job!  Each one is so graceful!

Call times -- three different times!

Settle in and be comfortable - we are in for a long night!

We were lucky enough to throw one more concert in the busy schedule.  Our wonderful friend gave us tickets to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert.  The Muppets came and participated so the tickets were available for our whole family.  We had a great time!  The girls loved watching and seeing the Choir perform, not to mention, giggling at the Muppets. It was an experience to remember!

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving was successful again this year!  We hosted the Baird family Thanksgiving party this year, and I would have to say, it was great!  The food was delicious and the company was fun!  We even all sat around the table, just not the same one.

I was a little unsure if we would actually use the table, however when we all gathered around the counter and started stuffing food in our face before the meal was finished being prepared.  Jeff and Kristin's friends brought us some yummy-lisious hors d'oeuvres. 

Finally, we sat and ate!

After eating too much, we decided we needed to exercise.  So we all gathered at the ice rink to cause a different pain and suffering.  

The weekend was so much fun, we were truly sad to see it end and send everyone home. We have so very much to be thankful for!

A Special Trip

Cambree and I got to go on a special, special trip: just the two of us!

We hopped on a plane and went to Virginia to see.....

Cousins!!!

Everything is so much more exciting with cousins!  Even coming home from school is so cool if there is a cousin involved.

Not to mention, doing chores is soooo cool with your uncle.

Cambree determined she would return home different than how she came. 

And she succeeded!  She is one determined soul!

Cambree wasn't the only one having fun!

  I enjoyed my time, too, with my siblings.   Even Deborah joined in.  

The most wonderful reason we came!!  Lucy's baptism...what a wonderful day!

The trip went way too fast, but it was sure fun!  We love our cousins!!

Halloween

Time has flown by.....and the Halloween festivities have come and gone!  However, it doesn't mean we didn't have fun.  We had our normal traditions of eating carving pumpkins.....

Then we have to show how cute our carvings are.

Then it's time to dress up...Bet you can't guess who this family is!

Our real costumes...Elsa, a dragon tamer, and an Elf princess.

A Cousins party is the BEST!

Specially when there is a movie theater involved.

Time to trick or treat!  It's serious business to Shayla!