More Christmas and Cousin Time

On Monday, after a morning game of basketball with my family (it was SO fun and tiring!) we had lunch and visited with my grandparents and Jim & Shellie, my aunt and uncle and their kids that were visiting from Utah. Then we headed to Tri-Cities to visit Kyle's family. We had dinner with them and exchanged gifts. It's fun to have two Christmases. :)

I thought this picture was adorable of Dee Ann with Lindsey on her new rocking horse from Dee Ann. Cute!

The kids played a game of twister and man that game is hard. You have to be so limber.

Kathryn and Lindsey

On Tuesday night, we headed to Royal City for a cousin party for Kyle's side. Matt and Courtney had it at their new gorgeous house and the kids were having a blast playing with all their toys. The adults were loving the food and the family feud game that Courtney did. It was a fun night visiting with everyone. Kyle has some pretty cool cousins. :)

Kyle with his cousins that were there and Grandma Great (aka Arlene).

L-R back row: David, Brenda, Kyle, Heather, Matt, Melanie and Becky. Front row: Nicki, Whitney, Arlene and Holly.

Playing the Family Feud game

Kyle with Dee Ann and Melanie

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas To You!!!

Oreo's and cold milk left out for Santa? Check!

New warm pajamas for the family? Check!

(They all have chocolate from the oreo's in their teeth, ha.)

Happy kids on Christmas morning? Check!

The kids were sleeping in so we finally woke them up at 7:30 because we had to get to Church by 9:30 so we were under a time crunch. We were able to see what Santa brought, open gifts under the tree, eat breakfast and get to Church on time. phew.

Kate got an American Girl doll from Santa. It's an understatement to say she was excited.

Preston got Spencer the train from Santa and he would have been happy with just that, but he also got a cars track.

Lindsey got a doll that dances and some maracas that might be turned into weapons.

We had Christmas Dinner at my parent's house. We came home from an hour of Church and ate a quick lunch, packed the car and headed over the mountains to my parent's. It was snowing most of the way so it made it very festive as we listened to Christmas music. A few family members got sick on Christmas eve so we pushed back our dinner plans and hoped that no one else would get sick. Well, I ended up getting sick a couple days later and so did Sadie. It was a quick sickness, but still, no fun for any of us! My Mom was a trooper and made Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner for everyone even when she didn't feel good!

Watching the kids dance and play. It gets loud with all the kids running around. We exchanged cousin gifts, my parent's gave the kids' their gifts and then we put them to bed before opening the adult gifts. It was much quieter then. :)

Reagan loves my Dad and it's so cute to watch her with him.

My Mom made the kids new pajamas with material that says "I love Grandma". And don't you love Hailey's glasses she put on? ha!

Festive Dresses

My Mom made all the cousin girls matching dresses for Christmas. I happened to have a matching vest for Preston, wore gray and black myself and had Kyle wear gray and black too so we were all sorts of matchy matchy at Church. Kyle had a meeting right before Church so I didn't get a family picture, bummer. But I was pretty surprised the kids sat for me to take their picture!

Snowflake Lane!!!

We have been waiting all month to go to Snowflake Lane in Bellevue and we finally went on Monday. My parent's and Jared (and Christian, a friend of Jared's who just got home from his mission) came over for it. Marci also came up to meet us. We met up at Cheesecake Factory for dinner then enjoyed the festive celebration. It was fun and seemed way busier than last year, but I think it's because it was the week before Christmas and kids are out of school now. They do this celebration every night at 7pm for the month of December for free. I remember last year we spent good money on the Santa train in Snoqualmie (you ride a train, see Santa, get cookies/hot cocoa and ride the train back) and the kids liked Snowflake Lane better than that! And this is FREE! haha!

What the street looks like, lots of snowflakes and people.

The kiddos posing for us. Kate bought that Santa hat at the dollar store with her money from the tooth fairy because a couple of her friends had one and she wanted one. haha!

Some of the spectators, good face Jared!

Kate with the snow princess who she was so excited to see that night.

Dancing with the toy soldiers that walk on stilts. They also have drummers come out and stand on podiums and they play to Christmas songs while the characters dance around shaking tambourines. It's very loud and festive!

Preston and Daddy

We were getting a picture of Kyle and I when the toy soldier jumped in our picture. It was funny. And just as I was uploading the picture I noticed Jared peeking above Kyle's head, nice Jared!

At the end, it snows *bubbles* and Lindsey was trying to grab them.

With Frosty and another princess

I thought this was cute of the kid's holding hands. It's nice when they get along. ;)

Countdown...almost there!

I can't believe it's been several weeks since I posted last. We have been having fun with our activities on our Christmas countdown. We have been dealing with kids being sick off and on. And of course, getting ready for Christmas. I'm almost done, one more present to wrap so I'm glad about that. We will spend some time over at my parent's and with Kyle's family over the holidays. Should be fun!

Decorating cupcakes with friends and neighbors

Going to Cold Stone with our friends before the Nutcracker. All the girls wanted to get dressed up in fancy dresses.

At the Nutcracker! Kate was so excited to see all the ballerinas and dancers. It was my first time going too and it was fun to see. It was kind of long and I wish it had words. haha. But it was cool. It's put on by a ballet school so the tickets are a lot cheaper than the professional nutcracker in Seattle.

Our decorated gingerbread house, tree and gingerbread men. This kit is from Costco and it was AWESOME! The house was prebuilt and the icing comes in a bag with a tip. Genius! Kyle, Kate and I all decorated it. Now I can't wait to get rid of it because the snow (coconut) keeps flaking off and I have to clean it off the table all the time.

Visits to Santa

Our ward had their Christmas Party Saturday night. Kyle and Kate stayed home sick. Kate was SO sad because she would miss seeing her friends and seeing Santa. Lindsey was sick first starting on Monday, then Preston on Tuesday then Kate on Friday night then Kyle Friday as well. Geesh! I'm the last one to get it and I hope I don't! But the Young Women were in charge of decorations and all the YW and leaders made a bunch of snowflakes. We hung them on the string across the gym. I loved how it looked. Our theme was Winter Wonderland.

Preston was excited to see Santa and told him he wanted "Molly" it's a train from Thomas and he like yelled it. It was funny.

Lindsey wasn't too happy to see Santa.

Then she stopped crying and just stared at him which was cute.

We decorated our tree yesterday and I love sitting in a dark room with just the Christmas lights on.

24 days 'til Christmas

In December we do a 25 day til Christmas countdown with activities. It's been more fun to do stuff as the kids are getting holder and enjoy the activities more. I needed an advent calendar though. I borrowed one from my Mom last year, but this year I wanted to make my own. So I looked on Pinterest and found this matchbox one that I thought was cute. Well, Jeni happened to have made one a couple years ago just like it so I picked her brain and got some good tips. After finding the right paper to match my red in my house I finally finished it in the nick of time. I printed off the activities on red paper, cut them into strips and put them in each little matchbox. We open one every morning to find out our activity. Today was make snowflakes. Here's some other ideas, not in specific order:

Decorate Christmas Tree

Watch First Presidency Message

Read Christmas Stories

Take Treats to Friends

Watch Frosty the Snowman

Decorate Gingerbread House

Make Christmas cupcakes and decorate them with friends

Color Christmas Pictures

Got out to dinner

Eat dinner by Candlelight

Sing Christmas Songs

Watch The Nativity

Read the Nativity Story out of the scriptures

Snowflake Lane in Bellevue

Red, Green & White Breakfast

Go to Jump Planet

Watch the Grinch

Make Ornament for Tree

Donate a Toy

And there are many more you could add or change. But it really is fun to do and Kate talks about the "fun thing" we are going to do each day.

I bought the little matchboxes at Walmart for $.98 for 10 of them. I bought the pan from Goodwill for $1.99 and then used goo gone to clean it up. Then I spray painted the pan black (in my kitchen because it was too cold outside, but then I wrecked our kitchen table with the black overspray and it got all over our kitchen floor- it was a MESS!!! Stupid of me! But it got painted. haha!)

Then you measure the matchboxes, cut strips of paper and I hot glued the paper onto the box because Jeni said she used glue stick/roller tape and it didn't stick. I embellished mine with ribbon and buttons and stuff. You cut little strips of magnets and put them on the back- I did 2 strips per box. My Mom made the circles with the numbers in Microsoft Word- made a circle with a text box inside for the number, she's tech savvy like that- and I used a 1" punch to punch them out. I printed out the top saying onto paper and used double sided tape to stick it down. I chose another pattern of paper to put on the rest of the pan because the magnets on the back were peeling up the paint from the pan. Add some ribbon and hang it on your wall! Oh yeah, the pan had a hole at the top so I could just hang it, but Jeni had Kevin drill 2 holes in her pan so she could put ribbon through it and hang it.

I am now ready for the Christmas countdown to begin!

Thankful

Thanksgiving came and went and I never blogged about it. I realized I hardly took any pictures over that weekend. We ventured over to my parent's house and spent Thanksgiving day with Melanie and her family and Dee Ann was even up because Melanie just had a baby boy on 11-11-11. Cool birthday! The food was delish and we had fun visiting with everyone. It was a good Thanksgiving- much to be thankful for.

My Mom, Marci and I went shopping on Black Friday. We don't do the crazy early shopping and we like it that way. By the time we get to the stores they are dead. Sure enough, Target and Walmart weren't busy, but the mall was crazy and JoAnn's had the LONGEST line to cut fabric. It was the worst and longest line we stood in all day. But with 3 people taking turns standing in line it wasn't too bad. The guys met us at night, the kids were at Jeni and Kevin's with a babysitter, and us adults went to Texas Roadhouse. They just opened one up in Tri-Cities. Their rolls are amazing and the food was really good. I hope they build more in Washington. A side note about shopping is Jeni went to Walmart on Thanksgiving night at 9pm (their sale started at 10pm) so while she was waiting she called us to see if we wanted anything. We were looking in the ad and then calling her multiple times with requests. She got us everything we wanted and was home by 10:15 thanks to a nice self-checkout lady who helped her check out super fast. Jeni said there were mass amounts of people and she would have been there for several hours waiting to checkout if she didn't luck out with the self checkout line.

Lindsey riding in comfort on our way to Tri-Cities on Thanksgiving morning. She sat like that for quite a while. It was funny.

Meeting Owen Henry for the first time. He looks like his daddy and brother Dane. He has lots of dark hair and was a very good baby because he slept through the entire Thanksgiving meal! Lindsey was fascinated with him, it was funny to watch her with him.

Kyle did dishes after the big meal! I helped him, but he definitely earned some points by doing this. haha! He thought it was dumb to take his picture doing dishes because he says he does them a lot. (I don't know about a lot, but yes he does them. :))

Lindsey Lou Who got her first haircut by Sara over the weekend. She was such a good girl and sat still- well good for a 15 mo old.

The after shot...side profile shot...I won't look at mommy shot. Now she looks a little more grown up.

We got back from Thanksgiving and this week Lindsey and Preston both have been sick. It's been lovely. Poor kiddos.