2015 New Years Eve

We partied hard on New Years Eve...and by "partied hard" I mean we played kid games, drank sparking cider, handed out chocolate kids and wrapped it all up at 9:00 PM.

2015 was good...hard...but good.

Our Everyday...

All of December in iPhone pics...

December has been such a fun month for our family!  First Dave has the entire month of December off, for Sabbatical...which is the best thing in the whole world!  We have loved him being home.

We've also had tons of snow this month.  I don't love the cold, but if it's going to be cold...then I love the snow so the kids have something to do!

I feel like I've been dropping "the ball" left and right this Christmas season. And there's so many things I wish I were doing different or better. And I didn't get Christmas Sunday clothes for everyone and luckily Ava was willing to get a picture with me, even though everyone else refused 😏. But I was spiritually fed today in church and went away feeling more determined to try harder and be better, strengthen my faith, serve more, love deeper and give forgiveness. And I think that's what our Savior really wants from us...is to always keep trying, always getting up when we fall, always striving to seek Him and be like Him. So my gift to Him, is to do just that...keep trying.

If there's anything I really love at Christmas time, it's getting Christmas cards in the mail!! I look forward to getting the mail everyday and get a huge smile on my face when I see my beautiful friends and their adorable kids, smiling back. I know how much work Christmas cards are to get out...so to each of you, who sent one our way, thank you so much! Each of them made the banister and we all love to look at them daily!

I took the girls out tubing behind the 4-wheeler for an hour and a half and we had a blast!

This picture is everything to me.  My sweet little family with my sweet little Nonna.  I love that she's wearing pink.  I love that she is smiling.  I love that her hand is on my cheek.  She's such a special lady in my life.  She's been sick and on her death bed a few times, but she's got 9 lives and keeps springing back up.  She has such a fiery spirit and we love her so much.

Christmas Eve 2015

Christmas eve is such a special day as we think about our Savior and his birth.  We have many fun traditions on this day and these cute kids look forward to them every year.  

We always make cookies for Santa and get the milk and carrots ready too.

We had an early dinner at Olive Garden.

We came home and played games and had too many fun laughs.

Then onto jammies and our ornaments.  Every year the kids get an ornament that represents their year.  This year they all got an ornament with their picture on it.

My gift from Ava :)

Then we turn off all the lights and we sang some Christmas hymns and talk about our Savior and the true meaning of Christmas...all with our lanterns lite.  Then we sing as our lanterns light the way to these little ones beds.  They were so excited about the morning!

Christmas Card

We all know family pictures day is the worst, and even though I'm a photographer...it's still the worst for me too :)  We've had such a busy month, that I wanted to make our Christmas card this year easy.

So we got in our jammies, got into our new bed and snapped our pic!