Snow day

It was perfect timing… the kids were thrilled to see snow falling and then even sticking to the ground on the day after Christmas.  If it had snowed on Christmas, they might have been torn between presents and playing in the snow… They were able to do both!  (Snow is rare here in El Paso and melts so quickly!)

With sick kids, we had to limit the outdoor fun…

The little kids played for about 15 minutes and then came in.  

The older ones went to the park for about an hour to play with friends.  

Gideon turns 3 years old!

I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he said, "Cholocate!" and then also picked out a topping by bringing me a Christmas tree cookie cutter.  Okay then!

We had to wake him up from a post-church very late nap, 

so he took a bit of warming up to open presents, but just a bit!

We spent the evening enjoying dinner and playing with presents!

Every time we sang "Happy Birthday!" to him he beamed and was so excited!

Christmas 2014

What a great day!

The traditional line-up

17 people for Christmas morning means a lot of presents!

And a lot of monkey bread!

Run!

Playing with toys

Skyping with family

More toys!

Skyping with friends

Waiting for Christmas

We got involved with lots of fun activities while we counted down for Christmas to come.  We made snowmen with cake balls, sugar cookies, and the kids even made a lego Nativity scene.

Kind of Elmo-like, huh?

Before the messy frosting…

Creative and cute!

David's 14th Birthday

14 years.  Really?
It seems both like yesterday and also like it has been forever.  I guess that is the miracle of time.

We celebrated David's birthday with the missionaries coming over for dinner and a delicious cake.  I also put his ornament on the Christmas tree and had a friend in Georgia put our new Santa on his grave.

It is really hard to wait.

Panoramic Fun!

Wow, we've had some fun with panoramic pictures this past few weeks.
Here are some of my favorite shots!

Hair fun

I love doing Leslie's hair every day! 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2014

Each of the kids helped make a portion of dinner.  It was wonderful to share that time with them.  We had quite a delicious feast.  We also had some service  thrown in to the day with the El Paso parade clean up activity.  The boys had fun playing some turkey bowl.  We had the missionaries over and the hit of the night was the Twix Cheesecake.  Yum.

Jonas is Seventeen

We love this guy!

We had a fun day with a cool toy set up of all of Jonas' old favorite toys ... thanks kids!

We had a family football game.

Bob and I took Jonas out to IHOP for lunch.

He opened presents.

We enjoyed a noodlemania dinner with 

German Chocolate Cake for dessert.

Yum!

Lots of toy memories...

Lucy is wondering if she can have any of Jonas' food/candy... 

Uh, no.

The cake... 

YUM!

Evelyn's Baptism

I love the shining faith of my little girl.  

She positively beamed with joy as she was baptized and confirmed.  

She requested that Jonas baptize her, which was a wonderful privilege for him.  

Bob confirmed her a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 

and bestowed the gift of the Holy Ghost upon her.  

She is beautiful inside and out, and we are thankful for her righteous example.

We hung out in the kitchen with candy and talking after everyone left...  

Two of my favorite things to do!

Jonas' Eagle Court of Honor

We were blessed to have all our sets of grandparents in town for the weekend.  We arranged Jonas' court of honor and Evelyn's baptism for that Friday/Saturday.  We enjoyed our time with everyone. We are so proud of our Eagle Scout!

We had a lot of other good times this weekend too with trips to a couple of parks, 

visiting in our home, 

and even sneaking in an awesome conversation with Leslie in fulfilling a Personal Progress requirement about faith.  (Yes, she's doing it again...!)

Thank you, dear grandparents, for coming to visit!

Halloween 2014

We've had an illness run through our little ones again, which made the Trunk or Treat not so fun...
Halloween night was a success with fun pictures, acting the parts, gathering loot, and then rushing off to see Jonas' final football game.  Today we graphed our candy and took a fun time-lapse movie of the kids eating candy for 5 minutes. Perhaps we should have taken a time-lapse movie of them AFTER the candy... :)

Trunk or Treat... 

you can probably guess by the faces 

who wasn't feeling too great...

Halloween night (Jonas is missing because he was at his last football game... who schedules these games!!!)

Princesses

My cute dragon (just woke up from a nap, so a little grouchy...)

The energy of these knights!  

Back view of Princess Leslie's outfit (and hair)

Best buddies

The candy graph.  900 pieces of candy total.  

Lollipops are reigning champion...

This is gross to watch in real time, 

funny in sped-up time, 

and would be disgusting in slow-motion! 

FUN!