Ho, Ho, Ho

Merry Christmas!
It's been a wonderful Christmas. We drilled the kids last night and they knew that they could not wake us up before 7am! Once we were up and going they grabbed their stockings:

They got some fun things (including a puppet for each). Bud got a shark!

Henry has a new bath poof!

Can you tell N8 is excited!

When we moved over to the tree the first things up were these guys:

It's a pillow, it's a pet, it's a pillow pet! They love their new pillow pets!
The next BIG item was a Wii:

We've procrastinated getting any type of video games, but are excited to now have the Wii. The kids had a blast playing Mario Kart and Lego Star Wars today!
Here's Henry getting into the action opening up the Little People Farm that Santa brought to him and Mo.

Emma has enjoyed her new Rapunzel as well as a new doll (a Madam Alexander 18" doll). Tonight her and her doll are wearing matching nightgowns!

My parents got us this print of the Mesa Temple, I love it!

Some other favorites were legos, trains, a magic bullet and the newest version of Emma.
We enjoyed Turkey, rolls and mashed potatoes for and early dinner and blueberry pie for dessert! Much of the mess is cleaned and put away, but some will have to wait for another day.
We had a wonderful Christmas and look forward to seeing family this coming week!

Santa needed some cookies...

Tonight we decorated cookies for Santa. I tried a new recipe. It's pretty good. It's not a soft and chewy cookie, but the flavor is good and it was easy to roll and cut out after the dough was chilled. I also decided to go with a royal icing to decorate. I then bought ketchup bottles at Walmart for easier icing. They kids had a great time and I liked that it was much less messy using the bottles rather than a knife!

Mo really liked putting on the sprinkles!!




Henry helped out N8:

This was my favorite that I made:

Tomorrow will be an exciting day. Bud and Emma are SUPER excited for Santa to come and open presents. Mo will be excited once he realizes that he finally gets to open what's been sitting under the tree.
Tonight I'm thinking of Mary being ready to deliver a baby. I'm thinking of the Shepherds beings visited by an angel letting them know the the Savior had been born. I'm thinking of the love I have for the Savior and all that he has done for us.
Merry Christmas

All lined up and ready to go...

Here are the kids all ready to go to church this past Sunday. Emma is wearing her new Christmas dress.
This first one we went with age order, oldest to youngest:

Here we tried something new.

They were a little confused at first, but we finally got one where they looked at the camera!!

Open House

Once a year China Lake Navel Base opens it's doors to the families of it's employees. The kids look forward to seeing where daddy works and eating pizza at his office. This year we got to go check out a new building on base and a friend that works there took our picture!

It's an infrared picture. Can you see all of us? Mo is a little hidden between Emma and Bud! The kids were a little nervous at first, but after Ellie offered them suckers, they were happy!

The great cookie exchange!

On Monday morning my house turned into a sweets shop! My house was the location for the 2nd annual cookie exchange. This year that turned out to be 18 women (who knows how many children!), at least 19 different treats, which turned out to be about 1000 goodies.

Each person was asked to bring 4 dozen treats. That meant everyone could take home 2 of each treat and then there were some leftovers for tasting and snacking on after. I got a picture of everyone as the came in with their goodies:




And here are all of the goodies:



It was so much fun and everything tasted SUPER YUMMY! This is an annual tradition that I hope we continue!
Merry Christmas!

Oh the insanity...

Today was a CRAZY busy day. Here's the breakdown:

• 8am-9:15am clean the church building
• 9:30am Benjamin report in cub scout uniform for Christmas Parade
• 10am-11:30am Christmas Parade
• 1pm-3pm Cub Scout push cart races
• 3pm-4pm Bake dessert for upcoming Ward Christmas Party
  
• 2pm-4pm Extend Youth Planning Meeting
• 4pm-5:30pm Birthday Party (for Benjamin to attend)
• 6pm-8pm Ward Christmas Party

That was our day today. It's done and boy am I glad!! Now onto Sunday, which will not be any less crazy, but at least it will have some time where I sit down!

Here's the float that Bud rode on through the parade. If you look closely you can see part of his head :)

Here are some of the best shots from the Cub Scout Push Cart races. Bud had a great time!



Look closely and you can see the hammer in midair! Yes, they were letting 8 year old boys throw hammers!!

December is a crazy month and I know as our children get older it will just get more crazy. This next weekend we plan on going down to LA to the temple, enjoying the lights, temple work and family time. I just need to continue to remind myself that the hustle and bustle of the month cannot be overshadowed by the reason we celebrate at this time of the year.

Elder Uchtdorf said in this months Ensign:
The Christmas season is wonderful in many ways. It is a season of charitable acts of kindness and brotherly love. It is a season of being more reflective about our own lives and about the many blessings that are ours. It is a season of forgiving and being forgiven. It is a season to enjoy the music and lights, parties and presents. But the glitter of the season should never dim our sight and prevent us from truly seeing the Prince of Peace in His majesty.

Happy 3rd Birthday Mo!!!

3 years ago Mo joined our family. It hasn't been the same since!!

Happy Birthday Mo!!!

Trimming the tree...

Tonight we decorated the Christmas tree. I didn't even rearrange things very much after the kids put the ornaments on! Now our home feels ready for Christmas. Now I guess I should start wrapping presents!

Choo, choo...

Tonight we got to go and ride a train! The kids were SUPER excited. It is a 7 1/2 gauge railroad that gets decked out from Christmas. You must have a ticket to ride and tickets are given by invitation only. This means you have to know someone to get a ticket. A lot of people know people apparently :) We rode the train about 6 years ago when Bud was little, but they have significantly added to the experience (a lot more track and Christmas lights!). Here's their website if you want to give it a look: SBSL.
Here we are waiting in line for the train:

N8 wore Henry in the Bjorn and zipped his coat up around him. It kept him nice and warm and everyone thought it was hilarious!

At the end of our train ride!

Our picture with Santa didn't turn out, but the kids were excited to get a full size candy cane!

The leaves...

We cut down our mulberry tree just before Emma was born 5 1/2 years ago and put in a strawberry tree. It doesn't drop it's leaves in the Fall. Luckily for our kids, unluckily for us, our next door neighbors still have a mulberry! We had a little room in the top of the garbage can so I thought we should stuff in as many leaves as possible, plus it gave the kids a chance to play in the leaves!!

I'm Thankful...

We were able to go visit my sisters family for the week of Thanksgiving. We LOVE going up there and had a blast. One of the first activities was the California State Railroad Museum. The most excited person for this outing was Mo for sure!

Can you tell how much fun he was having!

Here he asked if he could touch the train!!


The next day we got our family pictures taken. I was not very happy with how things went, but will have to deal with that later. Luckily we got decent individual shots of each of the 4 kids.

After pictures we went to the Jelly Belly Factory! They've changed the tour since the last time we were there and now you get to taste the beans as they are being made. The factory smelled of buttered popcorn Jelly Belly's and it was great!


We were exited for people to help hold Henry while we were there. My mom has more and more energy and was happy to help keep Henry happy!

My awesome sister got this awesome shirt for Henry. "My Auntie is Awesome" for sure!!

The men folk took the kids on a hike while the women got the pre-Thanksgiving cooking done.

Thanksgiving morning was the now traditional turkey trot. Here are the 4 trotters before the race:

Here they are after:

They are still smiling, but inside they're really annoyed!! Spencer, Casey and Taylor ran a supposed 5k which turned out to be 3/4 of a mile longer and N8 ran a supposed 10k which turned out to be over 1 mile longer. They still felt good and N8 took 5th place for his age group!
Here's the whole group for Thanksgiving:


On Friday, after all of our crazy Black Friday shopping (that deserves its own post) we attended Spencer's Eagle Court of Honor. We're super proud of Spencer and look forward to seeing what is coming up for him (graduation, collage, etc).

We had a great time and I'm having a hard time getting put back together from it all! Today I did get most of the Christmas decorations out. Hopefully we'll get the tree and outside lights up on Saturday after N8 gets home from a work trip back east. He got to see one of his brothers today randomly in the airport and Friday will see his Dad and Karen.