Jasmin's Dr apt

So at Jasmin's Dr apt last week she was 14 lbs 14.5 oz and 25.5 inches long.
She has also started waving hello. I cannot believe she is over 6 months old now!

Other Odds and Ends of the hoildays.

So, we are almost caught up and it is only a month late.
Here are some more Christmas time activities.   These next few pictures are of the girls as we were trying to decorate after getting back from Montana.

 

\We made a gingerbread house on Wednesday evening.  It was fun, Kenya and I made the cookies and ahead of time and then Kira and Daddy helped build it.  Kenya loved eating making the house.  Wednesday day was filled with 4 hours of wrapping presents too!

Before we even began Kenya had frosting on her face!  Isn't that the way it should be when you are a kids.

This is what Mom did was we decorated the gingerbread house.

Jasmin hung around and watched.  She really enjoyed it.

The masterpiece.  The snowman was Robert's creations.

By Wednesday our house was empty and Kenya and I were a sad and quite bored.  There was lots of cleaning to do, so we kept busy.  We played games with our friends the Reids one night and enjoyed some good old fashion fun!

Our New Year's eve was fun.  We actually ended up having quite the busy day.  We went to the Idaho Museum which had a display of Christmas stuff.  That was quite fun.  (We just never got there before Christmas and we really wanted to see it.)  They had nativity sets from all over the world there.  Truly it was great to see!

Then we played games with the Reids again for a few hours. Then off to Rexburg for a party at our friends the Hunts.  It was just us and there family, but still plenty of fun!  We played Wii games, watched This Is It (Micheal Jasckson's last dvd) and drank bacon soda for our New Year's toast.  (Yeah, drinking that soda is still the worst decision I have made this year.  GROSS!)  Then we were all off to bed and asleep before 1:00am.  I know lame married people, but at least we stayed up and brought in the new year.  Kenya woke up about 15 minutes till and so we just let her stay up and bring it in with us.  She did the same thing last year.  It was a great New Year!

I was kind of strange that we did not have an extended amount of time off or go anyway for a Christmas break.  Pretty much all of my life has revolved around school and there was always a break to Christmas and most often traveling.

Holiday blogging done!

Christmas Day with the Drapers 2011

We did a pretty good job of covering the tree!  With a little help.

I love having Christmas day on the Sabbath! Having Christmas on Sunday seems to make that day so much more spiritual. It was also very convenient because our church was at 11am so we had time to do gifts, breakfast, showers, and get dressed before church. And then we only held Sacrament meeting where we heard great Christmas music and hymns and were able to commune with Heavenly Father as we remember The Savior. The following pictures are of Christmas day in our home.

Kenya and Lois were the first ones up at around 6:30am.  They showered as everyone else slowly got up. It was about 7:00am when everyone started digging through their stockings and sorting presents to open.

 

These are new stockings we got this year.  We loved them!

We actually put the turkey in the oven the night before, before midnight.  This was Tom.  One of the turkeys my mom raised this summer.  It would not fit on our roaster and just barley fit in the oven. 

Wholey turkey!  This sucker was huge!!!

Here are the pictures of the 2-3 hour present process!

Sam sorting presents.

Cheri and AJ

This got her stocking as usual.  She had a treat and some mice in it.

This enjoying her treat while we opened presents.

My mom made quilts for gifts this year.  Cheri and her 2 girls got one and so did Jasmin and Kenya. I will have to take pictures of the quilts and post them a different time.  She did a great job on all of them!   

These next pictures are of a check that Amy sent and we wrapped in the biggest present under the tree. We filled the box with newspapers for weight.

Kenya got these scissors in her Dr kit and tried to use them to open her gifts.  So cute!

More from the Dr kit.

Thanks uncle James!  She loves the dress up stuff!

Jasmin joined us at about 9:00ish.  She had fun opening her gifts and playing with new toys!

Oh how she LOVES her backpack.  She was going to school. 

The aftermath. 

  Our girls after church.  Not the greatest pictures, but still so cute!

This video is of Kenya when she saw her awesome gift from Grandma Carla.  We waited until after church and her nap to give her this one.  There was no room to set it out before.  I guess we should have let her wake up a little more.  Kenya LOVES it and has had hours of playing with it since.  This video does not really show her excitement though. 

What a wonderful Christmas.  The rest of the day was filled with a yummy dinner and family time.  It was not all the gifts that made this year great it was the spirit of Christ that we felt in our home, the memories we made, and the time spent with family!  We hope that all of our Christmas' will be this rich in love and blessings!  We are still striving to keep the Spirit in our house. 

Christmas time with the Drapers 2011

So this Christmas the Draper household was definitely a full house! Altogether we had 13 people staying in our 3 bedroom apartment! The Hammonds from Boise area came and Lois's mom and one of her sisters came also.

Juanita and Kira arrived on Tuesday the week before Christmas. The Hammonds got here the following Thursday night. The on Friday Robert worked til 1pm and the family went to the Tautphaus Park Zoo!  It was a special day because they have never opened during the winter. The animals are particularly active during the winter time and some even got Christmas gifts and treats to open and eat. We saw a very young lemur who was constantly trying to get a treat out of a stocking! It was so fun and cute!


So the following pictures are of the things we did on Christmas Eve.

Grandma Juanita and the girls are starting to make bread.

Grandma Juanita and the girls are kneading the dough.

Cheri gave the boys, much needed, haircuts!

LET THE SLEDDING BEGIN!
It snowed on Wednesday...just enough to stick and to play on. Not pictured is Robert and Sam because they were in the garage putting together the toy kitchen set that Grandma Carla got for her. Thank you Grandma Carla...for hours of agony!)

CHRISTMAS MINUTE TO WIN IT!

So Lois and I have never actually seen the t.v. show Minute to Win It, but we've seen commercials and heard of others doing it. So Lois put together our Christmas Eve activity and we had a blast! It was boys vs girls. One of the rules we had to follow was if you were doing one of the challenges, you had to be wearing a Santa hat!

In this game the objective was to stack some metal nuts as high as possible using only a candy cane in one minute!

The objective here was to stack the cups as high as you can in...you guessed it...one minute!

This challenge involved people, noses, lotion, pom poms, string and a certain amount of time....go figure.

In the voice of Bill Cosby: You see...you take the cookie and you put it on your face. Then you wiggle your face like it's hippin' and a hoppin' and a bippin' and a boppin' til you get in your mouth!

Into the game we incorporated the tradition and opening one gift on Christmas Eve. It went from youngest to oldest. But the challenge was to open a gift while wearing ski gloves or some mittens and if you didn't do it in the time allotted, then you didn't get the gift til Christmas day!

Jasmin was the exception to the glove rule because she took long enough anyway! But she wasn't exempt from the Santa hat rule!

 

Jasmin loved this gift...when it finally got unwrapped!