Christmas Finery

My cute kids in their Christmas Sunday clothes.

Christmas!

Christmas is my most favorite holiday ever! I am sure it probably has a lot to do with the fact that it was my Mom's favorite holiday as well.

We started our Christmas out with our annual tradition of going out to eat on Christmas Eve. The last several years we have gone to Texas Roadhouse, we try to have our good friend Brad be our server (if he is working) and we make sure to give him a super tip!

Christmas morning was chaotic as usual, but it was great fun! All the kids were so happy and polite. It feels like one of the best Christmases we've had!

Here is Cameron with all his Christmas presents

Kenzie with her haul

And Abby with all her stuff

I also made our traditional cinnamon rolls the day before so we could enjoy them Christmas morning after opening presents.

And one of the best presents was ALL THE SNOW!! I love having a White Christmas!

And of course we had to have our yearly picture with Mom at the cemetery.

December Part 2

I love family parties! I really do! Christmas time is always a great time for family parties too. It was great to have Dad and Laura in town for this party too. It will be a really sad day when we no longer have the annual McCullough Christmas party and talent show. I hope that we still have many years to go until that happens!

December Part 1

McKenzie had an AMAZING opportunity to sing with a professional singer. Alex Boye (he is an amazing LDS singer). Eagle Mountain won a contest he was putting on, so he came out to give a concert. Someone mentioned that our Middle School choir sang one of his song, so he invited them to sing it with them. I was such a great experience for all those kids! And Alex puts on a great concert.

I applied to get tickets to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, and I was able to get 6 of them! Pug had to go out of town that Sunday (which never happens) so I asked Grandma and Grandpa to come with us! It was a great devotional. And how fun was it that all us girls were color coordinated?

We all went to Temple Square another time when Pug was home. I love seeing the lights, however, I could do without the insane amount of people there! I think maybe next year we will go AFTER Christmas! The lights will still be up, but there won't be so many people!

My parent's anniversary is December 8th. I love this picture of the obviously in love newly weds! It is still hard that Mom is gone, but because of this magical day back in 1976 my parents are sealed for time and all eternity. I will see Mom again, we will be a forever family.

And I saw this message on Facebook and just loved it.

Family Pictures

We had our family pictures for the year done! We had to wait until Kenzie's braes were off and her hair was cut :) Can I just say I LOVE this cute little family of mine?!

Thanksgiving at the Cabin

This year for Thanksgiving, we did things a little differently. Usually we celebrate with my in-laws on Thursday. My siblings and I do a dinner on Saturday- something my Mom started after Heather was married. Glen and Margaret were going to be in Seattle this year. So, instead of just staying and hanging out at home (where friends, wifi, Netflix, etc. would be a constant companion) we decided to head up to Bear Lake. We left for the cabin on Wednesday morning, hoping to avoid the storm that was expected to come that night. The storm came and dumped several inches of snow (about 6 I would guess). We were able to just enjoy one another company (most of the time!) and just have a quiet uninterrupted few days. We didn't bring snow pants (DANG!) but we enjoyed driving around the whole lake one day. We saw lots of wildlife. In fact, on Saturday morning around 5:00, we heard what we thought was a REALLY loud bird. After awhile Pug got up to see where this bird was (it sounded like it was right outside our window!) I could also hear the hoot of an owl. I had assumed the owl was too close to this bird and was scaring it. NOPE!! A great horned owl had caught a RABBIT and was killing/eating it on the balcony!! As morbid as it may sound, it was quite interesting to watch it. We had the kids come up and watch it to. The owl tried to fly away with its rabbit, but it was too heavy for it to fly with it. After the head plus a little more was gone it was finally able to fly away with it. It sure did make for an exciting morning!!

As you can see for the pictures we had a great time in some beautiful scenery!

Abby competed in her first State Meet for gymnastics. She did so good! She earned 4 medals in this meet.

Vault- 4th place with a 9.100
Bars- 2nd place with a 9.00
Beam- 1st place with a 8.800
All Around- 2nd place with a 35.250

She has worked so hard this season, learning and perfecting her skills and routines. I am so proud of her and all her hard work!
Way to go Abby!!