Christmas Visitors

A few days before Christmas we were happy to have some old friends drop by.  Dave Zincke was Steve's freshman roommate and they stay connected both as roommates and as coworkers throughout college.  I knew Dave and his wife Charity too as we often worked together at Wyview cleaning the married BYU students apartments after they vacated.  We had a lot of fun times together and it was good to have a small reunion of sorts.  We now have 7 kids between us.  Funny how time flies by.

My mom also came and visited with us over the Christmas break.  Elsa learned rather quickly that Grandma has a special phone with lots of fun games on it.  She learned to say "PHONE" pretty quickly and Grandma was only too happy to oblige her.

It's sad when your mom is more technologically advanced than you are.  Not only does she have an iPhone, but a pretty sweet tablet as well.  Kids flocked to her like bees to honey.

Two Birds With One Stone

I had signed up to volunteer in Rowan's classroom for their Christmas party.  I decided to combine the treat I brought in as both an activity and a mini celebration for Rowan's birthday.  We ended up making Snowman Sundaes and they turned out super cute.

There were two other kids in Rowan's class who would celebrate their birthdays over the Christmas break.  Rowan's teacher is a little old school and has the kids choose 8 birthday spanks or hugs or some combination thereof.  I'm not sure it would pass in a more stringent school, but Rowan thought it was fun.



When I got home, Nadia insisted on recreating a snowman sundae for herself.

 She decided to pose like a sneaky cat for this picture. 

Looking Snazzy

I try so often to get a good picture of all three kids together.  One of these days, I'll find the trick to it.

Apparently, it's not cookies.

I took Nadia aside one time, as she actually is willing to pose for me.

What a character.

Santa-phobia

We had our ward Christmas party and also our worst Santa encounter yet.  Elsa handed Santa an orange, while the other two cringed in the corner.  Santa eventually ran after Rowan forcing him to give him a hug.  Kids.

Houston, we made contact!

I couldn't even get them in the same shot as each other.  Until...

Rowan's primary teacher, I mean SANTA, gave Rowan a good ribbing for being such a wuss.

The theme of our party was a Night in Nauvoo.  There was the Scovil bakery (loved by all of the kids), learning to square dance, making Christmas ornaments in the workshop, writing missionaries in the Post Office.  It was well thought out and well done.

Snow!

After returning home from Pasco, we were greeted with some welcome snow.  The kids had forgotten what it looked, tasted, felt like and Elsa, our little southern belle, had never seen it before.  Needless to say, they were enchanted.  Granted the snow gets old after a few months, but even I was delighted at being reunited with snow.  It kills bugs, which makes me happy.

Elsa wasn't quite as prepared as the others for venturing outside.  This girl runs around naked half the time as she has learned how to undress herself.

In Illinois we had snow, but no hills.  In South Carolina we had hills, but no snow.  Finally in Utah we have achieved the perfect sledding environment.  The kids were thrilled and so was I, to finally get some use out of our sleds and enjoy the park near our house.

Is this girl stunning or what?

Austin, who lives just a block over, came too.

The snowman they built themselves.  It makes me so happy to see my children enjoy snow as I did when I was little.

Thanksgiving in Pasco

After a rather long 12 hour trip, we made our way to Pasco for Thanksgiving.  We got to carpool with Krystal's family, which made the trip a lot easier on us.  The cousins were entertained in the back and we had plenty of adults (and baby Einstein movies) to help keep Elsa content.  It's so nice to be back in driving distance to family for holidays again!

It's too bad we won't be able to carpool next year.  Krystal will have a new addition to the family by then and we were already at max capacity.  Should have gotten the 16 seater...

When we first got there, the kids got to go on a treasure hunt in Grandma and Grandpa's new house.  A lot of these pictures I stole from Krystal's blog.  Apparently I didn't take too many over the break!

 Nadia had Aunt Chandra's help finding her hidden My Little Pony.

 Rowan found a transformer I think.

 

The cousins got to have sleepovers every night.  There was quite of bit of giggling and late nights.

Steve- the turkey.  We brined again this year.  Delicious!

Great Grandpa Judd joined us.  I don't think he had met any of our kids before, so it was nice for them to get to meet him.

The Walch family did the decor and made these cute napkin rings with everyone's picture on them as an Indian.

When you don't like food, Thanksgiving can be a bit boring so you have to create your own entertainment as Elsa discovered.

Elsa wasn't so sure of Grandpa Judd.  She warmed up well to Grandpa Luke though.

Chandra took on babysitting duties more than she should have.  Here she is playing board games with the kiddies.  Thanks to the abundance of babysitters, Steve and I got to go see several movies in the theater.  Hunger Games was my personal favorite.

I think Grandpa Luke's lifespan was shortened by a couple years for babysitting the kids while we enjoyed the movies, but he's a glutton for punishment it seems.

The trip back was worse than the trip there, but we made it though and got home before the snow started to hit.  We're so thankful for the blessing it was to spend this holiday especially surrounded by those we love.