Merry Christmas!

 Christmas started off for us at 6:00 in the morning.  The kids must have been on Santa's "very nice" list and they were all really surprised and excited to see what Santa brought for them.  Zach didn't quite know what was going on but he quickly became alert when he saw the truck/car ramp that Santa brought him.  Tyler got an air pistol, Brooke got an American girl doll and Kenna got a Leap Pad.

Ready to come down and see what Santa brought

Love seeing the kids happy and surprised

This year the the kids saved up a little bit of their own money to get each other Christmas presents.  This picture show how Brooke and Kennady ended up getting each other the same thing, a ballerina doll.

 After opening presents we had our Christmas breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage and hashbrowns.  Yummy!!

After breakfast we went to church.  After church we relaxed for a little bit and then got ready to head to Idaho for a Christmas dinner with my family.  We stayed there a couple of nights and then came home and recovered.  It was a great Christmas and we are truly blessed and thankful.

Ready for Christmas

We love the holidays and the activities and excitement that come with them.  I tried to make it a priority this year to teach the kids the true meaning of Christmas and to teach them how Christ would want us to serve others.  We decided to go and visit two widows in our ward.  The kids were all a nervous at first but soon could see how important it was to serve these women in our ward.  We really enjoyed visiting with them and giving them our gifts of chicken noodle soup and cozy pairs of socks.

I just had to get a picture of Kennady and the cute little nativity scene that she had set up.

We went with some of our friends to a live nativity scene in Fairview.  We all started out gathered around a fire and then headed over to the manger scene with stops along the way while they retold the Christmas story. It was so cold(-9 degrees) so ironically, the boys ended up heading back before they got to the manger scene and us girls toughed it out with the Madsens.  Thankfully there was hot chocolate to warm us up a little bit at the end.

Tyler and his friends(Caleb and Owen) lighting their candles

Jeff and Jordan bundle up by the fire

Jake hooked a sled up to the 4 wheeler so I could pull the kids around the neighborhood.  They had a blast!!

Decorating (and eating) Santa's cookies on Christmas Eve

Ready to go to bed in their new Christmas jammies

Cookies, a glass of milk,  9 carrots, a note for Santa and some very excited kids.
Thankfully they went right to sleep and didn't wake up until 6:00 on Christmas morning.

Cute kiddios

Danny, Cassie and Cooper came and stayed with us for a few days during some of their Christmas break.  The girls loved having Cassie pamper them and rag curl their hair.  Tyler would often snag Danny to play games with him.  Zach has been entertaining him self lately with any kind of hat he can find. 

Gymnastics

Brooke and Kennady have been taking gymnastics for a few months now and they are enjoying every minute of it.  They go to gymnastics once a week for one hour and have learned a lot of new things.

Idaho

We made a trip to Idaho a couple of weeks before Christmas.  I decided to make a craft for my neighbor's christmas gifts this year and decided to cut and sand some extras for my mom and sisters.  It was fun spending a couple of hours doing crafts and I think they all turned out really cute.  The next day grandma treated the grandkids to making gingerbread houses.  They love doing this tradition and especially love all of the candy decorations.   The kids wanted me to take them down to feed grandpa's cows. It was Zach's first real close encounter with a cow and he loved it! We couldn't stay long because it got to be too cold and I wanted to get back to Brooke.(she is allergic to hay and had to stay behind)

These are the Christmas gifts I ended up making for our neighbors. It was quite the project but it was a lot more fun than baking something and turned out to be quite inexpensive.  Only $2.00 for each gift (including the hershey kisses)

While we were doing our crafts Brooke was being creative with her own craft that I got for her.

Having so much fun decorating gingerbread houses. Thanks to Grandma for providing all of the goodies!

Zach warmed up to Aunt Angie really fast 

Farmer Tyler

Tyler loved feeding the cows with the pitchfork.  He did not want to leave.

Kennady and Zach were a little unsure at first but ended up loving it!