The Grand Opening!

The highlight of every child's year: Christmas morning.

Adelyn has officially dumped out her stocking (notice the apple and oranges--my mother will be proud) and she is on to opening stocking stuffers.

Preston was very excited to get another airplane in his stocking.

Another excited face

Annalise had so much fun opening her presents this year. She loves her new puppets and dolls.

This is how I feel about my new Pyrex baking pans. I'm one of those weird wives who really appreciates practical gifts, probably more than the non-practical ones.

Ryan is pretty stoked about his new iPod alarm clock (I'm patting myself on the back for that one).

Yeah! I finally got a "Rocque" sign, thanks to Ryan's mom.

The kids enjoying their toys from Grandma after a breakfast of crepes, sausage, and hot cocoa. Thanks so much Grandma!!

Adelyn all bedazzled. With Amber's help, she spent a good portion of Christmas day assembling all this jewelry from the jewelry-making kit she got in her stocking. We got to spend most of Christmas day at Ryan's moms enjoying good food and just hanging out. It was so fun for the kids to just play together and relax and talk. I was put on call again that night and never had to go into work. I was so grateful! That was my Christmas miracle--to spend all this special time with my little family.

Christmas Eve

We celebrated Chritmas Eve with my family this year. I was scheduled to work and dreaded having to miss the party this year. But my prayers were answered when I was put on-call and never had to go in! We had a delicious dinner and lots of fun. I'm so glad I didn't miss out.

My mom has been sewing her heart out these past two months to make a custom pillow case for each of her 37 grand-kids. She did such a great job. Preston and Adelyn were thrilled with theirs.

It looks like Annalise preferred Preston's to her own though. She kept putting it on her head and laughing.

We had all the cousins dress up and be parts in the Nativity story. My dad read Luke 2 and my talented Aunt Judy played her violin to the different Christmas songs that coordinated with the scripture story. It was almost professional. :) Adelyn played an angel for the third year in a row. It takes quite a lot of seniority in my family to play the part of Mary. Maybe next year. . .

My nephew Brigham made a great wise-man. After the nativity, we just sang more Christmas carols and enjoyed the rest of the night before driving our kids home and tucking them in for the night. They were so excited for Christmas!!

One of my favorite things to do all year is be Santa's elf for a night.

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Break and Traditions

We had the fortunate blessing of having Ryan with us for the entire two-week Christmas break this year. We has been wonderful and we did a lot of fun things together. Ryan took Adelyn, Preston, and three of the neighbor kids sledding a couple times. We also took the kids out to Brick Oven to celebrate a great 2010 and Ryan and Adelyn's perfect report cards :). We also took the kids to Salt Lake to see their cousins who were in town from Washington. They had three sleep-overs at Grandma's house and had endless hours of play-time. We also built another gingerbread house, which the kids always enjoy. And, of course, we did a lot of just hanging out together: watching movies, laying around, playing games, and laughing.

The kids love making our laundry basket into a "boat" by stuffing it full of pillows and blankets and taking turns pushing each other around the house. Annalise was the fortunate rider this time.

One Christmas tradition we started last year and continued this year was making a Christmas chain counting down the days until Christmas. On each link, we had a scripture about Christ to read and a Christmas carol to sing before bed. Then we read the kids a Christmas story.

We also had an FHE about service. We read them a story about how by serving others, we are really serving Christ. We made each of the kids a small manger out of pretzels and marshmallows. Then we encouraged them to do service, and each time they did they could add a piece of straw to Baby Jesus' manger.

The last tradition we did was on Christmas morning. We talked about what gift we would like to give Jesus. With a little encouragement, the kids each decided they wanted to try to keep the Spirit in our home better by not fighting with each other as much. I'm planning to make a peacemaker chart so they can put a sticker up for all the times they almost got upset, but instead chose to be a peacemaker. It turned out to be a really meaningful December. We thought these little things helped our kids remember who we were really celebrating this holiday season.