Christmas Traditions

Every year we have some family Christmas traditions. Here are some of them:

This little guy on the blender is named Stephen our elf. Connor named him last year. Every night he flys back to the North Pole and reports to Santa if we are being bad or good. Every morning we find him in a different place in the house. He has really come in handy when we have needed to point out that Stephen is watching.

This is an ornament Trent and I got for our first Christmas. Every year we have bought an ornament. Sometimes it is to symbolize something that happened that year.

This is our ornament from last year. We bought it while we were in Hawaii.

Here is our little Christmas tree. Our kids enjoyed putting the ornaments on it.

Owen has become a little crawler in the last couple of weeks. He loves going to the tree and trying to grab any presents or ornaments in his reach.

Every year we take the kids to see Santa. Since we are cheap we take them to see Santa at RC Willey :). They even take the photo and print it out for you right there :).

After walking around the store for a minute Connor said he needed to go back to Santa. He forgot to tell him what he wanted for Christmas. He told him a Batman movie and a t-shirt. Santa said to go to bed early and to make him some chocolate chip cookies. Connor asked if it was O.K. if we made him gingerbread cookies because we already bought the mix for them. Santa said that would be great. It was pretty funny.

While at RC Willey we couldn't pass up the free hot dogs and soft drinks.

Another one of our family traditions is to go to the Festival of Trees. Here is Leah by her favorite tree.

Connor liked the Grinch tree.

We love the Christmas season and all the fun things we do together as a family. We also love the reason why we celebrate Christmas and are grateful for Jesus and his example to us.

Merry Christmas!

Job Interview

Trent and I just recently returned from Iowa and Illinois. Trent was interviewing for a job out in Iowa and the company flew us both out to interview and check it out and see if it was somewhere we would like to move to. We brought Owen along with us (since I am his food source right now) and we left the other two crazies at home with Trent's nice mom.

Owen enjoying some alone time with his parents at our hotel.

John Deere's headquarters are out there. This photo was taken at their museum.

Owen and Trent

On Sunday we went to a small ward building surrounded by beautiful corn fields. Then we took a drive out to Nauvoo to see the Temple. It was beautiful. I wish we had more time to see everything.

After the Temple we drove to Carthage to see Carthage Jail. I was so glad we were able to go there. It was really emotional and we had a really neat missionary couple take us on the tour. His great great grandparents had lived in Nauvoo and her great great great grandparents had. She was actually a convert to the church. He shared such a beautiful testimony in the room where Joseph Smith was killed. Then he let Trent and I stay in the room alone for a minute.

We had a good trip and enjoyed seeing a part of the country that we had never seen. But, we were happy to see our other two rug rats.

Give Thanks #7

(sorry for the bad photo)

I am grateful for Leah. It has been so fun to have her as my daughter. Today I took her to the store so she could use her birthday money. I asked her what she wanted to get. I thought I would hear a stroller, or maybe a doll or a care bear. Nope- she wanted Billy Mays Big City Slider Station. The store we went to didn't have it, so she had to settle for a book and a Strawberry Shortcake movie. I think the poor girl has been watching too much tv. She has been brainwashed. I have a lot of work to do :).

Give Thanks #6

I am grateful for good neighbors. We love where we live. Not because our house is our favorite, but because of our neighbors. The picture below is a bunch of stuff my neighbor didn't want anymore. She was moving and offered me a bunch of stuff she wasn't taking. This may look like junk to you, but I have big plans for some of it.

The large jar: holds laundry detergent in my laundry room
The 2 small jars: I am going to use as a rewards system to get my oldest two to do chores. They will fill them with pom poms. They'll get a pom pom to put in when they have done their job. When it is filled we will head to the dollar store.
The basket: To put their snow clothes in.
The flowers: To make cute hair accessories for Leah.
The cowboy hat: For Connor. He ate corn flakes this morning while wearing it.

Give Thanks #5

I am grateful for Owen. He has been so fun and Connor and Leah adore him. Here he is on the right with his cousin Matix who was born 31 hours before him at the same hospital! We hope they won't get in too much trouble together :). Look how they are holding hands. They are already partners in crime.

Give Thanks #4

I am grateful for Connor. He is such a character. Recently I was looking through some pictures on my camera and found a bunch that Connor had taken. I guess he is an aspiring phtographer. They were really funny to find, but I wondered where I was when he was taking all those pictures :).

(Photos and photo captions courtesy of Connor)

"it's me smiling"

"getting pictures of the beautiful stuff"

"from the tv"

"from the movie what I was watching"

"getting pictures of trucks"

Give Thanks #3

I am grateful for my family. They are a crack up and I love to be around them.

Here is my brother Brian holding a piano recital at the park. Yes he is a grown married adult. We laughed pretty hard at his musical selections.

My brother Patrick with my parents.

Gayla and Teresa showing up to Connor's birthday dressed as pirates.

My sister Alissa, brother Brian and brother Scott.

I am grateful to have a big family and live so close to them. I hope we can always live so close to one another :).