December Recap

We welcomed December in with some Christmas decorating. Yay! My parents have given us a Christmas ornament each year for many, many years and I love looking through each one. They have continued the tradition with us and with our kids. Love, love, love it! Graduation, baby's first Christmas, parents-to-be, first home, picture ornaments. Decorating the tree is like opening up a scrapbook. It is so wonderfully nostalgic to open up the box of Christmas decorations and sift through the memories that each ornament holds.Marie was absolutely taken with this little bear. Totally and completely in love with it.

William thought the balls would look best all clustered together in one spot. To each his own.

The rest of December was as low key as December can be. I struggled through some pretty bad morning sickness and spent most mornings on the couch while the kids watched way too much TV. We managed to make it through all the major events, but beyond that not much happened.

Preschool Birthday Treats

William got to take cupcakes to preschool in celebration of his birthday. He requested green cupcakes with sprinkles. I obeyed.

Brandon's 28th Birthday

Brandon's birthday! Presents in the morning. Lunch at Olive Garden without the kids. Ice cream cake as a family that night.

Christmas Sunday

After these glorious pictures we took off to church and I conducted the sacrament meeting Christmas program. I was called as ward choir director about 4 weeks beforehand and told, "Oh yeah, and we need you to do the Christmas program." Right. Miraculously, we got it all together. I just have to give a shout out to all the ward members that participated. I have received countless compliments and have to pass them right on to the people that did the real work, the members of the choir!

Graham Cracker Village

A tradition carried on from my family. The kids look like they are very interested in decorating their houses. Really, they were very interested in eating the candy and ... silly me ... we did this before dinner. By the time we were done helping the kids with their houses and failing at our attempts to keep them from eating their weight in sweets, Brandon and I didn't even have the energy to make ourselves houses. So, our humble little village of two houses was the final product. We didn't even get around to putting sugar cone trees on. Sorry, Mom! I'll do better next year, promise!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve included a delicious pot roast dinner made my mother-in-law and a celebration of Great-Grandma H.'s 82nd birthday. No pictures of that. I guess the food was too good to bother taking pictures.

Christmas Eve PJs, yet another timeless tradition. Ah, look at my cute family!

Christmas Morning

We have countless pictures of Christmas morning, but these two capture the excitement in my kid's eyes perfectly.

Sunday at Grandma and Grandpa's House

The three S. Grandkids. Our sister-in-law is having a little girl in March and poor William is going to be thoroughly outnumbered. We are kind of hoping for a boy for this reason!

William Turns 4!

William's birthday is going to get a post of its own. But in the meantime, let's just document that it happened and I'm pretty sure he liked it. :)