Christmas Day 2014

We had a nice Christmas day!  Jordan displayed his poncho that he got from his grandparents and Eden showing her soccer barbie along with her pajamas from Tucker and her ballet skirt from Santa.

Tucker and Kolby set to work on Tucker's lego sets right away!

Eden loved her dance bar that dad made and I painted!

They were ready to come down the stairs!

Tucker loves his new robe!

I think they enjoyed the signs I made talking about what we love about them.

We saved the Santa presents for last this year. Tucker was surprised that Santa knew he wanted the little superhero toys.

Kolby always gives the best reaction like he did here when he saw his 2DS, I didn't get a picture of Jordan opening his GoPro.

Brady was completely shocked and excited to get a laptop.

I sent Sam on a scavenger hunt for his big present....first stop was the car.

It was a great Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2014

I was a little sad coming up on Christmas Eve realizing that we didn't have any other people to be with.  We haven't always had family around, but in the past we always had friends that were like family but we just haven't had that down here.  I wanted to go to the beach of somewhere fun but Sam had been so busy with work that we just stayed home.  Instead we played games and watched a Christmas movie and acted out the nativity together and it turned out to be a really nice day. We started out with the intention of letting each kid take a turn at choosing a game but we only made it to 2 or 3 games if you count Heads Up.  Tucker chose Bubble Talk and Eden chose Life.

We had some of our traditional Christmas Eve Food, Italian Sausage sandwiches, deviled eggs and we made pickle dip instead of other dips that only Sam would've eaten!  

Sam also made some Sfinci's and we enjoyed some Stephen's Mint Hot Chocolate!

Of course we opened our pajamas with a very obvious theme.....

....and ornaments!

Tucker got a swimming ornament because he got over his fear of the water this year and became a full swimming, loving the water!

Eden got a microphone because of her voice lessons and singing performance this year and her obvious love of hearing her own voice!

Kolby's is a kitchenaid mixer because he discovered that he loves to bake and many Sunday afternoons were spent mixing cookie dough in the mixer!

Jordan's computer screen represents his non-stop chatting of all things related to his computer class and his favorite teacher. He really has found a true passion!

Brady's BYU ornament is for his first year at EFY on the BYU campus.

Sam's is a boat for cruise ships

The family has a whale for all the Sea World trips.

There were also some bowling ones for the kids this year because we spent so much of the summer at the bowling alley.

How the Grinch Found Christmas

The Primary Presidency was in charge of our Ward Christmas Party at Church this year, which is a big job but luckily so many people in the ward were able to help.  We chose a Grinch theme and I was in charge of the program. The program didn't go quite as well as I envisioned, but overall I think everyone had a good time.  The decoration were great and I heard lots of great things about the food. We were able to have smoked tri tip and turkey for our "Roast Beast" and of course we had some Who Pudding!  Several of us spent time during mutual making all the snow flakes that we hung from the ceiling.  My favorite was the one above made by one of the men in the ward.   We had a contest for costumes, Eden was the winner for the girls and Sam was the winner for the adult male, mainly because there were hardly any men dressed up!  We set up the gym to look like Whoville and Sam was the Mayor leading the Who-ibration which he did well as usual!  

A friend in the ward made this amazing painting and Who Town and I didn't get a picture of another amazing fireplace painting for the picture backdrop!

Many people asked Jordan why he was dressed like Miami Vice!

I taught some of the youth a skit/song as part of the dinner show.  They performed a funny version of the 12 days of Christmas while the audience sang the song.  The pictures aren't great but I'll explain some of the funny moments:

Ladies Dancing...Jordan and Carson!

Maids 'a milking....Josh yelled out Moo while Brady pretended to milk!

Kolby and Logan glided across the stage on skateboards as 7 Swans

Jordan was a goose laying an egg while Brady caught it!

Kendall taking a call while Josh spoke French

The one repeated most often, Jordan hopped on Brady's back and yelled "Cuckaw" every time we got to the first day!

Two turtle doves...

and drummers drumming!  

The primary sang and we had a singing competition game between the tables and then the grinch came in and started singing "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch," look how cool he looks!  The same friend that painted the Who Scene also made this costume and then his wife did the make-up! He did a little script that I took from the book and then he and some of the YM took off with some of the decorations.  Then people planted in the audience started yelling out things like "Christmas is ruined" and "This is Awful" but then one of the town people got everyone singing "Silent Night" and the grinch popped back in and Cindy Lou Who talked to him.  He then finished the script and then bore his testimony of Christ in Christmas.  We then showed part of the talk by President Uchtdorf where he talked about the grinch and ended with a beautiful musical number.   It was a little shorter than I expected because we were missing some musical numbers but I still think the spirit was a felt and it was neat to see so many people there!

(I got this picture from a friend, Brady and Kolby aren't in the picture since they didn't dress up!)