Christmas Dresses

Matching Christmas Dresses are always fun...and so are the Grandma's who send them! ;)

Sitting Up

I love when my kids get to the point where they can actually sit up and play. Ella has started doing this in the past month and she has so much fun pulling toys out of her basket.

Fun Traditions

I love Holiday Traditions and adopting new ones each year.

In Lance's family they have a fun tradition where the cousins all draw names and send each other a Christmas Letter and an ornament. It's a fun way of staying connected and this year the girls and I decided to go the homemade route and found this cute idea from Family Fun Magazine. It was really quick and easy and the girls were able to help by picking out the baby sock hats, and painting the tubes.

In our ward here in Spokane I got a fun idea for a Christmas Book Tradition that we have adopted this year and it's been a huge hit with my girls. Lance's parents always send the same Christmas Book to every family each year and my Family used do this growing up as well so we have accumulated quite a few Christmas books over the years. This Lady in my ward does the same thing so every year on the day after Thanksgiving they wrap up ALL the Christmas books and put them under the tree and then every night the kids get to unwrap a book to read. It's been fun because the girls look forward to it every night but it's simple, and makes me feel like we're getting good use out of our books!

The Girls

Thanksgiving Extravaganza!!!

All of us (minus Ella)

The Guys couldn't get a Turkey Bowl game together so they settled for early morning basketball!

The Turkey Contraption

Reading stories while waiting for dinner.

The Kid's Table! Aunt Jilly helped them make their own table cloth.

Our Table...and yes that is what the Turkey is supposed to look like! After marinating in Italian dressing for 3 days, and then deep frying it, this is what you get, and while it looks a little scary, it's delicious!

I think Aunt Jilly and Uncle Dane were definately the favorites. They were such good sports to play games, hold kids, read books, etc etc etc with all the neices and nephews.

We were very excited to have my family come for Thanksgiving this year. We missed Jen and her family and my Dad, but everyone else was here. We had 16 people total in our little house! It was crazy but so fun. Thanks to a nice big basement I think we were all realtively comfortable. We enjoyed 2 deep fried turkeys, tons of other yummy yummy food, game playing, black friday shopping and a birthday party for my nephew Ayden so we packed in the fun and it was a blast!

Preparing for Christmas

The girls have spent the last month and a half getting ready for our Christmas Eve reinactment of the Nativity. It's a good thing their "Boy" cousins will be coming for Christmas because right now we have two actresses wanting to play the part of Mary. I think Mia tried to convince Maddi that she could be Elizabeth (John's Mother) but that wasn't going over so well (at least on this night). And of course Ella was enlisted to play the part of the baby Jesus, which she did very well!

Crepes and Crackers

After reading a book about a girl in France who makes and sells crepes the girls were dying to make our own using the recipe from the book and Lance was nice to indulge them one Saturday morning.

We had fun with few baking adventures. Mia was very interested in how crackers are made so we looked up a recipe and gave it our best shot! Although they wouldn't have sold in a store, it was a fun experiment and really quick. I think next time we'll have to make cheesy ones, they could have used a little flavor! :)

Date Night

We have been doing a date night trade with some friends here off and on for a few months however our dates have always included Ella in tow but after 7 months we left her for the first time and had a great time socializing without any children at party for Lance's work!

Tiff and David's Visit

Brinn and Maddi's ice cream party. Consolation for not being able to go to the Big Kid Birthday party that Aidan went to with Mia.

I love this picture of the kids mid action dancing! It just says it all. :)

Cute Brinn with Ella. She just LOVED Ella and was so sweet with her.

About a week before Thanksgiving my Best Friend from High school Tiff and her family came to visit while they were seeing family near Spokane. We hadn't seen each other in 3 years!!! So it was really fun to catch up. Tiff, and I and her husband David all grew up together in Seattle so it was just like old times hanging out again! Our kids are the same ages and they got along so well, had a blast dressing up, and dancing, and the guys were very nice to stay with all the kids so Tiff and I could go see a movie.