Merry Christmas to all...

I love the Christmas season! I love the the lights! (Those put up by others of course) I love the music! I love teaching my kids about giving and having them get excited to buy gifts to give away! I love the extra time with family! It makes me aware and ever grateful for the great circle of friends we have. I love the food. Mmm...fudge.... :) I love that so many people turn their focus to the Savior and His incredible life.

This year Christmas creeped up on us. Mike and I got home on the 16/17th and really only had a week to prepare. Sarah insisted on decorating before Thanksgiving, and I had most of the shopping done, but the week leading up to Christmas flew by.

Sarah is a holiday nut! She loves decorating and talking about the true meaning of Christmas. She liked to color and draw nativities and made sure her friends knew that Christmas wasn't about the gifts. She decided to make a Mary costume and wore it for a few days.

When we went to Midway a couple weeks before Christmas Sarah and her friend Lillian BOTH got to be Mary.

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to Midway. We had breakfast at the Homestead, where they had a Santa, and then made ginger bread houses.





Since Mike couldn't take any more time away from work my parents came to us for Christmas. Sarah and my mom are really close, so they insisted on sleeping in the same room together. On Christmas Eve we let the kids open their Christmas pjs, which is a tradition of ours.


We went to Mike's families annual Christmas Eve party at his grandparents in Bountiful. Mike's grandparents are two of the sweetest people I know.


Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, which I was thankful for. It makes it easy to have the day focus on the Savior when you get to attend church. We let the kids open their stockings in the morning before heading to church at nine. The kids tried to get Adam interested, but he isn't there yet. :)



After church we had Mike's family join us for opening gifts and brunch. We watched "The Nativity" to try and set the mood, but the kids just wanted to open presents.






I realized I skipped Thanksgiving, so I wanted to highlight some of our fun events leading up to Mike coming home:

I'm writing this post January 4th and the weather has been unusually warm. It's been ~50 for over a week. I do have evidence of snow though. The kids wanted to build a snow fort, so they watched me as I labored away. :) Then they threw snowballs at me behind their safe fortress.



For Thanksgiving we drove to Colorado to be with my side of the family. We stayed with my sister Ashley and loved our Isabel time.

My older sister Becky made an amazing Thanksgiving meal...
Sarah and her cousin Angelina were born only nine days apart, so we celebrated both of their birthdays. They had fun playing with their doll look-a-likes.