Christmas 2013

We had such a lovely Christmas this year!  I was a little down because we were supposed to be in Canada this year, but because of expense and stuff we decided to stick around (plus we thought we'd be seeing some family in January, but I guess not!  :(  anyone want to come for a visit to make me feel better?  ;) ). So I wasn't feeling it too much, but as it got closer I had a conversation with myself and decided that I just needed to change my attitude so that we could have the happiest Christmas, and I did, and we did!  I missed being with my family, of coarse, still do! but we had quite a nice holiday here!  

It started Christmas Eve-Eve, which I don't have any pictures of because I forgot my camera, but Jeremy and I looked adorable in our matching shirts and I am sad I didn't document that!  We had such a fun time with Jeremy's Patterson family though and the kids were in heaven playing together all night.

Christmas Eve we got to put up the last thing on the advent calendar!  The kids were SOOO excited!  They have been excitedly putting these up every day!

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That day we did our usual Christmas at Grandma's with cinnamon rolls and breakfast foods and stories and presents from Grandma.  The kids had fun and we spent the whole afternoon at the park playing with cousins in the nice 70 degree weather in our t-shirts!  

When we got home we sort of carried on some of the Canada family traditions of getting Chinese food for dinner (we got Panda while my parents got Bill's... not the same, but as close as we could get!) and we opened jammies, played with Grandma's presents, read the scripture story, and bed!  Well bed except for Mason who couldn't sleep forever!

 This was Santa's set up before the kids arrived!

Anyway, we had a lovely Christmas and were able to see all of the family, and the kids have been in heaven since with cousins and toys and I am hoping it doesn't run out for the next week at least!  We have loved having Jeremy home for a lot of the holiday week, and the kids are loving all the extra wrestling time!  Thanks to my husband's thoughtful gift we've been able to do a lot more relaxing too with a nice clean house!  I have been struck many times with how lucky I am in the past week, and month really.  I have been blessed!  Also Owen may or may not have made a Christmas announcement... I will have to try and remember!

Merry Christmas!!

Game Night!

I got to hose a Hasbro Game Night!  They sent me these games for free with some snacks too, and we just played the games, had a blast, and laughed a lot!  We liked Taboo and Draw Something if you are looking for fun new games, and I have coupons for you if you want them!

My Aunt, Uncle, and cousin were visiting from Portland, and Katy and Dave live out in Gilbert now, so we got to see them again!  It was magical!  

As you can see everyone had a lot of fun!  haha I am so lucky this weekend that I got to see so many friends and family!  There is nothing better!  My other cousin and her family came over earlier in the day (which is impressive because she had baby #4 2 days ago!) and the kids played so well and had so much fun, then game night to top it off!  Good weekend!

Halloween

Well... Halloween... we had SO MUCH FUN!  But I didn't get good pictures!  And I am pretty sad about it now.  I didn't even get a picture of me at all or one of Jeremy with his sharks!  I was really slacking and I regret it now!  But, here's what I did get!  The boys were sharks, and I made their costumes out of some hoodies.  They turned out pretty cute, and they made me smile!

My mom and dad were here for Halloween again, and I am so glad!  It is a fun time to have them around and we really liked taking them to the ward trunk or treat!  Plus it was a big help to have extra eyes and hands since there were like 3000 people at our ward party!  (ok, maybe not quite, but tons of people!)

 Jeremy was an injured surfer.. shark bite to the head.. which later moved to the leg since the bandage was too tight on his head!  I was a lifeguard.  Never photoed but I swear it happened.

Grandpa was in charge of Owen during the trunk or treat... they had a good time!

  
My niece Isla was the most beautiful Cinderella I've seen!  And Ava was... something wearing black, and she was really cute too!  It was fun to have so much family come to the ward party!  We love seeing cousins!

I took Brenna to her costume parade at school even though she's half day.  The boys and I went and it was fun to see her with her class really quickly!

She wouldn't look at me during the parade though.

This was our first Halloween in this ward and in our neighborhood, and it was a lot of fun!  I'm glad we live in such a nice place with a big ward and friendly neighbors!

Pumpkin Patch

We got a Groupon for a pumpkin patch this year.  I thought it would be a fun family outing.  Although we did enjoy it... it was soooo not what it said it was.  We were very very disappointed at the state of the pumpkin patch and the lack of... anything else.  BUT the kids did have fun and we made the most of it.

We got to take a horse drawn hay ride out to the patch.  The kids really enjoyed it!

The best part was the hay maze.  It was easy enough for the kids to run through by themselves and we could see them the whole time too because it wasn't too tall.  Brenna and Mason loved this!  And I followed Owen around and he was on cloud 9 too!

The pumpkins were already picked!  I was under the impression we would get to pick ours from a patch of pumpkins.. I was wrong.  They wanted $1 for a tiny pumpkin, $5 for a pretty small one, and for the big (same size as Target's $3 carving pumpkins) they wanted $50!!  Can you believe it!?  I couldn't!  Needless to say, we did not purchase any pumpkins.. but we did stop at Target later that day and get some.

There was no petting zoo, and the dinky pony ride was $5 a kid for a 2 minute ride, so instead we let the kids run around and explore the little western town that was around the pumpkin patch.

We had fun!  But I will not be going back there... ever!  We will find a better pumpkin patch next year!