Our Christmas Celebrations

For one of our FHE activities this month, we made our first gingerbread house. I don't think I've ever made one of these before. I had visions of it looking just like the one on the outside of the box. haha. The kids loved it though.

Olivia was finally brave enough to talk to Santa this year. Carter wasn't so brave, he did talk to Mrs. Claus though.

For another FHE (Family Home Evening) activity, we got together with our neighbors and they took us to Pyramid Hill to look at all the lights. The kids loved it too.

We are still trying to figure out what traditions will work for our little family during the holidays. We tried bowling on Christmas Eve this year and it was great. It was the kids' first time and they really enjoyed it.

Christmas morning was full of excitement and flying pieces of wrapping paper as the kids tore through their gifts as quickly as they could. I was so happy to see that Olivia got her own chef hat. She had been begging me to make her one for awhile.



We now have our very own Handy Manny.
And he loves to be "working" under the hood of his jeep!



We hope you all enjoyed the Christmas holiday too!

The scariest thing to me

I think I saw the scariest thing last Thursday night. At least since the scariest thing I saw last year. As I was getting ready to go to bed I heard a big bang outside. I immediately thought it was a gun shot. I ran into our bedroom to ask Aaron (who had just gone to bed) if he heard the noise. I then went to peek through our bedroom window blinds and saw orange flames high in the air just a few houses away! I ran to the back door to see what house it was and called 911. They were already on their way. Aaron and I watched the sky darken and flames continue to burn the house for awhile with our neighbors. It was so sad to see that with my own eyes (not on TV) and it took me some time to calm down enough to sleep that night. I did hear from some neighbors today that everyone got out safely at least. The loud boom that I heard was a motorhome in their front driveway that pretty much exploded.

On a [much] lighter note...we got our mailbox bashed in a couple of weeks back. Gotta love the teenagers with nothing to do and a baseball bat in hand. Not! But in comparison...I'll take a smashed mailbox ANYDAY! (please ignore the mailbox post that is in bad need of a new paint job.)

Thank Goodness for Little Girls

Well, I haven't updated in almost two weeks because I didn't think I had taken a single picture in that time and didn't have anything new to say since I just sit around gaining weight everyday. So today I turned on the camera just to be sure I hadn't taken any pictures and WHOA! Someone had taken 248! That someone is Miss Olivia...

I found about 20 pictures of Carrie and Doug.

As she reviewed these pictures with me today, she said, "Oh, there's Carrie Underwood."

About 100 pictures were something similar to this.

Oh my sweet girl. If only I could capture in a picture the many questions she asks about the new baby everyday! She has so much excitement in her for all the things happening so soon...Santa, Georgia visit, her birthday, the baby...

One more cute Olivia moment:

Last week she came running up to me after looking through the window at the cold weather outside and says, "Hey Mommy! What if I saw some ice and I went ice skating and I didn't even fall or get hurt. Is that what 20 year-olds do?"