Christmas is finally here!

Santa's elf helping prepare on Christmas eve

Samantha got the phone she's been asking for, for forever!! And used all 250 free texts in a matter of minutes!!
Ethan's swiss army knife from grandpa

Ethan had been bugging my mom about what was in a present she had for him under the tree. My mom jokingly told him it was a tutu, and so the running joke began. Ethan would joke about what he was going to do with his tutu and how excited he was to get it. So... my mom couldn't resist actually going out and buying him one. It was so funny Christmas morning when he opened it... :D

Thanks to the Markels for our awesome Tony Hawk game!

Abby got this pretty quilt from grandma Whiting, with lots of hours of love and care sewn into it.

Another big hit was Owl City tickets

It was fun to have Granma and Karl to share Christmas with us. We haven't ever had someone share Christmas with us at our place our entire marriage, so it was a nice treat.

Brad was super excited about "helping" put this toy dinosaur together for Ethan

Elise working on a new fashion design

Ethan wasn't too bad at it either!! :D

Santa brought Abby a desk. Here she is at 12:20pm

Here she is at 4:50pm

Here she is at 6:41pm!

She was busy, busy, busy in that desk ALL DAY!!

While we didn't recieve snow for Christmas morning, late Christmas day came a fog that produced this beautiful hoar frost for Boxing Day.

The hike up Pilot Butte was so pretty!

A great wrap up for our Christmas season.

More December fun!

December brought more fun, like the ward Christmas party. Although we are not coordinated at all in this picture from the party, I think everyone looks pretty good. Thanks to Lora for taking the pictures- we haven't had a picture of us all together for a very long time! I went to help in Ethan's class to help them make gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. All the children in class were carefully following the model the teacher had shown them and my son comes up with this....????

I also went with the YW to wrap presents for the needy seniors in the community. I thought it turned out to be a really nice event.
Some of the younger girls joined us as well.
We also went for a snow shoe trip up to Virginia-Meisner snow park. It was a little chilly to begin with or if you stopped moving. We did about 3 miles.




At "the top"

Very pretty day and pretty view.

Abby's tuckered out!

Brad took the little kiddos out sledding one day over the break.

And the kiddos and I joined the YM/YW for tubing at the tube park

Some deep snow!!

Check out the cool tow to take you up the hill!

Lots of good stuff this month!