Sledding

We decided for our family activity on Friday to go sledding. We all bundled up and headed out. Here is baby Cate all snuggled up. I love this picture.

We went to a park by AF Highs School. It had a perfect hill, long enough to have fun, but not too hard to climb back up. Grace was totally excited to go down. She and Ben were one of the first from our group.

Elise, Rob, Abbie, Heather, and Spencer all waiting at the top.

Grace, Sydney and Spencer

Grace again. She would go with anyone that would take her, and then got the courage to do it on her own. She even tried going down without the sled, but then got stuck in the middle of the Hill until Ben went down and rescued her.

We only had 2 casualties of the day. Abbie went over the jump pictured above accidentally, but landed on her tummy laughing. She thought it was great. Kurt got hit in the back by some crazy sledders and was pretty sore for several days.

We headed home after that for some Hot Chocolate and Rock Band!

My Favorite Christmas Present

Ben's brother Bryan had my name in the family drawing for Christmas this year. So as they were asking what I wanted I requested some drawings by his amazingly talented wife Alyssa (who is majoring in Art at USU) of my babies. Here are the results. I absolutely LOVE them and can't wait to frame them and hang them on my wall!

Christmas Day

Garett decided to wake up early on Christmas (like at 5:00!). So after I fed him he went back to sleep, but Ben and I were wide awake and excited. We decided it was still to early to wake up Grace so Ben bundled up and went out to shovel the snow(again). It was biting cold outside so we made some Hot Chocolate and watched the MoTab Christmas Concert while Ben warmed up.

Around 6:30 we decided we had waited long enough and drug Grace out of bed. Once she realized it was Christmas morning she was so excited to see if Santa had come! Here we are waiting anxiously at the top of the stairs.
When we came down the stairs the first thing Grace saw was her Princess Barbie! (which was supposed to be in this picture, but I must have picked the wrong one) She gasped and ran to it and said "Daddy this is AMAZING!" She was so excited to get her Cinderella dolly and horse. Then she ran over to the plate and saw that Santa had eaten her cookie and milk and was even more excited. It was so fun to watch her. As we opened her doll we had her look through her stocking. She was so meticulous at pulling out everything individually. She even pulled out each candy one at a time, "and another, and another" Then she would count them, "1,3,6,7,8..." She used to count to 10, but somewhere along the way she lost 2,4&5. Needless to say she was so excited that Santa had come and couldn't wait to open more presents.
Here is Ben opening his new Wallet. This was my great surprise of the year for him. I found this taxi wallet online that was the same as the one he got on his mission and has loved for years. He was excited.

Here I am opening my sack of flour. Literally. Ben was super sneaky this year. Usually he can't keep a secret to save his life, but he really got me this year. I didn't even notice the two huge boxes hiding behind the Christmas Tree. This pink one was the first I opened. It had a sack of flour, a box of cereal, toilet paper rolls and a Wii in it! I was really getting mad when I was unwrapping all that food, and then I finally opened the Wii and was excited. Well, I had to warm up to the excitement. You see, he went WAY over budget and that's what kept going through my mind as I stared at the Wii box. I've always wanted one, but didn't think we'd get it because we were cutting back so much on Christmas this year. So he got me good this year. I was totally shocked and surprise. Oh yeah, the other box was Rock Band 2!!!!! We have had a lot of fun creating a band and touring the world.

We opened all of Garett's presents while he was sleeping. He wouldn't have cared anyway. So here he is with all of his gifts. I'm pumped about the Bumbo!

After we opened our gifts we went over to my mom's for more gift opening and a yummy breakfast! We then headed up to Ben's parents and on the way called into a conference call with all of my siblings and my brother Todd who is on his mission! It was so fun to hear him and talk with everyone all together! (A funny note about the car ride up. Grace was playing with her Cinderella and I hear her saying. "bump and bump" I looked back and she had taken the dress off and was examining her doll. "Look, bump and bump Mom!" It was hilarious, but then I had to explain what they were.) We exchanged gifts at Ben's parent's house and then shortly after headed home afraid that we were going to get stuck in the storm. We didn't it hardly snowed on us the rest of the day. So we headed back to my mom's for some food and fun.

Here are Ben and Kurt playing Guitar Hero.

Before we headed home for the night we had to get a cute picture of Garett in his Christmas outfit. What a sweet baby!

Here is Grace showing off her Tutu I made for her and her new ballerina slippers.

The spoiling continued at my Dad's house on Sunday where Grace got a rocking horse and we got money to buy a freezer! I'm so excited about that. (I totally forgot to pull out my camera there) We had such an amazing Christmas where we got to spend so much time with family and sit back and chat and enjoy the season. I'm grateful for our time together and sad that's it's over.

Christmas Eve

We started out Christmas Eve by sleeping in! Okay, sleeping in to me is anytime past 8:00 AM. It was great! We all got ready and headed over my Mom's House.

At my mom's we made Cookies, had a really yummy dinner, and played lots of games on my sister's Wii. Here is Ben dunking Garett. He wasn't so excited about being way up there
After dinner we decorated cookies and then went downstairs to do the traditional acting out of the Nativity. My mom went all out this year and made costumes for all the Grandkids to participate. They were all sooo excited to dress up, but the only ones that really wanted to cooperate were Spencer, Sydney, and of course my ever happy Garett.
Abbie was Mary and wouldn't even come out, but
here are Spencer (Joseph), Garett (baby Jesus), and Elise (a Shepherd).
Spencer, and Sydney (the Wiseman).
Garett was such a great Baby Jesus. Happy and cooing the whole time!

Grace was supposed to be the Angel, but she sure wasn't acting like one!

After the Nativity flopped we sang a bunch of Christmas Carols with my mom's completely out of tune piano. Luckily the singing sounded good still! Then it was time for our pajamas! Here is Grace and Garett in their new warm jammies!

Heather's kids all ready for bed.

We then headed home to put our kids to bed. Grace of course had to lay out the stockings first and leave a cookie and glass of milk out for Santa. She went right to sleep after Ben read her How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We were all so excited for Santa to come!

Cousins

We were lucky enough to spend a lot of time with our families over the past week. It has been so fun to play with them and meet all the new babies! (we've had 6 including Garett born and still have 1 more on the way!)

Here is Garett with Brieya and Caleb. This is the difference 6 weeks make. Garett is 6 weeks older than Brieya (check out her head full of hair!) and Brieya is 6 weeks older than Caleb.

This is Garett and my sister's twins Conner and Catelyn. They are one month older than Garett. Yes, I know, Garett's a big kid.

More Snow!

Ben shoveled a lot of snow last week. We were hit with a big storm on Monday, but luckily the storm on Christmas didn't bring us much in Utah County.

I had to take a picture of the snow on the side of the driveway. It's almost as tall as Grace.

Grace thought she should help too so she pulled out her shovel and pail.
Here's Ben working those back muscles. He was pretty sore from shoveling so much, but I'm grateful that he did! Getting stuck in our own driveway doesn't sound very fun.

Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! It has been a wonderful season and we are so grateful for this day to remember our Saviors birth! What a joyous day and life he gave for us and I love him!

Here are some pictures I took of the kids on Sunday in their Christmas Outfits. I wish I had Michelle here with her camera, mine just isn't as good.

Gingerbread Houses

We invited the Lynes and Ross's over for FHE on the 15th and did Gingerbread Houses. We had a fun time and it was great to see what everyone created with their kits.

Here is our masterpiece..... notice the frosting blobs? Ben just couldn't let the extra frosting go to waste! Grace then snacked on the hardened disgusting frosting for the next 2 days, so we threw our house away.
Here's the Gingerbread Neighborhood.
The Harper Home, The Ross Mansion, and the Lynes Shack. :) Just Kidding! Your house looked great!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

Grace has been waiting and waiting for the snow to come and when it finally did we were at G & G Harper's house. Luckily we brought her snow clothes and she was so excited to play! But first she had to try her hat on Grandpa.

"Wait a second...this is really cold!!!!!"
"Where are my gloves?????"
"This is so much fun!"
"I LOVE the SNOW!"
"Until my cousins come and throw it at me and my hands get too cold, then I come in crying!"




I'm a bad mom and thought of everything she would need except gloves! All we have are the little fabric ones so I need to get her some snow ones.

3 Months Old!

My Baby is 3 months Old! He is such a great baby always smiling and cooing at me. He has grown so much, and.......he's sleeping through the night! Hooray! I've had almost 2 weeks of uninterupted sleep at night! Whohoo!!! I usually feed him between 10 & 11 and then he'll sleep until I wake him up between 7:30 and 8. It is fabulous!!!!

Thanks for being such a wonderful baby Garett, you have made having a new baby so wonderful and I have enjoyed every minute of you! I Love You!

More Christmas activities

Friday the 12th was Ben's work Christmas Party. It was a lot of fun meeting his coworkers and the people he talks about all the time. We had a great dinner and a fun white elephant exchange with the prize of the night being this....

There were a few BYU fans, but more Utes there, and the Ute fans won it. They were going to run over it with their car, but I think they decided to just noose it instead. It's a shame really, somebody would have really enjoyed getting that.

Then on Saturday we had a very busy day! I started off by going to the ward RS Brunch which was wonderful! They had a beautiful program that I got to participate in. I sang in a trio and I think our song went really well!.

Then off I went to Bingham High School's Candlelight Concert. Bingham is celebrating their 100th year and they put together an Alumni Choir. So for the past 4 weeks I've been able to go sing with my old Choir teacher Mrs. Willmore and tons of old friends. It was so much fun!

Here we are performing, I think we did a really good job for only having 4 rehearsals!

That night we had our neighborhood Christmas Party! These are so much fun!!!!! We just laughed and laughed and had another yummy dinner and white elephant gift exchange. I think the favorite gift was a book entitled, "What is your poo telling you?" Just imagine the contents of that book and you can imagine how hard we were laughing. My favorite: the post-partum poop also known as the "bonus baby". The Cowley's hosted us and we are so glad they did. Thanks for the fun fun night!

The Ward Christmas Party

On Dec 6th we had the Ward Christmas Party. We had a great time, and got to see Santa again! Garett was even awake to see him.

Grace was much bolder with this Santa, she knew what to do and didn't even hesitate to hop right up on his lap and ask for a princess dolly!

Tis the Season...

We've done so many fun things this month. We started off our Christmas Celebrations by going to see..

with the Lynes on Dec. 3. It was a wonderful night to get away and enjoy an evening of remembering what Christmas is all about

Then on the 5th Jenny and I decided to go to the Festival of Trees since neither of us has ever been. It was a lot of fun! We only made it about half way through the trees before the kids broke down and we had to give up seeing the rest.

This was one of my favorites, it's blown glass!

We did get to see Santa while we were there! I really talked it up this year, so Grace was so excited to see him, and this is the first year I have a picture of Grace not screaming while on Santa's lap. I also kept asking Grace what she's going to ask Santa for for Christmas. She kept saying, "I don't know" so I "suggested" that she might want a Cinderella doll (which is what I had already gotten for her). She thought that was a great idea and told Santa that's what she wants. So lucky for her Santa can grant her Christmas wish! Poor Garett got woken up to take this picture.
They had a really fun craft area for the kids. They got to make these Reindeer hats.
Here is Matthew and Grace.
Nicole and Grace, I love the silly face.

Here they are making the hats. Grace was loading on the sparkles, and definately felt she needed more. But really would you expect anything less? I'm still vacumming glitter and sparkles out of my carpet.

The other activity the kids chose to do was fishing. Mostly because they knew they'd get a sucker out of it.

Here are the three kids in front of a Disney Tree. There were some truly creative and beautiful trees there and we had such a fun time! Maybe next year I can get Ben to go with us, or watch the kids so we can make it through all the trees!