Christmas 2011

Christmas was absolutely perfect this year. Christmas is my favorite holiday/time of year/thing to celebrate/reason for living...you get it.

Every year, as the kids get older, it just keeps getting better and better because not only can they appreciate why we celebrate Christmas and can get themselves in the spirit, they also appreciate the traditions we've started and I think they're pretty close to loving Christmas as much as I do {almost}!

But I have to say...I think this year has been the best Christmas of all since Bobby and I have been married because we got to spend it with my family at our house!! Bobby always has to work either right before (like christmas eve) or right after Christmas so the past several years we've just done Christmas with us and the kids (which we have begun to really enjoy as well!) and headed down to St. George to be with my family the week after Christmas for Kylee's birthday.

But this year, since Amanda would not be able to get enough days before or after Christmas off of work to go down to St. George the family (my mom, dad, amanda and alena) decided to come up north and celebrate with us so Amanda could have family to be with-especially for her FIRST Christmas home from the mission!

The couple days we had together before Christmas were spent going to see a movie (Arthur Christmas-surprisingly cute!!), playing games, lots and lots of eating (which I am NOW regretting-ugh!), making gingerbread houses using graham crackers-do NOT recommend this ha ha!-and lots of listening and dancing to Josh Groban's Christmas CD (LOOOOOVE this-it was my early Christmas present to myself :) and it's quite possibly the only Christmas thing I'm still having withdrawals over not having.)

We decided mom's was the winner!










Little mishap with the cookies and milk for santa...


...all was well though because the kids got him a new plate. They were pretty adamant that Santa get his treats!


Chrismtas morning the kids woke up about 7:30 and we headed out to do presents before our 10:00 am Sacrament meeting service. Kylee was a little overwhelmed by all the stuff going on in the living room I think, so she sorta hung back and watched Tyler before diving in herself.


Santa brought Kylee an art easel and paper which both the kids have LOVED using! they don't use the chalkboard side ever, but they love to pull the paper down and use all the art supplies Grandma got them for Christmas-glitter glue, markers, crayons, pencils, fuzzy pom poms, pipe cleaners, etc-to make some pretty amazing stuff :).




Santa brought Tyler a leap frog video game which both the kids have also had fun playing with.


Santa always fills their stockings with fun little knick-knacks they love...gum, silly bandz, fruit, candy, etc.


Amanda and Alena opening their stockings...




This year Tyler got his first Book of Mormon! Now that he's beginning to read, and is responsible enough to take scriptures to church, we got him his own set of scriptures (which was actually totally at his request with no prompting from us!). He feels SO grown up carrying his scriptures to church and when we read at night he has to have his scriptures in front of him open to the page we're reading. Kylee got a couple Book of Mormon figures, but she is extremely jealous of Tyler's scriptures and they fight over who gets to hold them almost every night so we might have to get her a set of her own before next Christmas :)


Tyler's favorite gifts this year were this Spiderman webshooter from Bobby and I and his Batcave/car/man lego set from his Uncle Mark (not pictured because he opened that present the night before when we skyped with Bobby's family)


After presents and a yummy quiche breakfast (thanks momma!), we headed out to church. Our ward only held Sacrament meeting and when we came home we had zero luck getting any pictures. ha ha! Kylee is usually my eye roller, hang head down, turn her back to me kind of picture taker and the ONE time Tyler refuses to get pictures taken Kylee is all cheesy smiles and loves. Of Course!!




My HANDSOME boys!!


Oh wait there she is. There's my real Kylee.


And we'll go ahead and call that a wrap before anybody gets hurt.


The highlight of the day for everybody though was talking to TY!!!! I haven't been home for the past couple mother's days or Christmas's when he has got to call home, so this was my first time talking to him in almost 2 years!! (he comes home in less than 10 weeks!) He sounded SO great and is doing so well! Can't wait to hear all his fun stories when he comes home in March!!!

The next couple days we hung out, played with toys, went and saw some Elk in the freezing cold, painted nails and danced to some more of my man Groban.






A couple days after Christmas we headed down to Provo to meet Alisa, Skyler, Nate and Bailey who were on their way home to St. George from having been in Bountiful. We met up at chili's for lunch and then spent the whole afternoon at Amanda's apartment opening more presents and hanging out.

Alisa and Amanda gave Kylee her birthday presents since they wouldn't get to be there on her actual birthday. Alisa gave her tw0 princess barbies-Cinderella and Belle which she has played with non stop! Barbies is her absolute favorite thing in the world right now and she plays all day long with them! Amanda got her a new baby doll (which she was in desperate need of since her old baby doll is disgusting!) which she loves to take care of. If she's not playing with her barbies, she's playing babies!




Nate got Tyler Iron Man which was THE perfect gift for him! He has loved action figures for the last year and always has one-or two-in his hand at all times. He took this Ironman to show-n-tell with him his first day back to pre-school!


The sisters did a gift exchange as well and I had Amanda. Apparently from this picture we can see that she was SUPER excited about her new body spray and lotion from Victoria Secret! (sorry for all the very poor quality pictures from the day...next time I'll remember to be in charge of the camera :) )


I guess this was the only picture our camera-man got of my gift from sweet Alena! I love the beautiful necklace and bracelet she got me and wore it to church the very next Sunday!


Just hanging out...




That night we got to go visit a WONDERFULLY sweet family that Amanda is working with to teach them English. They wanted to meet us and make us Hot Tamales for dinner and Oh. My. Gosh!!! They were soooooo good! She made a *HOT* batch and a mild one and I have to say...I pride myself on being able to eat some pretty spicy/hot things but I could not eat more than one of her hot ones! ha ha! The two older girls were SO SO SO kind to our kids and even though Kylee was much younger than them they wanted to play with her and Kylee loved all the attention!


After dinner we headed back to Logan and I spent the next day-all 24 hours of it :) - cleaning, ha ha! But it was SOOO worth it! Ahhhh. So satisfied. So happy. So in love.

I would have to say...

December 2011

At the beginning of December, the kids and I traveled down to Springville to spend the day with my BF for her birthday! One of the Christmas presents we brought down for Macey- much to her mother's dismay :)- was some princess nailpolish. The girls had fun dressing up in their princess outfits and doing each others nails! They are SO cute!!


I have to say...they did a pretty decent job!


We took them to good old Mcd's for some lunch and they spent a good couple hours playing in the play place!


We did a lot of fun Christmas related activities throughout the month of December (you can read about them here) but I don't have any pictures!! Ack what is wrong with me!! I did however get pictures from our FAVORITE Christmas tradition-going to temple square to see the lights!






Tyler thought it was so cool that smoke was rising off the water in the fountain!








He HAD to have his picture taken in front of the lawn of green and blue lights (his favorite colors)!


...and the blue trees!


Bobby thought it was really cool that he could fog up the lens of the camera by blowing on it and get a foggy picture. Hehe...I love him.




He's quite the photographer no?!




SUCH a great night! Oh man, I just love my little family!!!!!!


We also managed to sneak in a visit to Santa a couple days before Christmas! Tyler was soooo nervous sitting on his lap. He sat with his hands perfectly still on his lap the whole time and didn't move his body an inch the entire time he was talking. When Santa asked him what he wanted for Christmas he spit out, "A spiderman web-slinger" like he had been re-hearsing it for the last 30 min-no emotion, no smile, monotone and quick. You could tell his little heart was beating so fast and his eyes were so big. Haha...He was nervous and it was adorable.



Kylee had NO desire to sit on Santa's lap. She did however want to stand next to him and tell him what she wanted. She was shy but not nervous. She looked him straight in the eye the whole time, answered all his questions and responded that she wanted a baby doll for Christmas in her sweet, shy voice (same thing as last year! She absoultely LOOOOOVES playing babies and princesses-not the dress up kind, the barbie kind-and does so ALL day long!). He gave each of them a candy cane and they were on their way!


December also includes Christmas (obviously :) ) and Kylee's birthday but each of those deserve their own post, so those will be up soon!!

November 2011

November was a BUSY BUSY BUSY month for us!! For one thing, we did soooo many craft projects! Our fridge and walls were plastered with all sorts of paintings, murals, gratitude trees and different activities from THIS project. We went through 4 large tubes of finger paints and had baskets full of "painting clothes" to wash at all times, it was great!!

Unfortuately it was too cold to paint outside by Nov. so we got used to covering the kitchen floor with newspaper and going to town!


These are their 'hand-print trees with fingerprints for the leaves' pictures.


Just a random picture I found on my camera from November...she's so darling I swear I could just eat her up!! Man she gets away with so much more than she should!


Also random...
Tyler came walking in our room one morning with something he found and asked if this was how you were supposed to wear this "light thingy"??


Well I guess if your name was Chip or Dale it would be.


Kylee doesn't take naps anymore so when I walked in her room one day to tell her that her 'quiet time' was over (about an hour period where they are to stay in their rooms reading books, coloring, playing quietly, etc.) and found her asleep I was SO happy! Just because she doesn't take naps everyday doesn't mean she doesn't need them!!


For Thanksgiving, Bobby's dad and stepmom Mary came out from Missouri and spent the Holiday with us. It was SO nice to have family here for the week and get to relax in our own house! My sister Amanda drove up from Provo the day of Thanksgiving and spent the day with us too and we had so so so much food!!! For the life of me I can't find ANY pictures from our week with the Brickers so when I find which memory card I used I'll have to come back and add in those pictures!

The day after Thanksgiving we took down all our fall decor and the first Christmas thing up was our tree!


It's so much fun to be able to involve the kids now in so many of our fun holiday traditions, they really are what make the holiday's special!!