Let Christmas begin!

Our ward had a Christmas party and Santa of course made an appearance. Sadly, he wasn't the highlight of the night. The line for the balloon lady never stopped! :) (Didn't get a picture of her, or what the kids got, but she was amazing!)

Since we would be heading out of town for Christmas, we decided to have our Christmas Eve on Tuesday, December 21st. We did our traditional heading out looking at Christmas lights, and looking for Santa, and found this note when we got home!

Jaden knew just where to go. I asked him what do we do now, and he said "Santa told us. We've gotta look in the closet with the games"...where he found Star Wars Lego 2 for the Wii! Which of course he and Kyler wanted to play right away. Santa also left Carcassonne for Christian and I. Love the game tradition!

After the kids were in bed Christian and I (okay, mostly Christian) spent much of the night cleaning the boys toy from Santa we found on KSL .com. Pics in the next post. Merry Christmas Eve! Let the Christmas celebration begin!

MORE SNOW!

Then we got some more snow! Christian obviously loved it! :)

The boys got more snow for their hill!

My 3 cute boys!

Playing in the Snow

Before we took off for Christmas break we got a little bit of snow to play in! The boys LOVED it!

We tried to make a little hill for them to slide down!

It didn't seem to matter what side they went down, it was all fun!

David Archuleta Christmas Concert

My mom, won tickets to the David Archuleta and Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert in Salt Lake last week, so she gave them to my sister, Annette, who is David's biggest fan! Annette decided I was cool enough to go with her! We decided to go to dinner before the show. Love Johnny Carinos!

We did not dress warm enough at all, and were FREEZING waiting in line to get in for about 15 minutes!

But it was all worth it! I got these pics from the internet, so don't think I broke rules taking pics during the show!

The decor was beautiful. The whole program was amazing! Thanks mom and Annette for the tickets!

Jaden's Christmas sing

Jaden's elementary school had their Christmas sing on Thursday. They saved Kindergarten for the very last grade to go. They said this was because they wanted to have an audience for the rest of the grades! Kyler got pretty bored and antsy. Mommy did too!

Pretty blurry picture, but I thought that Jaden looked so handsome and cute with his homemade shakers!

Jaden missed school the day before the sing. It looked like only 1 class did the verse, and then they all sang the chorus. Jaden looked slightly confused. It's been fun to hear him singing the songs around the house for the last couple of weeks. Kyler has even picked up on them and knows them pretty well.

Singing Feliz Navidad

Loving this Christmas season!

Kyler at Gymnastics

We got a free gymnastics lesson in Kyler's candy bag from Halloween and finally had some time to go try it out! He loved it all! His face was beaming with excitement the entire time! Here, they had to chase a rolling hoop, get it, and bring it back. Of course the time I decided to video it, ...well, you'll see. :) He's a good sport. Always willing to try again and again!

They got out a giant parachute and Kyler loved shaking it! What a cute idea to give the kids turns jumping in it!

They moved over to the trampoline area. Afterward, Kyler said jumping on the tramp was his favorite!

I had just got done saying how surprised I was that he hadn't tried doing a flip yet. Spoke too soon. Scary front hand spring Kyler. What a goof!

Attempting to do a straddle jump!

"Marshmallow" AKA foam pit fight!

This is a tricky drill trying to climb you feet up the wall and then kick them over the bar. He did a great job for never even doing this before.

This one it looked like they were practicing squat ons. With your hands on the bar, jumping your feet to the bar and then jumping off forwards.

Here he is climbing his feet up the wall to do a handstand!

Dance, Freeze, and Roll!

That's a forward roll? Or maybe he's attempting a handstand, and falls over.

These donkey kicks were too funny!

They were supposed to be doing cartwheels over the dot. Kyler just wanted to get further and further from the group. He liked the mats, more than his dot.

I really couldn't take pictures. Through the glass obviously wouldn't work too well, and the lighting in high ceiling buildings is always hard for me to figure out. Hope you enjoyed the videos though. Glad Kyler finally got to play at gymnastics.

Work Christmas Party

Well, I didn't win any of the fabulous prizes they had this year at my work party, but the boys got to see Santa and get a candycane. Jaden asked if that was the "real Santa." He knows he's seen them dressed up all over. Nothing really gets past that kid. He's just too smart for us. But he still seems to enjoy it all!

What is that silly noise?

This is what I got to hear today for about 20 minutes while getting dinner ready! I'm so glad Jaden has great friends to play with. He and Jason sure had a great time!

Thanksgiving

Get ready for picture overload! Thanksgiving this year was at my parents in Boise. Christian and I thought it would be fun to make a pumpkin pie from one of our pumpkins from our garden. So we brought that with us!

I think that may have to become a new Thanksgiving tradition! It was excellent! Best pumpkin pie we have ever had! Yum!

Jaden still loves to take pictures! I think he probably took about 200 or so. (Not going to post all of them :) But he did manage to get a picture of everyone there.

Daddy

Annette

Kyler

Mindy

Mommy

Grandma

Grandpa

And even one of himself!

Along with many, many, many more. Mostly of toys and random things around the house!

Kyler was so excited to see his Aunt Mindy! He loves her so much and misses her already!

They totally remembered the Superman capes and had a blast with those!

Here we are waiting to do our traditional Thanksgiving stories.

Kyler helped Annette with her story, holding the pictures up for everyone to see!

Kyler wanted to be closer to Mindy's story as well. So he sat with grandma!

Jaden just sat patiently with us on the couch.

When we finished all the stories we went around and told 7 things we were thankful for. Here are what the boys said all on their own:

Jaden- Heavenly Father, Jesus, Mommy, Jesus, My friends, Grandma and Grandpa, and Harry Potter.

Kyler- Jesus, Dad, angles, my house, my TV, Candyland, and my pictures.

What a cute picture of my boys! I'm thankful for them! :)

Kyler did so many puzzles with grandma!

Jaden learned how to do a light bright!

Kyler colored while waiting his turn for that!

More pictures that Jaden took!

The boys love their grandpa!

We played a game on the Wii (Just Dance 2) after our Thanksgiving feast! The boys really got into it! It was quite the workout! I was only able to do 1 song!

Candyland with Grandma!

Playing in the snow. Actually, more of mommy just keeping up with making snowballs...

for the boys to come and get...

only to be thrown at the slide! Glad they were enjoying this! I thought it was great too!

They also enjoyed some swinging...

while I tried to throw snowballs at them! They really thought this was funny!

What a cute family!

Jaden with his Daddy!

Traditionally we also go see a movie the day after thanksgiving! This year we saw Tangled! It was so cute! Really loved it. (Christian said it helped him write his paper! :) )

Waiting for the movie to start!

More playing in the snow!

Playing in the snow with grandpa.

This time the new snow was really great packing snow! Awesome for making snowmen!

Or a snowbear! Thanks for your heart honey!

Also something we recently discovered about Kyler...he knows his letters! Most of the Uppercase and some of the lowercase! Glad we got that on video. Thanks Annette!