Gingerbread Houses

 After seeing Deb's cute house she made I had to try one year to make ones from scratch. We always make them at my Mom's house every year the weekend before Christmas. I went ahead and 6 of them. I was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. They are so much better then the graham cracker ones we do every year before. My kids always fall apart that day and these held up for a couple of weeks.

 Tyler loved making his. He was doing it the longest. He kept adding more things to his.

 Lucy loved building hers with Nana!

 More candy made it into Hunters mouth than on his house! Don't let that face fool you!

  Mommy had to help Gracie a bit more than the rest.

Lucy put on a lot of mini Reese's Peanut butter cups.

Here are the finished products!!

"Not the Chickens"

 This a phrase that is yelled in terror by the girls of our family. Mostly by Lucy and sometimes by Gracie too. Hunter thinks it is quite funny. Back in December for my family Christmas party Hunter figured out how to catch the chickens. He wanted to show my so I pulled out the camera and got some shot of him in action.

 Gracie came to watch the show. She doesn't like the chickens!

 Hunter got one. It is not very easy to do. Way to catch it Hunt!

 Kate also Hates The Chickens!!

 AJ didn't want to touch it.

Random picture alert! We love this time of year in AZ! Love our oranges.

Winter Sing

 The three oldest had their winter concert. The boys both had parts they got to sing in the mic. They all did wonderfully. AJ got to come with Grandma and watch them. I love their smiles in this picture.

This was their finale.

Dad missed it because Gracie was sick. They did such a wonderful job.

My Little Santa

Most of you know that my Tyler has loved to dress up. Any day of the year he has turned himself into someone else. He has always loved Christmas too!! I wanted to show you who we have in our house for the month of December. He has been wearing my sweater from when I was a girl almost every Christmas for the last couple of years. The sweater has Santa on it. He even wears the sweater and santa hat to school for part of the month of December. He had kids at school running after him calling him Santa. He didn't wear it as much this year as last year. That makes me sad that peer pressure is catching up to him a bit.I will be really sad when he doesn't dress up at all.

My Santa and me!!

 Everyone has to sit on Santa's lap.

 Ho ho Merry Christmas!

 These pictures were taken at Meema's neighborhood Christmas Party. The girls were my reindeers and my boys were my Santas.

 We had to wait in line to see Santa so we took lots of Pictures!!

Their faces show how long the wait was..

Gracie was so funny! She didn't want to take pictures. She told me she had to concentrate so she could tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas. The sad part was we were rushed through and didn't get a chance for any of the kids to tell Santa what they wanted.

Cubs

 We have all been having fun with my calling as Wolf Den Mother. We made Christmas trees out of rice krispies. The boys were mixing the green marshmallows and calling them Shrek boogers.  They are so silly sometimes. Of course the rest of my kids had to make some too!!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we got to eat Turkey with Mema and Papa! Of course it was yummy and filling. The next day we woke up early and drove up the Flagstaff to play in the snow with Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of the family.
It was a white weekend.

 Thanks Uncle Sean for making this huge snowman!

 Here is Hunter's snow man he made!

 Lucy and Gracie were having fun making snow angels.

 We loved to snuggle on the couch at night and watch Christmas movies. The girls loved this night when we watched Santa Paws. The teenagers wouldn't tell you the same story. They tried to get rid of the movie.

 The pond froze. The kids loved walking around on it. It was fun to slide on the parts not covered with snow.

Hunter kept standing under these icicles and trying to knock them down. Travis had to knock them off so Hunter didn't kill himself.

It takes a while to get everything ready to go and the girls were antsy to leave. They kept trying to come out in their clothes.

Hunter had the perfect snowflake on his head. We tried to get a picture of it, but as you can see it didn't really work that well.

Hunter loved the snow. It was hard to keep inside. Well I guess it is always hard to keep inside. He is an outdoorsy guy!

Here is all of us that were up there except Candice's family. It was a fun weekend!!

Family Fun

 A couple of weekends ago we had a fun weekend. We went to Gracie's Hubbard swim school party. We watch Finding Nemo while swimming. It was fun! After that we walked over to Bass Pro Shop to meet Santa. I know a bit early, but we don't really make over there that often so we decided now or never! It is pretty neat there this time of year. Check it out if you haven't.

My kids stand in this order quite often. I love it. They stair step down!!