Birthday Party for Jesus!

I don't know how many years we have been doing this now, but it is still one of our favorite traditions during December.  We changed up the menu this year and went with a turkey breast instead of turkey steak! It was kind of like Thanksgiving Dinner all over again!  Yum!  It's always a good night to get us thinking about the Savior instead of all of the other stuff that sneaks its way into our Christmas celebrations!   

Christmas Tree!

Its always a good day when you get to set up the Christmas tree.  It seems like things get so busy around here that it takes a couple days of the kids begging before we actually get to it.  Once its up though, it feels like Christmas!!  Yahoo!

Quincy's advent calendar!

Quincy make this cute advent calendar in school.  Each pocket has something fun she made up for us to do.  We try, but unfortunately we are not getting to some of the activities.  Some of them are a little elaborate for the time we have each night!  She did a good job making it though!

Thanksgiving

We spent another Thanksgiving in Rexburg with the Southwick family.  We have spent all but one Thanksgiving with Grandpa and Grandma Southwick for the past 20 years!  We still love it as much now as we did in the beginning.  We traveled there on the morning of Thanksgiving and stayed in a hotel that night. We spent all of the next day playing on Grandpa's farm and riding in his cool pedal car.  

Grandpa always sets up tables and chairs for us in the garage...complete with a heater.  It works great.  This year Jan and Dan and their girls and Brandon were the only others who could be there.  Quincy and Brinley had a great time playing with Lily and Kara.  Uncle Lane, Bonnie and Colette also joined us for dinner.

We love spending time in Rexburg with Grandpa and Grandma.  The kids are always excited to go.  Grandma makes us delicious food and Grandpa always has plenty of interesting projects to help with....and who doesn't just love to visit with Great Grandma Ward!

Project...Big project!

I decided about a year ago that I would love to redo my entertainment center.  I talked to a couple people about the best way to do it, and did a lot of reading online.  While I have always loved our entertainment center, it was really starting to show signs of being in a house full of kids for the past 12 years!  Kylee came home for Thanksgiving and made the comment that she was bored and didn't know what she was going to do with herself for the next week.  I knew I had a window of opportunity with a helper!!  That was all it took.  But might I say, it turned into a much larger project than I had anticipated.  It ended up being a several day project and took the help of the whole family. Our house was almost unlivable for a couple days.  We had to get pizza one night because we honestly couldn't use our kitchen.  There were wet pieces drying everywhere!  

But...when it was all said and done, I was so happy with the results! When we put it all back together and stood it against the wall where it goes, we all decided that now the wall behind it needed to be darker.  One more can of paint and one more trip to Home Depot.  But we love it now!  It was worth all of the mess and work! 

Brinley's Letter to Santa!

There are probably not too many more "letters to Santa" that will be coming from this house. We are on the tail end of our "believers"!  But I think we can safely enjoy one more year!

Brinley is on top of things this year...it's only November 18th and she has her letter all written and ready to go!  I loved it!  Here it is...

Santa,

I want a boogie board for cristmas this year. I hope I'm on you're nice list so I don't get cole.  I want a preasent instead of cole, cole is grose so I help I get a boogie board (a boogie board is the boogie board that you can draw on and if you push the botton it will erase the picture not the boogie board that you use in an ocean).  Oh and my sister wants the same thing as me a boogie board.  I want pink and my sister want's light blue.  I hope we can get them for cristmas this year.  Me and my sister will be so, so, so happy to see our boogie boards if we get them so I hope you will get them for us on cristmas day!

Sincerly,

Brinley

She was even a good sister and took care of asking Santa for what Quincy wants as well!  Gotta love her!! 

Snow!

Some of the first snow of the season...Quincy and Brinley had to get out there and play!!  Ahhh, the famous snowball maker.  Kade scored that at the DI several years ago and it has been put to good use!