Gingerbread Houses

This is one of the kids favorite Christmas traditions.  Probably because they are all addicted to sugar and love all of the candy that comes with this acitvity!  They all love it!  Brinley's friend Kate was at our house the night be decided to do it, so we invited her to stay.  She is here enough that we call her one of the family anyways!

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!