Christmas morning

It wasn't the most beautifully captured morning, but I can assure you that we had a wonderful morning.

The line up. So photogenic.



Opening presents.





Posing with presents. Matt and I feel like it's a success that we got half of our kids pictured with their presents. The other half did nicely too.




The big news of the day was the present from Santa. The kids came downstairs fully expecting to see presents all over the living room that Santa had left. Their expressions were pretty funny as they tried to figure out why there were no presents from Santa. After looking around, they finally noticed a note from Santa telling them that there was not enough room to bring the present down the chimney so he had to leave it in the backyard. They looked out the window and saw that Santa left them a trampoline. We have no pictures of their reaction. Or of them jumping on it. Or of the trampoline itself. But trust me, they all loved, and continue to love it.

Christmas Eve presents

Traditionally Santa makes an appearance during our family Christmas Eve festivities, but it appeared that Santa was too busy to sit and chat this year. This year Santa doorbell-ditched us leaving a big, red sack of presents on the porch. No one seemed to mind which was a little bit of a relief, and our kids seemed to enjoy their presents. Also a relief.

Santa and a gingerbread house

We worked long and hard to make this beauty.



And everyone was still smiling when it was all done.



Way to take charge and run the show Matt.



The only time our kids sat on Santa's lap was at our ward Christmas breakfast. Howie didn't feel the need to join in with the rest of the family.

Skate City

Last year when we went to Skate City, only Matt and Donovan skated. This year we rolled out two more participants with Howie and Nina. Both were a little reluctant at first, but by the end, they wanted to keep going around "just one more time". I hear there are already plans to go again during this Christmas break.




Cam decided to be a Jedi and blast the bad guys who were skating.






And this was me at 35.5 weeks.

Not Cameron too!

On this fine day I learned not to go upstairs to fold clothes. And just to be safe, I might not do laundry ever again. It's not worth it. Here we have Nina's apprentice Cameron demonstrating a skill Nina perfected early on. That of making a mess with products that are hard to clean up. Cameron chose butter. The huge tub of butter. I have a couple of pictures. But not included are pictures of butter on the oven, fridge, carpet, coffee table, DVD cases, couch, hallway floor, or the bottom of his shoe. This only took me 1 hour to clean up. Not too bad.

Happy Birthday Howie!

Although this is a week late, here are the festivities from Howie's 7th birthday. Can I just say we love Howie. He is such a helpful, thoughtful, smart, loving and all around awesome boy. We are grateful to have Howie in our family!

Howie requested a red turtle bomber birthday cake. Sadly for Howie, he was not blessed with a mom skilled in cake-making. And lucky for me, he doesn't seem to mind.


Howie wanted Krispy Kreme for breakfast, mac and cheese for lunch and waffles for dinner.





Opening presents after completing a treasure hunt.




And a combined birthday party with his best friend Kyle.

Go Rapids!

This is for Matt. He's sort of in love with the Rapids. I'm not going to accuse him of being obsessed. All I will say is that I think he was excited that the Rapids won the MLS Cup. He went to 2 playoff games. One thanks to a friend of ours who hooked him up with some awesome seats, thanks again Paul! He read probably every single article and comment made on online soccer forums. He of course watched the big game, then carted us all off downtown to the little celebration the city held in their honor. Go Matt and go Rapids!

Thanksgiving pictures

I was trying to think back to Thanksgiving and nothing notable came to mind. We had a nice dinner with Jill and Adam and I guess the food was fine because I remember we all felt full. Then I browsed my pictures to try to jog my memory and apparently these are the only pictures I took on Thanksgiving:







Then I remembered that the kids were loud, sneaky and messy. And a little cute.