December

Let’s see if I can sum up Christmas/Christmas Vacation in one long posting.

First we, of course, had to head to Thanksgiving Point and go look at the lights. This a tradition we started with our little family 5 or 6 years ago, but last year we changed it up a little, and instead of the usual drive in your car through the lighted park, we decided to try the horse drawn cart, and we loved it. So even though it was colder this year, the boys wanted to do it again, and we are all so glad that we did. It’s the same light, at the same pace, but there is just something about riding behind a team of horses while bundled up with your sweet kids in a big blanket.

After we had seen the lights, we found these oh so cool glasses. (Not only do you look awesome while you are wearing them, but it makes the Christmas lights more Awesome as well.")

The glasses made the light go from this:

To this:

On the Saturday before Christmas Wesley had "The Candy Cane Classic" at gymnastics. This is a recital, where he goes through all the things that he has learned for the past 4 months. It was quite fun to watch him tumble this way and that. And the look on his face when he was awarded a medal was priceless. (No I don’t have any good pictures other then outside afterwards, since the parents sit about 20 feet in the air looking down on the kids through a rather smudged piece of thick glass, and I just don’t have the kind of camera and/or the ability to do that.) Thanks Gramma for coming - he loved that you were there!

Christmas was wonderful. The fiesta was something everyone in our family looked forward to, and was so much fun, with great food. The pinata went over very big, and through what must have been a great miracle, noone got hurt.

Christmas morning we were woken up by the boys at about 6:45, and spent quite some time opening stocking and gifts. Then we ate our traditional Christmas morning breakfast of Cinnamon Rolls (next year I’m determined to have these be homemade). Then Gramma, Grampa, Chelle, Kyle, Porter & Bridger showed up to fill our house with even more wrapping paper and presents. We then went and spent some time with Grandma Kinsey, Shalena, Matt, Jeni & A.W., and brought home even more stuff. (By-the-way, Thank you everyone for the fabulous gifts.) Then we spent the rest of the day playing, and ended up with our final tradition of Homemade Pizza’s.

The next day - Riley got to try out his new Skateboard (I’m thinking he needs to work on how to move himself forward.)

And Wesley started building with his new Erector Set. (He made this plane (almost) all by himself - I only had to hold the wrench in place for him to tighten the bolts, and remind him to pay a little closer attention to the instructions.)

After Christmas, we had a pretty good week of snow, and that gave the boys a chance to play as well as give Phil the chance to use his new/inherited snow blower. The boys loved getting every last crevice of their bodies filled with snow while standing near the "blower" part of the large smelly beast.

Phil spent one morning snow blowing all the sidewalks and driveway’s on our side of the street, and what he couldn’t get, the boys made sure to get with their shovels. (Our large shovel broke, so my only choice was to stand around watching and take pictures with my new macro lenses, I know I felt horrible.)

Then we took the boys sledding. Wes loved every minute of it, and was a little more daring then his older brother.

Which is kind of ironic seeing as he is the one who ended up with this:

Followed in a few days by this:

New Years was celebrated in the same way it has been for the last 11 years, with lots of food, games, and tons of confetti. Grandma and Riley have an on going battle for who can cover the other one with the most confetti. It’s a total riot, we look forward to it every year. (I think I need to look more closely at the ingredients in that Sparkling Cider and make sure Phil doesn’t drink to much of it.)