Christmas Eve

Speaking of traditions, here are some pictures from acting out the nativity for mom and dad on skype. The kids are a little more active than last year, but I they knew the primary songs better :) Here is our wiseman Ben. He was excited that he could kneel down in front of Jesus and give Him a present.
Here is our sheep, Sam, and one of our angels, Nara, that kept stealing baby Jesus from the manger. We eventually had to get another baby Jesus so she could hold one too :)
Here is Mary, Isabel. It's her favorite part. Next year Nara might give her some competition for it though :)
Here is Joseph (Noah) leading Mary on the donkey (Chris) to Bethlehem. Here is another angel, Ari, that got to say 'Good news'.
Jon and Tamina (choirs of heavenly hosts) entertaining the sheep in bunny clothes :)
Jen (another heavenly host) and her angel.
Kelli Ann (yet another Heavenly host) holding the angel Gabriel that got to tell Mary that Jesus was going to be born!
Our shephard, Adam. He had quite a job keeping watch over the sheep, Sam!The program went well. Next year might go a little smoother, cause we will have more room to act it out. The past 2 years we have been limited to the range of the computer for skype. Grandma and Grandpa Morgan got each of the kids some presents from the Philippines, so we had the kids open them so mom and dad could see them. The girls got a beaded purse, a shell necklace, and a seed bracelet. The boys got a wood water buffalo and a wood turtle and a racing car. The older girls (me,Tamina, Jen & Kelli Ann) got a tablecloth and Philippine pearl necklaces and bracelets. The older boys (Brady, Jon, Chris, & Grant) got water buffalo horn belts. They are pretty cool, and apparently a status symbol over in the Philippines. All the families got a bag of treats.... yum yum! I love this tradition. The kids look forward to it and so do I!

Rice Crispy Reindeer

You can make anything with rice crispy treats.... I just know it.....dragons, towers, turkeys....! These reindeer were way cuter in my head...... they turned out alright though.....
The kids made theirs as reindeer faces. You can see Ari's reindeer face made out of m&m's. I also showed the kids that they could make a wreath to decorate, so that is the other thing on her plate. (The one with stick pretzels our the top is the reindeer)
Here is a cute one of Sar-Bear.... She loves coming to play, and I love that she will just follow me around and jabber my ear off :) She was my special helper to wrap presents and make dinner. She helped me wrap a 24 pack of soda for Brady and as soon as she saw Brady she said, " hi brady.... I helped wrap you a present. I'm not going to tell you what it is, it's a secret, and it's soda!!!" All in one breath! Luckily she loves Brady now.... that is definite progress!Ben enjoyed eating his more than making it. :)Here are Isabel's creations. The one with the pretzels sticking straight up is her wreath...
And Adam made (from left to right) Santa's sleigh, reindeer face, and a wreath. He was very proud of his creations too!
I'm glad the kids got to come play again! Tamina and Jon got to take Sam to get an EEG at Primary's. Luckily it looks like they can start tapering his seizure medicine! Hooray!!

Grandma's Elves

I went to get the kids after work one Monday and Grandma Tracie made sure to tell me that she had elves helping her all day! They loved to wear the jingle bells around over their ears so Grandma told them they were her elves!
Cute little elves if I do say so :) Speaking of elves, we had one join our house this year. The week before Christmas. (An elf on the shelf). I would post a picture, but he already flew back to the north pole to stay with Santa til next year. The kids named him Elffy. I think he really does have some magical power.

Gingerbread Houses

Another activity in the advent calendar was to make gingerbread houses. We Adam, Ari, and Sarah come over to make them with us!
Here is Isabel's masterpiece.
Adam's creation!
Here is Ben's...... the candy never made it on there.... it wouldn't even stay together because he kept eating the frosting that was holding it together...... ( luckily I found a recipe for egg-free royal icing so I didn't have to worry if he ate it or not!)
Ari really liked the orange frosting.... you can tell, can't you??? :)

And Sarah was very proud of hers. She had marshmallows, gummy bears, and chocolate chips.... all her favorite things! We had lots of fun! Thanks for letting me borrow your kids Tamina :)

Reindeer at Weber State

I set up my Christmas advent quilt this year and in each of the pockets I had an activity for the kids to do. We loved going to see the Reindeer at Weber State last year, so that was one of our activities this year. Here are the Ben, Zoey, and Isabel. Not too bad for a picture together...
This was 2 seconds later. All I have to say is they know how to push each others buttons already :) Just like I could do with my brothers!
Here is Isabel and Ben (pretending to be a reindeer) with Snowflake, one of Santa's reindeer.Here is Zoey chatting with Snowflake. I thought this picture turned out so cute.... my kids wouldn't talk to the reindeer..... Ben only wanted to act like one :)Here he is pretending to be a reindeer again. If the reindeer looked like he does here, I think kids all over the world might have nightmares about Santa's reindeer.....After we saw the reindeer, we went upstairs to do the craft (a picture frame) then I let the kids run around for a little bit. They LOVE the hills up at Weber.

Here is Isabel pretending to be a reindeer.... She makes a cute reindeer I think :)
Here's Zoey being a reindeer..... her antlers almost made it to the top of her head.....
And Ben finally made an almost normal face to be a reindeer in this picture.

Ben only stayed in that position for a second, then he was off to collect some sticks....... why you ask???So he could make himself real reindeer antlers! Very clever little boy.....And Isabel liked the idea :) On a side note, I didn't get a picture, but she got sticks and hooked them to the front of her bike, so her bike had antlers sticking out the sides of the handlebars. She did this cause she wanted a reindeer bike to ride! Clever kids......
And he's off and running, again........ like always........Then we made it up to see Santa. They got to put paper towels in Santa's sleigh and then they got a candy cane! Isabel told him she wanted a candy cane (just like last year) and a snow globe. Ben wanted nothing to do with Santa. I was actually impressed I got a picture with them all looking and smiling.... miracle!Looks like a forced smile to me, and Isabel's not looking.... the other group picture is better....Isabel has no problem with Santa. She even got to see him at school!!!! She was so excited! This is a fun tradition we will have to keep up :) They didn't give reindeer food this year, and Isabel was very worried, so I told her I had a recipe, and went home and made some for them, so the reindeer would know where to land!

Festival of the Trees 2011

Our kick-off to Christmas starts the Monday after Thanksgiving when we get to go set up our tree for Festival of the Trees. We were crazy this year, and decided to put 2 trees in the Festival. Our first idea was for a redneck tree. Tracie was worried that it wouldn't sell, so we did a nativity tree too. I found it hard to take pictures of just our tree, cause the trees are so close you get all of the other ones in the picture too. So, with that said, here is our Redneck Tree.
There were pheasant tails, cat tails, and plastic pink flamingos sticking out all around it. We had cans of Spam games (bought at the IFA store) ties with orange tulle, shot gun shell lights, Jeff Foxworthy movies and books, toy guns, gummy fish of all colors, and we strung pop-tops from soda cans with hunter orange tulle. Under the tree were presents wrapped with newspaper with cute tulle bows.

Here's a close-up of the topper. We got some antlers, put a santa hat on it with a light up Rudolph nose and draped shotgun shell lights around it. You can see one of the flamingos good in this one :)And here is the whole set-up. We had astro turf on the bottom, a fire pit with a fake fire, camp chairs with orange vests hung over the back, a wood spool table with a jean quilt draped over the back, 2 games (Fishinoploly and You might be a Redneck if..), and a fishing pole. We had fun making this tree, and everyone loved to stop and admire (laugh at) it. Still not sure if this one ever sold. Guess no one actually wanted to pay for a redneck tree even though they liked it :)Here is our nativity tree. It turned out so pretty. I loved it. This one sold!!
The ornaments are kind of hard to see, cause they were mostly glass nativity scenes or angels. We had sparkly stars, sparkly tulle, and sparkly white pointsettas. I liked the sparkly Christ is Born wooden signs.Here is a close-up of some of the ornaments. We had different names of Christ printed in vinyl and we put them on some filled round plastic ornaments. I really liked how they turned out. Might have to add some of those to my tree at home.We got the Willow Tree nativity set to put on top of the bookshelf, and we added a bunch of Christmas books, a fisher price nativity, and a few cute signs with sayings like, 'wisemen still seek Him'. We were told that it looked professionally decorated :) This is a fun way to start off the Christmas season. Thanks Tracie for the tradition! We did decide only to do 1 tree next year :)

November at a glance

November flew by for us! We did make time to have some cousins come over to make turkeys! (The cousins have been having withdrawls from each other.... in the summer they saw each other a ton.... now that most of them are in different schools, it's way harder! I can guarantee they are all very thankful for summers with cousins!) Below is a sample turkey.....
Here is Isabel's turkey.... it was consumed very quickly.
Here are the girls making their tukeys. (Sarah, Isabel & Ari)
Here is Ari's turkey....
Here is Sam's turkey... He is a talented boy. His turkey looks awesome :)
Sarah was very proud of her turkey!
Ben got a beak and 1 feather onto the turkey, the rest went right into his mouth!
We then had them make thankful turkeys. They were all very good at writing down themselves (except for Sarah and Ben) what they were thankful for. (Ari decided she could be thankful for everything except her mom) She is standing here clarifying that everyone else said they were thankful for their moms, so she didn't have to put it on hers :) She said she really is thankful for her mom.
Ben is in the phase where he has to make faces in each picture. He and Adam love playing together :)
Here are the girls showing their turkeys. They did a great job!
Here is the close-up of the boys turkeys.
And here is Adam with his turkey. Best thing is, they were easy as can be to put together :) You can make anything with rice crispies! I'm so thankful for my family and extended family! I love these kids and doing things for them! I truly have been blessed this year, and have so much to be thankful for.