December 2015

The first weekend in December we carried on the tradition of making gingerbread houses.  This year we decided to make two houses instead of one.  One for each kid.  It worked SO well.  They have such different decorating styles and last time we tried to do it together Van just kept getting frustrated with Brielle so having their own was great:)

I absolutely love this tradition.  It's so fun to watch the kids concentrate and be creative.  

This girl (in her dance leotard:) was so into it!  She sat like this and worked on her house for well over and hour.  She totally would have kept going too but we ran out of candy:)

The finished products.

One day Brielle was drawing and she drew our whole family.  I thought the difference between her drawing of me and her drawing of Brian was hilarious.

Me....

Brian..... ha!!!

We went to the Alpine living nativity again this year.  It was a great night.

He held my hand!!! Love my big boy:)

Brielle had a little dance showase this month which was so fun.  It was just during her regular dance time and the parents were invited into the studio to  watch a little performance.  Brielle was so excited about it beforehand but got really nervous once we got there. 

At one point she stopped dancing and ran over to me and wrapped herself around my leg.  She finished strong though:)

One day my boys dressed exactly alike for school.  I had to take a picture and I got the bonus of a cute little photo bomber in the back:)

We have had so much snow this year!  We are all loving it.  One day when Brian had to work late the kids and I played in it until it was too dark to see anymore.

Both kids were so into buying/making/wrapping presents this year.  

We rode the train up to temple square again this year.  Pretty sure the kids would have thought it was the best night of their lives if we had just ridden the train up to Ogden and back without going to temple square:)

Scott and Shauna met us there.

The two Asian (or part Asian:) girls in front of Brielle's favorite Japanese nativity.

Christmas Sunday.  Believe it or not this was the best of about 30 pictures I took.


Christmas Eve!!
The boys spent much of Christmas break building snow tunnel.  Brielle sporadically got bundled up to help.

Making cookies for Santa.  It's a great coincidence that Santa's favorite cookies happen to also be Brian's favorite:)

We tried to get a pic in front of the tree and it morphed into a wrestling match.  Oh well!


We used our little people nativity to "act" out the story of Christ's birth.  We have done this several years and it works well when we don't have enough people to act it out ourselves.

spreading reindeer food.  We actually have a lot of deer that wander our neighborhood every night so we pointed some out to the kids the next day and they were SO excited thinking it was from Santa's reindeer.

Cookies, milk, and a note from Van.  All waiting for Santa;)

Christmas Day!

We didn't get many pictures of opening presents but we did get this one.  This was the one that had the first clue to a treasure hunt in it.  Van was SO into the hunt and Brielle just followed behind excited because he was;)






At the end of the treasure hunt they found this!  It has gotten hours and hours of use this winter so far.

After presents and a delicous french toast breakfast we decided to take advantage of the 6 inches of new snow that had fallen that night and go sledding.  Since Van got us all up at 5:30 we were out there by 9 and were the only ones on the hill for most of time.




Right before Christmas I finally bought Brielle proper gloves and guess what?  She finally like the snow!  She loved the sledding and was making snow angels and playing and playing.  She doesn't have near the stamina Van has (that kid plays for hours and hours in the snow) but she has pretty much matched his enthusiasm now:)


We spent the rest of Christmas day packing to leave for Idaho the next day....

Novermber 2015

November started off with the kids finding their Great Pumpkin toys.  Brielle asked for a BIG puppy with clothes on......ok.  She was really excited about it:)

Van wanted an archaeology kit.  It was a little bit sad how much fun we all had watching him dig in that little brick:)  He was in heaven!

For the first family night of the month we made a Tree of Gratitude.  We did this two years ago and loved it.  Last year we had way too much going on to get to it so we were excited to be able to do it aging this year.  Brielle is quite the little crafter and she gets so into any project that we do together.  This was fun to do initially and it was fun each day as we got to hear what each kids was grateful for as they added new leaves.






During the process Brielle decided the tree needed some birds flying around it so she shifted her focus:)  She made them basically by herself (with a tiny bit of cutting help from me) and she was so proud of them.  She also made a couple for her room:)  I wish we had gotten an end of the month picture when it was all full of leaves.  We have a lot to be grateful for!

We let the kids try out the jets one day.  Yes, they are probably too old to bathe together but how were we supposed to decide who got to go first?  Plus it was really cute:)  The jets make the bubble bath go crazy!


Brielle cleaned her and Van's entire bathroom one day with only a little direction and help from me.  Stop growing up!


We snuggled a lot this month:)


Diva mouse!


She is always wanting to be ON me all day every day.  Sometimes it is inconvenient but mostly I love it:)


Doing the dishes for me.


She falls asleep in random places since she stopped taking naps.  This was on the way home from the library one day.  She dozed off while reading one of her new books.


This time I found her topless on the floor.  Her shirt was right next to her, not sure why she felt she needed it take it off.


Van was in charge of treat one family night and he chose frozen yogurt......during a straight up blizzard.  The roads were terrible and it was SO cold but the kids didn't care;)


One night we were wrestling and these two both got a crazy case of the giggles.  I have never heard either of them make the sounds they were making and they seriously couldn't stop.  It was hilarious!


November was the start of this extra snowy winter we are having.  We are all loving it!!


Had to document Van helping with the laundry.


She let me curl her hair for church one day. So adorable!!!


Snow!!! I usually love it but this particular day it made me sad because it meant we couldn't go to Idaho for Thanksgiving as planned.  We ended up having a nice break at home so it was ok but we really missed seeing family.


This is the only picture I got from the actual day, Van making a pumpkin pie.  He did a great job.


The Saturday after Thanksgiving we got our Christmas tree!! We weren't able to get a permit to go cut one in the mountains this year which meant that for the first time in 9 years we had to buy one rather than cut  down our own ;(  We were all really sad to miss out on a tradition we all love BUT the kids got over it really fast once we actually had a tree in our possession.  It was actually still pretty fresh and made our house smell wonderful.  We made hot cocoa, blasted Christmas music, got new jammies, and loved every minute of decorating for Christmas.


She was being really bossy, can you tell? That hand on her hip just kills me!!!




Two happy kids ready to start the Christmas season:)