Santa came a day early...

Since we knew that we would have to travel to Utah on Christmas day, we asked Santa if he would mind visiting us a day early. 

Guess what?

He said yes.

But we didn't tell the kids; we wanted it to be a surprise. 

Here are the kids with their stockings:

 Some favorite gifts were: the girls dollhouse, that Scott made from some wood given to us from another dollhouse (Thank you!!),

 The puppets and the puppet stage from Grandma Linda,

 Russell's helicopter,

 An ornament made by Emalyn,

 Star Wars legos,

 Some of the interior design the girls and I are working on for the dollhouse,

 And this is Tyler about one hour after opening the presents,

So it was a great Christmas.  We didn't put as much under the tree this year, on purpose, and it was nice to be able to concentrate more on the individual gifts and givers.   Also, the kids were not as overwhelmed as they usually are on Christmas day.  So I think this is a tradition we'll be continuing.  I

New camera, homemade Christmas tree decorations, and two lost teeth.

First of all, we got a new camera.  And it has 35x zoom.  So these are blades of grass in our back yard taken from inside the house, about 10 feet behind the glass doors.  I find that particularly awesome.

We made homemade tree decorations from salt dough and then painted them.  Then the kids got the great idea to give them to their teachers at school as Christmas gifts.

Above, Emalyn's ornaments, and below are Krysta's.

Tyler's ornaments that he made.

And Emalyn lost her two front teeth, just in time for Christmas!!  She went around singing "All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" until Christmas came. :)

Our trip to Utah for Thanksgiving

Our camera broke during our trip...so the only pictures I have are courtesy of my mom and my sister Cheryl.  Thanks guys!

Thursday and Friday we spent at Scott's parents home.  We had a lot of fun with them.  We went to Thanksgiving dinner at Nancy's sisters house (Janet), where the food was really yummy, and where there were so many of Scott's cousins that we filled the kitchen and living rooms both.  But we forgot to bring our camera, and it was broken anyway, so we have now pictures.  On Friday, we had a family dinner with Scott's brothers and sisters.  That was a lot of fun too.  That night, Scott and his brothers moved all of the furniture into one room so that Ron and Nancy could paint and recarpet and lay down tile in four rooms. We left the next morning, so they could get right on that, being the obliging people we are. :)

Then we went to Amy's parents home in Orem.   Amy's sister Cheryl and her family were in town from Nebraska too, so all the sisters were together.  We had lots of fun.  We went to the Bean Museum down at BYU in Provo.  The kids had lots of fun watching some movie about bees in the picture below.



Gotta love this girl's pretty face.

 That night, we had our annual lip sync.  We usually have this around Christmas, but certain people wouldn't be around at Christmas, so we had it at Thanksgiving.  Our family was the only one that actually practiced beforehand, AND we came prepared with props.  We lip synced a song called "Santa's Stuck Up in the Chimney".  Scott was Santa, the blue box was the chimney, and we were all the reindeer trying to pull him out.

Everyone else did a lip sync too...I just don't have any pictures.  It was a lot of fun.  Kayli and Bryce even gave us a violin concert, Cheryl and Blake showed us their gangsta moves, Megan and Weston did a lip sync/puppet show about losing shoes, and my parents did some song about being really old and "Thrill me." It was awesome.  And super funny. 

And then we had an encore.  I did "Santa Baby"-the infamous lip sync that started the tradition of lip syncs at Christmas. My Mom did "Tiptoe through the tulips"- a slightly disturbing song sung by a very disturbing Tiny Tim from the seventies.  If you've never seen it, click here.   And then Megan and Weston did an amazingly authentic version of this Russian Vita Opera singer.  Megan did the calmer singing, while Weston rushed in for every screaming chorus. 

The next morning was Sunday, and we got to go hear my sister Megan teach a lesson in Sunday School.  She is an AMAZING teacher.  Really.  I think it's a gift that she has developed.  And then we had Krysta's birthday party, which I covered in the last post.  And then, sadly, we went home.
Thanks for a great visit everyone!