Where it all began

Like I said in my other post, our "Sleeping around the Tree" tradition was started by my mom when we were little. Luckily, even though most of us have moved out, we still do it every year. With the family getting bigger, we don't all fit around the Christmas tree anymore. We actually don't even all fit in the same room. However, we do all sleep over. This year was a lot of fun. There was tons of yummy food!!! We had fun playing the WII, card games, and watching a movie. Unfortunately, we were having so much fun that I only snapped a couple of pictures.

Christmas Break with the Cousins

Another tradition that has been around for decades is to spend Christmas break with cousins. As long as I can remember, we always do lots of fun activities between Christmas and New Years. We didn't do as many things this year with my cousins because several people were out of town. However, we were able to do a few of my favorites.

One of my favorite activities to do with the cousins is Ice Skating. It's a little different now that I'm a mom. I spend most of my time helping my kids around the rink rather than skating with the cousins. But, it's fun to see how my kids have improved. Tanner and Mickell even got to the point where they could skate on their own. Baylen and I skated a few times around the rink by ourselves. My cousin Michelle and her husband Alex came up and commented that we were having a 5 minute date like them. We laughed at how true that was. I guess you take what you can get. It was a really fun afternoon. The kids loved it!

Another cousin activity we do is sledding. We always go to Churchhill Junior High. It's funny how the hill seems smaller now that I am older. I remember the hill seeming so big when I was a little kid. However, I think it's the perfect size for hiking back up when you go down (especially when you are carrying a kid up). We had a really fun time there this year. Mickell loved going down the hill with the cousins on the "pain train."
Tanner spent most of his time on his new snowboard. He got so that he could make it all the way to the bottom without falling. I was really impressed. Baylen said he's ready for the slopes now. That makes me a little nervous.
Hailey was die hard all afternoon. She loved it. She went up and down all by herself. She did this over and over for a couple of hours.
Ashlyn loved it as well. She called it a slide.
We also had lots of fun hanging out with Tavi, Brian, and their girls. We went to two different movies (Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Bedtime Stories). We also went swimming. I had all four kids without Baylen so I didn't take my camera. But, it was a lot of fun. The kids LOVED swimming. We also went sledding. Hailey was having an off day but the rest of us had a great time. We did manage to snap a few pictures there.

A White Christmas

I love the magic of Christmas morning. I really do think that most of the magic I feel radiates from my kids. They were so excited. They had a really hard time getting to bed the night before. I was worried we'd be up at 4 in the morning. However, they did a pretty good job of waking up at a decent hour. I think they came into our bedroom at 7:45.

We were definitely spoiled this year and we feel very blessed. Some of the highlights for the kids were a big doll house for the girls and a Nintendo DS for Tanner.

Hailey loved her Barbie movie. She was so excited that it is her very own. I know, that face just radiates excitement!!!
Mickell has now had her ears pierced long enough that she can wear hanging earrings. She got a pretty new pair from Santa.
This is Ashlyn rocking out with her very own MP3 player.
Tanner loves this game set. It includes chess, checkers, chinese checkers, and more.
After opening presents and getting ready, we headed to South Jordan to spend the rest of the day with my family.

Christmas doesn't feel quite the same without a little white on the ground. This year we didn't need to worry . Boy did we have snow!!! It was beautiful, but it also caused for some white knuckle traveling. Our drive to South Jordan was pretty uneventful until we hit West Jordan. It was basically a white out there. Luckily, we had good snow tires. The people in front of us were sliding all over the place. We made it to my parents and had a great time there. We opened gifts, watched our slide shows, and played games.

That evening we went to my Aunt Janet's house for dinner. We were only able to stay there a few hours because the storm hit again. It started snowing really hard so we decided to head back to my parents house. We ended up sleeping there so we didn't have to drive home in a blizzard. We spent the evening playing Disney Scene It and all the fun new WII games that my parents gave everyone for Christmas.

It's crazy that you look forward to Christmas for so long, and then it is over so quickly. I'm grateful that we usually spend an entire month celebrating. This Christmas season was a lot of fun. I am so grateful that we could spend it with so many people. We are very blessed with amazing family and friends. I'm also grateful for the traditions that bring us closer as a family and add a little extra magic to this special time of year.

Christmas Eve- French Style

Baylen's family has been doing this tradition for as long as he can remember. I'm lucky enough that I married into it. It is a really neat tradition. Baylen's dad served his mission in France. It just happens that 3 of their sons have also served French speaking missions (Baylen, Briody, and Bergan). So, we celebrate Christmas Eve with a little French influence. We have a delicious dinner that Boyd and Terry always do an amazing job preparing. Terry makes a killer clam chowder. This is a big compliment because I don't normally like clam chowder. But, I look forward to this all year. We also have lots of French cheese and bread. Baylen really likes this part. I'm not really into yucky, moldy cheese but there are a few more mild varieties that I really like. Everyone keeps telling me the cheese is an aquired taste. Apparently I haven't aquired it yet.

After dinner we always do a nativity/sing-along program. Terry has made costumes for the kids. This year Mickell was the coveted charater "Mary." Tanner probably should have been Joseph but he really wanted to be a wise man.
So, little Landon took the part. There was a slight height difference between Mary and Joseph!
Hailey was a cute little shepherd.
Ashlyn didn't really want to participate. Maybe next year!
Here's a picture of the entire cast. I've decided it's close to impossible to get a good picture of all the kids.
After the program, we had our gift exchange. That was a highlight for me because Tina made me an amazing count down to Christmas wall hanging. I'm sure she spent days and days doing it. It is a gift that I will treasure forever. Grandma made the kids each a "hug." Ashlyn loves carrying hers around...
Each Christmas Eve, Boyd measures the kids and marks it on a wall in the kitchen. He puts their name and year by the marks. It is crazy to see how much the kids have grown in one year. Ashlyn won the award, out of all the cousins, for growing the most. She grew 7 inches in one year!!!

After a fun evening in South Jordan, we headed home to get ready for a visit from Santa Claus. Before going to bed, the kids put their stockings on the back of the couch. We also have the tradition of reading our Nativity book before tucking the kids into bed.

Something New

After an amazing Christmas lesson that one of the counselors gave in Young Womens, I decided to start a new tradition this year. I bought the book, The Giving Chest, and had the kids open it on the way to South Jordan on Christmas Eve. It comes with a CD that we listened to as we drove. I'm excited about this new tradition. The book is a really cute book that has an awesome message. Hopefully it helped my kids think about a little more than the gifts that they were about to receive.

Cookies for Santa

Another tradition we have is to make cookies for Santa during the day on Christmas Eve. In the beginning, the tradition included making cookies from scratch. However, over time I've learned that scratch=mess which then =stress. So, I've started buying the dough already made. This year I went a step further and bought dough that was already cut out into cute Christmas shapes. I let the kids put the dough on the cookie sheet. They didn't even complain about the steps that we conveniently skipped over. We had lots of fun frosting and decorating the cookies.
Instead of spreading the frosting on, Ashlyn had fun licking it off.
In the end, we had lots of really cute, creative cookies for Santa. They must have been tasty, too, because we left several on the plate and they were gone in the morning. I'm thinking Santa probably put on a few pounds at our house.

In Loving Memory

On December 12th, four months before her 100th birthday, my sweet Great Grandma passed away. I feel really blessed that I was able to know Grandma Barker. She was one of the most humble, kind people I have ever met. I think it is so neat that my kids were able to know her a little, too. Not many people get to meet their great great grandparents.

We were able to work things out with Baylen's work and the kid's school so that we could go up to Oregon for the funeral. It was neat to be there to honor Grandma Barker and her amazing life. All five generations were represented there. It was also really neat to see lots of extended family that we haven't seen for really long time.

We did a little photo shoot after the funeral.

This is a picture of my dad and his siblings. They were all able to come. My dad hadn't seen some of them in seven years.

While we were there we were able to go over to Grandma Barker's apartment and choose a few keepsakes. I'll always remember Grandma Barker for being a kid at heart. Her entire apartment was full of fun stuffed animals. Grandma Whipple collected two HUGE bags (bigger than garbage bags) of toys from Grandma Barker's apartment. She let the kids have as many as they wanted. The kids were in heaven. They especially like the stuffed toys that sing and dance. I think that Grandma Barker would be happy to see how much fun the kids are having with the toys.
We really enjoyed looking at all of grandma's keepsakes.

It was freezing cold while we were there. However, that didn't stop Baylen and the kids from getting in Grandma's hot tub. It was 13 degrees outside when I took this picture!

Tis the Season for Fun

It's a good thing I tried to be on top of Christmas this year because in the end I found myself behind! We had a few unexpected things happen that really threw me off (a trip to Oregon for a funeral and a new very time consuming calling). Blogging kind of got put on the back burner. But, I'm back with A LOT to blog about.

Our Stake Christmas Festival...
Our Stake has the tradition of doing a festival each year. It is actually a lot of fun. This year was especially special because Tanner was asked to sing in the children's choir. At first he didn't want to do it because he said it would be embarrassing. I convinced him to try one practice. He loved it and hasn't stopped singing since then. He's a really good little singer. He practiced for the festival a lot. He even taught his songs to the family for family home evening.

The festival was really neat. They had a live nativity, hay rides, and an old fashion Christmas village set up outside.

This picture was on the hayride...
This was at the nativity. I know it doesn't look like it, but the kids are standing next to a donkey, a lamb, and shepherds.
The music program was incredible. Tanner did a great job. There were only five or six boys in the choir and most of them decided to just mouth the words. So, there were several parts that Tanner and Preston were basically singing a duet for hundreds of people. They were very brave an did a fantastic job.


Christmas Village...
One Monday in December, Broman and Rachel invited us up to their house for family home evening. We had dinner and then went to Christmas Village in Ogden. I had never heard about the village before this night. But, it is well worth a visit each December. They have several blocks set up as a little village. There are probably over 100 little houses that are decorated with different Christmas themes.

Rachel was really sweet and bought us each a huge gingerbread cookie. It was the yummiest gingerbread I have ever had!!! While we were there we got to visited Santa Clause. Ashlyn wasn't too crazy about sitting on the big guy's lap. But, we snapped a picture anyway.
It was a really fun night!