Our Christmas this year was a bit different from any of our others. Mike was on call Christmas day-- which meant that he would leave early Christmas morning at 5:30am and would not be home until the next day. We talked with the kids and gave them the option of asking Santa to come a day early or a day later. They of course chose the earlier option!

So we had our Christmas Eve on the 23rd. The first part of the evening was spent with our favorite people. The Janke's, Nelson's and Thorntons.

We then went home and opened Christmas PJ's and decorated sugar cookies for Santa

Christmas Morning!!

It was such a fun morning. The kids were all so genuinely thrilled and excited.- Which as a parent that is what makes everything worth it.

Samantha: Kindle Fire and Headbandz game

Collin: Imaginext Castle and Dragon

Owen: All things AVENGERS! Action figures as well as a Thor Hammer and HULK hands!

The kids LOVED their presents from their Grandparents as well. Grandpa and Grandma Taylor got them LEGOS!

Gra and Papa got them Ice Age, Slippers and Gra made them all new pillow cases!

It was a great Christmas. It was different, quiet and a little lonely (we missed our families) but we made the most of it and it was nice. On the actual Christmas night the kids and I went to visit Mike at the hospital. It was a pretty quick visit- but it was good to see him!

Christmastime Activities

The month of December goes by too quickly. It almost seems like it is sometimes too busy to enjoy. But in the end we did have a good month. We wished for snow-- but no such luck :(

Here are some of the things that we did.......

Owen and I went to both Collin and Samantha's school parties. It's always fun to see them interact with their friends and classmates.

We decorated "gingerbread" houses. I learned a good lesson----don't try and save the frosting from a kit that we used the previous year to assemble your houses. After we started decorating the houses they slowly started falling apart. It was funny/sad/frustrating. But we then used some of the frosting that I made and it ended up keeping the houses together. phew!

I ran to the dollar store one day to pick something up and Owen found this Santa hat. I couldn't refuse his plea- he just looked so cute! The funny thing is-- is whenever I told Owen to get his hat and coat on, he would put on the Santa one instead of his winter hat.

 We went to our Ward Christmas Party. It was a nice night-- but we really missed Dad who was on call.

Samantha is currently taking dance from one of our friends. It's pretty low key and really inexpensive, so it is perfect for us. Katie does a fantastic job with the girls. They put on a mini winter recital. I wish I had  pictures of Samantha actually dancing-- but Mike was on call and I could only do one camera at a time and chose to videotape it. Here Samantha is afterwards with 2 of her little friends-- Hallie and Maggie

Holy Moly she's EIGHT!

We can hardly believe that our Samantha is now 8 years old. She is such a sweetheart. She continues to constantly think of others. She is- as always our resident drama queen-- possibly the cause of a few of her dad's gray hairs? She enjoys reading, drawing and creating little projects. Her imagination continues to produce endless activities for her and the boys. She is definitely a daddy's girl - she adores him and looks forward to the times that he is home to help her with her homework.

We love Samantha so much and we are so grateful for the sweet, kind spirit that she brings into our home.

For her actual birthday, we had her favorite dinner - ribs, mash potatoes and broccoli. And instead of a cake- she chose cheesecake(love the easy request)!

With this being her 8th birthday, she got to have a friend party! The theme was "Baking Bash!" She chose to invite her friends from the ward- (it would have gotten too complicated and crazy to include friends from school.) We had moved the party to a week after her birthday so that Mike could be there-- but wouldn't ya know it- he ended up having to work a 24 hr call shift that day :(  Such is the residency life! Thankfully, my pal Syleisa came over and helped out---and Tana invited the boys over to play- it all worked out great!

Here's what we did----

They decorated chef hats.....

  .....made their own mini pizza's......

 ....they decorated their own little cakes.....

The finished products! Can you say SUGAR RUSH?!?

Samantha chose to have cake pops instead of having a cake---yet another easy request!

The crew! I had a momentary lapse in judgement and decided to make each of the girls their own aprons. Lucky for me-- I only had to make 6! (Amber was not able to make it)

Presents!

GOAL!

Collin had the chance to play indoor soccer this year. This is his first time participating in any extracurricular activity. Needless to say he LOVED it. From the moment his game was over Saturday morning- he was already down until his next game (not kidding). It took a few games for him to get the hang of it-- but by the last few games he became more aggressive and ended up having 4 goals by the end of the season! He was lucky to have his friends Kalea,Tytus and Ammon on his team.