Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Christmas 2012

Christmas 2012
This was our first year away from Utah. It was definitely a different day just lounging and hanging out as a family. We LOVED it and missed the hustle and bustle of Utah too.  
 Christmas Morning after the fun of opening presents had passed.
 Some of my favorite pictures of the girls as they opened their gifts.
I love when I can capture their true emotion!


 My handsome man in his new shirt. I never take enough pictures of him!
 Mama's new purse!

 The HUGE SURPRISE of the day. We got the girls a bounce house this year. We have been talking about it for a few years and this was the year!
They were SO surprised it was perfect. Payton even said "someone pinch me!" We waited until after breakfast and presents and then told them to come downstairs.
AWESOME!!



We love these girls with  every ounce of our beings!
They are such great girls and we are absolutely lucky to be their parents!!
MERRY CRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Christmas Eve 2012


Christmas Eve has always been full of traditions for our little family since we got married. We have added things along the way as we have had our girls and this year we added another. We try and always take a family picture. This year was a success i think:)
We take this girls to Build a Bear to pick out their own animal and make a new best friend to sleep with. They love this one! It's fun for us to see what they pick each year.
 
 
 Kennedy's bear has a hood on her shirt. Pretty funny because Kennedy HATES wearing her hood!
 
Payton changed her bears shirt probably 5 times (the blue was not the final choice!)
And this fits her to a T!! She changes outfits at least twice a day. 
Oaklee LOVES monkeys, no secret. And once she saw the unders Monkey HAD to have some too! 
 
 In the past we have always gone to Temple Square and looked at the lights. Well, no luck this year obviously. But we wanted the girls to still see the Temple. So we drove to the Denver temple. It looked so beautiful! 
 
We then went to the Olive Garden for dinner, another tradition. The wait was around 40 minutes and i always love listening to the comments people have about our girls, and are they all mine, and how beautiful they are. It's pretty cool :)
 
The girls always open new pajamas on Christmas Eve. They seem to like this one too!
 This year we added a new tradition. The girls all bought another sister a gift. We took them all shopping and split up so the other wouldn't see. They LOVED this! And I loved seeing how much thought they put in to it!
 
Kennedy bought for Oaklee.
 Payton bought for Kennedy.
 Oaklee bought for Payton.
 Then we set out our Milk and Cookies... and an apple of course.
And the girls are off to bed!
 Justin and I then spend hours wrapping all the gifts and watching Home Alone.
I forget every year how much this KILLS your back, but I love it all the same.

Christmas Eve was always a special day for us to just be together as a family. Most years we have spent Christmas day running from house to house. So Christmas Eve was a day for the little family we created. This Christmas season was a very different one for me. Being away and not going to all the parties and family gatherings was VERY HARD!!
I love and miss our families VERY much. I hope we can teach our girls the reason for the season and to always love each other as much as they do now.

Christmas Adam



This is a new tradition we have decided to do as a family. Some friends of ours have done it for years, and we think its SO GREAT!
Christmas Adam is the night before Christmas Eve. We all sleep out in the family room together. We start by reading the Christmas story and putting the Nativity together. (We need a new Nativity for sure) It was a lot of fun and next year Oaklee will join us :) We have a lot of fun things planned for Christmas Eve and needed our sweet Oaklee to have a good nights rest!

SNOW.... finally!

 
We have waited for some snow to play in. It's been freezing with no snow!
Now that's just torture!! Finally we got a little bit and the girls LOVED playin in it with Dad!!