Four Jingle Bells

 Funny story: Spencer was very annoyed about having to decorate this gingerbread man.  He thought it should have been a "Santa or a train".  So, I bribed him with candy to make it.  He gooped glitter glue all over it and called it good, the last day it was due.  It only took an overnight to dry.  But check out that awesome missing tooth.     The kids created a store in the art room.  There were many choices: singing lessons by Brooke, fun games, and "recipes to died for". The best part was the photo booth with accompanying snowflake decorations.  It was pretty great.  Brooke's typical sleeping picture.  Don't know who took this one, but turned out decent.     Me and my monkeys!   We made gingerbread houses, well, graham cracker houses.  They turned out pretty great!  And what a great way to use up all the candy in the cupboard.  Our first snowman of the ...

   We had our missionaries over for dinner and cookie decorating.  We have gotten pretty attached to these guys. Elder Deering and Elder A. They are great guys!  (Blake just pointed out that William looks like he has  six pack in the above picture.  ha)     Brooke and Elder A have become best buds.  They just were meant to be friends.     Check out those yummy cheeks!  The missionaries were so nice to accept the cookies after the kids had licked the knives and frosted the cookies.  They are totally awesome.  Even Elder Deering who had only one sister learned to love our crazy kids.  It is neat to be out in the mission field.  We are always thinking about ways to bring people to Christ. Such a blessing.  What we have been doing to keep busy.  They were playing pretty well this day.  Slowly but surely!   William is an avid book read...

 Ok, small towns are small towns.  Since I grew up in Las Vegas, I have an idea of how activities are going to go but this is a small town, so small town ways.  We went to the holiday hoopla opening night which people said was so awesome.  Not awesome.  My feet are still cold!  Enough of the whining though.  There were some fireworks at the end which were decent. We waited outside for two hours for Santa! It was freezing and hot cocoa was so overpriced but kind of helped.  Then Santa showed up in the middle of a magic trick and we decided we would skip the hoopla from now on!  And just wait for the fireworks next time.  The kids met Buddy the Elf.  He was pretty authentic!  We saw some awesome trains set up in the basement of an old shop.  The kids were thrilled to be up at the top.  Christmas happiness  William loved the tree and by Christmas time, most of the ornaments were at the middle o...

 The snow started and didn't stop!  The kids had a good time in it though.  William is a yummy snow bunny.  Brooke and William washing the walls together.     Our individual ornaments:  Spencer got an S bc he has been doing so great in school.  Blake got a fox bc he and the kids were loving "What does the fox say" for awhile.  Hailey got the dolphin bc she loves them.  William got a dog bc he loves dogs and it was one of his first words.  Brooke got a pink heart bc she loves pink and has a great big heart.  She will share her last bite of anything with anyone.  She is a sweetheart.  Getting all the Christmas stuff going    Happy with their new ornaments.   We had 25 people for Thanksgiving.  25!  My first Thanksgiving I cooked!  Wow, it was busy, but it was great to be able to have so many friends over when we have only lived here six months....

Our ward had a temple trip so we decided to use it for a little getaway, since we knew we wouldn't be getting away much with the winter coming.     Hailey was proud of kicking butt at yahtzee.  She got three yahtzees!  On the way home, we saw a sign for the biggest frying pan in Iowa.  It's about 20 minutes from our house in a tiny town with one gas station.  They actually used the frying pan and cooked a town meal.  It was pretty funny.  My Mississippi.  I can't get enough of this place!  Cute kid  Playing yahtzee.  We always stay in these little condos when we go to Nauvoo.  It's nice to have a little home instead of a hotel!  It was so cold while we were there that this little creek was frozen over.  I loved driving by it.  Nature is so great.  Josea Stout is my relative.  Hailey, Spencer and I walked down Parley Street and read all of the signs.  It was ...