Christmas Day 2013

This is the sweet face that I woke up to on Christmas Morning

Here's our beautiful tree with all of the presents underneath

Jane got this Hello Kitty shirt/tutu from Santa
and she LOVED it.  She also looked darling in it!
She knows how to rock those sunglasses, too.

She's holding Princess Anna, which she got
from Uncle Adam last night, and her puppy
purse that she got from Grandma. Quite the
ensemble! We told her that she had style.

Jane is thanking Colin for the present he got her - two My Little Ponies!
Colin was happy to watch Jane open her presents while he had some breakfast.

Jane also got some books for Christmas!

This is us trying to get Colin to open some of his presents.

Colin loves trucks!  What a good gift.

Grandma came by to see the kids open a few presents.
Jane loves this princess shirt!

Big hugs for Grandma!

Colin is starting to get the hang of this opening, thing, now!

He loves this Blocks table so much!  His favorite place to play with it is
sitting on top of it!

Hard at work.

This is the present that Jane picked out for Colin.
She's happy to help him open it, too!

Or open any gift that might be lying around!

You might think that it would be hard to build towers
while you're sitting on top of this table, but
Colin makes it work!

Mommy got busy cooking in the messy kitchen!  We had yummy eggs and
sausage for breakfast - but the real trick was getting dinner ready!

Grandma got Jane this flying dinosaur thing, and it was good for hours of fun
on Christmas.  You can see the cat under the tree is looking at it very suspiciously.

Daddy couldn't resist playing with it a bit, too.

Mommy didn't remember to take a picture of dinner until we were almost done with it!
I roasted a turkey breast, made gravy and Red Lobster biscuits (one of Michael's FAVORITES!).

But my favorite and most time-consuming dish for dinner was this stuffing,
recipe provided by Grandpa Ross.  It's the yummiest thing ever!  Also I made
enough to last us for a week!

I had to include this picture of Michael's
favorite Christmas gift - Wall-E and Eve mugs.
I showed him a picture of these online months
earlier and he flipped out over them, so I made
a note that they would make a good Christmas gift.
I think he told me they're his favorite gift ever.

I took a few videos from Christmas morning and put them together here:




It was a beautiful day!  The kids had a great time and we loved being together.

Christmas Eve, 2013

Christmas Eve was a total blast!  Colin and Jane had a great time with all of their cousins at Grandma Bobbi's house.

Jack got some snuggle time in with Colin.  So Sweet!

Jane giggling with cousin Merri.

Uncle Adam quietly wearing a mine craft
head that Jack got for Christmas.

Jane LOVED her present from Uncle Adam.
She also loved the wrapping paper!
Right up her alley!

Colin made himself comfortable on Uncle Adam's lap.

Eden got this cool Elsa wig from the movie "Frozen."

Ryan cracked everybody up when he tried it on!

We're all laughing our heads off.

Colin got these cute puppies from Grandma!
They had their own little house.

He also got a rolling suitcase!  This will help
stop him from his favorite activity at home -
Rolling Jane's Hello Kitty suitcase through the
entire house!  Up and down the hallways.

Ella and her cousins got some cute stuff from Grandma!

Uncle Doug got to help Ella open all of her presents!

I made another apple pie for dessert.
Gotta have apple pie!

I made dozens and dozens of "Finger Lightsabers"  for all of
Jane and Colin's cousins.  I think everybody got two or three!

Merri and Will locked in epic battle

Here's Ella with her Lightsaber.

Grandma opening her gifts from everyone.

Dallin and Matti prepared a guitar duet of Christmas songs for us - it was amazing!  I only took video for a bit of it, but you can hear how beautiful it was.

This is Michael and Jane at home later - looking through Michael's
present from Grandma - a book on how to do little girls' hair!

What a great night!  It was busy, crazy, yummy, fun, and basically a hit!  Good thing it won't be any trouble to get to sleep tonight!

Family Christmas Sing-Along December 2013

Erika hosted our family Christmas sing-along again this year.  Pretty amazing!

Even Doug made an appearance!  Colin was happy to sit on his lap.

The kids slowly drifted downstairs as they are likely to do after awhile. Jane had a blast playing with her cousins! Colin watched from the safety of the top of the stairs as his sister flew around on top of Keala's shoulders.

I took a couple of video clips.  One is just 4 seconds long of us singing - sorry!  But it's fun to try to guess what song we're singing.  The second video is the crazy chaos that was the kids playing in the basement.  I stuck them both together in the following video:

Jane's Preschool Program, December 2013

Jane's preschool put together a little program of Christmas music for the parents.  I took a video clip of a few of the songs, including a long clip of a really cute snowman medley.  I thought that it would be only interesting to me and a few grandparents and I would put it on the blog purely for them, but I just watched all 7 minutes of it and I have to say, it is probably the cutest thing you will see all day if you want to give it a try.



Colin enjoyed the program, too!

After the kids sang, they had Santa come to the preschool and each of the kids got a chance to tell him what they wanted.  I thought this was awesome because it saved me a trip to the mall, and Jane thought it was awesome because she got to meet Santa!  Although she was a little bit nervous, she did great. :)

When he asks her what she wants for Christmas, she says, "Hello Kitty talks and sings!" She had been telling me for a couple of weeks that she wanted a Hello Kitty that talks and sings. We had a talk closer to Christmas about how there aren't really any talking, singing Hello Kitty dolls, but there are lots of snuggly Hello Kitty dolls. Jane said she would be fine if Santa brought her one of those. :)

It was a great day!