Bethlehem Village

I love the lighted Christmas villages. I have several houses that you'd find in many collections, but one year I found this Bethlehem set. It's my favorite. It has six buildings, villagers and the manger scene with the three wise men.

My lights are what I find so difficult to part with when it's time to take Christmas decorations down.

Christmas Morning

This is what our living room looked like Christmas morning. So much for having a whole corner empty for our tree! Santa brought a digital piano so that Tersa and Keddi could take the lessons they have been wanting to take. Mardi got the orange bear sitting in the zebra beanbag. (She's been watching Build a Bear for two years waiting for them to release it again but they aren't going to.) The bean bag is hers too but that was from Mom & Dad. Shinara asked for the "real" guitar. And she thinks she would like lessons too. We'll see.

Anarya's First Christmas

This was Anarya's gift from Santa. She played under it while we opened our gifts. Then we took hers out, set the video camera and had her open hers alone. Unfortunately, it wasn't until we were done that we discovered that the camera had messed up and turned off. I got some pictures though.

Christmas Day football

This morning Bro. Schott sent out an invitation on facebook for any males that were interested in playing some football to come to the high school field. They were instructed to bring pads and bandages. Tersa asked why we hadn't been invited and he joked that it was because he knew we would invite ourselves. Well, they didn't have the turnout they were hoping for so the girls were invited to join in. After some convincing, Tersa took them up on it.

Perhaps this is why some girls are not invited.

Everyone's up now!

But she did run around after the ball and got the chance to run with it too.

Keddi went off by herself and played something of her own making between the track and the field. Shinara decided to run the track with Leslie Richardson. Leslie would stay with her until she tired. Leslie would circle the track and when she caught up to Shar, Shar would run with her for a while again. I couldn't believe how long she stayed out there doing this.

Look at that stride. Maybe we have a track runner in the family.

Joel, Anarya, Mardi (until a friend of hers came) and I sat on the sidelines watching. I took pictures of course. Suddenly the baby started crying and I looked at Joel questioningly. He said that when he had cheered (loudly and suddenly) she had jumped and then cried.

Daddy never raises his voice like that so Anarya was rather disturbed. It took a minute to calm her and from then until we left, she didn't enjoy our stay quite the same.

Christmas with Wilson's

Wilson's stayed home for Christmas this year. So we had our exchange earlier than usual. Between Mandy and I we probably took 20 pictures before we'd let the kids open their presents and this is the only one in which you can see each of the kids. And isn't Shinara cooperative. Well, she wasn't much better for most of the 20 pictures!! But as always we enjoyed our night with the Wilson's. We love them so much and find that as the kids get bigger and life gets more hectic, we don't spend as much time with them as we used to . So thank goodness for traditions!

Christmas Decorations

Joel got a new flat screen plasma for his birthday so we stored our monstrous t.v. and we have an empty corner for the tree this year.

I didn't think I would get Anarya's stocking done this year, but I did! And there she hangs with the rest of us. This year I put Joel and I on the end and the girls on the letters.

Presents under the tree

It's getting a little crowded to take this picture. It's gonna be hard when they are all big.

Bass Pro Shops

With a house full of girls and a husband that isn't really an outdoorsman, it's surprising how much money we spend at Bass Pro Shops. This year we needed some gifts and gift certificates so we all went together because I got an add that showed that they do a Winter Wonderland. As you can see, there are shooting games galore and some video things. There was an area for writing Santa letters and a place to get your picture taken with Santa. Shinara informed us that it wasn't the real Santa and didn't care to get her picture taken with him, but I asked her to so she did.

Christmas Tree set up

It took a while for us to get around to setting up the tree and another week almost to get it decorated.

Anarya loves light. She always has. These christmas tree lights dazzled her and she was held close to the tree and allowed to grab them.

First Cereal- Nov. 30, 2010

Joel gave Anarya her first taste of cereal because I wanted to take pictures. She has been sitting at the table with us for a while now and always sticks her tongue in and out while she watches. She knew what he was going to do when he sat down with that bowl and she was so anxious. I was really surprised at how well she was able to get her tongue to push the food back. Sure she made a face for the first three spoons full but then she was all about shoveling it in.

"Oh my goodness! I have been waiting FOREVER to get some of that stuff in my mouth."

"Let me help you with that, because you really are quite slow."

There's really no mistaking if you've made this child unhappy. This is what happened when Joel got up from feeding her.

Cute outfit for Anarya

A lady in our ward gave us this outfit and though I do not really like headbands on babies, at least this one didn't have a huge flower on it or anything. But even though I took it off right after pictures, she had an indentation! So cute though, don't you think?

Can you stand this smile?