Some pre-Christmas pics

I'd have to say that this Christmas was really fun this year with Leah. She loves to have me turn on the Christmas lights and then turn off all the other lights in the house. They she would say "We're having a Merry Christmas, mom."

She loved decorating the tree, opening presents, reading a scripture about Jesus every day in Dec. thanks to my sister-in-law's advent calendar, making cookies, Christmas music, snow (though I'm getting tired of it in Utah) and everything else related to Christmas. She also enjoyed picking out some toys for another little girl for Logan's work's Sub for Santa.

I hope we can continue to have the spirit of Christmas in our home each year and continue some of these great traditions. Last year she didn't understand as well about Christmas so it was fun to see her learn more and more about it.

I forgot to post about Logan and I celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary back on Dec. 16. I think I got too wrapped up in preparing for our trip to Texas that I forgot to write about it.

We put the kids to bed, asked our neighbors to listen for Cameron via the monitor (we have great neighbors upstairs), and ate out at a fun Indian restaurant called the Bombay House. We don't get to eat there very often so it was a treat. The food and service was great, and we even tried to talk about other things besides our kids.

I can't believe it's already been 5 years. And we're looking forward to many more wonderful years to come.

Cameron is here playing with his favorite animals - his tiger and lion. Leah dressed him up in her tutu so I had to snap a shot of him.

Our Christmas Holiday (better late than never)

We've returned, and I finally have some time to blog about our Christmas adventures in Texas. We were truly blessed to be with our family this year and made the trip there and back without any major complications (thankfully).

There is always something we forget on our flights to Texas, and this time it was my memory card to our camera. So the pictures I have are the ones my mom took while we were there. She was great about getting some pictures of us, but I just wished I would have brought mine along. We did take the video camera with us to capture the kids in action, but that takes a little longer to upload.

When we got there on Sunday, we had such gorgeous 50-60 degree weather until Christmas Eve when temperatures dropped and it started snowing. The wind was blowing so hard that the snow was falling sideways. But we had plenty of activities to keep us inside our cozy home, and we even made a couple of trips to our church building to let the kids get their wiggles out.

Some activities we did included making sugar cookies with Leah and my nephew Dallin, chasing my 2-year-old nephew Ben and Cameron around the house and watching them so they wouldn't mess with my parents' dog, singing Christmas songs, and driving around almost every night to see Christmas lights.

There is a house down the street from my parents' house that decorates ALL OUT for Christmas over most of their roof and yard with lights, a mini carousel and Ferris wheel, a Santa seesaw, etc (you get the picture) and Leah called it the "crazy house". Every day she asked to see the "crazy house". The city park also hangs Christmas lights all over and you can walk around and see the displays. Leah thoroughly enjoyed this too. no pics though :(

So here are the pictures that I have from my mom.


Leah with only some of her Christmas loot. She got herself all dressed up like this when we were getting ready to go out.











Cameron after eating chili one night.














My mom and I took Cameron to get his first haircut since his hair had been growing out and was looking shaggy. It was a bittersweet moment for me because he had such cute curls at his neck but now he looks like such a little boy inside of an infant. I was please with the cut.















Here's the finished product. Don't look at my tired face and pulled back hair. We had been shopping all day.





The girls minus my sister Angie and sister in law Lindsey. I think this was taken when we got home from shopping the day after Christmas and we were the three girls left in the house. Angie went back to her apartment in Lewisville and my brother's family flew out ON Christmas day to see her family in Denver.














Leah posing in the beautiful dress my mom got her. She was walking around the house with it on.















We tried to get the kids to smile good with my parents. And I think they were just tired from all the day's activities.




We really enjoyed a wonderful Texas Christmas! Thanks to my parents and siblings for helping us with the kids and spoiling us while we visited. Happy Holidays to you all!

'Tis the season for....

....visiting Santa and giving him the Christmas list. She wasn't even scared this year to talk to Santa and sit beside him. When he asked her what she wanted, she said she wanted a Barbie and a princess castle. And when he asked what Cameron wanted, she said "Maybe he wants a train." I tried to put Cameron down with them but he totally freaked out and wanted NOTHING to do with Santa. So I put him back in his stroller.













The kids both got a sucker afterward, but it was a huge rectangular caramel sucker that should not be given to kids. Nevertheless, Cameron sucked on his happily while we walked around the mall and didn't make any kind of noise so I didn't pay much attention to him. When we were in the Disney store a while later, I looked down to see him still enjoying the sucker but with sticky sucker drool ALL over his hands, shirt, pants and face. It was a trade-off.


.....and making graham cracker houses with friends. Our friends Laura and Kart came over with their two kids to make houses with us. Logan looks forward to this tradition every year and plans out some new house design to build. This year he made a tree house, and it turned out really great. Leah enjoyed putting candy on the house we made together, and she kept wanting to put more and more candy on it. So by the end it looked like a candy bag exploded on our house.

Kart and Laura are both creative artists and made really clever houses as well. Even though we tried to keep the candy away from the kids, they still ate lots of it and we did too.

My grown up girl

When it snowed yesterday, we took our time all morning getting ready until we were brave enough to venture out. Leah actually let me curl her hair while she read some books in the bathroom. This doesn't happen very often because she usually takes a bath at night, and she wakes up with it all tangled.

She even let me take her picture. I just can't believe how grown up she looks now with her longer hair. Her looked really cute when I first curled it, but unfortunately she has my hair and it doesn't hold curl for very long.

Cameron eating his birthday muffin

So we were a couple days late making Cameron's pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for his birthday, but he didn't seem to mind. We ran out of butter on Sunday, his actual birthday, so we waited until I got more at the store. He loved them as always!! He didn't stuff his face like I thought he would but still made a good sized mess.


































Here he is walking with his lion and his tiger, probably his favorite birthday gifts.






























Video of Cameron eating his muffin (it's kind of long)




And Leah didn't want to feel left out so she asked me to take one of her spinning.