Christmas Eve and Google Earth!

For the past three years or so we have done our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve! It makes for a busy day, but it works out better for everyone. Then Christmas isn't spent cooking all day and we can usually all be together. Now that all of us have other people we need to spend our time with, it's nice to all be together on Christmas Eve! Everyone comes to my house, but my Mom does all the cooking! Works for me!! :)

Grant was so excited that Nana brought his snow boots! We keep them at their house cause we don't ever need them here. We sure could of used them this year! He didn't take these off the entire weekend!

We always go over to my Grandparent's house on Christmas Eve! I didn't take very many pictures this year! My Grandparent's have this Santa that does a cute little booty shake and Grant does a cute little booty shake, so they are a perfect match.

While we were cooking dinner we made Aliya fold and hang up her clothes. She wasn't very happy about that!

Pretty Nana and baby Trey!

After Grandma and Grandpa's we went in the hot tub, showered and started our Christmas Eve traditions. The kids opened their sibling present! It's so neat to see them choosing a special present for each other. We choose names so they just have to buy one present. (There is only three of them, but they have fun picking a name.) They are always very thoughtful in the gift they choose and very grateful for the gift they received! Next was reindeer dust!! And yes, that is snow on the ground! We had a white Christmas this year. Unheard of in St. George! For two weeks Aliya asked for a white Christmas every night in her prayers! She says the snow was Heavenly Fathers gift to her. I think she was right! Next was opening Jammies fom Mommy and Daddy!

We got to talk to Misty and Lorelai on the web cam! So fun to be able to share a little bit of Christmas Eve with them! Then we put out milk and cookie bars for santa! The kids love to write him a note and he always writes them one back!

The big hit of the day though was following Santa all day on Google Earth! Thanks Dad! The kids were so excited to see throughout the day where Santa was and it also helped them to go to bed that night because they saw that he was in Texas and they didn't want him to skip our house!!

Night at Tuacahn!!

Tonight we went out to Tuacahn and saw the live Nativity and rode on Old Salty. This has been a tradition of ours since Aliya was a baby! This year was pretty sad cause my parents weren't here. They tried to surprise us and come down (My Dad even took off work), but because of the big storm they weren't able to. I know I whine a lot about my parent's not being here, but my family is big on traditions and it's sad when they aren't able to be here. We still had a lot of fun. We didn't freeze as much as we thought we were going to. Usually there are so many people, but tonight we got to sit really close. It's such a beautiful setting and amazing music. I look forward to it all year.

This would have been a perfect picture if Grant was only looking. It's very rare to get all of them smiling and looking at the camera at the same time. Still cute!

Crazy Josh!

Like Father like son!

Trying to keep warm!

On the train!

Snuggle bug!

She has a new tooth!

We took Aliya to the Dentist today. Our dentist is not in on Fridays so we took her to a different one and Aliya was really nervous. She did great though. I am always so impressed with Aliya. She is very good at concentrating on something else and does not make one peep! Landon feels very bad and has been very nice to her.

Aliya's new tooth. Yay! They did a good job. It matches the other tooth very well.

Tooth+Truck=Trip to the dentist for a very expensive visit.

Landon got mad at Aliya and hit her with a truck. Here is the result. If I survive Landon it will be a miracle!

C Position, G position, F position... Pretty much gibberish to me!

On Saturday Aliya had a piano recital. She played Trapeze Artist. This is her second year of piano and she is doing great. I am unable to help her anymore because I am musically challenged so practicing is getting a little harder to do.

This is the only picture I got before my camera died. She looked so pretty with her hair all curly and girly! Thanks Brittany!

Moon Sand....Oh how you make my life miserable!

We had a few of the Bundy kids over today for a couple of hours. Shanna just had an adorable baby boy (congrats guys) and so we decided to have a little fun. I just had to get a picture of the kids playing with Moon Sand. Brooklynn, Alyssah and Carter were very excited to play with the Moon Sand, but were all a little nervous their Mom would not like them making a mess. I assured them it would be okay as long as they left the mess at my house. Hehe.. Anyone that knows Shanna knows she is a little bit of a clean freak. Love ya Shanna!

What I wouldn't give for a little boy like Carter. Everything we did he said "But we are not going to make a mess, right?" in his sweet little boy voice. What great kids they are.

My adorable child..

Aliya was asked to sing a couple of songs at the Dickens Festival this year. She did a great job. Here is a video of her Christmas song. If you want the link to the other song she sang, just leave me a comment. It's worth looking at. I think! :) Being the dork that I am I forgot to turn off the recording so when she is done singing there is just black and another cute little girl singing. Also, you can hear Grant saying he wants to hug and kiss the little girl singing. Cute to us, probably not so cute to anyone else.

My house always looks so bare when all this comes down.

I am such a bad blogger lately, so I thought I would post a couple pictures of my Christmas decorations. I love this time of year and I get so excited to get out all my fun decorations. I am not very creative when it comes to decorating, but I love it anyway.

Here is my mantel. I always have an internal struggle with this. I love all these decorations, but I have a really pretty lighted garland that I also love here, but with the garland being so big, there is no room for anything else. I think this way won this year.

My Mother-in Law paints us a house every year and I never know where to put my village. I am paranoid about anything getting broken, so they are on top of the cabinets this year. See the cute little Fireman in the left hand corner?

I have a strand of lights to string though the houses, but haven't gotten around to doing that yet.

The Stockings were hung...... Umm.... not by the chimney. Every time I hang them on the mantel my kids pull on them and the holder falls and breaks (luckily not on any one's head.).

Here's the tree. My tree skirt tore so I have to find one still. The kids had so much fun decorating the tree. I need to straighten that star.

Anyways, nothing new to report. Aliya was invited back to sing at the Dickens festival again this year, so we are doing that on Saturday. I will have some pictures of that I am sure. Maybe even a video. Her little voice has developed so much over the past year. I could never get tired of hearing her sing.