Christmas

On Christmas Eve this year, we made graham cracker ginger bread houses.  Clara had a blast and wants to make that a tradition for our family.  Joe was just overwhelmed by the amount of candy he saw at the table and was frustrated I was making him put it on a house!

In the end, we all had fun and will probably start doing this every Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning was a hit.  I was a little worried that Clara would be dissapointed she didn't get very many toys.  But she kept saying that this was the best Christmas ever!
At one point we had TONS of gifts under our tree....

Here's what our Tree looked like Christmas morning.

And here are the kids with their gifts:

I love how Joe refused to shoot a basket from the ground.  He had to dunk the ball.  When Mom and Dad stopped lifting him up to do that, he solved the problem by dragging the stool over.
Jeremy's apron says Beckman.... He thought that was pretty cool.

Christmas Week at School

Clara had a Christmas Sing at her school on Thursday this week.  She was super excited to see me and kept waving at me the entire performance.  Afterwards, I found out why.  (Just a tiny bit of background, our school has a ton of kids, so they always have two performances and ask parents to come to a specific performance so that it doesn't get too crowded at either one.  I was asked to come to the second performance of the day.)  Clara didn't know there would be two performances and when she didn't see me at the first one, she was devastated that I didn't come see her.  Needless to say, she was overjoyed at seeing me later on in the day.

They sang Rudolf and Feliz Navidad and had actions to go with.

On Friday, since it was her class party, I got to go help out. She got to make an ornament that is supposed to bring you good luck, a Santa Clause graham cracker, play musical chairs, and play minute to win it.

Lights at Temple Square

We took the kids to go see the lights this week.  It was a bit colder than it has been, so we didn't stay too long.  But the kids loved getting to stay warm and bundled in the stroller while Dad pushed them around.  I was there too, but for some reason, I'm not in any photos....

Christmas is Coming

We got to decorate our house for Christmas and the kids have loved taking turns wearing the Santa hat.

We also got the privilege of having Santa come and wave at us from a firetruck.  He came Saturday morning and Joe has been wanting to see him again ALL weekend.  It seems like that is all he can talk about.  Hopefully we'll get to see Santa again before Christmas is over.

Thanksgiving

We started our Thanksgiving week by getting to celebrate Grandparent's Day at Clara's school.  None of Clara's grandparent's were able to make it last year, so Clara was super excited that ALL of her grandparents were there this year.  Clara loved getting to ask them questions about what it was like when they were little.  Thanks for coming!

Thanksgiving Day we spent at my brother, Matt's house.  We had very yummy food followed by getting to watch movies and play some WiiU.  We watched the episode of Mr. Bean where he gets the turkey stuck on his head.  I loved that both little boys were watching it with us, enjoying some time on their Dad's laps.

The days after Thanksgiving, we spent at Jeremy's parent's  house.  They had their house remodeled while they were on their mission, so we got to help move the last of their stuff back into their "new" house.  The littlest kids had fun playing in the warm weather in the back yard.  Joe thought he was so big doing the things the older kids were doing.  Too bad they had no idea he was.  :)

We were also able to watch BYU beat Cal, what a game that was!  Since Jeremy and I decided to get rid of cable/satellite, this was the first game I got to watch BYU play this season.  Thanks for letting us crash at your house John and Sharon!