Christmas

Our week was a super busy one.  We started our week by having Grandma Z come over to exchange Christmas Gifts.  Our kids loved getting to spend the evening with Grandma.

The next day, we were able to attend Eric and Amy's wedding.  We loved getting to spend all day talking about the temple and what a wonderful blessing it is to get married.

The day after that was Christmas Eve and we did our traditional graham cracker houses.

Christmas morning was great.  Our kids enjoyed all their gifts and we enjoyed the whole day just being a family.

It snowed about 10 inches on Christmas, so we tried to go outside and build a snowman as a family.  Joe thought the snow was too deep, so he and I headed inside after only a few minutes.  The snow wasn't very sticky, so Dad and Clara built a snowman by just building a snow pile.

The Sunday after Christmas, Clara put on a party in her room.  I loved that she invited the whole family to do just what they wanted to at her party.  Joe loved getting to privilege of being in Clara's room.

Christmas Sing

Clara had her Christmas Sing on Thursday this week.  I went to bed the night before with a fever, and wasn't doing well.  Jeremy took the day off of work to let me stay in bed.  It was a good thing he did because I ended up having strep.  I couldn't go to Clara's school with strep, so Jeremy took Joe and got to see her perform.  Clara wasn't disappointed I couldn't go because it was so exciting to have Dad be able to actually attend a performance of hers.  Jeremy took video though and I got to see it all that way.

Also this week, we had the Beck Family Christmas Party.  Complete with a nativity in which all the grand-kids participated.  I was so impressed with the Teenagers who were willing to do their part.  Clara was excited from the moment she  heard about it. 
Our kids got to be Baby Jesus:

And some angels:

Here is the entire cast:

After the live Nativity, we got to open gifts.  Clara decided to use the ribbon to decorate herself further.

Jackson turned 9 months old this week.  On the day he turned 9 months old, he cut his first tooth!  We also took him to the Dr and he now weighs 14 lbs.  They forgot to give me the paper with his measurements on them, so I'm not sure about how long he is, but he's still my very small baby.  Then on Thursday, he figured out how to crawl!  He now likes to crawl over to anyone nearby and a get into all the stuff Mom never let him touch before.

Christmas Parties

Tis the season to be really really busy.  Jeremy and I were able to attend one of his work parties this week. It was so nice to be able to have a nice date together.  It was held on the top floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on Temple Square, so I got to look at the window and see all the beautiful lights.

We also had our ward Christmas Party this week.  It was fairly low key, but we got a family picture taken on a Christmas couch.  I love how Jack is staring at the picture of Jesus.

We also got to have a great FHE about temples.  We all made play dough temples while we listened to Dad talk about temples.  Here is everyone hard at work:

And the finished projects:

Christmas Is Coming

At the begining of the week, we decorated our house.  The kids are so excited, I love it.

Santa came to our house on a firetruck and threw us some candy.  Here the kids are when they first see the truck

As the truck gets closer, Joe gets embarrased and ran over to me.  But even though he is shy, that definately doesn't stop the exitement for him.  Look at his face!

Here comes our taffy!

Good-bye Santa!  Hope to see you a lot these next few weeks!

We also officially finished all our Christmas shopping this week! The best part is that we stayed within our budget and that makes me feel really good.

Jackson is getting so close to crawling.  When he sees something just out of reach, he gets up on all fours, then falls back onto his tummy, but gets closer as he falls.  If he still can't reach, he'll repeat the process until  he does.
This week I heard Jack awake, but was busy trying to get Clara off to school.  Since Jackson was making happy sounds, I just left him in bed until Clara left.  When I finally went to go get him, I found him like this:

Apparently he can now go from laying to sitting all by himself now!

Joe loves being able to make Jack laugh.  He just has to wiggle his head, and it cracks both Jack and Joe up.

Our home teachers came over this week and Clara had a TV show planned for them.  She even made a cardboard remote for them to use to turn her on, off, and pause her!

I always check on my kiddos after they are asleep and before I can go to sleep for the night.  I usually just make sure they have blankets covering them and things like that.  One night I found Joe sound asleep while strangling his dinosaur.