On The Third Day of Christmas...

Nope, you didn't miss it... we haven't counted down any of the other 12 days, but that won't keep me from starting with the last few. 

We finally got to head downtown and see the Temple Square Lights, and it was a good thing we waited. We got the share the company of the fabulous Willardsen family and it was no less than 45 degrees outside. Yep, perfect. Especially for those of us that love Christmas lights, and it was even manageable for those of us that are willing to be dragged along.

These silly kids are of course in the category of people who love lights.

This guy turned out to be one who would tolerate it since it was nice out...

 ... and because we remembered to bring his milk cup.

 A great Temple pose. Gavin, Josh, Gabby, Henry and Parker

 And Wyatt will smile if he gets to have his picture taken alone.

 This picture really makes me think about how these two will look as teenagers. They were just hanging out with hands in pockets watching the crowd. I hope to enjoy a lot more small moments before they hit that more grown up point in their lives.

 Some of the trees from my favorite area of the lights beside the Assembly Hall.

 These guy seem to all know where to stand for the perfect pose.

 Us, not so much, but we were also standing around Finn's stroller where he was snoozing and laughing at Caryn trying to take our photo.

First Biter Biscuit

Finn had his first biter biscuit a few days ago. He was so excited when he realized that what he was holding actually tasted good. He is growing so fast.

Festive poses

I love this time of year when my kids look so much cuter for church than normal. Now that Finn is a little bigger, there are so many outfits that have been handed down that he can wear to match Wyatt. And let's face it, he has such a super cute smile.

I took a few of them in their matching outfits on Sunday. They look like they are just snuggling up, instead of Finn tipping over, until...

Wyatt tries to help him back up by pushing him in the face.

Thanks to the silly brothers they are watching, a couple of cute smiles.

 And now for everyone's favorite time of year... The Christmas Card rejects. 

They just make me laugh.

 Luckily, all we needed was one good one, since we got about 25 in all kinds of silliness.

A kid Christmas Party

Last weekend we host about 11 extra kids at our house and so we had ourselves a little Christmas Party. We decorated foam Christmas trees and attempted to make an ornament out of perler/melty beads and cookie cutters (this one may have failed and ruined a few of the cookie cutters that Shelby lent me) and we also made a festive dessert. This one was fun to see the different creativity. I didn't get pictures of the ornaments, but the kids liked them even though we did it wrong.

We also watched about half of the Christmas movies that we own, or atleast we all watched a couple of minutes between playing, eating and having fun.

Here are some of the shots of the various trees and the cute kids who I enjoy getting to hang out with every couple of months.

The minimalist

 The snacker- he took about 90 minutes to actually eat his tree.

 Working meticulously to get the most artistic frosting coating.

 Hmmm.... yum.

These two were a bit excited about all of the sprinkles. They kept adding more. Henry ended up with a huge puddle at the base of his tree.

Their end result was pretty cute though.

 These two attempted to make sure all of their ornaments were perfectly placed.

 Gavin preferred only red ornaments.

 The last two to make their trees probably used as much candy as all of the others combined, and it is safe to say they were very hyper as a result.

 What a fun party. There was even one back up craft that we didn't have a need for. What a fun group.

A favorite trick

This kid loves his feet A LOT. He even loves to chew his toes when he can. It is very cute to watch his excitement when he gets them in his grip.

Thanksgiving at our new house

We really love that our new house gives us the room to have family come and stay more comfortably with us. We also love that we have the space to host our friends as well. This Thanksgiving we got to do both of those things and it still didn't feel like we got over crowded. Mara and Ben were in town, of course, and Ben's sister that is attending BYU came up for the day. Our friends, the Haws, were also facing the prospect of spending Thanksgiving alone or having to cook a lot of food if they had someone over, so I convinced them to join up with us. (That was Caleb got to do a lot of the cooking for all of us.) We had a great day.

Gavin and Ella watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade together after the race.

 Both Gavin and Noah insisted that they wanted a drumstick. None of us thought they would actually eat much of it, but since no one else wanted one, we let them go to it. They had a great time being little carnivores and actually ate most of the meat. It was impressive both to us and them.

 Peter and Henry went more for the bread and potatoes.

 Caleb and Mara serving up in the kitchen.

 We had plenty of time after all of our food to relax and gear up for the desserts. There was lots of cuddling with babies.

 For dessert Caleb made his new legendary recipe, Maple Bacon Cinnamon Rolls, and Alisa made some fabulous pies- a coconut cream and a french apple. We probably should have gone out and run another 5k after all of that food, but we tired to do more of this instead...

Mara, Ben and Crystal (Ben's sister) passed out on the couch. I know they were sleepy because they didn't even stir when I took this picture. (You may not Mara's change of clothes from the previous photo... Cute little Ella had a massive diaper explosion all over Mara and herself after lunch... I think she was trying to find a way to say "Happy Thanksgiving, Mom.")

 The rest of our weekend was busy and since I had to work one of the days, there were many photos taken that day. We did have a lot of fun Saturday at the park and going out to dinner with just the adults and the tiny babies. Wyatt and Jade became quite the pair running around being silly and getting into trouble. At one point they were both upstairs and had gone into the shower and turned it on. Somehow only Jade got wet on that one, so we will assume Wyatt put her up to it.

Here they are the last morning after they had been arguing over breakfast about who was eating what cereal.

 We went to a new fun playground as well and enjoyed the warmer sunny weather.

 They all loved the 4 person seesaw.

It was so much fun to have the Gardners stay with us for the weekend. Looking forward to watch those cute girls grow.

Thanksgiving Day 5K

Back in September I was trying to think of ways to get Gavin to go running with me. I heard about the Cottonwood Heights 5k on Thanksgiving Day and decided that we should run it. Gavin was all for it and went running a mile with me twice. Then Henry decided that the race was something that he could handle as well. I was hesitant since sometimes Henry can't even seem to walk when we want him too, but we went running a couple of times and he did great.

Here they are waiting for the race. It was cold that morning, but not horrible.

Mara and Ben came into town for Thanksgiving from Arizona, so it was quite a bit colder to them, but Mara was signed up and ready to run the race. 

 We decided to put these two cuties in the jogging stroller, since we knew they would be cozy and take a nap. It worked great and they stayed nice and toasty and didn't make a peep the whole time. And Ella is so much lighter than Wyatt, so pushing it for the race was a breeze. I also got lots of compliments on my "twins." Since they are only a month apart it was an easy assumption for people to make, though Finn is quite a bit larger than Ella.

 I figured that there would be some amount of complaining from the boys, as well as some walking, so we told Mara to go on ahead. She finished fast, I think about 25 minutes. But we also did better than I thought and Henry and I finished right behind Gavin and Caleb at abut 45 minutes.

 Even though there was a fair amount of complaining, and Henry says he is not running a 5k again next year, they were both excited that they had finished and went to collect their water bottle and snack at the end.

 Ben even survived his job of entertaining Jade and Wyatt while the race was going on, and they seemed to have a great time.

There were ribbons given out to anyone who "Beat the Mayor" in the race. Mara was a lot faster than him and got a ribbon. When Gavin found this out, he said, "I should have run with Mara. Maybe I would have beat the mayor if Mom hadn't made me slow down and run with her." Right, I was the one who needed to walk and whined a lot about how far we had left to go. I did point this out, but he just looked at me like he had no recollection of his whining, so hopefully when he looks back on this he will only remember the fun he had.

The Thankful Tree

This year we started a new tradition... The Thankful Tree. I picked this adorable thing up last year and finally got it all done and put together for this year.

We all had a good time making leaves and posting the things that we were grateful for. Gavin and Henry would ask all day when it was time to put more leaves on the tree. Next year I will know to make twice as many leaves.

We are thankful for everything from milk to legos to Baptism and even for a great kindergarten teacher. I put this years leaves in a bag, so that we can get them out next year and reminisce.