Christmas Eve Cardon Extravaganza

Well, this year was supposed to be our year to host Christmas Eve at our house, but with the kitchen renovation well under way, and basically a huge mess... Stacy and Nathan graciously agree to host it at their house again.

We made the sugar cookies to take for decorating. Gavin and Henry got pretty good at figuring out how to keep the shapes in tact.

 I also got the awesome surprise of picking up my new van that morning! It was a great Christmas surprise.

 We had a very tasty soup and rolls dinner with so many kinds of soup and so much tasty food in one place. And also so many kids.

 Decorating cookies for Santa is always a creative and yummy time. Wyatt was very meticulous this year and basically wanted to make Santa about a dozen cookies. We finally talked him into eating some and saving just two.

 Gavin was more worried about the reindeer carrots being left out, but he made some great cookies too.

 Henry may have been more worried about eating cookies.

 Tyce and Finn had a blast all night wrestling and pillow fighting and snuggling with their dads.

 No gathering would be complete without some shirtless wrestle mania from these 4 boys.

 Finally Christmas pajama time. This was the first year that my boys didn't get character pajamas. They were surprised at first, but ok with it after that. They do love some clothes and pjs.

 Keeping the craziness alive.

 Cute Christmas Eve boys.

 We ended the night with Muppets Christmas Carol and a hot cocoa bar. It was a hit, and I loved seeing these little boys sitting on the edge of the wood floor together. We love sharing our Christmas Eve traditions with these Cardons. My kids named it as one of their favorite things of the Christmas season.

Temple Square at Christmas

I love going to see the lights at Temple Square, even when we are completely frozen and squeezing through the crowds. I also love our new tradition of going to see the lights with the Willardsens!

It is hard to beat all of our silly and somewhat blurry photos and the fun of capturing the moments with the kids every year. These two pals sure love wandering the lights together. We got a great laugh out of barely being able to see Josh's eye in his bundled up outfit.

 Finn loved the lights and actually was quite happy to be in his stroller bundled up and wrapped in a blanket.

 All the big kids. Kind of funny that they automatically lined up by height without being told.

 Family moment.

 Wyatt and I in my favorite spot on the square. He had really wanted to quit and go get hot cocoa before we got to it, but he made it through.

1st Annual Favorite Things Party

This year before the holidays got too crazy I decided to host a Favorite Things Party. It turned out to be a blast. I wish I had taken pictures of more of the things that we did for the party, but I am glad that I got so many of the people that came. 

The idea behind the party is that everyone chooses something that they love that costs around $10 and then they buy 3 of that item and bring them to give away. I had set up gold platters for each person to place their items on and chalkboard name tags. Everyone also brought a favorite food item to share so we had so much delicious food to eat while we chatted and chose gifts. Each person filled out a quick survey about some their favorites and we read those to get to know people a little better.

 Everyone got a gift bag to take their goodies home with them.

In order to choose gifts we put each persons name in a jar and then drew the names out for each round and when your name was called, you could choose something that you wanted that someone else had brought. We did it in 3 rounds until everything was chosen. It was fun and worked out really well.

And here are some of my favorite people!

 I loved mixing up my old friends with my new friends in this setting and hope they got to meet some great new friends too.

 The whole group, except for baby Gwen who was there too.

 And one of the things that I got that I love and will now be a favorite of mine!

Handsome Boys

Sometimes these guys all look so handsome for church and they all smile at the same time. 

I love them and these moments.

Festival of Trees

This year I was asked to be on a committee to put together a tree for the Festival of Trees. It is a huge event at the convention center that supports Primary Children's Hospital. This was also the first year that I went to see the festival and it was really awesome. 

There were sections for wreaths and door hangings as well as big and small trees and crafts and food and candy houses. So much to see, we last a few hours and took pictures of some of our favorite things.

The minions.

 The Frozen gingerbread house.

 And of course we spent so much time in the Kids Korner playing games and being silly.

 Henry and Gavin loved the bubble machine. It was pretty cool to watch too.

 Wyatt was super brave and got his face painted with a dragon. He did try to talk himself out of it about 15 times, but finally gave in and was very happy he did it.

 The Chinese Tree. 

The festival was a great time, and we are now hoping to make it a tradition.

Rocking around the Christmas Tree

Putting up the Christmas decorations around here is always a lot of crazy pandemonium. This year was no different, in fact it was probably the most wild year yet. As the boys get older they love to help and opening the decoration boxes becomes a lot like opening gifts. They want to get everything out and spread it around the room to look at it rather than putting it up. The excitement was fun and nothing got broken, so I call that a success.

 It was funny to see the tree after they had all put on most of the ornaments... all were about eye level and on the front and one side of the tree. It took a little coaching and rearranging.

I love the tradition of each kid hanging up their own first Christmas ornament. I used to do this at home, and I love how they search for their ornament when they are looking at the tree throughout the month.

 Finn really was so fun since this is the first year he really cared about anything besides wrecking the tree.

 Wyatt begged to be the one to put the star on top, even though he sure seemed to panic once he was on Caleb's shoulders. It was kind of hard for him to reach while clinging to Caleb's head, but it got done eventually.

Thanksgiving!

 We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Our great friends the Haws family and the Hales Family came over to join us for a feast and some fun times hanging out. One of the best things about having a gathering of friends to celebrate is that we all split up the cooking and the work and it just doesn't seem like that much to do, except hang out and enjoy being together. Oh yeah, and enjoy some awesome food.

I love Alisa and Shelby and all the fun they bring to my life. They are always the best, but on Thanksgiving they took over two things I do like doing- pulling turkey off the bone and washing dishes. So great.

 We lucked out and had some amazing weather for Thanksgiving too, so all of the kids spent their day playing outside. Football, stuffed animals, long boarding, basketball, even some sword fighting. Such a good day.

 These two girls are always very outnumber with the 10 boys of our families, but they can hold their own when they need to.

 Yes, I did eat some pie that day. 

To add to the adventures of our weekend we did some fish sitting for Henry's class. Charlie Bubbles made it through the turkey day and the entire weekend safe and sound. We only had one adventure where a certain 2nd grade dumped tons of food into his bowl and it needed to be cleaned. When trying to scoop him out to clean it he started jumping around and freaking out. Luckily, Stacy was on hand that day to catch him and move him to safety.

The first missionary cousin! Cheyenne leaves for Nicaragua

We had the exciting honor of hosting Cheyenne and the Turleys for her last night before going into the Missionary Training Center in Provo. It was awesome to see her packed and ready to go and just rounding up her last minute details.  She was so happy and nervous to get this journey underway.

I also took a few cute pictures of her before she headed out.

 She looked so grown up and ready for adventure, I almost couldn't believe it was really happening.

We have been so happy to watch her journey and read her letters. Cheyenne is setting such a great example for her siblings and cousins by choosing to serve a mission. We will be seeing the blessing of her service for many years to come. I was so grateful that my boys got to see her off.

 What a cute group of brother and sisters.

 At some point she outgrew her mom. Even though she has been so grown up for quite a while, it is strange to have these kinds of moments to really step back and see what has happened.

 Almost the whole family (minus Alaina) marking this day in the books. So exciting.

The long board life

Among the many exciting things to happen this fall, two of them have coincided pretty well with the great fall weather we had. The road in front of our house was repaved AND Caleb built a long board. He worked with some boys from our neighborhood that are 16 and 17 to build long boards. It took them a couple months of working on it about once a week, but the end result was pretty awesome. And since once of the boys built the board, but insisted that he will never ride it, he left it at our house. Having two has been pretty convenient. There have been many hours spent outside riding up and down the street.

Everyone gets involved and we have even helped to convert some of our friends and their kids to the joys of long boarding.

Yes, that is Gavin walking next to me just in case I fall off. 

You can get going pretty fast on the knees as well, as Gavin and Henry prove. Though they mostly stand up now that they both have the hang of it.

Glow in the dark kid

For almost a year, Wyatt's favorite color has been green... more specifically- Neon Green. He wears it almost every day and gives me a long lecture about doing the laundry more often when he runs out of neon shirts. Thank goodness we also came across this pair of shorts for him. Not green, but they seem to do the job. He doesn't want to go anywhere without being noticed, and he often covets the construction workers we see for their awesome vests.

A boy and his mom

The youngest of my crazy crew sure has a busy life. When it is just him and his mom, he gets to spend plenty of time running errands and cleaning and helping out. Luckily he has become a shopping pro and loves to go out get the work done. Every morning he wakes up and says "What are we going to do this day?"

 He also gets to go to work with me at least once a week and spent the entire fall playing at the museum with just mom. Of course, that didn't mean that he didn't want to have his picture taken every single time we went.

 He has become a pretty crazy climber and jumper these days. Nothing really slows him down. It is a strange world for the mom, that we no longer that a stroller on these kind of outings... makes me realize I carry around too much stuff.