Our Christmas...

The first gift of Christmas? A baby jack-in-the box of course! Alayna found this box when I was getting out decorations and she played with it the whole Christmas season. The girls would slide her around in it and she tried really hard to get in it all by herself. Not very successfully though!

Kira's birthday was December 8th, a Wednesday. We didn't have her party on that day, but she did want to take the whole family (minus busy Alayna) to the movie Tangled. This was the tree that was in the theater. The movie was a big hit. Can't wait to see it again!

Oh Mrs. Peeps!! This year we got a little visit from one of Santa's elves, Mrs. Peeps. She came in the mail with a letter that explained how she worked:
"Soon after she gets here she moves only at night. To high places, low places,she stays in plain sight. She holds very still when she thinks you are watching. Her magic is precious, it fades with on touching. She waits and she waits without making a noise. She waits until Santa arrives with the toys. So you better be nice and mind what you say, because Mrs. Peeps will tell Santa when he comes in his sleigh."

So that is cute Mrs. Peeps. We did wake up to her in a new place every morning! Well almost every morning! And if she didn't move, there was always a good reason, like she must have really liked that spot, or maybe she was afraid to move from such a high spot:) Kira was the most distressed if she didn't move. I found sitting with her head on the table by her cereal bowl one morning because Mrs. Peeps hadn't moved since the night before. And if the baby found her and played with her Kira just couldn't handle it. "No one is supposed to touch her!" But my favorite Mrs. Peeps morning was when we woke up and found only Mrs. Peeps eyes, noes and elf hat poking out from the bottom of the couch. Come see us next year Mrs. Peeps, that was sooo much fun!

Our tree. We were lucky enough to go down to Manti canyon and look for trees again this year. We went along with Erin and Jeremy's family and Chase and Jen. There's was plenty of snow this year. Each time the men wanted to really take a good look at a tree they would shake it really hard getting snow all over anyone in the area. Seth and the girls found this one, and also discovered it had a bird's nest laying inside the branches. Fitting this one inside was a little tricky, but we sure do love this tradition.

Our little Ute fan getting all wrapped up!

Gingerbread House time!

We waited so long to do it that the house itself had started to crack and the icing was too hard. So the girls, improvized and used this chocolate pillsbury frosting. All for the fun of it anyway, right?

Soooo tired!

I don't remember what we were doing here, but I love this picture! Life isn't always perfect, but I think these girls really do have a lot of fun together.

This is Christmas Eve and we are visiting our friend Kema who lives in an assisted living center. My family has been friends with Kema since I was a teenager. Kema was born without the use of her legs, but has the best attitude and funniest personality. I'm so glad that my girls are able to get to know her now. We sang Christmas carols along with my nieces and nephews and chatted with a few other people that lived there.

This is my friend Nan on the left and my mom on the right. Nan and her daughter Emma Lea share a portion of a home with her sister and her mother. They really don't have very much, but they make the most with what they've got and truly want to give gifts to everyone. For example, this year, even though they didn't have money for gifts, they got fabric and made pillowcases for all my girls and hand painted them. It's the thought and the time that goes into those kinds of gifts that impresses me. Every time I leave Nan I want to be better and I want find a way to give more.

So after visiting Kema we all went to Nan's and Emma Lea's. This is my brother Austin playing for everyone. He wrote a really pretty arrangement of the songs "How Great Thou Art" and "Some Where Over the Rainbow". It's always a treat to hear him play.

We all brought Emma Lea one or two gifts. She decided to open a couple while we were there. She was so happy!

Christmas Morning!! Showing off some new stuff...

A little overwhelmed? The girls were so excited to see her open gifts that they kept helping her open them. It took her a while to really play with anything though. Just too much, too fast!

Dr. Kira is in the house! Santa really delivered this year with a full dr.'s outfit with working stethascope. The cute thing was we had too see both families on Christmas day so she did two separate unveilings of the costume. She got fully dressed for both families in another room and came out and surprised them. She has since brought this outfit on play dates to friends houses, or wears it around the house when she's feeling the need. I wonder if it will be next years halloween outfit too since it is rather large!

Here's the winner toy for the baby. The stationary steering wheel. It is really cute to watch her drive it, and sway her head back and forth, although it is loud and never really stops making noise, even after you've stopped playing with it. In fact, the other night I found it in a laundry basket under some towels. When I asked Seth what it was doing there he said he couldn't get it to stop! So he put it under the laundry? There is an off button, just too hard to find when you're desperate for quiet I guess.

Christmas morning at Grandma Julie's
Kira with Nichole and Brynn with Anthony

Brynn and Ty
These 2 were 3 years old when Adam and Cori got married, where has that time gone?

Food Please!!

Up at Grandma Jill's. Everyone helping little baby Tripp open presents.

Alayna was being too naughty to sit with the rest of the family, so daddy took her up to play the piano.

The Bailey/Charchenko nativity scene. Aren't these costumes fun? Jill and her sister Dana came up with them. Kira was rather insistent on playing Mary. No one gave her really any competition for the role so she was thrilled and then Tyne was an angel and the boys were wise men. I think Brynn was herding the cute little cows and sheepies.(Alayna and Autumn)

Our Little Cow, I think this is the only picture I got before she started taking the costume off.

Radiant Mary

The whole crew. Chase played the inn keeper and Jed was Joseph

Baby Tripp played baby Jesus, but he's kinda pouring out over the side of that manger a little!

Here is Levi, Tyne, Brynn, Hunter, Tagg and Kira
We had just gotten our extended family picture taken and were polishing off the day with some Burger King. We loved being all together as a family, especially since two family don't live in Utah.

Seth heard me say it like 5,000 times throughout December. "We have to take the girls down to see the lights at temple square." We actually made it work, amazing! We were able to meet up with Don and Jill and Dru and Adam, it was great to see family one more time. All the baby had on was her poncho and hat we got her in Italy and a long sleeve shirt underneath. She didn't seem that cold when we got to the car, but 24 hrs. she had nasty croop in her lungs. She got over it really quickly though. Man that little sweet girl's been sick a lot!

Christmas was fantastic! All of it, the family, the friends, the meaning behind it all. I hope with each Christmas that goes by my girls are able to feel the lasting warmth and goodness you feel from giving. I just hope they don't grow up too fast, because right now it feels pretty close to perfect to me:)

Let down your hair...

This is Kira's 7th birthday party. She was really excited for the new movie "Tangled". She wanted her dad to play it for her friends in the movie room. She was disappointed when we told her that it wouldn't be out of the theaters yet, so she settled with going to go see it as a family. We did end up having a Tangled party and just had to be as creative as possible at doing things that Rapunzle would do at a party!

The girls got to color Rapunzel poster with piles of hair to color (most of them said their hands hurt and couldn't finish the hair:) The boys colored wanted posters of Flynn Ryder, and they had to give him a nose, since in the movie they could never get his nose right.

Here is Kira playing the toilet paper princess game. I split the kids up into 3 teams and gave them all a roll of toilet paper. The had to pick one person to model and the others were designers. You never know what kids will like, but they went to town with this game, and when it was over they all wanted a turn to be the model.

Cute Lexi Gee, this was her teams' final product

This is Cambria Bybe, Kira's good friend from school. These girls took a while to nail down their concept!

Happy Savannah, from Kira's class also

Above and beyond my favorite! Logan looks thrilled to be in that position doesn't he? Logan is the only boy at home, and his mom told me he made her promise not to tell his dad that he dressed up like a princess that day! His team of boys were definitely the most creative and the e fastest too!

A little spin on a favorite: Pin the Hair on Rapunzel

Little Lizzie Gee is pretty close to the target here, but Seth spun them around so much they needed the voices of their friends to steer them in the right direction.

Cake!!! Kira saw this Tangled cake in the bakery window at Kohlers like a month before her birthday, and told me that was the cake she wanted. That made my job easy! I'm still getting used to this new camera and was unable to get a good shot here, oh well!

Karaoke was the final stage in our activities for the day. Now that Christmas is over and the girls been given so much, I'm not sure how important the karaoke machine was, but one day before a party my perspective wasn't so clear. The girls really did have alot of fun with it. Especially this little friend of Kira's, Payton. She is not shy with the microphone, it was cute. Hopefully we'll get the mic back out, we just have to turn that tv all the way around to plug it in. Not something mom can do by herself real well.

Man, what a great party. What a great day. What a great little girl we have in Kira. It was fun to meet some of her little friends!

Brynn's Nutcracker

There's our cute little soldier. I'd feel bad about Brynn having to spend most of her life at her ballet studio, but I really don't, because she loves it! She can't wait for school to be over with so she can get to dance. She can't wait to learn something new and then come home and give us all a personal performance and show us. I love the passion she has for dance, and I love that she puts her heart and soul into it! This year Brynn was a soldier that fights the "mouse king" and a candy cane. She normally dances about 9 hrs. a week, and with the nutcracker it added up to about 10 to 12 depending on the week. She loved it all! And Seth and I loved the extra driving too:) I was lucky to hang out with Brynn back stage for one performance to help. Some of the pics are bad because they are taken with my camera phone, oh well!

Brynn and her friend Rachel. This is their soldier make-up. Brynn was a busy girl back stage. Each day they had two shows; an evening and a matinee. So after being a soldier at the beginning of the show Brynn would have to wash all of her make-up off and then re-apply regular stage make-up for her candy cane dance. Then in the evening show she would repeat that whole process!! Her face looked kind of beat up by the time she got home and always had some of her white soldier make-up way up in her hair line.

Brynn's soldier group. From memory, some of the girls are: Lauren, Abbie, Hannah, Rachel and Bailey. I was supposed to be in charge of entertaining these girls while they were off stage, but they came fully equipped to entertain themselves. It was after the nutcracker that Brynn started asking for the big ticket electronics items. "So and so has a DS, so that would be fun to have and mom can you believe so and so has their own phone?" They all brought their own board games and treats (eventhough there was a strict no food allowed in the building rule). These girls didn't need me to lead their fun and it was going to be really hard to get Brynn to do her math in the midst of this circus backstage!

Brynn in her Candy Cane costume. She also did the whole dance with a striped hula hoop. She was also a candy cane last year, so the whole soldier thing was alot of fun for her! Kira came to see her and brought a little nutcracker as a present, she wouldn't let anyone else hold it. "It's my present for Brynn!" She gets so excited to see her up on stage. And figuring out which soldier she was among the others was not easy!

Halloween Saga 2010

It was time again for Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. We missed it last year and the girls were begging to go this year.

We had to get a shot in the giant chair. I couldn't convince Seth to hop up there for an entire family picture though!

Alayna, very busy selling baby pumpkins

This is Gordon and Seth trying to figure out one of the mazes. They take them very seriously!

Help, I'm swimming in corn and I can't get out!

It's always great to hang with the Kennards!

The cold train ride:)

The last thing the girls wanted to do was get their faces painted. It was already passed their bedtimes, but we went ahead and let them get fancy. We had to take pictures before they went to sleep and wiped it all off!!

The Witches at Garner Village
If you look closely, Kira still has her face paint on from the night before, she just couldn't part with it.

Kira lost her cousins and sister because they went off to a Utah game, put that didn't her down from posing in front of every witch!

My little music lover

Grandma Julie and Grandpa Mike hadn't ever seen the witches before. It was lots and lots of fun!

While Seth and Brynn went to the Utah game and sat in the freezing cold rain, we all went to my mom's and watched the game and let the kids play.

We're so glad when grandpa comes home! I remember when my dad would say "two girls" and that meant he wanted both Brynn and Kira in his arms at the same time. That face says happiness, doesn't it?

Ian having a little conference with Alayna

Carving Time!

Taeya's Halloween party

Kira's favorite game!

Kira, as Dorothy and Brynn as a gypsy
Alayna wanting to come to school too as always!

Kira in her school parade

The 5th graders don't walk in the parade anymore, so this is the only picture I could snap in Brynn's classroom. How can anyone be too old to walk in the parade?! This last picture is of Kira reading a part in a pumpkin play. The baby sat very patiently, as you can imagine!