Christmas

Christmas this year was completely magical!

On Christmas Eve we scrubbed the house getting ready for Santa to arrive. We then headed up the the cemetery to visit Grandpa Rex's grave with the Maughan's.  I really love this tradition of remembering him and spending a little time with him. Then we had a yummy dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Schick's house. The Sheltons were sick (and coughed all over everyone) but other than that we had a good time.😜

The kids were very anxious to get home to open their first gifts.

 What is it?!?

 New Jammies!!! Kate and Will both got Batmas Jammies. Much more appropriate for Kate than those princess things.

 Josh and Jonah both got raccoon jammies! (THAT would have been right up Kate's alley too, but they didn't have any in her size)

 And Rach doesn't match anyone but she sure looks cute too!

 We set out the milk and cookies, hung the stockings by the chimney with care...

 And Santa came!

 We told the kids they couldn't come up until 6:00am but at 5:51 they couldn't wait any longer and woke us up. First, we dug through the stockings.

 Kate got her giant beanie boo!!

 Greatly needed new snow-clothes.

 Rachel accidentally opening one of daddy's presents....oops.

 Daddy got a pistol (and a safe to keep it in.)

 Will spent 85% of the morning eating this super sour candy/juice called quick blast. It was gone before breakfast.

 Josh asked for a new fishing box. Instead he got a very old fishing box....one that Grandpa Maughan had given to Trav when he was a boy. They are going to repaint it and get it just like new.

 Mom was there too?!

 Jonah did eventually join the party as well. Notice Will still squirting the candy?

 Jonah got old baby toys wrapped up that used to be the other kids. But the good news is that he'd never seen them before so they were all new to him!

 But Santa did surprise him with what he needed most....diapers.

 It's good he has a good helper to open presents.

 This is how most of the pictures turned out. I deleted a lot of them but had to keep a couple for documentation. I was constantly getting the back of someone's head! Don't the kids know about positioning for my pictures? Sheesh!

 

Dasher, our elf, left us the funnest game! Telestrations. It's our new favorite.

The girls got a big bookshelf for their bedroom.

 Jonah got 3 different whales. Sorry dude, you're going to be plagued with that your whole life. It's good they have really cute whale stuff.

 Over the past 2 weeks Trav has warned the kids that whatever toys they leave out he was going to wrap up and give them for Christmas. Everyone did really well except the little one. When William opened his gift of toys he left out the look on his face was priceless!

 He said, "Ummm....this is not a gift." and walked away in disgust. It was hilarious!

 The biggest gift we received this year was season passes to Lagoon!!! We are going to have SO much fun next summer with those!!

It also was a white Christmas! There was green grass on Christmas Eve when we went to bed (but it was raining). Then we woke up to like a foot of snow! It was awesome!!

We got done with all the presents, and even made it to 9:00am church on time. We had a wonderful sacrament meeting where Josh and I sang in the ward choir. It was then time to go home, put jammies back on and play with all the new toys.

 Jonah got all dressed up for the big day.

 Of course it was like a Lego factory at our house.

 Will got a giant new elephant too (elephants are his favorite).

 And yes, it looks like a bomb went off and Santa's sleigh spilled into our living room.

 Pongo, Kate and Patch.

 Playing 'til you drop.

 The day wouldn't be complete without another photo shoot of Jonah.

 Grandma and Grandpa Schick came over for a yummy turkey dinner that night but we just spent the whole day enjoying the beautiful Christmas day and the birth of Jesus Christ. What a wonderful, magical holiday.

It's the Holiday Season!

We learned something valuable this holiday season....Good things come in small packages. Thanks for the reminder, little Buddy.

 

 He definitely was the cutest thing under the tree. And in case you're wondering, yes, we are still taking a billion pictures of him. Here he is all dressed up in his church duds.

 Rach has taken to making scripture stories out of Lego's again. This one was Noah's ark. Cute.

 And we finally pulled out the exersaucer. Jonah is a fan!

 I guess we should also document that we have a few other kids. Here's the toothless one.

 And the stinker (in more ways than one).

 Back to Jonah!

 We had a fun night making gingerbread houses. This year we did a "village"

 The finished products...

 A couple days later all of the gummy bears went missing from the village and I asked Will if he had eaten them (knowing he totally had). He quickly responded, "No, my invisible ghost friend ate them. But I told him not to do it anymore so he won't." I'm so glad Will is the moral compass for invisible ghost friends....otherwise we'd have a haunted coup on our hands....oh wait....

Little Mr also turned 5 months! Holy Schmoley! He smiles, laughs, rolls, blows raspberries, talks, loves to be tickled, and puts everything in his mouth.

 Case and point.

 For our dates this month I took Kate ice skating at Station Park for the very first time. She was a natural! Trav took Will to antelope island to see the buffalo. No pictures of the boys but they got a couple cool ones of the buffalo!

 These next pictures were actually taken on Thanksgiving day. They were the only pictures I took that day (so lame). We had an awesome Thanksgiving with Trav, Rach, Josh and Will going fishing with some of the Maughan clan in the morning while Kate, Jonah and I made lots of rolls and sweet potatoes. We then had a yummy feast at the Jones' house with great company. We even got to meet Kalli's baby (little Kate) for the first time. So here's my Thanksgiving shot of a bunch of turkeys....

 Also....who decided it was a good idea to do science fair projects in December?!? Here's Trav (oops...I mean Rachel) doing her project. This year she discovered how salty water needs to be in order for an egg to float. It was pretty interesting.

 A daily ritual at our house....

 Matching boys.

 I can't remember why Josh got this doughnut. I think it had to do with TTM. He's been the top of his class all year and keeps coming home with treats because of it.

 Tummy time! He actually really likes tummy time despite the strained look on his face.

 And this shirt is a favorite of all the kids. As you can tell he gets pestered a lot while he wears it. Moose mouth open...

And closed.....This time he's eating batman.

 And here's the stuffed animal Kate got from the Kaysville electric light parade. Too much fun!