December 2014

We always love the first signs of Christmas! As soon as we got back from our Thanksgiving trip, we got our tree up and decorated.

Reading with Dad by the Christmas tree

Jared's chalk artwork. The kids were impressed with his masterpiece.

We weren't able to find a babysitter for the Magleby Christmas party, so Jared found this other pretty lady to take as his date. She loved getting to go with him. She looked beautiful and so grown up.

Asleep in front of the Christmas tree

I've always wanted to go to the Festival of Trees and we finally made it this year. There are hundreds of trees decorated in so many fun themes.

After that, we drove up to temple square to see the lights. It turned out not to be such a good idea to do that on a Friday night. It was so crowed we could hardly move around. It was still beautiful though.

Just a quick dance with Cinderella

My beautiful Christmas Children.

We acted out the Nativity for Family Home Evening. The kids get to be in charge and I always get assigned to be an animal. I guess that's just because I play the part so well.  This is a pretty cute group!

Making gingerbread houses.

There only ended up being three girls in Mackayla's dance class this year, so the recital was extra fun to watch.  Mackayla looked absolutely beautiful up there. She really loves doing dance, and we love watching her.

They love making peppernuts with Daddy. Who wouldn't love rolling out long snakes and then chopping them up into little bits?!

All ready for a family Christmas dinner one Sunday evening. The Nelsons were able to join us, and Jared's cousin Sadie. I love getting to set up all the pretty holiday dishes and spending a fun night with Family. I always look forward to this.

A cousin picture with all the pretty red dresses. We took so many of these pictures, and this was the best one. They were all so excited to get to play together it was hard to get them to sit still for a picture.

Bradley was excited he got to light the candles for dinner one night.

Family Home Evening treat of Christmas flavored milkshakes.

So proud! She can stand on one foot!

Our Santa waffles and a Rudolph corndog

We always love watching Caitlin's hair curl up after a bath. We thought we would document it this time. The first picture shows how long it is. The second picture is after just a few minutes of it drying. Then the last picture is when its completely dry. We don't put any product in it. We just comb it and let it go.

We got to hear Mackayla and Bradley both sing with their grades at the Christmas Sing at school. It was wonderful!

Then later that day Caitlin and I got to go help in Bradley's class for their Christmas party.

Here is our loaded Christmas tree. This was all of our presents as well as the gifts Grandpa and Grandma Hatfield sent us. We had an early Christmas and opened the gifts from them a couple of days before we left for Arizona.

We had fun making sugar cookies, and taking some to a few neighbors that evening.

Jared is an expert packer and loaded all of our Christmas presents into these couple of baskets to load into the car. It gets pretty tricky doing Christmas shopping when you're never home for Christmas. Everything we buy has to be small.

We left early in the morning and our elf was in the car waiting to go on the trip with us. 

Christmas in Arizona, here we come!