Christmas Day

We spent Christmas Day in St. Joe this year, as we always do, but this year was quite different since Dad was in the hospital with some Pneumonia and other stuff. But, we did the best we could to be jolly none the less :)

Alexander and Nehemiah are defiantly the hugging cousins, I have so many pictures of them like this, and they did it several times throughout the day.

Grammy opening her box that I made for her, to hold our Christmas Verses. We read a Christmas scripture before every present that gets opened.

Opening
The boys got this cool rocking horse from Grammy and Pop, and Alexander sure thought it should be his!
Arianna playing with her baby doll. She got a baby doll from Grammy and Pop, but the other kids took off with it, so she got this substitute doll to play with!
Visiting Pop in the hospital before we headed home.



Isabella and Sophia missed their Christmas performance at Church the weekend before Christmas because we got snowed in in Maryville, Sophia was very disappointed so she performed for Grammy and Pop. Isabella was never quite sure she was going to participate in the first place, so she was not as disappointed and didn't perform with Sophia, Alexander jumped in though!

Christmas Eve at Home

We got to celebrate our Christmas at home on Christmas Eve this year. It was a lot of fun, a relaxed evening to "do" Christmas just he way we wanted to.

The girls to to decorate a birthday cake for Jesus.Isabella's joy in reading the Christmas story out of her Bible.
After this Faron read us the Christmas story out of his bible while we acted it out with our plush nativity set, and paused to sing all the songs.
Normally we don't get the kids presents for Christmas, gasp. They get so many presents from all the family we have that it just isn't really necessary, so we get stocking stuffers and maybe a little something, but not big stuff. This year we did though, we kind of had to. Isabella has wanted a camera for a long time now and somehow she was sure she was getting it for Christmas, so we decided to get it for her, then we had to get everybody stuff, and it just went from there.

Everyone got new slippers, Even Papa. Every year I say I'm not going to get them slippers cause they never wear them, but every year I do it anyway. This year I had good reasoning though, these are slip on, and real soled, so when we get up at the crack of dawn to take Faron to work, these are easier to put on in half awakeness than shoes are, and they are nice and warm. So far, they have been worn, so perhaps my theory will work!
Customary new PJ's for Christmas
Ari's only present (and boy was she offended about that too, she kept going over to everybody else's presents and yelling at them and trying to take them away!)

Alexander got all "Cars"ed out this year. The topper was this big Lightning toy. He was a happy boy!
Sophia has been asking for a sword for EVER! I keep telling her I just don't think it is a good idea. All the swords I see are little hard plastic swords, and you could still really hurt somebody with those if you tried. But then I found this foam one, and oh boy was she happy about it!
Isabella's new digital camera. She was concerned over 2 factors, which made her have this face.
1. why is it orange and not the pink one she had been asking for?
2. who are these people and why is there picture on my camera?
When I told her that this camera had more features than the pink one so we went with it she was ok with that decision, and the picture of these other people came out once the box was open, so that problem was also solved. She now is a master of that camera and can use all the aforementioned features, and loves taking her pictures and movies.

Sophia's "big" present was a mini trampoline, it has gotten quite a work out these last couple days!


It was a lovely Christmas Eve, and Christmas is still to come!

Maryville Christmas

Usually we have Christmas with Faron's Family on Christmas Eve, but this year he had to work on Christmas eve, so we had Christmas Saturday. We went to Tenna's house and had a nice lunch and LOTS of presents, and then there was a blizzard and we got snowed in. They closed the highway, so that was pretty much the end of our travel plans! Matthew and Tenna were nice enough to put us up in their living room, and the kids thought it was a great deal to get to spend all day and night playing with Ella and Lane!


I think I mentioned LOTS of presents.

Arianna loved the wrapping paper. She did enjoy a few of the presents inside, but she really had fun with the paper!

quite a scene.


Every year the cousins make ginger bread houses. This year we also made a ginger bread tree. We had a little trouble with our house construction (it fell flat) but it was fun all the same.

Arianna's a big girl!

Arianna is really walking now. She has been taking steps for a couple weeks but this week she is walking across whole rooms. It is very cute and it's funny how all the sudden she looks like another kid running around. She has also heard "no " a lot more often this week than ever before!


I just thought this was an adorable sight. Xander lined his boots up next to Faron's.

all covered in ice

We got hit by that terrible ice/snow storm that's been workin. Not nearly as bad as some other people not too far away from us, my Parents and Faron's parents are all without power.
We didn't lose power or have bad roads or anything, but we got pretty wintry glimmer!

Sophia looking out the window at all the snow.

The kids were having fun inside since it was too icy to go out. Arianna just discovered the piano and she loves it.
Ring around the rosies!

Christmas Pictures

I got to take some pictures of my friend Jessie's kids last night, they are 1 and 2. It was lots of fun, here are some of my favorites.

Gettin all Christmas-y

It's been kind of fun this year getting ready for Christmas, I don't know if the kids get it more, or if I'm just feeling more Christmasy, or what, but we are having fun. Trees and lights, the nativity set is out so all our pieces are singing like mad. (in case that makes no sense, each person in our nativity set sings a Christmas Carol. Joseph sings "What Child is This", the Donkey sings "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and on and on)

Arianna is almost one and it seems like she grew up a ton over night. She is really trying to walk now, several steps here and there and standing for a long time. She gets all excited about it too. She is also developing quite a personality, knowing exactly what she wants and making it known to all. Tonight at dinner she yelled at Faron the ENTIRE time he was feeding her apple sauce, because she wanted the spoon herself.

Speaking of which, here's a breakfast a couple days ago where she got to have the spoon herself!




Somehow I just skipped past Thanksgiving, so to sum up the kids got to play with their Hazen cousins and had a great time. This is the best picture I got of all 6 of them, Ari wasn't really into the whole laying still thing. We'll try again at Christmas!