A Taste of the Christmas Season

We love Christmas around here, and fortunately we got to celebrate a lot of it with Grandma and Grandpa Burningham in Nevada. Here is a quick review of some Christmas pictures and activities.

Family pic taken at our house in Kentucky

I love Lydia's cute cheesy grins. :)

One Sunday we were invited to a friend's house for dinner and cookie decorating. Ethan loved it!

Ethan was Joseph in his preschool's rendition of the Christmas Story.

Ethan was "Joseph" in his preschool's short rendition of the Christmas Story. He was excited about that because his middle name is Joseph. They sang a few cute Christmas songs with actions including "Reindeer Pokey," "God is Good," and a song about the animals in the stable where Jesus was born. Parents were invited for the program and Jason came home from work early so he could see it. Ethan was really animated and knew all the words. So cute!

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My two shopping buddies! You can be assured that this arrangement didn't last long. ;)

Fun play date to Totter's Otterville

Jason and I went to his Christmas work party at a nice venue at Devou Park. They had a very nice dinner and dancing.

Fun night at the Creation Museum outdoor live nativity with the Huxel's. It wasn't too cold and the lights were beautiful!

Lydia's first haircut. I never got a good after picture so you'll just have to see the pics below. :)

We left on Dec. 20 to fly to Grandma and Grandpa Burningham's. In spite of sitting at the gateway for an extra hour because of complications, the kids still did ok on the 4 hour flight!

Grandma and Grandpa, here we come!

Grandma and Grandpa's house near beautiful Lake Mead!

Ethan was very excited to show Grandpa all the cool things he saw at Shark's Reef Aquarium.

Ethan said his favorite thing was watching the sharks in the sunken ship.

Chelsey, Mik, and Samara had been living with Grandma and Grandpa for about the last 8 months but Mike flew in, they bought a Pilot, packed up the car, and drove to Utah the day after that. Fortunately we got to do a few early Christmas Eve activities with them including playing the pipe chimes, seeing the lights, and going caroling.

An amazing house of lights in Boulder City. We actually parked and walked around it. Pretty amazing!!

These birthday twins had fun hanging out together for a few days.

Getting some dance action in. :)

Taking a walk to a nearby park and seeing the Big Horn Sheep that live there too

We ate dinner at Macaroni Grill one night and Ethan and Lydia loved getting up and dancing to the music they had playing. The poor servers had to keep dodging this dancing duo. :)

Ethan loved playing with Grandma's marble track toy. He went from building big, but useless, tracks to figuring out how the marbles went and designing some pretty cool tracks.

New Christmas Coat

Christmas Eve

We attended church with Grandma and Grandpa on Christmas Eve afternoon. They had a very nice program with lots of musical numbers.

Christmas morning we started opening presents at 7:00am. The kids had been up since 6:00 but we tried to delay it a little. As soon as they saw their Santa gifts they were happy and content to play with them for the next hour and a half while we made the traditional Christmas Breakfast with saffrons brod. After we finished eating and cleaned up we got back to the business of opening the rest of the presents. :)

Lydia got a new doll with pacifier and bottle for Christmas. Grandpa is reading the little book that goes with it. Lydia loves babies and carried her new "baby" around all morning.

Christmas morning Santa brought Ethan a remote control car that kept him happy and busy all day!

Grandma opened the family birthday calendar we made for her and Grandpa for Christmas.

We fed the fish down at the docks one afternoon. They are always hungry! Ethan loved just throwing rocks in the lake.

We also had fun one afternoon jumping on the big trampoline outside. It wasn't every warm enough to swim in their pool, but hopefully we'll be back soon to try it out. :)

Not pictured are all the wonderful meals and the times after the kids were in bed that we got to play games and watch movies. Jason and I watched three movies during the week we were there. I think that could be a record for us since we've been married. We got away on a date to see the new Star Wars movie in the theater which was a lot of fun. We also served in the temple one morning with Jason's parents. The Las Vegas Temple is beautiful and it was nice to be there with family doing the work for extended family! It was a beautiful Christmas and I'm grateful that we got to spend it with family!