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!

Times of Thanksgiving

We had a fun time celebrating Thanksgiving this year!

Although this wasn't a Thanksgiving dinner, we had dinner over at the Travers, some work friends of Jason. Jason plays basketball with Mark and Kevin most weeks and we all have kids similar ages so it's fun to get together.

 Ethan's preschool had a Thanksgiving feast, and it was fun to see him trying out some "new" foods. :)

For our real Thanksgiving Feast, we drove to South Beloit, IL to be with family. We got to be with Andy and Kimra and their family, Mike and Chelsey and their two little ones, and Grandma and Grandpa Burningham. We had a good time together. Of course we had the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, green bean casserole, stuffing, rolls and orange rolls, and pies. I brought cranberry marshmallow salad which is a tradition in my family. And the pumpkin, chocolate, and banana creme pies were also delicious!

Lydia was so cute and felt right at home with Chelsey, Kimra, and Grandma. She wanted them to hold her so she could give hugs and it was super adorable.

Lydia and Maisy giving each other high fives

 Besides eating good food, we had fun playing lots of game and talking.

Mik and Lydia "sharing" some toys

Lydia loved Samara and kept wanting to give her toys and put her pacifier in her mouth for her. :)

These three cousins - Mik, Lydia, and Maisy were all born within three days, and this is the best picture I got of all three. Let's just say they didn't sit still much during the time we were there.

Grandpa and Lydia

Playing "Do you love your neighbor?" and the milk cap game

Lydia eating her turkey and grapes for Thanksgiving. :)

 The day after Thanksgiving we went to the church building to play more games and then went to Edwards Orchard in the afternoon for playing tag outside and tasting the apple cider donuts. The weather so pretty warm for late November so it was nice to be outside.

Lydia and Maisy about to battle it out

Lydia loved watching the goats at the orchard and didn't want to leave them.

Mack was such a good buddy for Ethan

All of us at the apple orchard store

Lydia is munching on the yummy apple samples they have there. It was fun to try some new varieties of apples.

These three cousins were so good to Ethan! He loved being with them and never complained about them not sharing or being mean. He was watching them closely and wants to be just like them.

All girls!

Eight of the 21 grandkids

 This year we decided to do a Thankful Tree. Each night we all tried to name something different we were grateful for and add it to our tree. I think it really helped us to count our blessings this month.

Speaking of trees, we had a church activity for the women where one of the members who is an artist gave us a painting lesson. It was really well done and I had a lot of fun doing something I wouldn't normally take time to do. This is how mine turned out. :)

October 2017

October seems like a really long time ago now, but here are some highlights.

General Conference Weekend

We asked a young women from our church to help us take some quick family pictures. Ethan and Lydia were almost cooperative, but here a few pictures from that photo shoot at a local park near where we live.

Ethan tackling Dad

Playing with Mommy's necklace

 Ethan's preschool had a family field trip to Kinman farms. The weather was nice that day and the three of us really enjoyed it!

This was on a hay ride at Kinman Farms. Both Lydia and Ethan got their faces painted.

Every once in a while I capture him sleeping. :)

Lydia playing at the park

 Ethan participated in the Primary Children's Sacrament Meeting Program this month. It was his first program and he did great. He had his part memorized and confidently went up to the mic and said his part loudly and pretty clearly. It was cute to see him! We invited our next door neighbors and they surprised us by coming to see Ethan in the program and stayed for the rest of church with us. That was a fun surprise! I meant to get a picture of Ethan looking so handsome in his tie that day, but for some reason I only have this picture of Lydia and me. So now you know this picture represents Ethan in his Primary Program. ;)

Mom and Lydia one day after church

Our church had a Fall Festival activity at our church building. Ethan dressed up as a fireman.

Lydia was a dinosaur for Halloween

Halloween morning we ate ghost pancakes!

Ethan dressed up for Halloween.

Fun Halloween clothes

Ethan's preschool Fall Festival party with his teach Ms. Rhonda

Ethan and his goodies at his party

All ready for trick-or-treating!