A lot of Christmas fun! (and a ton of pictures)

December was such a wonderful month. We had so much Christmas fun. We tried to do lots of fun things together as family and participate in Light the World. I feel so grateful for this family of ours. I love spending time with them and getting to teach my kids how much I love our Savior, Jesus Christ. Throughout the month we wrote down acts of service we saw and placed them in His manger by the tree. On Christmas morning before opening gifts we said and prayer and thanked God for all we have and read the gifts we gave the Savior this month. The kids did a great job serving and I hope they felt the true Spirit of Christmas. 

Here is more of what we did this month! 

We baked all our favorite Christmas treats! 

Paul and I went on a Christmas date to Temple Square. This has become one of my favorite Christmas traditions. We had to rush it a bit because we can't leave the baby for too long :) 

The kids made a ton of perler bead ornaments. Susie and Braden made one for their teachers one for Aunt Livy. Susie even made Paul one for Christmas in the shape of the Deathly Hallows. He loved it! 

Susie had her first piano recital. She has learned so much this year and we love her piano teacher, Connie Lloyd. 

My Christmas dreams came true when my best friend gave me a ticket for the Tabernacle Christmas concert. I can never get tickets! Kristin Chenoweth was the guest performer and it was so wonderful! Temple Square had about a million people there so finding parking was a miracle of itself. It was so fun though.

We went and visited Grandpa and sang him Christmas songs. 

We delivered Christmas treats to our friends and neighbors. We made peppermint bark popcorn this year for the neighborhood and it was delish. 

We had a fun family night when we went to the Ogden Christmas village and looked at the lights and little village houses. Then we to In N Out, yum!

One of our acts of service was to make Christmas cards and deliver them to the Beehive House in our neighborhood. The kids sang Silent Night and We Wish You a Merry Christmas to the residents and they all feel in love with Clark. He knows the lyrics pretty well and he is the cutest when he sings. 

We had a little family party with Rebecca, Michelle, Benjamin, and their families. We had sandwiches and lots of treats and snacks and played Christmas song pictionary. I still can't believe how good they were at guessing the songs. One of Benajmin's kids (I think it was Mitt) took the chalk and scribbled all over the board, then some one on his team yelled White Christmas! 

Yep, crazy!

We had a one hour sacrament meeting the Sunday before Christmas and made the kids dress up and bribed them to smile in front of the tree to see if we could get a picture :) 

We invited our sweet Ukrainian neighbors to go with us and that was nice. 

We got a little snow on Christmas Eve and went sledding. We were hoping for more snow but we took what we got. The kids love to sled and play in the snow!

We had a Christmas Eve devotional. Susie played a few songs on the piano, Braden sang Sleep Baby Jesus, and Clark sang Silent Night. I read a story about the symbols of Christmas and Paul read the account in Luke of the Savior's birth. I made simple costumes for the nativity this month and we got to use them and it was so fun. Clark wanted to be a lamb and he was a rather loud lamb. We tried not to laugh while Paul was reading the scriptures but it was pretty funny. 

We had a snack food feast that night and watched Ben Hur. I just love that movie! The one with Charleton Heston of course. It is a great movie about how Christ can change your heart. 

We opened presents on Christmas morning and literally played all day long. It was the best day! I loved spending Christmas with just our little family. 

Thanksgiving at our house

We hosted Thanksgiving this year. It was my first time so that was exciting. Mom and Olivia arrived first and Logan and Tiffany and Ty came the next day. JP and Kathy both couldn't come because of work and we missed them! Everyone helped with dinner and Logan cleaned up every last dish on his own so it was pretty great! 

Mom brought a fun game to play with the kids. It's like I-Spy disney style. The kids loved it. 

I made pies the day before. I made a mixed berry lattice and a key lime pie and bought a pumpkin pie from Costco.

Lots of baby snuggles 

It was nice to have everyone help with dinner. We had turkey, potatoes and gravy, deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms, vegis, home made rolls (Paul's favorite), fresh cranberry salad, and Mom made her excellent stuffing recipe. 

We did a little Black Friday shopping. Susie was a brave girl and decided she wanted to go with us. 

The next day we had lots of snow and put up all our Christmas decor. The Christmas season is officially here! We also had a Garbett family Christmas party. It was so fun to see all my cousins! 

Olivia was so dedicated while she was here, she made time to study. Nursing school doesn't come easy. She also always makes spending time with the kids a priority. They were sad to say goodbye. 

Timothy is 3 months old now and is a dream baby. He brings so much extra joy to the family! Did I mention he is sleeping through the night now? Hurray!!! He has rolled over a few times, hardly ever cries, and has 1 tooth already. 

Halloween Fun

We had a lot of fun in October celebrating Fall and Halloween!

First we had a little party with a family in our neighborhood. We had spooky treats (the candy corn looking pizza triangles didn't work out great). We played some fun games like pumpkin balancing and make a mummy in a minute and pin the nose on the witch and Halloween bingo. Then we watched It's a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!

We got to go to a little Halloween play group party. It was late enough that Braden was out of kindergarten so he got to go too. 

My favorite is the Syracuse city Pumpkin Walk! There are hundreds of pumpkins and it is so fun and festive. 

Clark loves being "spooky."

Paul and I went to a face-painting-required Halloween party. He was Harry and I was Hedwig. It was a lot of fun. They played a few fun games and if you lost you have to drink awful concoctions. I was hoping to avoid it but I lost one of the games. Luckily I drew mint syrup mixed with prune juice so it wasn't too bad (fish sauce was one of the others which would have been awful!)

 We raked and played in lots of leaves. The leaves on our trees are almost all gone now!

We carved pumpkins of course! This year was Susie's first time carving on her own. She did so well! Braden painted his. Clark absolutely loves pumpkins (it must be because they are orange). He wants to go outside and look at them on our porch 5 times a day. 

We went to the Voyage Academy school parade on Halloween morning. The kids are SO CUTE! 

That night we made pizza for dinner and went trick or treating! Timothy was a sweet pea and I was a farmer. The pea costume is special because it was the same one that my little sister wore when she was a baby. Susie was a monarch butterfly, Braden was Spiderman, and Clark was the hulk. It was a cold Halloween night so we only lasted about an hour and a half but we ran into lots of friends in the neighborhood which is always so fun and saw lots of great costumes. The kids were excited to go home and glory over all their candy loot.