Highlights of December

Emily taught Sarah how to finger knit and they made themselves scarves. Cute, huh?

We made and decorated a gingerbread house, yum!

Someone special turned 6 months old and began to eat solids. He has since double his rate of growth. One pound in the last month instead of a half pound per month. Good job, buddy! Now we're almost 14 pounds!

A rockin' New Years Eve party with three other families (14 kids, 8 adults) at our house. What fun! And most of the kids even lasted until midnight!

Christmas (I'm finally getting around to it, sorry!)

Christmas Eve: We hosted the family Christmas Eve party at our house. Unfortunately, I didn't get too many pictures. We had a yummy dinner of beef stew, rolls, and Aino brought delicious Finnish style desserts. We had Grandma and Grandpa Larsen, Great Grandma Bartholomew, Uncle Reed, Uncle Ralph, Aunt Linda, and Brett and Aino's family (including Aino's sister, Marit). I really wish I was a better photographer and more on the ball. I would've taken a lot more pictures. But here's what I got:

Eliza and Josef are Mary and Joseph. Skyler started out as baby Jesus, but he couldn't last with these kids holding him. It was just so much easier with a pretend baby!

Sarah was our wild and crazy shepherd!

Sofia was the stylish angel!

Emily was the loud angel (and only just a little obnoxious) :>)

Favorite Christmas Presents:

Sarah loves her panda Webkinz, and a new basketball, too!

Eliza got a frog princess and an Ariel wand that lights up and plays music

(both from garage sales!)

This has been the funnest little contraption. It is called a Twistcar and even I love to get on it and ride it around!

Oh, isn't she just so cute?!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

I finally finished the stockings project that I'd begun--just on time! This photo was taken on Christmas Eve. This was a fun sewing project, and I was excited to finish all 6 stockings before Santa came!

On Christmas Eve, Buddy the dog morphed into Buddy the elf:

On December 23 we visited mom and dad in SLC. Mom tended Skyler while the rest of us toured temple square with dad. It had been years since Nate or I had gone to temple square at Christmas. What a neat experience! It was magical and our kids loved it (in spite of the cold!)

I will post about Christmas soon, but I needed to get the pre-Christmas stuff posted (I tried on Christmas Eve but it wasn't working). Hope you all had a great holiday!

Wicked!

Wicked, here we come! Yeah for Nate's cousins Heather and Kristen who called Angie, who called me--to tell us that the Wicked tickets were available on Monday if you were special and had the secret code (most people have to wait until Friday). Heather is special and had the code, so she passed it on to us! I called and bought our tickets for May 2! I don't know how good the seats are, but we're going! Shhh...please don't tell my kids because we're surprising them for Christmas!

My Amazing Emily

Can I just brag for a minute? Well, I'm going to whether you like it or not. Emily is an amazing daughter! Every month at school a child who exhibits the monthly character trait is chosen from each class to receive the Canyon Champs award (it's Canyon Elementary School). Last month the character trait was responsibility. It didn't surprise me at all that Emily won the award for being responsible. This is the girl that wakes up at 6 am every morning (the rest of the family wakes up at 6:30 or later) so that she can get her chores done before school.

Emily loves reading! The monthly goal for reading in her class is 400 minutes. Emily has averaged about 1400 minutes every month!

Today I received a phone call from Hogi Yogi asking to speak with a parent of Emily Pope. She entered a coloring contest in November, and she won! She gets a $50 savings bond! Pretty cool, don't you think?

Emily is also a great helper! I really don't know what I would do without her. I love you, Em!

In search of the Perfect Christmas Tree

We decided to start a fun new family tradition of cutting our own Christmas tree. Very early on the morning of the first Saturday in November, Nate, his brother Justin, and my brother Brett drove to Midway and stood in line in freezing cold weather in order to get tree permits. The permits are only $10, but they are limited so they go quickly. Luckily, we got our permits. So on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we made the drive to the Uintah National Forest by Heber to get our Christmas trees!

Here are our troopers! It was a freezing cold, windy morning. Angie, Sienna, Skyler and I waited in the car because it was just too cold for the babies (plus Skyler was hungry). It took an hour or so to find, cut, and haul back 3 beautiful Christmas trees! Then we drove back into Heber and ate lunch at the Dairy Keen. Yum!

Christmas Advent Project

I was talking with my sister about the advent calendar we had as children. I told her I had made a similar one with a Nativity theme a few years ago. I'm posting a photo so she could see what it looks like. If anyone is interested in making one of these I can email you the pictures. I scanned these cute pictures from a Nativity storybook. Then I printed them on iron-on transfer paper. I transferred it onto felt (felt sticks to felt--like flannelboard and requires little to no sewing). I made a background stable on a larger piece of felt. I also sewed pockets onto the larger piece. Each pocket is numbered and holds one of the nativity pictures. Every day in December they pull one picture out of the pocket and put it on the stable. My kids love this!