Christmas

Christmas Eve we went to Becky and Jeremy's house for dinner and the Nativity. It was only our two families this year. All of the kids were wearing their traditional Christmas pajamas for the party.

Sunday morning we went to church after opening presents. I was able to get the kids to stand together long enough for a picture.

Being goofy

After getting home from church we went to Mesa to visit with Dayson's parents and opened presents with them.

Then we went to my parent's house where we stayed the night with Becky's & Rita's families.

All of the cousins enjoy getting together and visiting with one another. Here is Kendall performing some songs on her guitar.

The little cousins playing a game with Konsti and Robin (another foreign exchange student who spent Christmas with Rita's family)

Aarron and Great Grandma Slade

She is giving him his birthday card with his quarters

Our friend Flavio came over Monday morning after Christmas to see our family. It's been a long time since we've seen him. It was good for Dayson and him to speak portuguese again.

Our final stop on our way home was at Dayson's extended family Christmas reunion. This has been a tradition for the last 15 years since we've been married and many more before that.

This is Dayson's grandma and grandpa Lawlor. We don't have many opportunities to take pictures with them because we live 4 hours away. They are so fragile and grandma doesn't remeber us anymore.

Christmas weekend happend so fast that we hardly got to spend time with our family. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Sledding

Over the last few weeks we've gotten a few snow storms. Thankfully it doesn't snow a whole lot in town. The mountains get the best of the snow. So to the hills for sledding we go!

We had three sleds to share with everyone. So the kids took turns going down the hill. Aarron was the first one down. He is fearless and doesn't think twice. He sits down, slides, does a flip at the bottom, gets back up and and away he goes again!

Harly is a little more conservative like her mother. I wished I could go down the steep parts and over the bumps, but I'm a whimp! She likes to go down gracefully.

 MacKenzie is also shy at sledding. She went on the smalles part of the hill. She only went down two or three times before calling it quits!

 Daycee loves sledding but rather watch and give others a turn first. She is always thinking of others!

Clayton is also fearless! And he loves to take his turn more frequently, forgetting about his other siblings who need a turn too! 

Carson loves the speed and the bumps! But he likes to wait his turn and doesn't want to cause contention between sharing sleds. Him and Clayton were racing down this hill. It looks like Carson got a little more speed than Clayton!

 There is Aarron again...Mr. Fearless!

A few days earlier we went sledding after school. We only got to stay a short while because the sun was going down and it was freezing cold. On this trip it was only Konsti, Carson, Clayton, Aarron and Kenzie. Harly and Daycee opted out of going, so I made them watch Adam.



MacKenzie's Christmas Program

Friday afternoon the 2nd grade had their Christmas program. MacKenzie loves to sing but gets to shy in front of people. She new all of the actions and words to every song. We are so proud of her for being brave and performing.

They were sitting down waiting for their class's turn to sing.

She is such a joy to have in our family and we are very lucky to have her as our daughter.

Decorating the Christmas Tree

This year we bought our Christmas Tree from Home Depot. Between the Wallow fire and the first snow storm we knew that finding a tree would be torture. So Dayson and I spent Saturday in Show Low by ourselves and brought home a beautiful "real" Christmas Tree!

Adam was so excited to decorate the tree. It took him 5 minutes to hang one ornament. All of his are down low! He was so proud of himself!

Our Christmas tree

All of the kids in front of the Christmas tree. They were so happy to finally get it up and decorated. Now it really feels like Christmas in our house!

Hanging Up Our Stockings

We haven't cut down our Christmas tree yet because of all the snow we got over the weekend so instead we hung up our stockings. We don't have a fireplace so the best place for them is on our planter shelf above the heater. I got the boys new stockings this year. I found boots at Kmart while in Idaho. Now I just have to find girl boots for me and the girls.

We went in order of age: Konsti first

 Clayton second

Carson third

Harly fourth

(a little help from dad)

Daycee fifth

MacKenzie sixth

Aarron seventh

(in his buzz light year costume)

Adam eighth

This was our Family Home Evening activity and than we spent the rest of the night decorating sugar cookies and watching Polar Express!

Aarron's 6th Birthday!

Aarron turned 6 years old on December 3rd. We had a family party for him all day. First he opened up his presents.

We had been putting together a Christmas puzzle and Aarron wanted to do one of his own. So we got him the wooden puzzle set that he put together right away.

He was so proud of himself!

A nerf gun from Grandma & Granndpa Wellman

After a while we drove up the mountain to go sledding. The roads were getting bad and there was a storm coming so we pulled over and decided to play in the snow instead.

Adam loved playing in the snow as long as he didn't touch it

 Carson, Clayton, Konsti having a snowball fight

When we got home we had pizza and cupcakes

Aarron decorated his own cupcake and picked out the number 6 candle to blow out

 Singing Happy Birthday!

Everyone got to decorate their own cupcake. They were alien cupcakes!

Konsti making his

 Daycee making hers

Kenzie making hers

Clayton making his

Adam had to have his own candle to blow out!

All the kids at Aarron's birthday party