We started December babysitting Zeus for Kathy and Troy while they went to Hawaii to visit Rich! It would have been more fun to go to Hawaii but Zeus was a lot of fun too.
Though he doesn't look too thrilled being dressed up by Victoria.
Victoria got braces!
Who would have thought that Kaleb and Victoria would have braces on at the same time. It is an absolute miracle that we are affording this.
Our orthodontist is wonderful.
Victoria and I researched how to make authentic looking clay food for Barbie and AG dolls. You would be amazed what is out there. Of course that is a post in itself. If you are interested,
check out my Pinterest board Here.
We tried convincing Kaleb to retire this sleep shirt. He found this at the thrift shirt when he was only 5 years old. It hung down below his knees. When he showed it to me I had asked him what he was going to do with that?
He was holding it like a prized possession in his little 5 year old hand.
He told me "I'm gonna sweep in it!"
So he has been wearing this shirt that says
Peace, Love and Crabs from Joe's Crab Shack for 10 years!
We put together this huge, awesome puzzle! We have a funny family thing that happens every time we put a puzzle together. Someone always wants to put the last piece in.
Can you guess who?
For years, he has taken a piece and has hidden it so that when we go to put in the last piece it is missing! Daphne and I finished this puzzle around 11 pm at night when we discovered that 2 pieces were missing! Uugh!
We baked cookies.
Victoria was begging to use her Buffalo cookie cutter.
Sure, why not, we'll just have Christmas Buffaloes!
I bet you never had Christmas Buffaloes before!
Sam did his best at keeping the floor clean.
Georgie discovered how fun it was to hang out in the Christmas tree while his house was being cleaned. Though he decided that the foliage wasn't very tasty.
I had help with wrapping presents, which is always nice.
Notice the direction of the trees on the paper...
We added to our massive collection of ornaments. Our neighbor Chris whittled the wooden Santa. It is amazing. We couldn't find Jared an ornament that related to construction so I sculpted a hammer from clay. Kaleb, of course has the green alien and the minion. He is getting quite a collection of brightly colored beings. Can you guess Daphne's? Yep, the cats, and a blue sea horse for Victoria. Daphne and I burned the snowflakes into wood cuts and Victoria painted the little snowman.
We have spent the winters living here watching trucks....sometimes city trucks.....pull into the library when no one is there and do donuts in the parking lot. We have always told my Dad about this. He told my Mom that he can't wait for the first snow because he wanted to do donuts out in the parking lot for us to see. So on Christmas Morning when we woke to SNOW!!!!!!!
He called to tell us to look out our window!
Yep, there he was doing donuts in the parking lot sliding all around. He had to stop though because a couple times it actually looked like he was going to get stuck. It brought back all those years in our Jeep growing up with him splashing through mud puddles where the spray would be sent up 20 feet into the air!
It was very entertaining!
It was wonderful having Nana and Poppa at our house for Christmas.
It was our first one together in many, many years.
It was a good day spending it all together.
It reminded me of all the blessings that God has granted us over and over again!
The past few Christmas' have been very difficult for various reasons. Mostly for financial reasons. This was our first Christmas doing on our own....because we COULD!
Thank you LORD!
Kaleb....pretty excited about his ORANGE sheets!
And Poppa happy with his new Popcorn Popper!
Victoria painted me this adorable snowman! I love it! I found this awesome frame and almost busted it to pieces when I slipped on a piece of ice on our drive way!
Uugh! Nothing like jarring your whole body.....
I love these next three pictures of Henry!
He looks so cute.....
Kirk says they are all the same...but no...his tail is moving!
Sam loves, loves, loves the SNOW!
He always gets so excited when he realizes that there is fresh snow on the ground.
We now know that my parents little dog Sugar, loves the snow too. She was an avid swimmer in Arizona and doesn't have a place to swim...no need, she has a yard full of snow! Who would have ever thought that she was going to love it so much. She was outside catching the snowflakes as they were falling. It was hysterical to watch.
She has the perfect fur for collecting snowballs.....
We call this snorkeling. In the pool she would make bubbles with her paws and then bite them. So now, she does the same thing but with snow.
We got in some night sledding which is always fun. It is really convenient using the library's parking lot lights and a nearby drainage ditch. We now have two new "metal" snow saucers.
We have replaced about 4 or 5 plastic ones.
We saved part of our tax return from Spring to buy snowshoes for all of us.
Now we can hike Green Canyon year round.
It was quite the treat to wake up to so much snow on Christmas morning.
We measured 7 inches by night fall.
I love that we don't become hermits during the winter.
We celebrated the New Year with a game night, Nana and Poppa and left over fireworks!
We are discussing goals for the year and actually feel hopeful over our situation in life. I think we are recovering from the economy crash that we experienced when we lived in Arizona. We have been greatly blessed and can't live without God's plan for us.
We have discovered that when we try to do what we want, we just mess it up.
His plan is so much better.
I can't wait to see what he has planned for us this year!
