December: the Season for Jollies. . . and a Drive down to Utah and Arizona!

The poinsettia and the live Christmas tree came home the same evening, right at the start of December.

I was brave and made "gingerbread" houses out of graham crackers for my week hosting preschool. I have to say I loved the houses the kids made, I loved getting all the trimmings, making the houses wasn't a terrible experience, and I will probably do it again. I will work my way up to making real gingerbread houses like my mom and Peanut do every year.

I bought this little hat for Cason and Doug threw it on him and began taking pictures. The pictures were so cute that we used one for our Christmas card,

I think this is the official Christmas card photo. . . ?

And Lucy posed with our tree, which we all decorated together and separately. Cason proved to be the menace around the tree that we feared. But he didn't tip the tree over or play in the water bucket, so everything is fine. Eating a few pine needles and ornament hooks never hurt anyone, I am sure.

I wanted so badly to figure out a way to make cheap Christmas cards. Doug let me know the good news in December that he really wanted to send out Christmas cards rather than Valentines. I was disappointed, but I gave in. I pasted so many pictures and wrote so much text in small boxes, hoping that I could copy and paste my way to a cheap card. Alas, despite making at least 10 versions of our card, none of the pictures I copied were clear enough to send, so I had to actually use Walmart's photo card creator thingy to make our Christmas cards. They turned out well, but I spent so much more time than I needed to. Now I know to skip the copying and pasting dream.

This was the final card.

One thing I have loved about where we live is that we have incredible friends here. This is me and Doug at an ugly sweater party in December. Not pictured is the horrible leopard bra Doug picked in the white elephant gift exchange. We have great pictures of it, but they are on Doug's phone. We just had 8 couples over last night for a Valentine's Day potluck party and didn't take any pictures. We had fun, though!

Here is my beautiful Brooklyn before she cut her hair. Sigh.

And my big boy feeding my littel boy. I love when Isaac pulls Cason into his lap.

I have pictures of Lucy in her dance costume, but I don't have any close-ups from her performance in December. I think she's the one on the far left, but let's count this as proof that we were there.

We drove to Arizona for Christmas and went to the Mesa Temple Visitor's center to see the lights. It was so beautiful.

We also went to the coolest restaurant I have ever been to--for entertainment value. The Organ Stop sells mediocre pizza, but organists play tons of instruments and play requests, and make the experience so fun!

We also went with Darcee, Jeremy, and their kids to a place that advertized train rides, Polar Express style. Unfortunately, the line for the train ride was over two hours long. The kids got glow-in-the-dark lights, posed for a lot of pictures, and got to ride the merry-go-round twice. It was fun.

This was cool. Doug and I took our kids for a little picnic and playtime while we were in Arizona. Doug took a picture of us from the playground. This is the story of my life when I am doing what I really want to do.

This is also typical. "Dad,take a picture of me. . . Now take a picture of you and me together."

This is also typical. They play pretty well, and fight quite a bit.

And Lucy can smell a camera from a mile away.

We did not teach either of them their poses, but wow.

Kayla and Dave's house.

More of Lu posing. She is a lovely girl.

Isaac with one of his new toys

I love this. This is Cason staring blankly before someone says, "Cason!"

And this is him smiling once someone says his name.

Brooklyn with her hair done

And without her hair done the day before. December was wonderful. Even though it is a huge pain to load up belongings for two weeks and bring Christmas elsewhere, I deeply, dearly loved our trip. We spent the night at my Mom's house, stayed for a week in Arizona, then Doug drove back to Idaho to work and I stayed for a week at Peanut's house (because Pat and Erica were at my mom's house). It was so glorious!