December Updates

Alexa at her Christmas piano recital. She played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "Angels We Have Heard on High."

Making Christmas goodies to bring to our neighbors and friends.

Notice how Andrea is about to lick her finger even though she had been told many times not to.

Here's Andrea licking her fingers again. I hope none of our friends who we delivered these goodies to see these pictures. :)

Sitting on Santa's lap at the Ward Christmas Party

Andrea sure wasn't shy this year. She even gave Santa a kiss. By the look on Santa's face, I think he enjoyed it!

Decorating the Christmas tree was quite an experience this year. Rylan thought that all of the sperical ornaments were balls and needed to be thrown. He was undecorating and throwing the ornaments faster than we could put them on the tree. Needless to say, all of the "balls" were eventually hung on the top half of the tree. It sure turned out pretty though!

Andrea's First Marriage Rejection

A couple of weeks ago, we had just come home from church and I was in the bedroom putting my scriptures and stuff away when I overheard this conversation in the living room:
Andrea: "Landon, when we get bigger will you marry me?"
Landon: Pause, pause . . . then a chuckle . . . "No"
Andrea didn't say anything after that. I guess the response was pretty straight forward.

I guess Andrea thought Landon was pretty handsome in his suit and tie. Poor Andrea. Not even her brother will have her. :) Hopefully she'll have a little more luck with men when she gets older.l

Snowed In!

Our car was just a little burried :) Good thing we didn't have any where to go that day!

The Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving we had quite the snow storm. School was canceled both days and, with the wind, it was hard to even see the neighbor's house. The kids were sure excited to have their Thanksgiving break extended by two days. Thank heavens things cleared up for us to drive to my sister Kristi's house the day after Thanksgiving.

Raking Autumn Leaves

The kids had a contest to see who could rake the biggest pile. Of course, Alexa won. She was the only one really raking.

Landon was pretending to be a scarecrow rather than raking any leaves.

That little pile of leaves was about all that Andrea raked, but at least she was trying.

"Helping" Daddy put all the leaves in the wheelbarrow.

It's hard to believe that we were out raking leaves just a couple of weeks ago. Now everything outside is covered with about a foot of snow.

Halloween Dinner

Joe was really getting into this scary dinner thing!

Because Halloween fell on a Sunday this year, we had two spooky dinners. One on Saturday nitht when all the Halloween festivities were celebrated and one on Halloween night. We had mummy dogs, slugs (mandarin oranges), witches fingers (cheetos), and witches brew (orange kool-aid with dry ice in it) on the first night and mummy meatloaf with sweet potatoes (because they're orange) on the second night. The kids had a great time and actually ate their dinner without us having to constantly harp on them!

Halloween Costumes

Here's a shot of all the kids together

Alexa was a witch (We tried to make her look like an ugly witch, but she was still beautiful!)

Landon was a SCARY vampire


Andrea was Alexa's black cat

Rylan was a cute little lion (He, however, hated this costume. Right after this picture we had to take the hood off because the mane was driving him crazy.)

Halloween Festivities

Carving the pumpkin and decorating Halloween sugar cookies . . . always fun, but always an absolute chaotic mess! The kids went a little overboard on the candies that decorated the cookies. Oh well, hopefully Joe's home teaching families enjoyed them and realized that our kids did the decorating.