Christmas came and went!

Christmas - the most wonderful time of the year, and unfortunately, I got SICK!  In all honesty, I was glad it was me instead of the kids because we still got to enjoy a very fun Christmas and even though I didn't have a lot of energy, it was still very enjoyable to watch the kids get so excited!  And luckily Lee was able play with them and take care of things while I rested!  Unfortunately this sickness has sure been a rough one though - I had a bad fever on Boxing Day, and have been feeling really crappy all the rest of the week!  I just want my head to feel normal again so I can stop wasting all this time we have had with the whole family and with beautiful weather as well.  Hopefully it will be gone SOON!

Anyway, now to summarize the Christmas events!

On Christmas Eve, we all (my entire family) went over to my parents house for a wonderful ham dinner and program.  My Cooper Grandparents were even there to share it with us.  The kids had lots of fun with their cousins, and the evening was full of some good laughs... mostly inspired by my Dad of course!  He had some pretty good magic tricks this year, in fact, probably his best ones yet, and he didn't even mess them up this year!  The best was that he had this special wallet that lit on fire when he opened it, and he used it as a joke that he had really "burned through his cash". Ha ha.  He also performed on the Ocarina!  Not too shabby. 

 Most of the grandkids performed a number or two as well.  Dakota and Griffin sang "Up on the Housetop", complete with actions that Griffin had learned in his school Christmas concert!  It was cute.  Dakota and Mason also had a skit that they had practised, which was, interesting, to say the least!  Mason also planned to play the piano, but unfortunately he forgot his piano music.

 And of course the finale and highlight of all is the kids acting out the Nativity pageant.  My Mom always has a great assortment of costumes, and it is fun to watch them get excited to pick who they want to be.  Griffin was Joseph, a very handsome one I might add, (he even said so when he saw the pictures of himself) and it was sweet to watch him put his arm around Riley, who was Mary.  I love the picture of both of their faces when they are looking down at baby Jesus!  They are so excited and cute!

 

 And Dakota and Holli were angels, which - if you look at the pictures, I can't figure out what inspired Dakota's body language, but she seems to be acting as more of an angel of death rather than an angel bringing glad tidings of joy.  She laughed when she saw the pictures too and doesn't know what she was thinking!!

 And we even had a new babe to play baby Jesus this year, thanks to baby Eli!  How cute!

 Mason played a humble role this year, of a donkey.  And he was a good sport about the obviously many sizes too small lion body costume and interesting head wrap!

 He even "let" uncle Jeff ride him! ha ha

Anyway, good times were had by all.

 And then it was time to open the Christmas PJs!!  All of my kids were THRILLED!  Even Scarlett was happy to have new PJs to put on.  It was always one of my favorite traditions as well.

 And then it was home to bed to get sleep before Santa came.  We got started around 8:15 in the morning, thanks to four anxious kids that couldn't sleep any longer!  Look at the excitement on their faces before we let them come downstairs!  It's always been a tradition to take a picture on the stairs - kinda funny now that I think about it!

 And each of the kids were VERY happy with what Santa brought them, and with the gifts that we had bought them as well!  I did almost all of my shopping online this year which was great!  I think I went a bit overboard though, as it's hard to tell how much you have until it arrived at my house!  Oops.  It's so fun for me though!
Santa brought Scarlett a doll that can walk, Mason got a Kobo e-reader, Griffin got a remote control car, and Dakota got a Journey Doll.  I love Griffin's face when I told him I wanted to take a picture of him with his gift - he was being "SO cool" since he thought the truck was pretty wicked!!

 I also love the face of Mason's that I captured in this next photo!  He was thrilled to get Halo lego!!  And Scarlett was hilarious with her "minion" shirt!  She loves the movie Despicable Me, and always asks for "Minions"!!  She was actually adorable opening all of her gifts - she really got into it, and every time she finished getting a gift open, she said "Yay!"  It was so sweet.  All of the kids were actually really grateful and said thank you over and over.  I was impressed.

 Grandma and Grandpa came over as we were just finishing up, and brought a bunch more gifts!!  Including a really nice fooseball table for us!  It's awesome.  It was a wonderful Christmas, and the kids got SPOILED.  They spent the rest of their day playing with their new toys, skating on our ice rink, and then playing with cousins.  We had my parents and Jocelyn and Jeff's and their family over for Christmas turkey dinner!  It was DELICIOUS!!  I was very grateful for a good husband who gave up his nap and did most of the work preparing and cleaning up the house before everyone came.  I was just feeling terribly sick and had given up to go get some sleep.  He was wonderful! :)

December

December was filled with lots of memorable moments!  It's always a fun month, getting ready for Christmas, but this year it felt especially busy!  The kids all had a lot of fun decorating the Christmas tree!  Even Scarlett loved to help, and just kept saying "pretty pretty"!  It was cute.

 The beginning of December also marked the return of our special Elf, Kandy Kane!  The kids were MORE than excited to see him again, and they sure had fun finding him each morning and laughing at the silly things he did!  Some of the most exciting were when he turned our milk green, had a date with Barbie sipping Syrup out of the bottle, made a snowman out of marshmallows, had a tea party with toys from around the house, and the best was when he stole my Iphone and left a note saying, "Check out the pictures from my adventure last night!" Apparently he had snuck into all the kids' rooms while they were sleeping and took pictures of him with them sleeping!  The kids could hardly believe that he had done that and they didn't notice him in the night!  Griffin was especially funny with the elf each day - no matter where he found him, it was always the funniest thing ever to him!  He just couldn't get over how fun Kandy Kane is!

 Another very exciting thing that the kids got to do this month was to skate on their very own ice rink in the back yard!  Lee spent hours and hours trying to set it up and make it just right.  And it was worth it!  So much fun for them to be able to learn to skate and practice whenever they please.  It's been amazing to see how much each child has improved at their skating.  Even Scarlett loves to slide around on her boots out on the ice!

 I also got to take Dakota on a date to the Nutcracker!  It was a lot of fun and the show was really well done!  We enjoyed seeing a couple girls from our ward dancing in it too!  And we went with Dakota's best friend Laura, her sister, and their Mom.  It was both our first time seeing the show!

 By coincidence, December also marked a few "firsts" for Scarlett!  We finally got rid of her soother, once and for all!  She was really addicted to it, and I was getting sick of running all around the house searching for one every time I wanted to put her to bed.  They were always lost and it was quite a chore to find one!  So one day when I couldn't find one, I just decided it was time!!  And she actually did pretty well, she only asked for it a few times and I was able to distract her with something else.  She definitely doesn't sleep in as well anymore though, since I think she used to like just laying in bed with it even when she was awake.  We also moved her into the bottom bunk bed, and out of her crib.  She had figured out how to climb out of her crib by herself and she also really just wanted to be a big girl, so it seemed like it was time!  Now she often comes in our room in the morning though when she wakes up and just stands beside the bed without saying a word, or else she climbs into bed beside her Daddy.  It's pretty funny actually.  Lucky for me, he gets up with her!

 

And on a more minor note, I curled Scarlett's hair for the first time in her life!  May sound like not a very big deal, but knowing her attention span and unwillingness to let anyone do anything to her, it's actually a pretty big accomplishment to get her to sit through the entire curling process!  She's getting more into looking "pretty" so that seems to work in my favor!  Every time she gets a pretty dress on, she has to watch herself twirl in the mirror too.  Pretty cute.  She's still a big stinker though! (As you can see by her "usual outside 

attire!)  She very often wants to go outside with just a diaper!  It's actually lucky she is even wearing boots in the picture!

As tradition would have it, we also built ourselves some gingerbread houses - in fact, it was a gingerbread village!  The kids had fun although we had to quarantine Scarlett into the basement because all she wanted to do was eat the candy by the mouthful!!  I wanted her to help us do it as a family, but as we watched the candy quickly depleting, we decided we had to opt for Plan B, and put a movie on to distract Scarlett.

And of course no Christmas season would be complete without some Santa photos!  These were done at our ward party!  And might I add, I am pretty proud of the one of the girls! Ha ha!  It's a classic.  Who else has a photo with one of their daughters wearing a mustache?  And we captured Scarlett's excitement to sit on Santa's knee PERFECTLY!  She was absolutely terrified to see him!

Happy Halloween!!

We had a great Halloween this year, the weather was AWESOME!!  The kids got to dress up for my parent's ward Halloween party one night (that's why some of the kids are wearing different costumes) and then of course they all got dressed up again for school and Halloween night.  I could NOT get Scarlett to put on a costume, in fact it's pretty rare that she will even wear shoes and a coat, so I was beginning to think she would be the first kid who would not get dressed up for Halloween!  She still wanted to be part of the pictures though, ha ha! But somehow her Daddy has a special way with her and he managed to convince her to do it.  She was absolutely adorable Trick-or-Treating too!  She memorized very quickly the whole routine of saying "Trick or Treat", holding out her bag, and then saying "Thank you".  Of course in her speech, only I could tell that was what she was saying, but it was pretty darn cute.  Dakota left us to trick or treat with Laura, I couldn't say no to those cuties.  So we just took the boys and Scarlett.  We went and did the lake homes to get full sized chocolate bars and pops - the boys were pretty thrilled about that, and it was fun to see half the ward doing the same thing, walking by each other!  I only went out a little while with them, and then I figured I should be at home handing out candy!  They all got a haul as usual, and Scarlett was NOT about to let go of her bag!  So funny.  I let them all pig out for a couple days, and then I actually got them to sell me their bags of candy for $10 each!  I was sick of hearing them fight over candies, and ask me constantly if they could eat some more!  Good deal for all!