Gingerbread Houses!

The kids love decorating anything, so gingerbread houses were no exception.  They had a great time loading their houses up with all sorts of sugar.

 

Jake was sure proud of his finished Gingerbread house.

Tater with hers.  She was the 1st one done, but this did not surprise us one bit.  Tatum tends to work very quickly when doing anything except chores.

Cambrie was the last one finished, by a LONG time, but again, this was no surprise.  She needed to construct her own chimney so her house was different than the others structurally.

All three of the houses!  They've been losing Smarties from the rooftops one by one through the week.

Chocolate Covered Birthday!

For her Birthday dinner, Cambrie chose chicken & rice and artichokes. She didn't want a cake though, she decided instead that she wanted chocolate fondue. What a surprise. We decided just to stick a candle in a marshmallow since that is her favorite thing to dip in the fondue.

Cambrie made sure she was the keeper of the sticks until she was ready to dig in.

And the Birthday girl gets the 1st dip.

Delicious!

Tater loved the chocolate fondue too.

Jake got a little crazy with his stick and ended up with chocolate on his head.

Happy 9th Birthday Cambrie!

Cambrie absolutely LOVES chocolate, so for her birthday, she took Hershey bars as her class treat. We found these cute labels online and put them on the Hershey bars. She was pretty ecstatic with the end result, and the fact that it was chocolate!
Cambrie on the morning of her birthday taking a Happy Birthday call.

Opening gifts. She was one spoiled 9 year old.


Happy Birthday Cambrie! We love you!

The Best Way to Shop.

I've figured out a new way to shop. I have been looking for some new black boots, so when Macy's was doing their Cyber Monday buy 1 get 1 free deal, I ordered 4 pairs. I figured when they arrived, I could try them on, keep 2 that I liked and return the other 2. I didn't realize the entire family would have fun trying them on helping with the process of choosing. We had quite a lot of fun as the kids all tromped around in tall, black boots. The choice has been made, and the kids are bummed that 2 pairs will be going back. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Cambrie striking a pose.

Tatum really got into character. Wait, that's just Tatum!

Even Jake had fun walking around in the boots.

'New' family tradition. . .

This year we started a new family tradition. It is the Elf on the Shelf. It comes with a great story about the elf and on the last page, you write your family name, what year you started and what your family named your elf. We've named our elf Sprite. Sprite keeps an eye on everyone in our family, then each night he heads to the North Pole to report to Santa. As a result, each morning he is in a new spot. The kids have loved looking for Sprite each morning when they wake up.  He is getting trickier though.  Tatum finally just found Sprite's spot for today after returning home from school.

Victor Holiday Festival

 Today was the Annual Victor Holiday Festival.  The highlight for the kids was the live nativity.  They LoVeD the animals, but couldn't figure out why the people were just sitting there (Mary & Joseph).  Now they've all decided they want to get an Alpaca.  Probably a little difficult, even for Santa (at least we hope so).

The kids have been wearing their Santa hats pretty much non-stop since we took them out of the storage boxes.  Apparently the Alpaca was a big fan because he started nibbling on the ear on Tatum's hat.  She thought that was just hilarious.

After the Nativity, we headed over to Timberline for the baked potatoe bar & sugar cookies.  They had A Christmas Story playing on the big screen.  The kids devoured the taters and put away a couple cookies each.

Outside waiting for the Light Parade to start.  The kids loved it.  It was quite a bit bigger this year, and one of the floats was throwing glow sticks.

After the parade they hopped up through the sun roof to get a better view of the fireworks.

Cambrie!

The whole fam.

All this fun and we were still home by 6:30pm so we could watch the Santa Claus.

The Big Guy!

This morning we had our Ward Christmas Party and while we were there, a special visitor arrived.
Cambrie said she didn't tell Santa anything that she wanted because she had already given all her ideas to me (hmmm!).

Jake told me he asked for a plane.

And Little Tater asked for a dog!

The kids sang several Christmas songs too. It was a great morning.