Christmas, Christmas, Christmas

First of all -- there are a lot of pictures - BUT you need to appreciate every one because it took me FOREVER to upload them. We recently cancelled our Comcast cable (because they just kept upping their prices and we were sick of it) -- so now we are with Quest or something like that -- so our internet is much slower. So appreciate my patience. :)

Anyways here is all our Christmas highlights. Lots of family, lots of food, lots of presents and lots of fun.

Christmas Eve

My side of the family -- most of the cousins

kitchen help..................

Silly boys..................

Me and my neighbor Shirley. We brought her to Christmas Eve with us since her family is crappy and was only going to drop food off for her on Christmas day. Sam set it up to bring her because he is a sweetheart. We loved having her with us.
Here I am trying to show Jacksons poor squished fingers.(click to enlarge) They were really dented on the outside and purple and red on the inside. He got them smashed pretty bad in the door. It was very sad. Lots of tears. Some by me too. :(
Tony -- spilled his dessert -- so Sam thought it'd be nice to take his picture.
Keith, Alicia and kids - Maci and Tori
Misty and Paul and kids - Mercedes and Alyvia..........
All the kids with their new pal - Shirley :) --we are printing this one and giving it to her to go along with the frame my sister Amber got for her..........

Christmas Morning

Here the kids are eagerly waiting to dig into their stockings and gifts from Santa. They had to wait - because we invited our neighbor Shirley to join in this as well. They were very patient.

Sidenote: Despite Sam's look -- he does love us. :)
Santa Came!!!!!
the excitement.......

i dont know why this one posted twice -- and i don't know how to get rid of it......
Light sabers for Jackson -- his MOST favorite gift...........
Gwen's favorite gift - Tangled hair. She actually got this from my parents the night before but I wouldn't let her get it out till that morning - when we were on our own so it wasn't ruined immediately. It's no longer is in that condition..........
Master Jackson ...................

Christmas Day

Back out at my parents for many more gifts and food. At the end of the day all of the families did a little performance. We sang "Christmas Bells" -- we even did a round - we sounded GREAT!! ;)

The rest of the families did their own things.

Here is Alyvia and Mercedes singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"........
Dallin singing "Here Comes Santa Claus".....
Maci and Alicia sang a duet of "Away in a Manger" (i think)
Ambers Family sang - I can't remember - sorry Amber
And then by special request Thomas sang "Mary did you Know" --- beautiful!!
To end the entertainment -- the kids did the nativity scene and sang Silent Night. They did a great job.
Then after the official Christmas portion was done - we switched gears and had a little birthday party for me. That is an ice cream cake that Jess got for me -- just to make my birthday a little extra special. And it was -- can you see my eyes - they are on that cake!! :)

Ward Christmas

Sam's parents came up stayed with us a couple of days before Christmas and then we met up with them and Sam's brothers family and his sisters family up in Washington a few days after Christmas.

Sam's parents gave everyone personalized towels - very cute.
After Christmas -- but before we left for Washington - it was my birthday. My 31st birthday. It was pretty low key -- but my favorite part was at the end of the day we rented the Michael Jackson Experience for the Wii. You dance along to all of Michaels best songs. Here's me and the kids -- I TOTALLY beat them ;)

Ok - now onto Washington. We had lots of fun there. More cousins to play with. They just got RockBand for the Wii -- so we all had fun taking turns playing with that. They also reserved the church building so we could go play. Everyone played kick ball and hide and seek -- and then just liked running around.

Here are the girls -- with child. A little young - yes - -but they thought it was funny!!
Here is the little prego girls dancing
On New Years Eve we bought passes that got us into a few different museums in Tacoma and some shows that night. I got to see a lot of it -- but my day turned out a little different then planned. My leg had been really bothering me the whole time we were up in WA and I ended up going into the ER because they suspected a blood clot in my leg. After a couple hours there - they said everything should be ok. No blood clot that they can see. So then I joined everyone at the Glass Museum and then went to the History museum.
this was an art room for the kids to create things - they spent forever in there........
Addie made herself a mustache..........
love the cousins..................
outside the glass museum..............
history museum -- the trains were pretty exciting for Jax............
more fun with cousins :) .................
We had a great trip. Great vacation. Now back to life. We got back last night - the kids started school today, I started watching little Pete again today and Sam left for work early this morning and will be working out of town for the next few days. It was nice while it lasted :)

**we would have had even more pics -- but our nice new camera is already broken -- good thing we got it at Costco!!