Chads Christmas gift

When my husband was young he used to do a lot of art work and drawing. He has started to take up the hobby again. Two years ago for Mothers Day he sketched me a picture of my Mother and Father which is displayed on a easel in my stairway. He drew the picture of my parents as a dedication to my Mother who passed away from breast cancer five years ago. Her death was very hard on me. This year for Christmas he did these sketches for me. I have not placed it on a wall yet, I am looking for just the right place to put it. It is head shots of our kids when they were 1 year old. He took their 1 year pictures and sketched them and framed them. Chad spent hours and hours on each drawing. What a wonderful guy I married!!! the photo I took does not do the drawing justice. Thank you Chad for such a thoughtful and wonderful Christmas present.

Nieces and cupcake fun

Sunday after Christmas my neices made some very cute cupcakes while they were visiting. I got out some of my cake decorating supplies and let them have at it. We did some of the cupcakes in cones and the rest in cupcake liners. Good job girls! I also posted this on my other baking blog littlemissmuffetandhertuffet.blogspot.com

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Hannah, Sara, Aleena, Isabell

Christmas 2010

I love Christmas!! I love the extra focus we give to the savior, I love listening to Christmas songs, baking yummy treats, buying gifts, finding ways to help others and sharing Christmas joy with those around. As a family we have a few fun traditions we have done for years, hopefully when our children are grown, they will continue these same traditions. It is such a blessed time of year. This Christmas Chads brother Shaun and his family came out from Arkansas to visit. For Christmas eve we had quite the houseful with 13 extra bodies, but what a great time we all had!!! We also were able to spend time with my Brother, Ben and his family and also Chads Sister Carrie, her husband and cute little boy Eric. We had a very enjoyable time. It is so fun to be surrounded by family.

Our kids have not been getting along as peacefully as we would like. We thought they needed a extra push to be more kind to each other especially at Christmas, so this year when we drew family names for gifts the rule was that you had to spend time and personally make the gift for whomever you had. Alex made me a apron, Jordan made Ethan a TCU blanket, Ethan made Jordan coupons, Chad also did coupons for Alex and I made Chad a tv remote control holder that hangs over the couch.

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The Sunday following Christmas We visited Temple square up in Salt Lake city. Ha, ha funny Troy, rabbit ears.

Chad, Jordan, Ethan, Me, Alex and my brother Troy.

Christmas morning opening presents with the cousins.

Alex, Jordan and Dan.
This is a pillow that Sara made for Alex, she did a great job on it. The pillow matches Alex's room perfectly!!
Ethan and his new bike.
Squishy, Squishy, cousins playing around.

Cousins watching the Nativity story.
This is what unfinished basements are used for-- pinata time.

Alex

Aleena

Heidi

Ethan

Isabell

Katie

David

Christmas Eve we started by singing Christmas carols and reading the Christmas story.

Kids bedrooms

This year Chad has been working on some painting projects. So far he has gotten the kids rooms painted. Here are the final results. If it looks familiar, the colors are the same as when we lived in Texas.

This is Ethan's room. Jordan's room-- Chad painted the mural on the wall, I think it turned out awesome.
Alex's room. The wall not in the picture is blue, the shade of the dark blue dot in the corner. I made the wall hanging.

Snow

Over the past few weeks we have gotten a ton of snow. We had some good size icicles hanging down and snow overhangs on our house. I just had to take a few pictures. The icicles grew longer as the days went on.