It's beginning to look a lot like CHRISTMAS!!!

I just love this time of year. It's so fun decorating the house, driving through town to look at the lights, decorating our gingerbread house, watching Christmas shows snuggled up in our pj's, baking Swedish bread, visiting Santa, wrapping presents...I just LOVE it! It's so much fun to see the kids get excited about it all...I can hardly wait for Christmas morning! January always comes too soon and before you know it, it's time to un-decorate. So for now, I'm just enjoying every minute of it.

The kids have had lots of fun finding things around the house to wrap up for each other - it should be an exciting Christmas morning to see what gets unwrapped!
Mmmmmm....yummy Swedish Bread. I've made about 45 loaves, got about 20 more to go!
Lots of gifts from preschool students and neighbors...

I LOVE the homemade decorations and ornaments!
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My homemade centerpiece
Drumroll please...what a masterpiece! :)

Girls Night Out...sort of :)

Every year, my mom and dad would go up to Salt Lake with a group of their friends to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert and stay overnight up in Salt Lake. Well, my mom had 2 tickets this year but no date :( so she asked me to go with her. It had been years since I've been up to Temple Square at Christmas time (I have a husband who hates to be out in the cold) so I was excited to go up and see it. We went to dinner with my parents friends, then to the Conference center for the concert and back to the hotel to exchange white elephants. I was definately the odd man out but it really was a lot of fun! Thanks for a fun weekend mom - I'll be your date anytime!!


Temple Square was beautiful! Next year, Vaughn's just going to have to bundle up so we can take the kids to see it!

The view from our hotel room

My BiRtHdAy GiRl

Happy 3rd Birthday Jenna! We've had a fun weekend celebrating - first, a princess party with Jenna's friends. We had 9 little princesses over to help us celebrate. Every time the doorbell rang, Jenna would scream "a princess is here" and run to the door as fast as she could! We colored, played pin the kiss on the frog prince, made crowns, went on a treasure hunt for magic wands, searched for poison apples, ate cupcakes and opened presents...it was a success and SO much fun for me planning a girly party! :) Today, we spent the afternoon putting Jenna's big girl bedroom set in her room and then we had grandma's and aunt Aimee come over for cake, presents and hide-and-go-seek in the dark (my kids all time favorite game!) Happy Birthday little princess!


Little princesses busy at work...



Thinking really hard about her wish...


Breakfast in bed...well, on the floor in Jenna's room. :)
So happy to be 3!

Not 21...2 + 1...that's what happens when I put Vaughn in charge of candles!

More celebrating



Jenna's new bedroom furniture!


SO excited to sleep in her new bed!

Jenna Roo

I just love this girl...


Practicing walking in her new "heels" It only took a few hours and she had it down.

Nice outfit she picked out for herself - don't you think?

Seeing Santa

We've already had our first Christmas Party and the kids were SUPER excited to see Santa...well, the boys were super excited. Santa walked in and Jenna disappeared under the table. I couldn't believe she didn't come to me, she probably figured I'd take her right over to see Santa. You have to click on this picture to really get the full effect...poor girl! :)



We visited Santa at the mall a few days later and Ashton was on his lap. Santa asked Ashton what he wanted and he told him, only Santa didn't understand. When Santa asked again Ashton looked up at him and said, "don't you remember what I already said?" Santa caught right on and said "I'll do what I can to surprise you."