Wanna see our Christmas card?

Considering I set a goal to blog once a week, I had a couple posts thought out in my head.  But wouldn't you know it... I can't remember them now!  But I totally need to blog our Christmas card so I'm excited to follow through on my blogging goal.  However, I cannot get the back side of our card to upload here, so I might just have to type it in.  Our card was actually a postcard, which I loved doing.  I like to include a little bit about us but never want it to be very long because I don't feel like I have that much to share.  I may do the postcard thing a lot in the future.  We'll see.  

So here's the front.

I love the way our family pictures turned out!  My pal, Dallas, did a great job on them and I need to blog those soon too!  The are seriously gorgeous.

The back of our card read:

(it really, really won't load)

Dear family & friends,

We are so excited to finally have made it to Christmastime.  It’s a favorite at our house, for sure.  It’s hard to think of much that is new around our place... Marshall is 6 and LOVES first grade more than any other kid on the planet.  Tyler is “pretend 5” (4) and is turning into one silly character that wants to grow right up.  Macy’s so loveable and is 1 going on 13.  That’s fun.  They are the most adorable kids, as you can see, and we, as parents, can hardly believe how blessed we are.  Everyone is happy and healthy, and we consider our busy lives are a sign that we are doing just fine.  May the Lord’s blessings find you, as well, this holiday season and carry over into the new year.

Love,

Colby, Andrea, Marshall the Smarty Pants, Tyler the Ladies' Man, & Macy the Tornado

Letters to Santa

I had the kids dictate their letters to Santa to me and I thought it was hilarious to see what they had to say to the Jolly Man.  I actually have their dictation on video and I condensed their "um... uh..."'s into their letters.  That was so perfect because I got to sit and watch it over and over; their cute little faces as their brains tried to remember everything they wanted were priceless.

Here's Marshall's.

Here's Tyler's.

Tyler had first only asked for a new workbench because their's was a tiny bit broken.  I told him not to waste a request on something like that because Daddy could fix it.  So then he asked Santa for Daddy to fix their workbench.  My sweet boy...

December on Instagram

I'm gonna try my best to add collages of Instagram pics from time to time.  

They can't be documented too many times, right?

1.  Sleeping Macy.  So sweet.
2.  Napping under the Christmas tree.  Wow, I love Christmas.
3.  Santa Baby
4.  Marshall is such a great brother!  He wanted to brush her hair and was so tender with Baby Sister.
5.  Pretty girl at Grandma's house.
6.  Tyler's style cracks me up.  Nothing like skin tight jammies and cowboy boots.
7.  Pretty sure painted baby nails are my favorite thing in the world.
8.  She sleeps like such an angel.
9.  Our impressive snowman we built in the middle of the night on a school night!

Christmas Morning 2013

Christmas was so great for us this year.  We are truly blessed with anything we could ever want... tons of health and happiness and a wonderful family!

Here we are in our annual PJ picture in front of the tree on Christmas Eve.  Daddy picked out the boys' matching Angry Bird jammies and Mom kept with the color scheme for the girls.  Macy's shirt said "all Mommy wants is a silent night" which wasn't as humorous as I had thought because since she was just a couple weeks old she slept for five hours at a time at night.  She's a little angel, I tell you.

I love how we are still the ones that rush to pull the kids out of bed nice and early because we just can't wait to get the party started.  One of my favorite pictures from Christmas morning is their sleepy stroll into the family room with that marvelous bed head.

Santa didn't disappoint with the scooters and other surprises!  Marshall got the whole set of books we've been borrowing from the library that have helped him learn to love reading.  Tyler got a couple different spiky balls.  They must have been good little boys.

The boys have gotten good at choosing great gifts for others and it makes me so happy.  The got Daddy this remote control truck that has an attached air soft gun.  He had way too much fun shooting those BBs at anyone that came around.

Here's Macy with her spoils.  She got a couple super soft blankies and some cute stuffed animals.  That deer is my favorite!!!  I think one of my favorite things was to let the boys pick something for their little sister.  Marshall just couldn't decide what type of rattle he wanted to get her so we were at the store forever.  I helped him decide on the princess rattle.  Tyler picked her out her very own pink cell phone.  Because every child needs a cell phone these days.

We got spoiled at Grandma & Grandpa Stratton's... it was one of my favorite years.  So many thoughtful gifts and good time spent together.  Plus everyone was there for the first time in a couple years.  I guess I've gotten tired of my camera being an extension of me at every stop because these were the last pictures I took on Christmas Day.  I promise to do better and document the people and fun at each house next year.  It's always fun to look back at how everyone has grown up and have pictures of the kiddos with their great grandparents...

I guess I've gotten tired of my camera being an extension of me at every stop because these were the last pictures I took on Christmas Day.  I promise to do better and document the people and fun at each house next year.  It's always fun to look back at how everyone has grown up and have pictures of the kiddos with their great grandparents...

Christmas Snow

Christmastime didn't really feel like Christmastime this year.  The beautiful fall weather was hanging on for dear life and it seemed like it was only about a week before Christmas that it actually got cold.

The first real storm came in on a Tuesday evening and Colby and I were with the Young Men and Young Women from church for a little trip to the St. George Temple.  We got home a little late but decided the kids needed to play in that snow!  I've gotten to be a bit of a stickler on bed time around here, but we all know that snow in Hurricane doesn't last long and I was sure we wouldn't have time to play in it before school, so I told the kids to put some snow clothes over their PJs and get out there!

They loved it!  Their favorite game was "hit Mommy with the snowballs" so it was a great time.

In the meantime, Baby Sister stayed inside.  She just hung out on her blanket, totally ok with sharing Mom with her brothers for a bit.

After trying everything they could think of with the snow (apparently throwing snow at the house is HILARIOUS) they built a snowman.  He was a cute little guy that lasted a couple days...  

The first picture is him the next morning looking cheery.

We got another fun storm the day after Christmas and they shot their new bows & arrows and rode their new scooters all over in that snow.

Christmas Essentials

After learning about the true meaning of Christmas today at preschool, this was my conversation with Tyler.

Me: How was school, Tyler?
Ty: Good. We dressed up like when baby Jesus... I got to dress up and be Moses.
Me: You mean Joseph?
Ty: Yeah. Joseph. He was Jesusus (that's how he said it) dad.
Me: Yep. He was. That's special you got to dress up and tell the story of Christmas.
Ty: (after a pause)Was baby Jesus born when the dinosaurs and dragons lived?
Me: (I chuckled a little) No. The dinosaurs were not alive anymore when Jesus was born.
Ty: And not the dragons either?

I think we need to go over the Christmas story a few more times.

Christmas Part 3

This post is about all of our stops we made.  I should mention that a couple of our usual stops were done before Christmas day actually came because none of my side of the family would be in town on the actual holiday.  For some reason I didn't remember to take pictures at those places.  Of course they were a lot of fun and we were totally spoiled.  Like I had mentioned in Part 1, we rushed over to Colby's parents' house once we woke up.

The boys breaking into their goodies.

Grandma made each of them these adorable blankets that were each a different animal.   I'm going to have to take some pictures of the boys with their blankets since I never got a good one on Christmas morning.  Marshall's is a turtle and Tyler's is a fish.  They love their blankets and sleep with them every night.

It's kind of fun adding a new person to the family.  Mike will fit in just fine with all of us weirdos.

Marshall and Brigham were playing a game.  

Marshall would yell and scream and Brigham would copy him.  

So fun...

Cassadee and I put our heads together for a good surprise for her parents this year and our "presentation" of the whole thing went almost as planned.  Good thing Marshall was there to help carry it out.

We recreated a picture that we had given her a past Mother's Day.  We took the pictures back in August and the boys did a great job of never leaking any info.  Cass put all the pictures into a book and we gave Mom the book first thinking she would see the pictures and say, "That's like the picture that hangs over there..." while looking towards the photo on the wall then suddenly noticing that it wasn't just a painting of some cute little boys, but a photograph of her actual grandsons.  Well... it went almost like that.  She said what we thought she'd say and she looked where we thought she would look, but she really only looked in the general direction and didn't really look.  So this is how it went down.

1.  "Oh... cute.  You boys are so cute... this looks just like that picture over there..."

2.  "Uh... Grandma... I was thinking to tell you to look over there..." and he repeated that a couple times and then the whole room had to prod her to really look.

3.  "Oh yeah!  I see it now!"

4.  Then we all had a good laugh.

(I'll have to do a whole post just on that fun little photo session we had back in August.  I'll do that right after I blog about our recent vacation.)

This photo was taken at Great Grandma Stratton's.  These teenagers are too funny.  They all took a little afternoon nap in the middle of all the noise and chaos at Grandma's house.

Then we went to Grandma & Grandpa Tom's house.  

The boys got some fun Play-Doh toys that they love so much!

I have to post this pic for posterity.  First of all, notice the wooden rocking chairs.  Grandma & Grandpa have made these for most all of their grandkids and great grandkids.  Brigham was loving his.  And secondly, take note of all the decorations.  I am sure there are only a few special people in this world that decorate for Christmas the way Grandma Tom does.  And this is just a tiny portion... just what was in the background of this photo.  I'm pretty sure this picture shows more decorations than I have in my whole house for every holiday of the year.  This is something we love about Grandma.  She really goes all out.

Christmas Part 2

Once we got home from church on Christmas we got some time to open the rest of our gifts.  

I love sitting back and watching all of their reactions and capturing some of them on camera.  

Kids bring so much magic to the holidays.  I love it.

Marshall got a new backpack!!!  (His other one was falling apart it had been so well loved.)

Looks like he approved of the characters on the front...

And Tyler got a backpack too!  He was so excited about it.  

He immediately put it on and wore it the rest of the morning.

He asked right away if he was going to go to school now.  We remind him on an almost daily basis that his birthday needs to come before he can go to school.  It's fun that my kids love school like I used to.

Daddy picked out these awesome Transformers masks.  They match the costumes we have too!  

I'm sensing Halloween costume inspiration...

The boys helped Daddy buy all of my gifts in one night from one single store found here in Hurricane.  We know that because they were all wrapped and delivered under the tree the same night I was hosting Bunco.  My pals thought it was funny that Colby got all the shopping done the way he did.  But I was surprisingly pleased!  I got a food processor and some other cool kitchen things that I've been wanting.

That race track was played with non stop that day.  Tyler was racing a dinosaur down it right here.

The boys and their loot.  We sure love them.