Omi and Sohpies birthday

Oh, before the birthday fun, I had to share this sweet picture of my girls. The air mattress they slept on had a leak in it (Burke fixed it now - but I'm glad it was there so I could capture their sweetness) so in the morning I went in the room and found them like this. I just love their sweet little sleeping faces.

My mom and my niece, Sophie, share a birthday and Kaiya's is in January. So since we're down for Christmas break, we head out for breakfast with Omi, Robyn I and the two girls. We went to IHOP's. Sophie had her new MP3 player, so they had to rock out to Taylor Swift while we waited.
We just smile while we wait.
A lady makes balloons for kids while they wait also. CUTE!
That evening we ALL -minus Randy, Riley, Reagan and Arik - went to dinner in Jordan Landing at a Mexican Restaurant there. The kids played outside while they got our tables ready.

I had to take a picture of all of us down the line of tables - 23 of us there!!! It was so fun.

Ryan and Erin MUST be married - they didn't even plan this, they're just naturally dorky - Haha!

Um... I wish this was in focus, but hey even out of focus - aren't they just too cute!?!!! Tiff and Oakley - the rest of their little family were far away, we missed them. Next time!

After we ate we went to my moms house and had cake and ice cream. I made a lemon bunt cake my mom likes and then one of her friends brought over a chocolate one - I'm so glad - there was plenty for everyone! Ryan waiting for the birthday girls to come over and blow out those candles.
Yay!!! Happy birthday ladies!!!

Grandparent gifts

We always get such nice things from the Grandparents.

Grandpa and Grandma Simmons gave the kids new church clothes. Kaleb's tie is a real tying one - no more clip ons! Burke has to do it of course. It's so cute to watch. I took these just before we headed out to Robyn's church. They had to test out their remote control cars really quick. :)

The girls dresses are just beautiful! Katelin is making her doll wave to us.

From Grandma and Grandpa Ottley, the girls got Tinkerbell dolls and Kaleb got the Toy Story 2 movie he's wanted.
From Omi and Opa the girls got these cute dolls they take everywhere (like in the pictures above) and Kaleb got his remote control truck. Him and Burke have some fun races. Mostly Burke just runs over Kaleb's, but it's entertaining to watch. And I love it when the girls ask me to do their dolls hair also. I'm having fun with them too and they love it when they have the same hair-do as their doll. SO. MUCH. FUN!


THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

Our Magical Christmas morning

This was our very first Christmas we've stayed home and opened Christmas presents at our own house! It was WONDERFUL!!!

A few of the favorites:

Kaleb was the only one who actually opened up his sleeping bag and checked it all out, what a sweetie. He really loved it. They all loved sleeping in them at my moms house, I'm so happy!

I surprised Burke with this remote control Jeep he's wanted. I totally fooled him, it was great. I NEVER am able to pull it off. Whew! That was worth it. Look at that happy face.

Burke surprised me with Mario Cart for the Wii. I'm not a huge Wii player, but I've always wanted to play that game, it is fun. I also got a couple of shirts and some music, I love it!

Let the playing begin!!! :)

PJ's and rockin' out

We kept the PJ tradition alive this year. They opened them Christmas Eve. They felt the presents all week and told us they knew that they were clothes. BUT they didn't know what kind of clothes. Hahehahehehehe!!!! So it was cute when they were actually surprised when they opened them. I love that they get excited about new pj's. So cute.

And this has nothing to do with pj's, but I had to put it on also. During the day Burke and Kaleb were playing Beatles Rock band. Burke was on guitar and Kaleb singing. He got his reading time in doing this for sure! It was so cute hearing Kaleb sing Yellow Submarine and many others. The kids just love singing that every once in a while - they'll just break out into song. I love it.

Burke would sing along with Kaleb too. They make a great little duo.

Gift giving

I really love looking at all of the fun gift ideas over the holidays. This year this one stood out to me and I just had to make some. These two I put quotes on it and then they can be replaced with a picture or even used in the kitchen to hold recipes while your cooking! I need to make myself one. I always dirty up my papers while I'm cooking. I found the tutorial HERE. She made hers a lot bigger than mine though. Burke cut the edges all nice for me. All of the things to put them together were found at different stores - that was a bit of a pain, but still fun in the end. One suggestion I would add to her tutorial though is to paint a quick coat of primer paint first - nothing amazing - just a quick coat, let dry and then spray paint it. The wood just drank my spray paint right up, it would have taken like 10 cans to coat that thing without the primer. Then, instead of needing to sand it and stain it, I just used my dark brown stamp pad and rubbed it on the edges. I saw this tip somewhere and it gives it that look without having to stain the whole thing if you don't want it all stained. For my mom and sister's birthday's I glued a picture onto it with a piece of scrapbook paper behind it. They turned out cute too - I forgot to take a picture of those. Anyway, this was a fun project this year.

The building of the candy houses

We did our Gingerbread houses (graham cracker houses) on the 23d. Burke made some good glue frosting, it worked great as usual.

Kaleb hard at work. He always wants his to be great like his dads. So he works hard, gets frustrated, Burke helps him and then works hard a little longer, and then he's done.

The candy line up.
Katelin's cute little house and silly smile. She is so funny with the camera.
My dog house.
When the girls were done, Kaiya took her turn opening up one of the kids games we got them. We opened up one per kid for the three days before Christmas. We had a lot of fun playing them together. I think we'll have to do this each year and open their games before Christmas for some good ol' family fun.
Burke's final creation. I don't know how he has the patience, but he does and he's always the last one building and building. It's fun to watch him.

Sibling Party

This is our first year doing a sibling Christmas party. Everyone made it except Tiffany's family. She was asked to sing in her ward, which I'm glad she got to do, but we missed them! Hopefully we can do it again next year and they can come. Burke and Kaiya had to stay at my mom's house because we found out that morning that Kaiya had strep throat! Poor thing. She was a good sport about missing all the fun. Burke and her made up for it by renting a lot of fun movies.

We started with dinner. There was soups, rolls, little hot dog things in sauce, dip and crackers, lots of German goodies we had growing up at Oma's for Christmas parties. Ryan and Erin got those goodies - it was fun to bite into them and remember Oma. It's amazing what food can do! I thought the kids looked so cute eating together and had to take a picture. Jordan said "We're just eating, it's not necessary to take a picture of us now!" I thought that was really funny, because it does seem silly, but when he's grown he'll understand. :)

Erin borrowed a cute little box of Frankincense and Myrrh that her friend had to show the kids what it looked like. They all crowed around and looked.

Erin found this cute idea to make reindeer cupcakes. They turned out so cute and the kids really loved making them.

Katelin wasn't patient enough to make the reindeer and then eat it though. So she frosted it and then just dug in.

Jordan is doing a great impersonation of his reindeer - Hahaha, this picture just makes me laugh.



When we were done decorating Quentin and Kaleb decided to eat theirs with their faces instead of using their hands. We thought Q looked a lot like his dad with his new goatee. Ha!!!!!!
Ewe.
I brought The Nativity Song on a CD and the kids came in when it was their part. It turned out really cute. The kids were really good about participating. Except for Katelin. Yah, I guess she was just doing her own thing this whole night. Oh well.
My siblings and I played the Left - Right game with our family gifts and then our kids opened them. I just loved hanging out with everyone and the kids did too. I'm so grateful for my family.