Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! There were a lot of really fun activities we did this year, so here's a little recap.

Christmas all began with finding our Christmas tree. Although I can see the logic in getting an artificial tree, I just can't do it. The Christmas season isn't quite right without first searching through a Christmas tree lot in the cold brisk air looking for that perfect tree. And we found a good one this year. It was around nice and tall, about nine feet and fit perfectly in our front window. It was also a good price. I thought for sure they had priced it wrong.
Madeleine got to help decorate it for the first time and she did a pretty good job. The only problem was that after we let her touch the ornaments, we spent the rest of December trying to keep her away from them.

I was really excited to be able to put lights on our house for the first time. Matt wasn't as excited, but after being bugged about it for awhile he finally made the venture on top of the roof. He was rather nervous about the whole thing and I didn't get nervous until I looked outside and saw the shadow of him on the roof and actually thought about the possible dangers. At that point I didn't care if the light looked good, I just wanted him to hurry and be done. In the end no one fell of the roof and I think our house looked pretty good for the first time hanging lights. My favorite part was our Christmas tree lit up in the center of our front window. Now the funny thing about all of this is that three days before Christmas our lights stopped working. Oh well. Our house looked festive for a few weeks.


Amongst all of our holiday fun, Madeleine has discovered a love for snow. She doesn't seem to care how cold she gets, she just wants to play in it for as long as she can. One Saturday, as Matt was shoveling snow, they decided to build a snowman with some neighbor kids. And in order for it to be a proper snowman it needed all the fixin's. So a cute neighbor girl went door to door for the carrot nose, used rocks from her huge "rock collection", got a hat from her mom and the best part are the hangers for the arms, an idea thought up by this girl's mom. It was one good looking snowman, the best on the street from those made that day.

This Christmas we also did the traditional activities. We went and saw Santa Claus at the Davis County Rec Center. He made his entrance by being part of the Bountiful light parade. The parade consisted of vehicles decorated in Christmas lights. My favorite was a little VW bug with those light-up reindeer attached to the front, lit up presents on the top of the car, and santa driving. I wish I had taken a picture. It was a fun, short parade. Then we saw Santa and Madeleine did great. She spent the entire time pointing out her sister to Santa, but she seemed to like him. We asked her what she was going to ask Santa for and she said a new car. We're in trouble already.

Madeleine also got to participate in my family party nativity as an angel. She was by far the youngest kid involved. Because of that she was quite the irreverant angel. She spent a lot of the time walking around the front, taking off her shoes, hitting her shoes against the wall and various other things. At the end she finally stood there next to the other angel and held her hand. I don't think the other angel wanted to hold Madeleine's hand, but she let her anyway.

Christmas has been so much fun this year. Madeleine has gotten so excited about it. She spent the entire month saying, "Santa Claus coming to Madeleine's house. Bring Madeleine presents." She also learned Santa Claus is coming to Town and was always singing it. She also got really good at pointing out baby Jesus and could name Mary and Joseph. It got me more excited for Christmas than I have been in a long time. Christmas morning she really didn't get it, but was excited to see the presents and to open presents all day long. You know I think Tori was actually the most excited for Christmas morning. She was the first one up and stayed awake the entire morning of opening presents. Madeleine got some needed toys like a doll house and table and chairs and food for her kitchen and yes, she got her new car. A pink Barbie beach convertible. Tori just got boring things like socks in her stocking and baby toys. Matt got a new suit for Christmas and I got a lot of new clothes. We had a lot of fun with our families Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

We spent the rest of our holidays relaxing, sleeping in and hanging out with family. Matt actually started the finishing of our basement family room! Yay! And New Year's was the quietest we've had. We played games with friends, who left before midnight. Yep, we're quite the party animals! So it's been a fun month and Christmas is just going to get better from here on out as Madeleine gets more and more excited for it. So Happy Holidays, and I'll leave you with a picture of our Christmas morning mess. Yes, that's Tori all by herself asleep amidst the chaos. Looks comfy, doesn't it?