Gingerbread Houses and More Birthdays

For a fun Christmasy activity in December the kids made and decorated graham cracker gingerbread  houses.  I got the kids each a gummy Christmas tree.  Quinn's tree didn't ever make it to his house. :)

Parker ended up a little stressed out because his house kept falling apart when he put his candy on, but we finally got it to stay together.

Isaac with his finished house:

Bryce with his:

As you can see, there wasn't much candy left on Quinn's by the time we got a picture. :)

Poor Parker finally got his house to stay together.  At least long enough to get a picture.

Josh's nephew and niece had their 18th and 16th birthdays in December, so their mom (J's sister) threw them a big surprise party.  She is friends with the owner/founder of the Waffle Love Truck, so she hired them to come to the party and everyone got waffles! So yummy! It was a fun party and Kekoa and Ivey had a fun surprise and fun night with their family and friends. :)

This year on the 22nd, Isaac turned 10 years old!  That means I've been a mom for a whole DECADE now! Wow!  As usual, he opened his presents in the morning.

He got a new lego set, Avengers the movie, the video game Minecraft, a nerf blow gun and a snow brick mold.

He got his Lego set put together really fast!

This year Isaac got to have a birthday party with his friends.  He decided he wanted to have his party at Nickel Mania.  I hadn't ever had a party at that sort of place, but it ended up working out well and everyone had lots of fun.

They supposedly have Utah's largest collection of pinball machines.  Josh had fun with those!

After everyone played for awhile, they had cupcakes.  I made Captain America cupcakes.

Then Isaac opened his presents from his friends.  He got some really neat gifts.

After we got home from Isaac's party, I made his birthday dinner.  He had been dying to have some coconut shrimp (one of his favorite foods), so that's what he got for his birthday!

Isaac's cake this year was also a Captain America shield.  You can tell what he's into lately! :)

December Performances & a Birthday

The first week in December, Parker had his very first piano recital.  He did such a great job!  He performed "When I am Baptized" (the same song he performed at his baptism), and "Jingle Bells".  It was so fun to see him perform.  He has such an amazing ear for music.  He will come home and play by ear a song that he heard once at school or on the radio.  It just amazes me!  

The day before Bryce's birthday, we took him to Chuck E. Cheese's to celebrate.  

All ready with their tokens to go play! 

Bryce and Quinn had so much fun riding on all the little rides.

Quinn learned really fast that putting a token in the slot made the ride go!

After playing for awhile, we took a break to have some pizza!

Bryce has been eating really well and he loves pizza.

Josh borrowed a few tokens to play some basketball!  He's good! :)

On Bryce's actual birthday he woke up to open presents!  I don't know why I didn't get any pictures of his gifts after he opened them, but he got a really fun wii game with the Nickelodeon characters, some wooden Jake and the Neverland Pirates puzzles, and thats all I can remember at the moment! 

All dressed up on his birthday and ready for church.

 After church we had Bryce's birthday dinner.  Lots of Bryce's favorites,

fish, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and corn.  So happy to see Bryce 

eating so well.

This year Bryce had a Mickey Mouse cake.  He turned 7 years old.

(black frosting is NOT my favorite - so messy, yuck, but worth it to see Bryce's smile)

On day I found Captain America reading a book on our couch! :-)

 

Josh's choir (Spanish Fork Chorale) did a Christmas performance.  They did such a great job and sang some really fun songs this year!  Trying to keep Bryce and Quinn quiet through the performance was quite challenging, but luckily the other choir members just thought they were cute and didn't mind the extra noise.  It was funny because Bryce and Quinn both love one of Josh's choir songs from previous performances - the Halleluja Chorus and each of them started belting it out in the middle of the performance.  Haha!  For one of the songs, Josh performed in a quartet.  They did a great job singing "We Three Kings".  

A Tree and a Temple - December 2012

The first day of December fell on a Saturday.  We spent part of the day putting up our Christmas tree.  It was huge this year!  It ended up being my favorite tree that we've had yet.  After Josh cut part of the bottom off, it was still 13 1/2 feet tall!  We actually used a piece of twine to tether it to the banister "just-in-case".  : )

Josh and I put the lights on.  It was kind of hard to do on the upper part of the tree because it was so big to reach around, but we got them all on.

The kids had fun putting the ornaments on.  Quinn really got into it.  He also had fun taking them back off through the month. ;)  The whole bottom section ended up pretty bare at times.

And then came the star...

 

That afternoon we got ready and headed up to Salt Lake to see the lights at Temple Square.  It was such a nice evening.  It wasn't cold and we were able to walk around and see the lights without freezing.  We stopped and listened to a choir singing in the Assembly Hall for a bit and we walked across the street to City Creek Center to have some dinner.   We even ended up running into my aunt and uncle who were up there to see the lights too. :)  Such a fun day!