Christmas Day Part 1

This Christmas Day was so different from any other year!  We made all the kids wait downstairs where they all slept until we were ready.  It was torture, but hey, it's a part of a parent's job, haha.  This is the Santa loot before it got raided:

Pure joy!

 Tayevion with his train car and flashlight.

Jasmine and the Repunzul dress!

So after seeing what Santa brought, we had an intermission to have breakfast.  This is not something we normally do.  With our small family, we usually jump from Santa gifts to the rest.  But we soon found out why it is best to wait when you have this many people!  If we hadn't done it this way, we wouldn't have eaten breakfast until lunchtime!

Here are the kids playing Wii and the grownups making breakfast.  We had egg burritos and fresh fruit.

And then the opening resumes!

 It was funny to see Taye get so excited about his little dinosaurs I found at the thrift store!  I think it was his favorite present.

And then Taye decided to help his cousin open her presents!

My two cute nieces got the same book, so much fun!!

Christmas Eve Part Two

At the end of the trip (well it felt like I was on vacation too), we all put our pictures from the entire holiday and put them on one computer so we could share them.  This was so nice, so that if we didn't have our camera for a certain occasion, we could still have those pictures.  Anyway...I was browsing those pictures and found these other ones from Christmas Eve and couldn't resist posting them.  I was still using my old camara at this time because I got a new one on Christmas Day (yay!!) and these are all much better quality pictures.

I love Taye peeking out from behind on this one below.

My niece Kailee made these matching flower clips for all of the girls to wear on Christmas Eve!  It was such a nice gesture, and we all got to match.  This is my sister in law Cat and my two cute nieces.

And the kids also did this fun dance as part of the program.  It was awesome because ALL of the cousins participated, and this is where everyone first got a glimpse of Tayevion's dance moves. 

He loved the attention!

It was so fun to see my 18 year old nephew Alex participating in the dancing.  He is was not too cool to join in.  Love that!

And here's a couple of overhead views of the crazy opening of presents!

How can I express how wonderful it was to have everyone together? I can't, it was just beyond happiness.

Here's Jonas, up to his sillyness as usual--he reminds me of my dad how he lets us take pictures of him posing in funny ways.  I think he is doing the "wrapping paper recycle" dance here.



Sibling Bonding and other Christmas Eve Events

All of my siblings were here for Christmas!!!  And the siblings in laws and the cousins all together for the Holidays for the first time in a LONG time.  The only person who was missing was one sister in law due to divorce, and that was very sad.  We missed you R! 

Well, of course I was pretty proud of myself for initiating some sibling bonding.   So on Christmas Eve my sister and two brothers and I went out to have a bite and bond.  It was funny because in the middle of eating I announced "okay so the reason I called this meeting...".  Everyone looked up at me like "I knew it!" but then I said "just kidding!".  So we talked.  And we laughed.  And we got closer.  And we realized that we couldn't even remember the last time the four of us were out together.  So nice.  And I can't believe that in all of the days that we were together, we never once took a picture of only the four of us together.  Unless someone else got one but we all shared pictures so I don't think so.

Okay wait here is one picture that we took while we were out.  It's of my brother Derick since we sat next to each other.  The enders, because he's the oldest and I'm the youngest. (we even have a dance)

Every year the kids do a nativity.  It was especially fantastic this year because all the cousins were together.

Next came eating Guatemalan Paches but somehow I don't have any pictures of that either.  That's another big tradition of ours.  Then we got started with the madness, er--I mean opening presents.

This year Shayden made "God's Eye's" for each of the cousins.  He learned how to make them in Spanish class.  And Jasmine made picture frames, but they are not pictured.

Every year we celebrate Christmas Eve at my sisters home and then we go home late at night to wait for Santa.  But this year was different.  This year every single other cousin was going to be waking up together on Christmas morning.  So how could we deny our kids that super important pleasure?  So we decided to spend the night and wake up there on Christmas morning!  Jasmine wanted Jonas to go on the roof and leave a note for Santa that said "Closed.  Please go to cousins."  Haha!   Stay tuned for Christmas Day.

GNO and stalking David Archuleta!

My sister was picked in the lottery for tickets to see David Archuleta perform with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  What luck she has!  But then I got lucky because she gave one ticket to me!  It was me, my sis, my niece Kiki, and my other sis-in-law Cat. 

The concert was pretty good, but the best parts came after.

Seeing lot's of random santas wandering the streets,

Stalking David at Deseret Book,

And finally, enjoying some delicious dessert at the melting pot.  I have been wanting to go there forever and my wondeful sister in law treated us!

It was so fun to hang out with these fabulous ladies, we should do it more often!

Family Pictures

We had family pictures taken by the talented Kimmy at Photos by KW at the beginning of December.  It was our first time going "on location" somewhere and we chose Murray Park, just because it is close and has tons of variety.  These are some fun ones, and there will be more on my new blog that is coming!

This is the picture that was on our New Years card this year:

Radio City Music Spectacular featuring...The Rockettes!

Because of my blog My Kids' Eye View, I got the chance to buy tickets to see the Rockettes for a super sweet deal.  So I took my parents for their early Christmas present.

This is a show I have wanted to see for years!! Every year when we go to New York, I wish we could also go see them perform at the Rodio City Music Hall, but of course tickets are outrageous.  It's funny that the only year we didn't get to go to New York, we did get to go see the Rockettes perform!  It was the first time they have come here to Utah.

It was such a fun way to kick off the Holiday Season, and our seats turned out to be really good!

Plus my sister and her husband came with us, so we got to go on a triple date.  We went to Applebees before the show.

This funny picture was taken in front of the bathrooms after the show but I edited out the background on this website that I found.  funny :)