Day 30

Yesterday the kids and I decorated for Christmas

tada.....

the stockings

Ethan and Emma got in on the action of decorating the tree
...wow...they both look goofy! :)
(don't anyone take this the wrong way)
I'm very grateful that I get to spend this Christmas with these guys
just the 4 of us in our home on Christmas day...
I can't wait!
Merry Christmas season!!

Day 29

The Friend

we use it every Monday for FHE!

Day 28

Books

Books
And more books

I love children's books and I have them everywhere in my house.

I love getting more and when I am stumpped about what to get my kids for their birthday or Christmas, I get them a book!

Day 27

I went Christmas shopping today to

and I used this
(not really my card)
but in doing so, I got all my shopping done, all but a few things that I need to get next week and order online on my next credit card cycle, and because I used my credit card, I got 8 points for every dollar I spent in rewards!
I also had a few coupons to save me some moola and I will get 10% back in rewards to Toys R Us after Christmas!
It was a great shopping day!

Day 26

Emma's new footie jammies*

And that the footies don't bother her as much as I thought they would. (She hates socks and pulls them off as soon as she can-that's why she's barefoot most of the time!)

*She picked the pattern our herself. I picked one that was brown and pink with flowers and she insisted on the monkeys. They fit her personality better than the flowers, we think.

Day 25

(No picture here)

But I have a lot of memoires of my childhood Thanksgivings that have come back to me this week. I've been trying to share them with Ethan and tell him what I did when I was his age. I'm very grateful for the fun memories that I have from those years and here are a few:

*driving in the suburban to Howe, ID

*staying at my grandparents' house

*the smell of the farm

*the cold air in Howe

*seeing Julie

*playing "Stacey and Kristen"

*the homemade candy-carmels (I still make them every year for my own benefit), pinoch ("poo candy"), divinity, Grandma's suckers

*super Jell-o

*playing trick-or-treat up and down the stairs at Grandma's

*riding the calves after Thanksgiving dinner

*dipping the homemade carmels, and the other fillings that I didn't eat and when the carmels were gone but there was still more chocolate, we'd dump in nuts and marshmallows from the kitchen

*reading Archies and watching TV after dinner in the living room

*puttin gon all the clothes I packed, almost, piling in the truck beds with the hay and Grandma's blankets, and heading up the mountain for our Christmas tree hunt

*eating vanilla wafers and drinking hot chocolate around the fire on the hunt

*piling back in the truck to head home!

*telling ghost stories with Zane

*playing "I've never" with David

*having a lot of fun with my cousins

*one time, I actually cried leaving Howe!

*having so much fun and getting to make all these memories!!

Day 24

Ethan took part in the reading program at the Orem library this summer and one of his "prizes" was half off admission to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. Mike took this week off so we went.

I'm grateful that my kids enjoy reading as much as they do so we could have fun together as a family doing all these things!

Climbing through the tunnel

posing with Utahraptor
exploring all by herself

dressing up like dinosaurs

sitting on a dino

being fed to the shark

digging for dinosaur bones

more digging

still more digging and discovering what is used to dig

posing with the BYU dino

GO COUGARS!!