You Better Watch Out...

You better not cry...You better not pout....I'm telling you why - SANTA CLAUS is coming to town!!!

OK...so I know that Santa has come and gone, but I had to post our pictures from visiting Santa. I have to say, the "Santa is watching" threat worked REALLY well at our house this year! Logan was so worried about Santa deciding to leave his presents at the North Pole, it usually worked like a charm to fix whatever problems we were having! Sometimes, it did take a phone call to the North Pole or a text message, but most of the time, just the threat worked great!!!
We wrote our letters to Santa pretty early so Santa wouldn't have any surprise last second requests. Logan did a great job. Here is what he wrote:
Dear Santa:
I am a good boy. I want 3 things.
1- Eva (from the Wall-E movie)
2- Race Car Track
3 - Mater
Dad wants a beanie and Rylee wants a kitchen and Mom wants a dress.

He wrote his letter himself and just told us what he was writing as he did it, so I wrote it all down. He even "signed" his name himself too. He was pretty funny about his 3 things! Anytime anyone asked him what he wanted for Christmas, he rattled off his list of three really fast. He was VERY specific about the Mater he wanted too. He had to be blue (the new Mater) and from ToysRUs since that is where he saw it and had to say things. He was also funny choosing things that the rest of us wanted, too. He chose a beanie for Darren because that is what he bought for him and I have no idea why he chose a dress for me! (I must not have been good though because I didn't get it...) He was REALLY excited to meet Santa and tell him his list in person, so we went a few days before Christmas. We went to the Cache Valley Mall, which is a great place to see Santa because NO ONE is ever there! The kids waiting for their turn to see Santa - They were pretty excited!Logan climbed right on Santa's lap and was pretty funny. Santa asked him what he helped his mom with and he said "EVERYTHING" and rolled his eyes. It was pretty funny! Then Santa asked what he wanted and Logan spit out his list pretty quick.... "An Eva, a race car track and a Mater, please" At least he said please!
Logan and SantaRylee wanted nothing to do with sitting on Santa's lap. I wish I could have gotten the picture of her crying with a death grip on Darren, but I wasn't quick enough! She was fine to smile as long as she knew Darren was going to hold her. She kept saying "see Santa!" after and I would ask if she wanted to sit on his lap and the answer was always NO!!! Maybe next year...

Christmas Activities

We have had so much fun doing lots of little Christmas activities throughout this month. We have so many traditions that I like to do, but it seems hard to fit them all in with all the other holiday stuff going on! We managed to get around to most of it though. It has been so fun with the kids being a little older and actually getting excited about things this year. There are A LOT of pictures....sorry! I was going to do these post separately but I decided to just put it all together.

We always love to go see lights during Christmas time. We actually put up outdoor lights at our house this year and were SO excited about it! It wasn't a lot, but it was fun! We didn't go see as many lights this year as we have in the past, but we did go see some really fun ones in Preston. One night, we picked Darren up after work and drove to Preston (about 25 minutes) to see this house we had read about in the paper. It was a HUGE yard and was decorated so neat!
The yard all lit up - The pictures do not really capture how many lights there were and how BIG it was!

The yard was HUGE and was filled with wood cutouts from lots of different Disney movies! There were SO many - Probably close to a hundred! The kids loved seeing all their favorite characters. There were ones from Toy Story, Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan, Cars, Monsters, Pinocchio, Shrek, and lots of Mickey and friends. They also had a really large Nativity. They had music playing and lights everywhere! It was so fun we had to drive through twice!

This was Logan's favorite one - The Cars one! It was motorized and the little cars drove by on the top. Logan thought it was so funny!
Here is Logan after licking the beaters one night after I made brownies for a party - He loves helping in the kitchen...especially if it involves licking the beaters!!!We also made a Gingerbread house. It turned into a much bigger project than we expected and was a 2 day thing. After we started it, we learned that the frosting had to set for 2 hours, then add the roof and let it set for a few more hours. By then, Darren had to go to work, so we had to make the kids wait until the next day to decorate it. Ry's favorite part of any project usually involves eating and she sure liked the frosting!!!The next day, we finally got to decorate it and the kids loved this part! The frosting was still the favorite part and both kids kept licking it off the house and eating it! Logan would take a big swipe with his fingers and claim he was "cleaning" it! I am not sure what is going on with this face. I think that she is trying to eat some of the candy and it is really hard....The kids finally got the idea of putting the candy ON the house instead of just eating it and had a lot of fun decorating.Ry even got into it and kept saying "helping" and adding MORE and MORE candy to the house! She liked to dump it on by the handful!Logan and Rylee with the finished house! It is now hiding way up on top of our TV hutch because I knew they would make a mess if it was within reach!Our house! When we started out, I had aspirations of making a house JUST like the one on the box. As you can see.....That did NOT happen! But our house has lots of Character!!! Our frosting was a bit of a mess - It got SO hard after sitting until the second day, so Darren added a little water and then it was so runny. It made good icicles though. You can easily see all of Logan and Rylee's little additions, so that makes it special I guess. I was thinking that it looked pretty ghetto until I saw my friend, Annie's house and then I felt much better! (haha - sorry Annie!!!)Darren will probably not be thrilled that I posted this, but oh well! I am not really Martha Stewart material and don't make a whole lot of home baked goods, even around the holidays. I think he felt bad for himself about that, and he got the itch to make some chocolates one night so he did. All from scratch! They were SO delicious and really got me into the Christmas mood - and added 5 lbs to my waist! He can be quite domestic when he wants to be!

Another day, me and the kids made these fun little snowmen from a little kit of foam pieces. It was fun and they got to put on little pieces like the nose and the eyes and a hat and scarf. They LOVED it and were so proud of their creations and were especially excited about using glitter! I love watching them work on stuff and looking so concentrated!

Here they are with their finished snowmen - They were so excited about them and couldn't wait to show Dad when he got home!

We got a TON of snow right before Christmas and one night went to our good friends, Robb and Carlie's for sledding, pizza and hot chocolate. Robb built a little sledding hill off their deck and it was perfect for the kids. They were not in the outdoors mood though and did not last too long.
Logan wasn't too happy to go down on the sled - He was a little nervous about it and Darren had to forcibly hold him in the sled... kind of funny!
Logan trying to escape!He had fun once they got to the bottom...Rylee lasted all of about 5 minutes! She went down on the sled once and said "fun" but then started saying "House, House" and whined until we finally took her inside!Rylee begging to go in the house! I think she was ready for Pizza.Logan making some snow angels. He lasted longer than Rylee and had fun with Dad, Robb and Olivia. Poor Ethan came in with Rylee since he did a face plant out of the sled and into the snow! These pictures didn't turn out as good as I hoped - I was late for church already and made the kids take a quick picture in their Christmas outfits. You can kind of get the idea, but the lighting is really bad! Rylee's skirt was so cute, but you can't really see it in the picture...

On the 22nd, we went to watch the Aggies Vs the Utes. The Aggies came away with a really exciting last second victory and it was a really fun game! Logan LOVES to do the Scotsman!!! Isn't he the cutest Aggie fan??Nothing says Christmas like Big Blue in a Santa Suit! I was sad that Rylee wouldn't get in the picture, too, but she didn't want anything to do with him! Logan loved it - especially when Big Blue gave him a Candy Cane!

We also made some sugar cookies. Logan was VERY concerned that we have cookies for Santa, so I decided I would let him make some for him. This also turned into a 2 day project. We had a few friends over to make cookies and while I was switching them in and out of the oven, I grabbed the wrong cookie sheet and burned 3 of my fingers. I have burned myself before, but NOTHING like this! It hurt for hours! It was the night we went to the game, and I had to keep my hand in a glass of ice the whole time. Darren made fun of me, but I was in too much pain to care if I looked like a nerd! I was even considering having him shoot me up with some Novocaine!!! The next morning, my hand was fine and we finished by frosting them. The things we do for our kids and cookies for Santa!!!

More frosting definitely made its way to Rylee's mouth than the cookies! I would tell her to put it on the cookies, and she would shake her head and say, "No, eat it!"

Logan actually did pretty good spreading the frosting on and especially LOVED adding the sprinkles to the cookies.

To be honest, the cookies were not that good! I hope Santa didn't mind. Darren wanted to take some to the nieghbors, but I said no way. The kids had licked every one of them and they were pretty gross. The kids had lots of fun making and eating them though. Maybe next year they will work out a little better!

SNOW much fun!

My kids were SO excited about the first snowfall!!! They have been waiting forever to try out their snowpants and build a snowman and Logan was SO excited to have a real snowball fight! We woke up to snow on December 8th - It wasn't a lot, but was enough to cover the ground and get the kids excited and was great packing snow, so it was perfect for playing in! I thought the kids would last about 5 minutes out in the snow and want to come in. They are not really cold weather kids after being spoiled in Vegas, but the stayed out for over a half an hour and we had to make them come in and bribe them with hot chocolate! We had "snow" much fun! Rylee looked so cute all bundled up in her snowclothes! She could barely walk but she didn't seem to mind.It was so hard to get a picture of Logan because he was all over the place! He LOVED the snow and made great snow angels and loved hitting me and Darren with snowballs!Rylee liked eating the snow! She would just eat mouthful after mouthful off of her gloves the whole time we were out there! Her mouth was always full of snow and she looked so funny. I tried to get a picture of Logan doing snow angels, but he was too fast for me, so I tried to get one of he and Ry together, but they weren't too happy about it...Logan, Darren and Rylee - They stopped their snowball fight long enough for a picture! It was one of Darren's late work days, so he was able to play with us, which made it even more fun!Building a (little) snowman! Logan had just seen Frosty, so once the snowman was built, Logan immediately gave him his hat (so cute!) and some stick arms. He didn't seem to care about the face...just the hat, since that is what made Frosty come to life! He also wanted to put a snowball in his arm to throw - He is so funny sometimes! I tried to get a cute picture of both kids with the snowman, but Logan was off building his Wall-E snowman. (I didn't get a picture of that because Logan used it his game of snow bowling and it didn't stand very long...) Anyway, Rylee is always up for taking pictures, and posed with the snowman so cute!!! She is a cheese!