Celebrating the Holidays

What better way to celebrate the holidays than with parties! We had a few really fun Christmas parties this year. We missed our ward party, but Darren and I went to 2 different dinners in the same week at the same place that were delicious! One was for the local Dentist Association chapter. Darren and I hate those kind of things, where we don't know anyone! But it was free dinner and helped Darren get to know some of the other dentists. We also had another dinner for Darren's office that was a lot of fun and Avery came along and was the hit of the party! Everyone loved her and passed her around the table.
Our favorite parties were our fun family Christmas parties. We decided this year my family needed to start having a party to get us all together since 3 of us are now married and have different plans on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and it is hard to all get together. We had a dinner and get together at my parent's house on December 17th. Here are Avery and Ethan - the cute babies! We have to get a picture of them everytime we get together! Avery is about a week away from 3 months and Ethan is about 3 1/2 months, but I'm pretty sure she is bigger!

Aren't they cute? Someday maybe they will actually cooperate for one of these pictures!

Rylee and Logan ready for dinner. It was delicious!!! Shrimp, salads, yummy crab dip...Lots of food! You have to have that at a party, right?

After dinner, we attempted sugar cookies, but it ended up being just me and my kids. No one else was too interested. Logan and Rylee loved cutting out lots of different shapes.

My mom also got stuff to make these funny melted snowmen. They are made out of donut holes and white chocolate. The kids had a great time making these, including the big kids!

Rylee showing Dad her melted snowman. She is a bit of a crazy girl, if you can't tell!

Me and Logan with our melted snowman - Logan ate his hat right as we took the picture, the little stinker! He just leaned over and bit it off the plate as we were posing for the picture, which is why his mouth is stuffed with chocolate.

My baby brother Kyle and his snowman. He is getting so big!!! He is such a funny kid with his holiday tie that he had to wear to the party. It played a Christmas song and he was quite proud of it.

Rylee loves to entertain the babies and is so sweet with little Ethan.

Rylee playing with one of Grandma's many "activities". I don't know why, but that is what she calls nativities and they are her favorite thing to play with at Grandma's. My mom has several child friendly sets that Rylee likes to play with and rearrange. Of couse, she also managed to break the baby Jesus to the one set she wasn't supposed to play with! She was at my mom's when she was putting them away and she was SO mad at her for putting away the nativities.

My kids played with all of our sets, too and I am sad that I never got a picture because they were so cute with them. They would always arrange all the people around Jesus, just like I think it should be! They were always in a little circle and a lot of the time, Rylee would tell me they were "blessing" Jesus. I think that comes from Avery's blessing that we just had. My sister-in-law Laura is also such a good sport to go along with all of Rylee's requests! She plays with her so cute and Rylee can be quite demanding!

This is the delicious dessert that I made (with Darren's help). It was AMAZING! It was a Triple Fudge Peppermint Trifle I saw on Good Things Utah (my new fav show) and had to make. It had a layers of white chocolate peppermint mousse, brownies, chocolate pudding and hot fudge sauce and was topped with whipped cream and peppermint! My new favorite dessert!!!

Don't they look thrilled to be there? The 3 amigos....or stooges....My brother Jeff, Darren and my brother Brad.

At least Logan is excited for the present game! I think he opened our presents 3 or 4 times before the party. For our white elephant exchange, we played a game where we each picked a present and then my mom read a variation of the "Night Before Christmas" poem and every time it said Right or Left we passed the present that direction. It was fun and took away the drama of fighting over gifts. However, we ended up taking home the ugly elf salt and pepper shakers I couldn't WAIT to get rid of!!! We also came away with LOTS of candy and a sweet disco ball box!

Laura reading to Rylee - Rylee keeps her pretty busy!

Cute Avery! She had lots of fun, too!

I am so glad that we started a little party for my family. Now that everyone is getting so busy and more of us live away from home it is hard to get us all together very often, so it was great to see everyone and start a new tradition. We didn't get to see Heather and Jay and Dean and Laura very long on Christmas Eve and not at all on Christmas Day, so it was good that we got together before and had a fun night! More parties to come!!!