Christmas Day 2009

We had an enjoyable Christmas. My parents drove up from Phoenix this year and my brother was visiting from South American.

The kids are always able to open their stocking first thing Christmas morning and they are able to see their gifts from Santa because he does not wrap them at our house. Keaton was the first one up at 5:00am!!! Yes, you read that right! We go to church Christmas morning, so we got ready for the 9:00am Mass. Once we got home we had our Christmas breakfast then sat down to open gifts.

It was a very light Christmas this year. The kids each got one gift from Santa, little ones got two. Their gift from Mom and Dad was our drive to Disneyland in November! They also had a gift from Papa and Nana (my parents), their Uncle Norm and Uncle Heath and Aunt Julie (my brothers). Papa John and Grandma Lori sent each of the kids a gift too. They had a few gift cards to spend from Great Grandma and a Great Aunt.

I forgot to charge the camera battery so all the pictures are courtesy of my Mom!

Gavin and his DS game from Papa John

Keaton and Ava, with her chair and wooden fruit from Santa

Ava feeding her baby breakfast before church

Keaton and Mommy. He bought this for me from his schools Santa's workshop!

Ava getting a new shirt from Nana and Papa

Ava and Uncle Norm and the Winnie the Pooh book he got her!

Soren and the "Monster Hunter" game Papa John and Grandma Lori got him

Gavin and Power Miner L*gos from Nana and Papa

Keaton and the Wii game he wanted so bad from Papa John and Grandma Lori

Preston and Keaton with a Wii game that Uncle Heath and Aunt Julie bought the whole family to share

**I will be having my first GIVEAWAY on the blog in a couple days!!! Please check back and one lucky comment/person will win. This will be your chance to leave a comment so I can meet all the people that read my blog. I cant wait to share this gift with you! I will give you a hint, I have a hidden talent/hobby that I have never talked about on this blog! :-)

Making Sugar Cookies!! YUM!!

Well I got brave this year and spent the afternoon making sugar cookies with the kids. We actually had a lot of fun, even though the entire upper floor of our home was covered with sprinkles!!

Ava was so cute, her job was to put sprinkles on every cookie after Mommy put the icing on. Every time she would say "sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle" as she sprinkled the cookies.

The boys got quite creative as usual.

Soren "Mr. Detail"

Keaton enjoying his finished product

Soren

Gavin enjoying the peppermint sprinkles!!

YUMMY FUN!!!

Thank You Uncle Norm!!

My cool Uncle sent me this all the way from Italy for Christmas. It is a little big but it will be perfect next fall, he also sent a beautiful wool red coat to go with it.  Great taste and thanks for all our goodies they really mean a lot to us.  Especially the ones from the Vatican.  I will get a picture of the boys in the awesome shirts soon.

That is a stamp on her foot from Gym class, not dirt!

Our little school girl

Our Day trip to Focus on the Family

While Grandma Sherry was visiting over Christmas break we took a day trip to Focus on the Family.  Soren had been before but not the other kids.  It is a great place to go for the afternoon and the kids had a blast playing, doing a scavenger hunt, and checking out the book store.  Most of the pictures below are from the toddler play area and I think the older boys were having just as much fun. 

Playing in the boat

Look close I think a wild Indian got Soren!

Who is the toddler?

Helping sissy

Another picture, Mom?

Christmas Day

It was a beautiful Christmas Day, no white Christmas this year.  The kids really enjoyed their Christmas this year but we did miss not having Nana and Papa.  We did have Grandma Sherry with us this Christmas and that was nice.  She has never been to our new house since we moved.  The kids were excited for her to come visit for a couple of weeks, it had been almost two years since they had seen her! 

We also had some good friends come for Christmas Dinner and pie, they did not have family in town either so we enjoyed each others company.  They were are guinea pigs for dinner because I have never cook a turkey.  Thank goodness we had a back up ham because the turkey took way too long to cook!  We ate around 3:00pm and the turkey did not get done until after 6:00pm.  I will say the turkey did turn out good but we had it for dinner the next night.  My boys love potatoes especially mashed potatoes so we made 15 lbs of mashed potatoes!  We had 13 people for dinner that night and believe it or not all 15 lbs were gone!!  I would have to say my boys ate at least 10 pounds between the 4 of them.

Ava really enjoyed her first Christmas.  Her favorite gifts were her baby stroller from Santa and Legos from Mommy and Daddy.  She did have a couple of pretty good melt downs from all the craziness and took an early nap.  After sleeping a couple hours she dealt with the rest of the day and evening very well.  

All and all it was a great day, even with sugar energized kids!

Preston trying on his new hat knitted by Grandma Sherry

Soren enjoying his new pj's from Nana and Papa

Gavin excited about his real flight suit from Uncle Heath and Aunt Julie

Yaya in mid sneeze but excited about her gift

Keaton with his favorite playmobil set from Nana and Papa

One present Christmas Eve

Enjoy the pictures of the kids opening their Christmas Eve present.

Preston gets Iron Man movie

Boys and goofy faces!  Soren gets an ipod dock and alarm

Gavin and more Legos!

Keaton having fun with cars from Papa!

Yaya opening a lock puzzle

It's Christmas Eve

The kids energy level is so high right now!  It's Christmas Eve and our tradition is to open up one small present after dinner.  The boys are already asking if you can change it to now.  It is 8:50am so it will be a long day.  We decorated our tree about a week ago, it had been up for quite awhile but with Daddy's travel, school and sport activities we finally had a free night last week.  The kids love to look at all the ornament's and remember the story of each one.  Yaya was very curious with what was going on and loved to look and touch the tree and pretty lights.  She has done very well and has not bothered the tree.  The first picture below is a gift that was sent to from a gift exchange last Christmas online.  I dont know who the sender was but it is very special to me and will always remind me of our very long wait for our daughter/sister.

The older boys have talked us into going to midnight Mass tonight.  We have my husbands Mother here so we will put the two little ones to bed and head out about 11:00pm.  We usually get home around 2:00am finish a few stocking things then off to bed.  Then we only have a few hours of sleep.

What a special Christmas this will be having Ava here with us, it is still so hard to believe after three years of waiting.  I am so grateful for all of Gods blessings to my family and for the birth of his only son on Christmas Day!  May you all have a very blessed Christmas!!  Happy Birthday Jesus.

We pray for Ava's birth parents always!

  Hanging her first ornament!

Keaton helping with the ornaments

Soren hanging ornaments

Finding for our Christmas tree

We have a Christmas tree farm right down the street from our home.  So the first weekend in December went to find our tree.  There was a few inches of snow on the ground from a few days before but for the most part it was a beautiful day.  As you can see my boys dont understand that it is winter and decided to go out with shorts and no jackets.  The trees are not the prettiest trees but they will do.  After living in the Northwest for over 15 years we were used to the beautiful Noble furs, my very favorite!  Now we have to settle for a Pine and they are usually oddly shaped.  We still had fun hunting through the snow for the perfect tree.  The boys played hide and seek and Yaya has learned how to eat snow.  Darn it my pics are backwards and I dont feel like changing them around!

Christmas outfit sneak peek!

First of all I want to start by saying I do not normally let my boys wear Mohawks. They had CRAZY HAIR DAY at school last week and so they all decided they wanted to do Mohawks. So it took them an extra 30 minutes to get ready for school just messing with their hair.

I cant believe Thanksgiving is right around the corner and then Christmas! We are going to my Mom and Dads for Thanksgiving down to warm Arizona and I cant wait. My Dad has not met Ava yet so we are pretty excited about introducing her to Papa!

So after 4 boys I was so excited to shop for a Christmas outfit for Ava. It took a while but I found the perfect one and she looks stunning in it! I used the tutu we bought back from China and found this beautiful top from a friend that sells Gen Marie. I cant wait to find sweaters for the boys, they will all look so darn cute!