Cousin Sleepover...

The Bush family kids have all been wanting to do sleepovers so we divided them up with there cousins and sent a group to each house to sleepover. We all met at our house and divided the kids to the houses they were going to.  We had Cole's age group here at our house. I forgot to run down and get a picture of them. When I was taking pictures they had already started their party and were downstairs dancing to music and hanging out! Those party animals stayed up almost till 1am.

The older boys went to Creig and Mindy's house and Dailey and the girls went to Ben and Rachel's house. And Cole and that group stayed here!

Lucy came out with her backpack on and her pillow pet in hand but we were not sending her on the sleepover. But Ben took her down to there house and let her hang out for a bit! She loved it!!!

The next morning we all gathered at our church building and played basketball and brought breakfast foods and hung out. Than we exchanged all the kids back to their parents! 

Christmas Day...

We are so grateful for the birth of our Savior and for his example and that we can be together and enjoy this season as a family. We had such an amazing Christmas. We opened gifts and played at home for awhile with them and than we headed to both families and opened a few more gifts with them. It was such a nice day!

Christmas Eve...

We read and acted out the christmas story and than opened pajamas. This year I made the boys byu pajamas and the girls were a striped material. It was fun to make them. My Mom did the hard part with the elastic. I still have to learn how to do that.
We had a big Christmas dinner too!

Visit with Santa...

Our Visit with Santa and Mrs. Clause was so nice! The kids were so fun to watch and I loved hearing what they asked Santa for. Mrs. Clause had a hurt arm and santa said that one of the elf's left a toy out and she tripped on it and hurt her arm so he asked them to be careful when they got by her. Well Cole was listening and he said "Which Elf"? it made everyone laugh. He was worried that it was his elf that left out the toy. Dailey asked santa for nun chucks and santa asked her if she knew what those were and she said uuh. No.
It was so funny!

Cole's Captain of Character Award...

The last day before Christmas Break we got to go to an assembly for Cole. He was getting an award. It was the Captain's of Character award. The teacher nominates one student in the class who is doing the things they are working on. They do the seven habits of highly effective kids. Like: win, win.
The teacher wrote a nice paper about Cole and how he tries to talk about things first and how he is positive in the classroom and nice to those around him!

What Shall We Give?

This past Monday we planned a FHE with the Bush family. We wanted to do a little service the for the month of December. So I put together a little list of service acts or ideas that we could go do.
We asked everyone to come with ideas and some money that they wanted to give.
We met at my house and the kids drew christmas pictures and than we watched this video (below) and than loaded into cars and went to the care center that my parents served in when we were young. We got there and the kids went to the handicap children and handed out their pictures they colored and than gave each one a candy cane. We sang a few Christmas songs. We even saw some residents my parents new when they were there so long ago. Our kids were nervous at first but they warmed up to them. I wish I could have taken pictures! It was such a neat experience.

We loaded back into the cars and went to walmart. The kids gathered around the quarter machines and placed their own money in them and left it to make another child's day! They were really excited about that. Than the kids bought a few things to put in the big box out front to give to children in need.
A few of our families bought gift cards to go give to a shopper in the store. My parents found a couple and gave their gift card to them and they said thank you and than later they saw them again and the lady came up to my Mom and said I just want to give you a hug and said Thank you again!
I thought that was really neat!
Than Cole bought a twix candy bar and went up to a little girl who was with her mom and gave her the candy bar and wished her a merry christmas. It made the girls day. But even more the smile on Cole's face was priceless.
We than bought cookies and took them to the Firestation. We told them thank you for their helping our community and wished a Merry Christmas. They thought that was so nice and than invited us in for a tour of the firestation.

We came back to our house and had homemade donuts and hot cocoa. We shared how everyone felt as they were able to do these little acts of kindness. It was really neat to hear what the kids had to say.

Day after Thanksgiving...

We usually put our Christmas Decorations up this day but we put them up early this year so we got up and went downtown to the Grand America for this cute little window display thing they do each year.

They had little chocolates they were handing out and gave you ginger bread cookies and hot cocoa. The window displays were really cute too. My kids kept asking if we could sleep there!

Thanksgiving 2013...

Thanksgiving was absolutely my favorite! I enjoyed the few days before doing all my food prep.
I made an apple pie and a pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap crust. I made homemade rolls for our little turkey we cooked to have just for our family, I also made stuffing from scratch, which my kids and Kevin all ate really well.
I was in charge of mashed potatoes and the vegetable tray and a couple pies at the Bush Thanksgiving.
I got to wake up early and go out for a morning jog and than I came back and Kevin and Cole went and played football at our ward thing. Than we watched the parade on tv while we finished up cooking the turkey. As you can see it was never a dull moment with the Bush family and we captured some good pics to share. We were messing around in the kitchen but things got crazy when the girls stepped out of the kitchen. :)
We had two turkey's a smoked turkey and a regular roasted in the oven turkey. Both were delicious.

We all went around and said some things we were thankful for it was really nice.
This is the first year in a long time I did not go out and shop after thanksgiving. I kinda missed it because I have so much fun with my family. But it was really nice just to hang out with kevin too.