A White Christmas

Christmas morning is always full of such excitement! I just can't explain all the excitement expressed by the boys! I LOVE IT!! It's just so magical! After opening presents we all had breakfast and played with our gifts. Then got ready for the day and headed to Boyd's parents for the rest of Christmas day! It's always so fun to go other there! Especially this Christmas since Boyd's sister and family came up here! They moved away so the cousins don't get to play together all the time like they use to. It was a great Christmas day!!


Keeg!!


Nolan!


Joshua!!



Mia really loved playing with Rich and the Jack in the Box. I love how she continually turns and looks up at Rich... SO cute!


I LOVE the excitement! The boys are SO MUCH FUN!


HUGS


MORE HUGS ;-)




All geared up and ready to go!


Nolan jamming some sweet tunes on the guitar! And Gabby looking pretty for the photo!


A group photo of all the Cousins there!

Christmas Eve 2008

Today we cleaned the house and got ready for our Christmas Eve celebration! Santa came to visit us tonight and give us a preview to all the excitement of Christmas day! For Christmas Eve our tradition is to have a fancy dinner where we all dress up. Then we do some activity like work on a puzzle. Finally we read about the birth of Christ and acted it out with puppets and sing lots of songs on the piano... and this year to Keegan playing the violin and Josh playing the piano. It was great! It was also SO fun to see all the boys excitement for Santa! They sure rushed to bed that night... not that they could fall asleep too quickly!

We also all have a sleepover every Christmas Eve... it’s always been our tradition!

Santa with the kids!

Nolan giving Santa a big hug!


Mia looking at Santa Clause... and look at Keeg and Noli


Santa & Mia

Family shot with the great nativity puppets we use each year... Mary made them!

Josh, Mia, Nolan, & Keegan under the tree




Rich and Mia love each other!!! It's SO cute!


SLEDDING!

We also made this awesome sledding hill in our own yard! The boys and the Greenhaulgh's... and of course some of us adults had a great time going down!

RipCity!!!

The snow is still amazing!  In Hillsboro the depth reached to 24 inches!  We enjoyed the morning playing outside with neighbors which we all enjoyed.  We then ran some errands... and THEN went to Costa Vida and the Blazers game!!  All thanks to Boyd... he is beyond the best!!  Costa Vida is the boys favorite place to go... the boys referring to Rich and Boyd.  They both LOVE this place.   After Costa Vida we rode the MAX into Portland for the Blazer game!  We all had a great time at the game.  I LOVE going!  I never thought I would like Basketball so much... but having Rich and Boyd get so into it has made me really love watching it.  Especially now that I am getting to know the players and their strengths.  I also love going to the games and watching my family get SO into it!  Yelling and cheering... it just makes for the best experience!  I am so grateful for all the memories we are able to make together!

Can beat the excitement felt at the game!

Rich and Joshy

Mar, Keeg, Josh, and Me

Rich and I on the MAX... with the weather we've been having everyone was riding the MAX!

Mar and Josh on the MAX

It was freezing cold outside!

All the boys!!  Eating at their favorite place... YUM!

Earlier that day Noli and Jonny enjoyed playing in the snow.

Samantha and Josh making snow angels. 

Keeg carrying a huge chunk of ice.  There was a thick layer of ice over all the snow.

Sledding

We all played outside again today! After playing around our home we went sledding just a few miles away from home. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon out there! We could get some really great speed off the hill and we all had some pretty awesome crashes! Who would of thought we could spend the afternoon sledding so close to home? It was a blast!

All of us!

Rich and Nolan... what handsome boys!

Mary ... watch out!

Mary

Josh has got some good speed

Right before the crash

It's On!


Keegan had the most fun of all... No Fear!

Except maybe a little here;-)


Nolan at the top of the hill

I think Keeg is just SO handsome... don't you?

Samantha also had a great time!

Especially riding down the hill with her dad!

She's Gorgeous!

Me and Rich

The "Nolan Sandwich"

We were all hungry after the trip... especially Nolan!

All that hard work wore us out!

Pretty, eh?

Nolan really wanted to get a little too close to these ducks

I also took some great video... which are way fun to watch. But of course being the smart girl I am I took all the videos sideways. So I'll have to work on rotating them so I can post some of those. Also we didn't get many photos of Rich and I sledding... just video. Dang!

A Day Inside!

Today was the Sabbath and yep you guessed it... church was cancelled. The previous day Bishop sent everyone an email saying to plan on a normal Sunday. My sister was pretty excited since she was hoping for a smaller crowd during her talk... o well. We'll all be there next week listening to her! Yipee I'm excited! Mar will do great! She is AMAZING... I can't even express how grateful I am for her and how blessed I am to have such a loving sister! Anyway since we spend the day at home we took advantage of the time to play lots of family games, make yummy sugar cookies and then go to the Greenhaulgh's to sind Christmas songs, enjoy teats and play more! We all had a great time... they are like family! FYI we still have a TON of snow! It just hasn't stopped snowing. We are having record snow depths... about 17 inches now! It's truly amazing! Yipee!

COOKIES

Nolan decorating his cookie

Decorating cookies

Keegan

Keegan being a good big brother!

Mia with a cute messy face... she loves to eat!

Our backyard... look at all that snow!