Christmas 2015

Christmas Eve's delicious dinner - our traditional filet mignon, Caesar salad, cream corn, and lots and lots of Martinellis.

After dinner we gathered in the family room to read from the scriptures about the very first Christmas.

We sang Christmas carols and then it was time for the first gift...

Christmas jammies!

Can't forget cookies for Santa from our last little believer!

Waiting on the stairs Christmas morning!

Santa delivered lots of Legos!

And some great stocking stuffers...

even for David!

Kylo Ren times two.

Handmade gifts from Noah...lots of drawings for everyone. Can you spot Kylo Ren?

More sibling gifts...a Darth Vader key chain for Noah from Savannah (and Kylo Ren over the shoulder);

the movie Cinderella for Savannah from Xander. Love it!

Noah's excitement in getting the movie The Pacifier cracked us all up!

Some Carolina gear for our little Panthers fan. Kylo making more appearances.

Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa Schaeffer!

David likes to guess what his gift is before opening. Although he did some shaking he had a hard time figuring this one out!

Some North Face love. And some more Kylo Ren, ha ha!

A fun game from Xander...

and that Lego set Noah had been begging for for the past four months.

A special gift from Dad...an Ipad!

Xander was so overwhelmed that he passed out. Just kidding!

Xander did tell me later that he started to cry over how much Dad cared about him to give him such a special gift.

Star Wars gifts were definitely a theme this year. And of course Kylo had to be in this picture as well.

We were all pretty excited that David got The Hobbit extended version DVDs. Time for a movie marathon!

An Alex Morgan jersey...

and a cool Storm trooper sweatshirt from the Clarks.

A big bag of new Star Wars guys for the boys.

Savannah's big gift -

a soccer ball signed by Alex Morgan!

The boys scored with some jerseys of their favorite players.

The rest of our Christmas was spent watching movies, putting together our new Lego sets,

and playing electronics!

I also set up my sweet gift from my little artist, Noah. I LOVE my snowmen!

Elder Shumway and Elder Deardon came over in the afternoon to play Legos with us, talk to their families,

and enjoy Christmas dinner with us.

Fun times!!!

As always it was a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Lights and Cookies

I had big plans for December. It was going to be a month filled with crafts and fun activities leading up to Christmas. But all of that went down the drain due to a bad cold and chest infection that wiped me out from Thanksgiving until right before Christmas. Added to that was a week of the most excruciating back pain and spasms I have ever had that all I could do was sit in my bed reading or watching TV (and of course David was gone for several days of that unbelievable experience!). We did do a few fun seasonal things, like one night grabbing peppermint shakes from Chick-Fil-A and driving around looking at the Christmas lights...

and of course we just had to make Christmas cookies again! Thank goodness I have the best cookie frosters around!