decorating the tree

My favorite thing to kick off the Christmas season is decorating the Christmas tree. The kids always have a ball. Every year they get their own new ornament so when they move out they will already have a collection. They love finding and hanging their own ornaments. We always listen to Christmas music while decorating and then finish off with a cup of hot chocolate. My favorite part of Christmas is the traditions. Even though some seem silly or small, they are things I look most forward too.

Advent Boxes

Every year for Christmas we have some kind advent calander so we can count down to Christmas. It has usually been the cheap ones at the store that have the doors and behind it is a nasty chocolate. This year I decided to make advent boxes and then we could choose the candy that we put in them plus we could use them year after year. The kdis had a blast decorating their own boxes however they wanted. After they finished they got to eat their first piece of candy. (We started on Nov 30 so the last piece would be on Christmas Eve)

Morgan and Liza gluing and sparkling it up!

Cam and Allie doing their thing

All the boxes

Pies Pies and more Pies!!!!!

Me and my MIL

Juicing a lemon (baking from scratch even!! No pudding mixes!!)

Pecan pie

My Mother-in-law and I spent all day Wednesday baking pies for Thanksgiving. We made a total of 11 pies! We had lemon merangue, Cream cheese with cherry topping, pecan, chocolate, banana cream, apple and pumpkin. It was a lot of baking, but we also had a lot of fun!

Advent Calander

My Mommy and I

My Mommy

My sister Carla

Our finished boxes!!

I love my craft robo! On ebay I found a file to cut out these fun little advent calander boxes. Each box takes 22 sheets of paper, an hour and a half of cut-out time and about the same in put together time. But they are totally worth it!. On Saturday I got together with my sister and mom and had a little craft day. We made these boxes plus got Christmas presents finished. Now I get to start looking for treats to put inside!

Christmas Ornaments

Every year my sisters and sister-in-laws do an ornament exchange. This is one of my favorite traditions. I love pulling out the ornaments from years past and it makes our tree very unique. This year I found a really neat paper pattern for a snowflake and it was actually very easy to assemble just a little time consuming. So here are my ornaments. I can't wait to see what all of my sisters came up with!

Googly Eyes

So I just had to share these because I thought they were hilarious!! While we were taking the pictures Paul and I were laughing so hard and I could barely breath.

I guess this is what we would look like if we were all cartoons!

Halloween

I know I am a week late but but better late then never, right?!

As usual the kids got way too much Halloween candy. So since Paul and I are such nice parents we have agreed to help our kids eat it!

Since Halloween was on a Saturday this year we actually got to spend the whole day together doing fun activities. We went to a shopping center in Holladay where the kids got their hair styled and colored, face painted, girls got their nails painted, Allie got a FREE haircut, and of course lots of candy. Then we went to the Sandy Mall and trick or treated and got TONS of candy. (The best part was it was all pretty good candy, not just the kiddie mix stuff you usually get.) Then we went trick or Treating in our own neighborhood and got even MORE candy! The kids had a ton of fun, and keep on the look-out for two larger butts walking down the street very soon!