Christmas Day

We had such a wonderful Christmas. The morning started off so wonderful because Hailee slept in until 9am! What a treat that was!

Once everyone else woke up, we went downstairs and gathered around the tree to open presents! My Dad is always the "present giver-outer" so once he was ready, he started handing out gifts and we opened them! How fun, huh!?! It was!

We all got so many awesome things! Gregg got a bunch of stuff for his IPOD, Hailee got new clothes, toys, diapers and a playhouse (which we let her open a few weeks ago!) and I got a bunch of workout gear! We also got the Wii Fit game. It's so fun! Hailee actually enjoyed opening presents too! First she watched how we did it, then she copied us and went to town on tearing the paper off! Once the paper was off, she really didn't care about the gift! haha.

After a little while, she got bored with everything and relaxed on the couch with her books.
Once the presents were all opened, we had breakfast. Hailee has this new obsession with this Mexican Santa that sings and moves. She has us play it over and over and over! Finally she got sick of it!

Later that evening, we had a wonderful dinner that my Mom and Ricky made! We decided to go with the traditional Christmas dinner (turkey and potatoes and all the side dishes) It was soooo good! Thanks Mom and Rick!
Hailee was a big girl and wanted to sit on my lap for dinner and eat off of my plate! She did so good!
Hailee enjoyed playing in the fire truck all day and night! She would steer the truck and then hit the piano keys! It was so funny!

We hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas.We are so thankful for our family, for all that they do for us. We are very thankful to have one another and to have such a beautiful daughter. We are also very thankful for the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ and for the sacrifice he made for us so that we can return to him again.
We look forward to this new year and for all of the new experiences and changes that will happen. We hope you all have a wonderful 2009 too and keep checking our blog for updates on our family!
(Oh, sorry about not getting our Christmas cards out. Things were so busy and I just didn't get around to them. But thank you all who sent us yours. I promise next year we will do better!)

Also....today (Dec. 26th) Hailee is 13 months! I can not believe how fast this last month has flown by! She is constantly learning new things. Some of the new things she has learned this past month are: walking down the stairs (She holds onto the staircase bars), spins in circles, has a new love for books, and she absolutely loves coloring still! Oh, and she now has 11 teeth!

Happy Christmas Eve!

Last night Gregg and I were talking about family traditions what we enjoyed while growing up. It was really enjoyable talking about our childhood years and about all the different things we remember during Christmas times as kids!
Two of the traditions that stood out that we talked about are the following:
My favorite Christmas tradition has to be our Christmas animals. It was in 1989, and my Dad came across these mechanical commercial retail animals at a job he was doing in the mall. I don't remember the whole story, but he was given all of these animals because the mall was replacing them with new ones. Every year since then, we have set them up all around our house creating Christmas animal scenes.

We look forward to every Christmas knowing that these animals are all around the house. They bring us such great memories and Christmas spirit to the house!

One of Gregg's favorite memories is opening Christmas pajamas every Christmas Eve. In my family, we have never done this. (Well, not that I can remember of). I was so excited when Gregg was telling me how he would look forward to opening his new jammies each Christmas Eve, because this was a tradition I wanted to start in our little family! Tonight, I surprised him by pulling out three presents...one for me, him and Hailee and told him we needed to open these tonight! He got a huge smile on his face when he saw that they were pajamas! So, this is a now a tradition we are going to continue with in our family!

Lastly, my entire family started a new Christmas tradition tonight. My Mom put on a wonderful Christmas program and one of the things that we had to do was to bring a Christmas poem/story to share with everyone. After we were done reading, my Mom gave us a binder to put the stories in and along with that, she gave us 24 more Christmas stories so each family now has their own set of Christmas stories to read to their families! Each year, we will come with a new story to add to the book!
Here are a few more pictures from the night:

We had a very yummy Mexican dinner tonight!

Us playing Hailee's new favorite game, Ring Around A Rosie
Kip and Sarah opened up their presents tonight because they will be with her family tomorrow.
And Hailee being as cute as ever!

I Love Christmas Time!

I love Christmas time because there are always so many fun things to do with family and friends! My Mom, Sarah, Hailee and I started our fun on Friday the 19th by making our caramel apples. Now, these aren't the traditional caramel apples, these are caramel apples loaded with Reese's Pieces Peanut Butter Cups, M&M's and Butterfingers candy! They probably weigh two pounds once we are done with them!

Hailee eating dinner and watching a movie while we get everything ready
Hailee and Grandma making the caramel
The three stages to our apple making
The finished products!
On Sunday Dec. 21st, our family went to go see the lights on Thoroughbread in Rancho Cucamunga! It was so much fun! We started off by getting some free hot chocolate provided by the Jewish Church (how nice of them!) It was so good, especially because it was so freezing out!
This was Hailee's first time experiencing the "real" cold and of course we weren't prepared. So, she ended up wearing several layers of clothes (tights and a long sleeve shirt under her pajamas which were under her jeans and a sweatshirt.) Luckily we found one of my mom's running beanies so Hailee got to wear that! (Don't worry, I did buy her some girlie ones today!)

Lastly, tonight (Dec. 22) we went out with my Mom, Ricky, the Hansen family and the Eddy family to do some Christmas caroling! It was fun! And Hailee looked soooo cute in her big puffy jacket! She reminded us of the little kid in the movie "The Christmas Story"!

Oh, and I just LOVE this picture! Today Hailee was laying on our bed reading a book! She is just sooooo cute and we love her so much! (Notice how talented she is....she can read a book upside down!)

Christmas Pictures

We had my sister in law Sarah (Sarah Lynn Photography) take our family pictures! I was actually really nervous that Hailee wouldn't cooperate. Ever since she has been walking, it is so hard to take any pictures of her....she never stands still long enough! She didn't do too bad yesterday, we didn't get a whole lot of smiles from her (I think because it was FREEZING COLD!) but we were able to get some good shots! I wish I could post ALL of them, but that would be about 100 pictures, so I'll just post a few of our favorite ones! Thank you so much Sarah!

We were running back to the car because we were FROZEN!

Ward Christmas Party

Last night we went to the ward Christmas party. They had the Bob Baker Marionette dolls come and perform. It was so cute! I think I had as much fun watching it as the kids did! Even Hailee liked it! We sat down on the ground in the front and she sat on my lap, kicking her legs to the beat of the music and smiled the whole time! One of the dolls even came and sat on her lap and she wasn't afraid! The only thing she was afraid of was Santa Claus!

Tasting a candy cane for the first time. She hated it and threw it onto the ground!