Christmas Day!

Festival of Lights!

We went to the annual Festival of Lights at the Washington DC Temple. It was cold and crowded, but we had a great time. The lights were amazing and the visitor center was beautiful as always! The trees that are decorated inside were so pretty. Paige kept pulling off the ornaments. I guess they were just to shiny to resist!

Some of these pictures didn't come out that great, but the temple and lights in the background were so pretty. John has such a love for this temple as he served his mission right here in DC. He remembers directing traffic and bringing investigators to the temple during this time of year. Unfortunately, he was never picked to be Joseph in the nativity. To bad John! We were laughing so hard as John was telling us how the missionaries would give the elder who was chosen to be Joseph a hard time because he had to put his arm around Mary, who was a sister missionary! Looks like the Missionaries in DC were getting a little crazy! :)

There is always such a neat feeling to be close to the temple!

Cousin Sleepover!

Don't these days seem so long ago? It's so fun that Jenny and Damon live so close that our kids can have fun memories like these. Zane and Liv came over for a night and the kids had so much fun. We put on Polar Express and said they could watch that until they fell asleep. We tried putting Paige to bed, but as you can see she would not have it! She wanted to be with her cousins so we made her a little spot and she was sweet as pie after that. They sure had a fun time!

In the morning I thought it was so cute because they all had a blanket they were snuggling with. Ellie calls her blanket B, Paige and Liv call there's Me Me. Zane made it clear that he just calls his a blanket. So we had B's, Me Me's, and blankets all over the place!

Family Pictures!

Well, I thought I would post a couple of these pictures. We had some pictures taken of our family. The main goal was to get a great one for the Christmas card. It was freezing! We had to take our coats off to take the picture, and then hurry and put them on again in between. I can't even tell you how many pictures we had taken and not one of them turned out. I actually love this picture of John and I, but thought it might be a little confusing if we sent out a picture of just the two of us! :)

Would it be to much to ask to have everyone look at the camera and smile! When I look at this picture it gives me a little dose of reality. Does the perfect picture even exist? Well, It was worth a try. Next time we attempt I'll try to schedule an appointment when it's at least above 20 degrees!

This is the happiest Ellie looked the entire afternoon! I think we were close to the line of child abuse. Oh, what I would do for a darling family picture!

Christmas is coming!

Christmas is coming and we have sure had fun getting ready. The tree and decorations are up! For Family Home Evening last week we made a gingerbread house! The girls had so much fun. More candy went in their mouths then on the house I'm afraid. We finally had to ban Paige from the table. Poor Paige! :)

I sure love this time of year! Tis the season to eat and be jolly! What more could we ask for!