Howie & "T": January 2010

This year we decided to hold our Christmas Sleepover at April's house because I had been living there to help her recover from her surgery. We always plan to celebrate Christmas the weekend before Christmas so that there are no distractions or obligation to visit with other family members. I love this tradition because I get my kids UNDIVIDED attention for about two days straight. AWESOME!!!! No rushing off to inlaws or grandparents house like they use to do on Christmas Day. We have a nice relaxing time together!

I love my girls....THEY ARE THE BEST!

I can't believe that we actually got Brayden to sit down with us for a minute to take a picture. He is usually too busy playing to stop to "smile" with us. I love this picture of the four of us together. I wish I could get a picture of ALL of my grandkids together, smiling, looking at the camera at one time. NEVER HAPPENS! But one at a time works out great :)

I have the best daughters around. We have a close relationship and I cherish it with all of my heart. They both pitched in with ideas for our get-together. We have a FUN filled day planned.

Decorating Stockings......

We bought these plain Christmas Stockings and thought it would be fun to have the kids decorated them at the beginning of our day.

This was a real fun activity for all of the kids.....

April had a bunch of pom poms, glitter, and felt cutouts for them to use.

The glitter was a HIT! They chose to make their names at the top of the stockings all glittery.

Alyssa REALLY enjoyed the GLITTER :)

OOOPS!

Nice work Jack-Jack!

Very Creative BOO!

While the kids played we played!

Just kidding! April just caught us about to kiss.

Merry Christmas to my Man!

Making Gingerbread Houses

Each year we try to plan some sort of activity for the kids to do. This year we thought it would be fun to have them make their own graham cracker "gingerbread houses".

I wasn't sure if they were too young for this activity but as soon as they started I knew IT WAS A HIT!!!

They each had their own idea as to how they wanted their house to look.

Even the younger kids were able to do their "own creating" and without much help at all.

It was fun to watch them hard at work.

They ate more of the candy and goodies than they actually used for their houses.

Each house was different and unique in its own way....

Lots of different candies to choose from.....

Mom helping fix the frosting bag.....

It was so much fun sitting around the table and watching the kids use their imagination.

YUMMY!!!

Finger lickin' good!

Pretzels for the window.....Good idea Luke!

Pretzel fence......

Time for a quick picture of my girls......

Nice job, Boo......

Almost done, Lyssi......

Lookin' GOOOOOD, Jack, Jack!

AWESOME JOB, Lukie......

The finished houses. I think this one is Jack's

Luke's......

Karah's.....

Lyssi's....

The kids were so excited to eat their houses, but we told them that it was too late for all of that sugar so they would have to wait until they got home from church the next day.

Games...Games...& MORE Games

After the kids made their gingerbread houses it was time for some Christmas games. I am ALL ABOUT having games planned when we have these parties. Even the simplest games seem to bring out so much fun and laughter from the kids as well as the adults.

With this game we had several different Christmas shaped objects. One child would choose which one to be hidden. That child would leave the room, another child would hide it and then we chose different Christmas songs to sing as the child that left the room came in to find it. We sang louder as they got closer to the object. This is an activity that is always used at Primary but the kids LOVED it! Perfect game for kids at this age!

Brayden is on the hunt to find his hidden object....

Karah found her reindeer.....

Lyssi found her bell......

Puzzle Race.......

This game was one that April and I just made up. We weren't sure how it would turn out but it ended up being A LOT of fun. First April made a picture of a Christmas tree and cut it into many small pieces. We took those pieces and had them taped all over the living room area. We divided into two teams. RED and GREEN.

This game involved everyone on the team. The young kid's job was to gather all of their colored pieces as fast as they could and bring them back to the adults on their team. Once all of the pieces were collected the adults could begin their portion of the race.

Their job was to put the puzzle together. WOW! was it ever hard. I had told April to make it difficult so that the adults would really have to work hard at this. YEP you did a great job April. IT WAS DEFINITELY HARD!!!

Ash and Tyson finished their puzzle LONG before Howie and I did.

Once the puzzle was complete the kid's job was to decorate it with circle ornaments. They had to match the different sized circles.

The first team to complete their puzzle won!
Lyss, Luke, Ash and Tyson CREAMED our team.

They were finished before we even had our pieces put together.

We even had to have April come and help us complete our puzzle. I am convince that our puzzle pieces were much, much more difficult than theirs :) :) :)
We actually found out later that the kids on our team had not found all of the pieces and so that is why we were having such a hard time. I know....excuses, excuses, excuses!

We are finally finished with our tree.....YEAH! It was seriously about ten minutes after Ash and Tyson did theirs. This was much harder than I had expected but it was a lot of fun.

Don't Eat Santa Game.....

This is another fun game that we played that night. It is called Don't Eat Santa. Many people know this game as Don't Eat Pete. You start with this game board filled with a candy on each Santa.

One person leaves the room as the other people choose a square with a Santa in it. Everyone knows the "chosen" square except the one out of the room. When he returns, he randomly chooses a candy from a square. If it is NOT the one previously chosen then he is okay to eat it. BUT if it happens to be the "chosen" square....EVERYONE YELLS...DON'T EAT SANTA!!! and his turn ends.

You try to choose as many squares as possible before you are stopped by everyone yelling that at you. The more squares, the more candy!

I think Ashlee got down to the very last candy before she was stopped.

Tyson did awesome as well....

Many of the kids were stopped at the first square that they chose. It kind of startles you when everyone yells it out, so we had some tears of disappointment.

Many of the kids were given more than one chance because they were stopped too soon and didn't get as much candy as the other ones. FUN GAME... Hard to explain. But very fun!

WII Games......

With having an entire day and evening together to celebrate Christmas it gives us a LOT of time to spend together. Ty and Ash brought over their Wii system so that the kids could play. Actually everyone joins in and is either laying around relaxing and just watching, or they are involved in the game. Brayden was so cute because he insisted on standing on top of the couch the majority of the game and he did quite well. Great balance as he is perched high atop the arm of the couch.

Ty was so kind to play with the kids while the mom's rested.

They really enjoy the bowling game on the Wii.....

It is amazing to me how well these small kids do with the Wii. Very fun family game!

Hide and Seek.....

Like I said before Tyson was AWESOME with the kids this day..... He played with them all day long. Here he is playing hide and seek with them.

Brayden was the first to find him.....

He also rolled around on the ground and wrestled with all of the kids.

They loved it!

Here are some cute videos of the kids playing with Tyson.

This video is kind of funny. For anyone who knows Karah she is so tenderhearted. She is always a little concerned with how rough Tyson plays with the kids. You can usually find her off to the side just watching because I think she is a little timid and doesn't want to get hurt. Here in this video you can hear her concern for Brayden as he is getting kids PILED on top of him. She rushes in to help him up and make sure he is okay.

We enjoyed rolling around the floor with cousins, sisters, nieces and nephews. Fun times.

Our Family Story Game....

For several years now we have done a gift exchange with stories of what we have been up to from the past year.

We have small cheap gifts wrapped up and everyone chooses a gift to start the story with.

No one knows what is inside and no one will know what gift you actually will end up with.

We begin by reading a story about each family, talking about their lives such as what they have been doing for work, what hobbies they have been working on, what lessons they are taking, what job they have at church, and so forth. Each time during the story if we read the word "LEFT" or "RIGHT" then the gift gets passed in that direction. The presents get passed back and forth around the circle never knowing what you will eventually end up with. It is a great way to hear what everyone has been up to. We also keep the stories so that years later we can look back at what we were doing years before. (We have also used this idea in previous years with the words "RED" and "GREEN" throughout the story and passed the present each time those words are used)

This is the first year that the kids actually realized what we were doing. Luke was absolutely HILARIOUS! I wish so bad that we had a video of this little guy. When he got a gift passed to him that he really wanted to keep we found that he hid it behind his back so that he would be sure to get it at the end.

Here he is trying to not let us see it hiding under his shirt. He made us laugh sooooo hard!

Once the story is complete we get to open the present that we are holding at that time. In the past we have used it as a GIANT Candy Bar exchange as well as a White Elephant exchange another year. This time I just bought a variety of goodies to eat as our gifts.