Christmas Morning

Yea, yea...I know I am way behind.

Our Christmas morning was fun. Santa splurged and get Emma and Lucy the kitchen Emma has been asking for. Along with the kitchen, Emma also got everything on her list: an umbrella, a pizza, and a tinkerbell thing. I love the picture of her with her umbrella (see below). You can just see the joy on her face when Santa listened and delivered!

Most memorable moment was having Emma walk in and wonder "Mom...did you buy me this kitchen?" "No, Emma - don't you remember what today is?" "Mom....did Santa buy me this kitchen?!!!!"

Lucy was still a little too young to understand exactly what was happening, but she is dang cute - don't you think?

You have never seen a three year old more enthused with the Christmas spirit than Emma was this year (to this day the only songs she sings are Christmas songs!) She talked about Santa, the elves, baby Jesus, jingle bells, Christmas trees, candy canes - literally NON-STOP. It was amusing to me that the morning of the day she had been so anticipating she had completely forgot what was going on!
To truly illustrate Emma's Christmas spirit, watch below:

Emma's Christmas Dance Recital

There have been a few events since I have posted, what with Christmas and all, so I have to take you back a ways - to the third Friday night in December....



Emma's first ever dance recital!



Emma has been in a little dance class this fall with her friend Aspen. She is learning the basics of tap and jazz. I was a little nervous about her recital because the last "show" she did - well - it didn't go so well. But, she was really great in her show. She found her sticker on the floor and danced her little booty off. She was great and we were very proud of her.

Family Pictures

Emma had a really hard time with it being so cold - and it show on her face in this pic!

Photos courtesy of Utahphotographicmemories.com.

One of our very favorite Christmas traditions that we have started with our friends is to make Gingerbread Houses. Typically we pull out the grahams and have at it, but this year we pushed ourselves a little further and made actual gingerbread. It was easier than I had ever anticipated with a great recipe from the Food Network. Emma was very proud of her creation at the end of it all. Matt typically gets to the house pretty quickly to satisfy his sweet tooth, but this year Emma wouldn't let him! And so, our gingerbread still stands as a centerpiece on our table for all to admire!

P.S. For more fabulous pics, visit Sean and Sarah's blog listed on the blog list. Their gingerbread house is seriously cute!
P.P.S. I posted about four blogs within the last half hour, so don't stop reading with this one...there is more fun below!

Our Tree

This is our Christmas tree. It is fun this year because we got to use some ornaments that my Grandma Margaret gave us. They are old fashioned car ornaments. I feel like with the addition of these, our tree really represents myself and Matt fairly. We also had to apply some kind of protection from the toddler. Our answer: put the tree on top of a table. It has worked wonders. I positioned one lone silver ball at the bottom and Lucy gets a kick out of seeing her reflection in it. Other than that she has stayed pretty well away! We are super excited about Christmas this year. The fact that Emma is really getting into it has made it that much more special. Every morning she puts an ornament on our advent calendar Christmas tree and asks when Christmas will be here. Most importantly, I have learned to effectively use the "naughty list" to get her to behave!

More Thanksgiving Fun

Emma digs in!

Cousin Stephanie and Marilyn

Matt enjoying the turkey

Matt's family has a pie tradition - that is, every year they try to beat the record of the most pies ever brought to a thanksgiving dinner. This year we had 23 pies. The record is 29. The men also have an unspoken contest on who can eat the most pieces. Not sure where Matt stands on that once since it is, you know, "unspoken."

Exactly How we Did It

If you heard about our Thanksgiving plans, you may have heard that we were planning on hosting around 50 people. So, in answer to the question many of you asked, this is exactly how we had a sit down dinner with 50 people in our front room! Some of you attended...I hope that you had as great of a time as we did! This picture reminds us that we are thankful for the extensive family that Matt and I are both so blessed to have in our lives on both sides of our families!

Sarah