Look who's practicing now!

Here's our newest little violinist!  How fun to have 3 beautiful girls to play the violin!!

 And don't worry, Andrew will not be forgotten.  He wants to play the cello, but he needs to grow a little bit first!

Christmas craziness!!

For some reason blogging about Christmas is always kind of overwhelming to me, so I put it off.  But it's time to bite the bullet and dive in!  We actually started out the season with some snow, and the kids couldn't wait to get out in it!  Sarah even built a snow dog, complete with a doghouse. 

Of course, the snow didn't last long, and then we began the task of choosing the perfect picture for the Christmas card.  Here were some of the choices:

The kids look forward to building a gingerbread house every year.  Luckily Costco makes this easy for even the least creative of us (meaning me!) with a complete pre-packaged kit.

They did a great job of decorating it, and had a lot of fun dreaming about eating it all through the Christmas season.  Of course, by the time Christmas was over it was too hard and digusting to eat, but that's beside the point.

We had a big Christmas dinner at our house for all of our "Boise family" before Jon and Ysolina left for Venezuela and Dan and Rachel went to Mexico for Christmas.  Here is the kids' table:

And the "Grown ups":

Misty even got in on the festivities, whether she wanted to or not.  (It kind of looks like not!)

Right before Christmas we got a visit from Grandma Jane and Grandpa Fred.  They were good sports and came to our ward Christmas party with us, where we got some fun pictures.

They also got to come to Sarah and Savannah's Christmas piano recital.  This was Savannah's first piano recital, which made it extra special.  Both girls played beautifully.

Then we headed down to Utah for Christmas!  We had tickets for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas concert, which we were very excited for.  However, we didn't realize how many extra tickets they gave out, and even though we showed up half an hour early, there were no seats left.  We had to settle for hot chocolate and a walk around Temple Square.

Savannah didn't seem too bothered by the change of plans!

Our Christmas celebrations, like most others, included a representation of the Nativity.  Here are some pictures of one of them:

With all of our family parties we ended up acting out the Nativity 3 times.  Andrew refused to be in the last one, and said that he didn't want to go to any more "Jesus parties".

And here is a classic picture of Grandma Shirley making a huge pot of "mush" for Christmas breakfast.  We look forward to that meal all year!

We had an absolutely amazing Christmas.  We were so blessed to spend the holidays with our wonderful family and friends, and to reflect on the birth of our Savior.  We truly made memories to last a lifetime.