New Year's

Everyone left the day before New Year's Eve so we celebrated all by ourselves.  We started out the party with our first annual Cox Polar Bear Club.  Aaron, Rachel, Bob and I all took turns jumping in to our 38 degree pool.  It was a great time.  It's pretty shocking at first, but we warmed back up fast. Especially since we all scrambled right back out of that water in 1.2 seconds! Then we all had hot chocolate.



We played our new games: Uno Roboto and Twister, we watched the Smurfs Movie, and we did sparklers and popits.  What a party!

Christmas

We had a full, fun Christmas this year.  Everyone from the Woolley side of our family came and stayed at our house for a week.  Even Grandma Monte and Grandpa Gene were with us.  It was great to all be together.

We acted out the nativity on Christmas eve. Here are some of our sketchy characters:

The presents for all 20 people filled up the space around our tree.

There were so many packages, Santa couldn't find room under the tree and all his gifts spilled into the other room.

 

We had great weather. We spent lots of time over at the middle school playing basketball, kickball, riding bikes and mostly playing tennis. We went to Valley of Fire and saw Elephant Rock.  We saw the Christmas lights at the Speedway, the gardens at the Bellagio.  And there was lots of eating and shopping and more eating.

Our favorites this year:
Danny--Present: Case for his Ipod, Memory: In-n-Out
Rachel--Present: Iphone, Memory: having everyone here
Aaron--Present: Trike and Ipod, Memory: Lights at the Speedway
Seth:--Present: PlasmaCar and play kitchen, Memory: Grandma and Dustin
Ruby--Present: blanket

December Activities

Danny and Rachel had their annual Piano Recital.  They did a great job.  I love hearing them practice their Christmas songs all the time while they get ready for the recital.  Danny took a little time off during the first half of the year, but we're so glad he started back up.  And Rachel is really developing into quite a pianist.  

The kids made homemade gifts for their secret siblings this year.  They each got to get out of school early one day to do their shopping and make their gift in secret.  Danny made a blanket for Ruby, and she sleeps with it every night, Rachel made an indoor hopscotch game for Aaron, Aaron made a blanket fort kit for Seth, Seth made some balloon poppers for Danny and Ruby made a friendship bracelet kit for Rachel.  They had a lot of fun making an giving their gifts.

We made candy trains with the Deans.  Such a great tradition.

The first weekend of Christmas break we went up to Utah for a whirlwind visit.  We hung out at Grandma's. We visited BYU and went bowling on campus. And we watched a BYU basketball game with Casey, Kami and Boston. It's so cold in Utah, we were happy to come back to our perfect Las Vegas winter.

We slept under the Christmas tree.

We went to the Springs Preserve for their Holiday Spectacular.  It was pretty great. The kids did a train ride, a huge blow-up slide, face painting, made ornaments, and rode on real reindeer (ponies). The weather wasn't too cold and we all had a great time.  We even bought year passes to the Springs Preserve so we can visit more often.

Thanksgiving

We went to Visalia for Thanksgiving. We had a great time. The weather was great and we played at the parks and in the backyard.  Everyone always loves to feed the turtles, but Seth is especially mesmerized by Grandma's pond.  He's climb around it and watch the water and fish as much as we'd let him.  He found a fishing reel somewhere and "went fishing" in the pond a lot.

We had lots of pumpkin pie and a great Thanksgiving meal. We played games and watched movies.  It was a great holiday.