fam pics

xmas

We had a great Christmas Break.  We celebrated Christmas at home. Christmas Eve was a Sunday, so we went to church for 1 hour, we had our traditional Chinese food for dinner, this time from Costco.  We acted out the Nativity. And this year the Sisters invited us to go caroling to some less-actives.  It was great.  And then we came home and opened secret siblings gifts.

Christmas morning started at 6:30.  We had a great time opening presents.  Bob was in charge of Christmas day food so he made pancakes for breakfast and ham and funeral potatoes for dinner.  We played with toys and did puzzles and had a nice lazy Christmas.  We also did our traditional family testimony meeting.

The day after Christmas, Danny had a basketball tournament so we stayed in town for 2 days for that and then we left to go to Visalia, where everyone was there because grandma and grandpa are leaving on their mission.  We had a great time with everyone.  We went shopping, watched movies, played games, went bowling and to a trampoline place.  We stayed until New Years' Day.  All 5 kids stayed up until midnight on New Year's Eve.

We came back after New Years' so Bob could work and Danny could go to practice.  It was also nice to have some lazy time, time with friends and time to work on Kwanzaa.  We went out to dinner to celebrate Kwanzaa this year.

Mexico

For Thanksgiving we were invited to go to the Salmon's Mexico beach house again.  Danny had practice and Bob had to work so they stayed home while the kids and I drove down on Saturday after school got out.  We stayed until Wednesday when we drove up to Ryan's house and met Bob and Danny there.  We had fabulous weather in Mexico.  It was even better than when we went during the summer a few years ago. The kids all had a great time swimming (except for Seth) and playing games at night.  We went to the Mexican market one day.  We went to church, which was a great experience. The only disappointing thing about our trip was that Seth got sick.  About the time we crossed the border on our way there, Seth started saying his throat hurt.  He was sick with a fever and cough for the whole trip. When we got home we found out he had Scarlet Fever, which is not a fun sickness to recover from! His skin peeled for weeks.

Ruby is 7

Ruby turned 7! She was so excited to get to have a friend party and not travel for her birthday like we have the last 2 years.  And that was the plan until we got invited to the Salmon's Mexican beach house.  So we missed the friend party again, but Mexico was a good substitute.

Smith Weekend

The Smith's came to visit us for the BYU v. UNLV football game and the Nellis Air Show.  It was a big weekend.  We haven't been to the airshow in many years, so we had fun there.  Then we went to the tailgate party and had the world's best corndogs and went to the game.  BYU won.

Halloween

Sadly Danny and Rachel are too old to dress up now, so we just went around with these 3.  We had our annual neighbor potluck and trick or treating as well as the ward trunk or treat. So there is always plenty of candy coming in at Halloween.

Broken Arm

Seth broke his arm.  He's the first in our family to do it.  He was running on the playground and put his hands up to try to stop from colliding with another running kid.  His arm "bent back like a U" as he said.  I ran him right over to quick care and it was cast the next day.  We had some pretty uncomfortable swelling and itching at the beginning, but he got used to one arm pretty quickly.  He had the cast for 6 weeks.