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One week of Christmas break is already over!  Wow time sure flies fast when you are on vacation.  But first a few photos from the previous week:

Robyn and Allison sick in bed.  Allison did not want any photos of her taken in sick mode.

Allison and Robyn's theater December showcase.







Sunday we had our neighbor over to decorate cookies.  Allison and Robyn wanted to make gingerbread houses so I had the genius idea to make gingerbread cookies shaped like houses instead of sugar cookies.  Allyce doesn't like gingerbread and Allison didn't like the small assortment of candy or that the houses wouldn't stand up very well.  Luckily Robyn was in heaven and Spencer only cared how many M&Ms could fit on a piece to shove in his mouth.  Most of my mom moments seem to go that way - 50% happiness with the situation is a good day.

Monday Robyn still had school. So the rest of us celebrated by cleaning, laundry and checking Robyn out early so she and Spencer could get their warts treated.  But that night we had a special FHE for Christmas, everyone wrote their presents for Christ for the coming year into a little treasure box, ate treats and Robyn had a pajama party to make up for the non-holiday style day.  Tuesday while Robyn went to school for half the day, I tried to take Spencer and Allison to the temple and out to breakfast.  I say that I tried as it was a 2 1/2 hour wait for baptisms at 9 am and a 2 hour wait later at 11.  My rule is that if the wait is longer than an hour and a half I will take them back home.  If I try to push it more than that, I get some miserable kids.  We did do breakfast although Spencer was barely awake until we stopped for doughnuts after.

And when I picked up Robyn, she and I braved the crowds to go to lunch at Kneaders.  Its a tough job being a mom some days!


This is before she spilled her soup all over her pants and tried to shuffle out to the car with napkins covering her lap.

We have been fitting in some fun things this break, like going minature golfing at Trafalga (where there was no heat!), and taking kids and friends to the indoor pool.  A lot of time has been spent staying up watching movies and playing with Christmas toys.  Tuesday we learned that our niece Brynn just tested positive for Influenza A.  So that changed our family plans a little bit.  Instead of getting together for our annual Christmas Eve of ice skating, nachos, truffles and elf and spending Christmas day and dinner together we just got together for dinner Christmas day while Brynn slept in the other room.  Since their other kids and their mom Kelly are now all sick we are all crossing our fingers that we dodged those germs!  Our kids have been so sad to not be spending the break playing with cousins as they planned and are praying hard.

Tuesday I had some friends over for dinner.  This year I decided that instead of giving out gifts I would just ask some friends over to visit instead.  It was fun to take a break and just sit and talk.


Since we weren't doing ice skating with cousins Christmas Eve, we decided to spend the afternoon sledding up in American Fork canyon at Tibble Fork.  It is my kids new favorite sledding spot.  Moments that stood out were Allison and Robyn going down with Robyn in the front crouched down with her goggles and yelling, "not in the lake, not in the lake", Spencer deciding to go threw a bush and some trees and showing us his scars after, Allison trying to walk on ice and Jeremy helping a kid rescue his sled from the lake.


For dinner we were able to host the missionaries with our nacho and truffle night.  It was really a cool experience to have the missionaries in our home and share a message.  Then when they were gone we broke out Elf for our yearly movie laugh fest.

Christmas morning our kids have learned to not wake us up till 7:30 and then they have to wait till I get Taylor showered and dressed before they can come downstairs.  After stockings they have to wait again until we do breakfast as Taylor doesn't understand waiting for food.  They are all good sports about it after all these years but they make sure Taylor get his food first so he can finish quickly!


This is Robyn's doll's first Christmas so Robyn made sure she had presents too.


One of my favorite moments is when Spencer came down with a blanket of presents over his shoulder.  He gave Robyn his old legos and she was in heaven.


My sister Christina made us all these super cool hats.


It was a Lego Christmas for Robyn.  That is all she wanted.


Allison gave Robyn some coupons including Lego playing time (unless she is slammed with homework).  So this is what our Christmas day looked like, and pretty much every day since:







Robyn laughed at how big some of Spencer's new clothes were:


But Spencer's favorite present has been a little table top ping pong set that he has loved playing.


Although I think his lizard appreciated the new heat lamp the most.


Taylor has a love/hate relationship with Christmas.  He loves all the food, music and cuddly warm clothes and toys.  But the noise gets to him sometimes:


Allison only asked for clothes so she got a bunch and has been busy trying out new outfits.  Macho our cat has been having peeing problems again, going everywhere.  Going on Allison's touch on the couch though was the final straw so he is living outside and in the garage for awhile.  He is not happy with the situation.


We had snow at Christmas this year.  When Robyn went to school Monday it snowed and everyone on our block including Spencer and Allison ran outside to make a snowman.  Let me re-phrase everyone on the block ran out at 8 am to make snowmen - our kids ran out at 10 am.  But by the afternoon all the snow had melted leaving only snow men in their place.  Robyn shed some tears.  So this weekend Robyn finally got to make her snowman.


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