December 2019

December starts with a Birthday for Carly!

She is now 14 years old.

We sure love this pretty little thing.

She has a great group of friends that joined us for a party this year.

I have a wonderful ministering sister that is an accomplished seamstress - she surprised the kids with their very own cute Christmas pillow cases and a little bag full of treats!

 Every December we get to have a little elf friend we named Jingle come visit us - the 3 little kids LOVE waking up each morning and finding what kind of mischief he got into or funny thing he does.

 We found a new Nativity Display to visit near us and it was amazing.  SO many beautiful nativities and this one had a room devoted to snowmen and a room devoted to the life of Christ.  Awesome.

Trevor was adamant that we all needed to decorate our own Gingerbread House this year.  Fun fun!

Matt's mom had a little Christmas dress that she let Alissa wear when she was 2 - now Alissa's cousin Rylee is just the right size so we have matching pictures!

 Some fun and festive breakfasts we had this month...

Our Christmas Eve tradition that I carried over from my childhood is to decorate sugar cookies.  Carly got creative and we ended up with grapes and a cracked bell!

 Cameron played a joke on his sleeping dad...haha.    Our Christmas Jammies from Grandma.

 Merry Christmas to us!  Cameron trying out his cool car that drives on walls, me enjoying my new big beanbag and weighted blanket, Matt's cool new Line of Authority and Cameron got a neat construction kit.

 The day after Christmas we were thrilled to get a visitor!  Matt's Grandma Paskett came to stay for a couple nights.  We love spending time with her.  Our first night got really exciting when she must've accidentally pressed her life-alert necklace because an ambulance showed up to check on her!

 Carly has been having quite a few aches and pains in various joints so we've had lots of various doctor visits to try to figure out what's going on - this one was to get an MRI on her elbow that's swollen, painful and she's unable to straighten it completely.  She also made a really cool bird out of the top of a pineapple!

 Over the weekend we were thrilled to get more visitors!!  My brother Lane, his wife Mallory, their cute little girl Caroline, their dog Judge Judy and my niece Nikhia all came to see us.  We had so much fun together - we love seeing family.  Mallory got hooked on one of our new Christmas games - Rubiks Race!  We recreated a picture of Cameron with Judge from 8 years ago and Trevor thought it was pretty cool to get licked by a dog...

 To end our month we had fun celebrating Matt's 39th birthday!  We ate at Applebee's and the kids thought it was pretty cool when we paid for the meals of a Vietnam veteran and his wife.  Matt had fun playing with his new mini-tetherball game with Liss and Carly. 

Alissa and Carly invited a big group of friends over for lots of fun games and yummy snacks on New Year's Eve then they all had fun at a big stake dance to ring in the New Year.  The rest of us continued our ongoing Harry Potter marathon and Matt and Jacie crashed right after we celebrated the arrival of a brand new year.  Cameron bought a big confetti cannon - it was great.  Happy New Year!