Gingerbread

 A week before Christmas I realized Sunday would be the best day to make this happen.  So we busted out the supplies, invited Jonathan, and went for it.

Best and cutest little gingerbread village we have ever had!  These kids are so creative!

Wow!  Gingerbread castle Kate??? and Emma did it all by herself, super cute.

Owen built a Lego Office building!

maris' turned out rainbowy and cute

Whitney made a little town square of her own, amazing! And Jonathan had fun with us as usual.

Here's everyone working hard on their creations.

So much candy lol. But I love the togetherness and creativity!

Our Little Miracle

 Jenae and Connor got their miracle on December 15th!  Only 3 weeks early, but she was only 5 lbs, so tiny!  And had to be born via c-section.  But we had prayed and fasted for 3 years for this!  And my kids particularly had been fasting for probably a year before Jenae got pregnant, and then the entire pregnancy Emma prayed for Jenae's baby literally every night.  And she started fasting on fast Sundays even though she was only 6 years old.  Because she wanted so bad for Jenae and Connor to get to have a baby! Sweetest faith! 

My mom was coming to help, but wouldn't be there for a couple more days, so I told Jenae I could come up for the day when they went home from the hospital. I brought them dinner and tried to help her with nursing issues and reassured them that things would get easier and held little Susan (yes!  they named her after my mom!) for an hour or so so they could take a nap. It was great fun and I felt helpful and Susan was so sweet and TINY!  Super worth the 2 hour drive each way and getting my kids rides for the day.

Little cutie!

THis prespective shows how small she really was- like a doll!

And these were the pictures they sent from the hospital right when she was born.  Tiny but perfectly healthy, a miracle!!

God is good. 

Christmas activities

I helped with a Christmas Activity for Tyros, it was cute.  The classic unwrapping the candy with oven mits on!

For Young Womens we went caroling around the pond and to several people in the ward, it was fun!

We made only like 20 plates of cookies this year, because I had bought some hot chocolate cans to give out.  The kids are PROS at decorating cookies though!  Seriously look at all their beautiful creations, and this was the ones we did without Katelyn and Whitney!  (they made beautiful cookies too!)

Also the ski season began!  Here's Maris next to Anna's Ice palace haha.  And Eric with Maris and Emma on Emma's first day!

Eric and the 3 youngest.  Emma took a skiing class and it paid off big time- she was suddenly super confident and great at skiing!  We think a year of the hoverboard probably helped her out too. :) Anyway Eric is thrilled to have another ski buddy.

The time when just Maris and Eric went, very cute!

Christmas performances

Improv this year has been super fun for Katelyn!  Challenging because there are so many new people who need to learn how to Improv better, but fun because she is super comfortable doing it now. Also they make up creative names for their shows, and generally hilarious posters!  Here was the Christmas one.

These pics are from the Halloween show- so so funny!  The first was my favorite game of Goon River I've seen Katelyn perform in.  She was a gargoyle on top of city hall and it was hilarious. The other picture is her doing a scene with Clover, which usually turns out good! I have great videos of her, especially doing a game she's particularly good at- Fill In the Blanks- where you create a scene from scratch and then add people into it.

This was the Spirit of Christmas :) Drama got to do scenes from the Father Martin story. Katelyn was an old woman.  

At one point Encore come out and sang an a capella song about Jesus while surrounding these "poor street people", Katelyn's on the right.  It was gorgeous.

More Kate the old woman.  She did have a bunch of lines in one scene.

This was the Nativity- Katelyn wasn't even in it but it was beautiful. I love it so much that they do a Nativity!

Owen singing in the elementary Spirit of Christmas show- he had to do a waltz with a girl- Abby Walquist of course, it was super cute! He's in the middle here.

And here's Katelyn's MDT class song, Close to Christmas from A Christmas Story the Musical.  They were great!!

This was her solo, the first couple of lines of the song.

So much fun singing and dancing! Austin, Addie, Andrew, Phoebe, Sadie, Sulice and Katelyn. Andrea is hidden in the back. 

Seriously love watching katelyn sing and dance!

This was a bright spot in a very frustrating semester of MDT!   It came together and she had fun with her friends. So that was positive.