Christmas Day

Well as usual, Santa found us! Although---I WISH we could have slept in longer! Garrin and I were dumb and went to bed at 1am and right at 3am....who should appear but.........no NOT 8 tiny reindeer! It was Jaycee. She actually wanted to open presents! I know---hard to believe. We were mean and told her no...that we agreed on 6:30 the night before....and she actually started crying. Then I felt bad because she IS nine and was excited...but it really WAS a terrible time to be awake. I had her sleep in our room and told her to wait a couple of hours. Well---that's exactly what she did---at 5am she woke me again (I wonder if she ever went back to sleep?) and again wanted to get up. I held her off until 5:30 and then at 5:45 let her wake up the rest of the kids.

Santa decided to do a joint present and gave us 2 sleds and a Wii. Brother Devin decided that the girls needed CANDY and actually gave them EACH 72 Air Heads. Wow...

I, as usual, got caught up in the Christmas morning stuff and never did take any other pictures. Maybe it's because I tend to video tape Christmas??? So that's it on the presents and pictures.

We got about another foot of snow on top of the one foot we already had. Devin decided to get his car out and got it stuck in the cul-de-sac. I had a good laugh at him and then Shawnee and I pushed him out. Here's a picture of our house buried in the snow.


We decided to get dressed up warm and try out our new sleds. Kaylee and Jaycee tried sledding down the mountain of snow made by the snow plows and bobcats and snow blowers.

After Garrin was finished plowing out the driveway, Devin did doughnuts and pulled the girl's around on the sleds behind the 4 wheeler

Garrin took over driving and I sat on the back watching the kids and taking videos and pictures. Garrin would try and dump the kids off the sleds...and in the meantime about lost me a few times. I was trying to video/picture take with one hand and sit backwards and hold on with the other. It's not a great video, but here's one of them that I got. They are dropping like flies off the sleds. They would get up and run to try and get back on the sleds while Garrin would start and stop to try and trick them.

Yes--a few casualites laying in the snow...sometimes they would lay there a little longer than I thought they should and I thought they were really hurt...but then they would finally jump up and try to catch us and laugh. Even Jaycee didn't cry (ok...once) but that's a miracle in itself!

Devin would just wait until you drove by and then jump on a sled--empty or not. Sometimes he'd land right on the girls and hold on. It was pretty funny---I haven't laughed so hard in a LONG time! They'd try and push each other away and usually Jaycee was victorious and the big kids would fall off.

We did this for at LEAST 2-3 hours. Nobody was cold (except the photographer) because they warmed up everytime they fell off and then ran after us. Grandma and Grandpa Berger came to visit us so we came in for me to warm up. We played the Wii most of the rest of the day, watched (or slept) through most of the movie Fred Claus, and then tried to get everyone to bed early. A very memorable Christmas if I do say so myself!

Christmas Eve Traditions

We have several Christmas Eve traditions

• Lunch at Mom and Dad's house with the whole family (no pictures of this whole day!)
• Playing games with all the cousins while eating, eating, and more eating
• Wearing these cool shoes (ie bowling with the kids) (it keeps their mind off of "you know who" coming to visit them soon

• We read the book that my parents give us each year. This year it was God Bless our Way..they are always nice hard bound Christmas books. We've been re-reading the prior year's gifts a few each night to help us get in the right Christmas spirit.
• Read the REAL Christmas story out of the scriptures
• Frantically wrap presents---I almost never start early and I didn't again this year!

We continued the usual traditions...had fun at mom and dads. Stuffed myself silly. Had fun with bowling---I never win! Read the stories. Garrin and I wrapped presents and watched Christmas movies on the DVR. We stayed up until 1am to finish up our movies! NOT a smart thing the day before Christmas!

Thank goodness for bumper guards....Kaylee and Jaycee both used them this year! Maybe I should have tried them and I would have bowled better!

THE RESULTS:

Game 1: Devin, Kaylee, Garrin/Shawnee TIE, ME, Jaycee

PS---Devin's work party last week was FREE bowling for 2 hours. I think that's why he won, right Devin?

Game 2: Devin, Garrin, me, Shawnee, Kaylee, Jaycee

I'm a Twin!!!

I was talking to my sister Teresa the other day and was laughing because I've been telling people that ask how old I am that I'm 42. It dawned on me that I'm actually 41---don't ask me WHY I'm making myself older.

Even funnier is that Teresa has been telling people that she is 42 also. She's actually 43!!! (I'm sure she'll love me blabbing that!) So we decided---we're officially twins (although we were born 2 years apart!)

Remind me of WARM!!!!

I lifted this picture from my brother Brett's blog. He lifted my photos...so I'm going to re-pay the favor It's from our family camping trip to Goblin Valley in April. He spliced all 3 pictures together and it looks like they are all jumping at the same time. Cool! It's Devin, Shawnee and my nephew Logan. They are jumping off the same rock at different times. Cool!

So....it's snowing today...and cold....I think 6-8 inches of snow already! Here's Shawnee and Jaycee. Shawnee would be the one working and shovelling...and Jaycee would be the one NOT.

They also had the Christmas Sing at school today. Here she is with classmate Makiah.

Live Nativity

We went to the Larsen's Live Nativity in Alpine and we asked my family to come along. Teresa and her kids decided to come so it was fun! Here we all are riding in the back of a horse trailer from the church house up to the Nativity site.

Kaylee, Shawnee, Jaycee at the church Logan, Austin and Shawnee

Dawson, Kennedy, Teresa Austin, Jaycee, Garrin

Kaylee, Dawson, Bailey Stefanie, Jaycee

We first saw Moses Abu---the camel and I think Kennedy was a little afraid of him from the look on her face. I always think the camel is one of the BEST things!

Landon, Jaycee, Dawson, Bailey Shawnee, Landon, Bailey, Kennedy, Kaylee

They also had other animals there---sheep, donkeys, a little pony and horses

They added Roman Soldiers this year that was neat. They would ride around and ask us if we knew where the baby had been born.

There were little shops set up around the barn---this one shows people making canes.


And of course---the highlight of the Nativity is always seeing Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. We didn't know any of them this year---but it still makes it more real to actually see them and visualize what it might have been like.

Coming back down the path was a horse that the kids tried to feed some hay to

When we got back to the church after riding the horse trailer back, the kids had a little snowball fight. Landon got Garrin with a snowball so the picture on the left was Garrin taking Landon down to the ground....hey...ya gotta have proof of some of this stuff!

Anyway---it was a really fun night---VERY cold--but fun!

Choir at the Joseph Smith Memorial

Jaycee had ANOTHER choir performance---this one at Temple Square in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. I think she will have had 4 performances in 2 wks time by the time we are done. This is my favorite performance each year. Jaycee loves to sing---but I laugh because she usually yawns quite a few times during the songs as you can see on the videos we have of her.

Jaycee with her friends Ali and Jeana

Jaycee on the balcony in front of the beautiful chandelier

Ballroom Performance

Shawnee had her first ballroom performance today. It was really fun to see her dance. Unfortunately, we also had an important city meeting on our new business---the only time they met this entire month---so Garrin had to go to it and I went to the performance.

Shawnee in her "jammies" outfit before performing the Fox Trot to Santa's Watching You.

Here are a couple of Shawnee doing the mambo with her partner Kyle Harris

They also performed a Waltz and were excited because they nailed their lift in the picture on the left. They were suppose to dance the with their dad for one song, but since Garrin was at the city meeting, Grandpa Berger stepped in and did the Fox Trot with her.

For the grand finale, they had all the dancers plus a bunch of the dancers played instrumental of Silent Night. It was a great performance and fun to see Shawnee

PS---we passed our site plans with the city for the business tonight too. Yipee....on to step 3!

Thanksgiving

Mom, you also forgot about the puzzle all of us older kids put together. It was a 500 piece puzzle that took us about 2 hours to do. Devin, Austin, Logan, and I worked on this forever.