Christmas!

Here's our Christmas in pictures:

The picture before opening presents.

Collin was SPOILED this year.  

We'd been noticing that most of the toys we had were getting too young for Collin.  So we really loaded him up this year.  Instead of spending Christmas Eve wrapping presents, we spent it going through all his current toys and boxing up the ones that were too young so we could put them in storage.

A box!

So excited about his new Spiderman car!

Greg got envelopes!  Just kidding.  It was just a box to hold an Amazon gift card!

I got Greg a new beanie; or so I thought.  Turns out it was childs size!  So Collin got another present!

We got tons of movies this year too.  

Collin got a Mario Memory game, which we play right side up and match.  He now knows all the characters!

Collin also got this giant foam Cars mat.  He loves it!

At Grandmas house!  Collin got a Superhero base for his super heroes.

Little sister got Orange Peel gift cards.  There is now one in Springville.  If you haven't been, and are ever in the area, GO!

The brothers.

Us kids got M&D a new light fixture for the bathroom

...and some decorations.  It says, "There's no place like home... except Grandma's"

And a start to the "A few of my favorite things" wall with Collin's picture.

We had a wonderful Christmas.  Towards the beginning of December I got Collin a Christmas book that explained why we give gifts at Christmas.  We read it almost every night in December, and it was such a great reminder of our Savior and the gift of His life. It gave more meaning to our gift giving this year to remember that the Wise Men gave gifts to show their love for the baby Jesus.  And so we give gifts to show our love.  Merry Christmas!

Last few things before (and after) Christmas

Sometimes I'm really busy, and blogging is last on my list of things to do.  Sometimes I'm just not in the mood to post.  You can blame the latest break on the latter.  But I need to get caught up before other things happen and then I will be overwhelmed by all I have to post.  (Hey that's another reason why I don't post; too many things to post.)

We wanted to take a family picture for our Christmas card.  During the week that we "had" to take it, it snowed and was very cold, so I decided to take it inside.  To give us a backdrop we hung a blanket up by one of our couches.  Oh, and it was almost nap time.  So Collin wasn't the most cooperative.  Here are some shots from that:

As you can see, Collin made it tricky to get a perfect one.  So we settled for one.  I'm terrible at getting family photos.  One of these days we'll get a good professional one done.  Promise!

Also before Christmas, a couple of my friends and I decided to do a Pinterest Party.  I volunteered to host, and we made wooden signs to be displayed during Christmas time.  My two friends brought a dish to share and we watched The Holiday while painting and putting together our signs.  It was so much fun we decided to make it a monthly thing.  Our January party, hosted by Katrina, is this week!  I'm so excited!

Getting ready to paint.

Tracey and Katrina waiting for the paint to dry and picking out vinyl.

Our three blocks.

 Katrina went with a red "Believe" sign.  Tracey's, also red, said "Wise men still seek him".  I went with a winter theme and did "Let it snow!"  All three turned out super cute!  I have since made a few for my mom as well as some Valentine's themed ones.  So fun!

After Christmas, we had snow so we took Collin outside to play.  Getting him ready to play in the snow with all the layers and such made me feel like the mom on Christmas Story when she's dressing Randy.  So we tried to get a picture of Collin saying "I can't put my arms down!" but he didn't quite get it.

Over my head?

This was the best one.  Love the face that says "Seriously? Let's just play in the snow!"

One of Collin's favorite games was "push" Daddy into the snow.

Check out Collin's face!  It was so funny to watch Dad fall!

It was pretty cold, and as you can see Greg didn't have a coat or boots.  And I didn't have snow pants.  So we wore out way before Collin.  But he did sleep much better for nap that day!