The Stocking Were Hung By The Chimney With Care . . .

Here is one big, long holiday post.

I can't begin talking about the holidays without dedicating this first part to Marilyn, my mother-in-law, who hand knit our stockings.  She has been working on these for awhile and this is the first year that we have a complete set (my mom included).  If my house was burning to the ground and I had time to go back for a material possession, I believe these stockings are at the top of my list.  I love them so much!  Thank you, Marilyn!

Tag and I made some good friends when we first moved to Colorado.  Everyone is scattered now, so I like to gather us together during the holidays for an annual Christmas party.  It's fun to stay in touch with good friends.  Thankfully a friend picked up my camera and snapped a few shots because I completely forgot.  I wasn't going to post any, but some of these ugly sweaters are just too good!

Susan (up front) and Jessica (in the back wearing the brightly colored sweater) tied for first place in the ugly sweater contest.

The pink fuzzy sweater came in third.  It was pretty bad :)

These are the fun treats we made for the kindergarten teachers.

The kids and I attended Lily's Christmas pajama party at school.  They got to decorate cookies.

We ventured out to Bass Pro to see Santa.  I did't scan the pictures right - bear with me.  Lucy was terrified.  It was so cute!

A friend of ours played Santa for the kids.  They loved it!  Thanks, Nate.

 Christmas Eve

I look forward to our dinner all year.  The kids helped out in the kitchen and we all sat around the table to enjoy our crab and lobster feast.  After we ate, we opened a new pair of pajamas, another fun tradition.  Then, we made cookies.  Just before bed we read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and Tag read the christmas story from the Bible.

 Now it might seem unfair that Lucy was left out of the cookie decorating activity.  However, scroll down and read all about her bout with vaseline which will enlighten you as to why I wasn't about to sit her down in front of a bowl of icing.

Christmas Day

The only thing Lily asked Santa for was a hula hoop.  She got one and surprised us all by being really good at it.

Lily is now a pro at the hula hoop and can do it for long amounts of time :)

My mom got Harrison an air swimmer.  What a cool toy!  Naturally we named him Bruce.  Bruce can air swim all around the house.  He even made it up into Harrison's bedroom.  

Sledding

Nona and Tag crashing into each other.

snowball fight with daddy

 Lucy and Harrison squished and Tag and Lily crashed behind us.

Lily catching air off a jump

We took the kids to see the zoo lights which were really impressive.  The zoo was covered with thousands of lights.  Even though it was cold, we had a blast.

We had a great Christmas and are very grateful that my mom could come out and spend it with us.  We love this time of year to celebrate the birth of the savior and to reflect on all of the many blessings in our lives. 

We got to ring in the new year at a friend's house.  We played games and ate good food.  I took my camera, but forgot to get pictures.  I'm excited to see what adventures 2012 has in store for us.