I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

So, here's a quick run down of the awesome Christmas stuff that we were did this year!:)

At South Hills, my school, raised a ton of money for a less fortunate school in West Valley! Because they met their goal of what they were trying to raise, they put on the annual teacher talent show! I sang Let it Snow, the Michael Buble version. I had a ton of fun with it!

Christopher finished the semester with great grades! Better than expected and he's thrilled! We're happy he only has one big semester left and then senior projects. Then he is DONE with school! One more year! We can do this!

After he finished the semester, he worked really hard on writing an incredible Christmas program from scratch! It was a great program. We had a great turn out for practices and we are so grateful for all those who were willing to share their talents and participate! In conjunction with the Christmas program, we also had our annual Christmas Choirside which was phenomenal as usual. We loved singing the Hallelujah Chorus again and seeing all the wards come together for a spiritually uplifting event!

Even though it was a little chaotic and Ken and Kalene were at the hospital, we still had Gingerbread houses to make! :) We made a log cabin this year!
   

We made a kind of happy accident. Christopher made the frosting a little runny....so we made melty snow on top of our gingerbread house! It was lots of fun! And we think it looks like we did it on purpose. What do you think?




We were able to attend the annual Kieffer Christmas party where we have omelettes and Santa Clause comes to Grandma's house! We had lots of fun eating yummy breakfast and seeing Santa!

Unfortunately, there was lots of sickness going around and we weren't able to make it to the Roylance Christmas party this year. It didn't feel quite the same without going to Grandma's and doing the Nativity like we do every year, but we were able to do a nativity with the Neff family on Christmas Eve. It was probably the most comedic of Nativities that I have ever participated in. While still portraying the Christmas spirit and the true meaning of Christmas, we did have an angel and Mary fighting over the baby Jesus. We had crying shepherds and a little bit of a restless Joseph. Christopher got to be a wiseman and all was well in the end!

Here come the shepherds and...Oh no! Here comes angel Zach...who wasn't so angel like...

And here come the wise men.

Where are you going Joseph?

Oh and there is Mary and the angel REALLY fighting over the manger.

Let's get a picture everybody!

Get in position!

This is probably our best one....

And now everybody look at baby Jesus!

Wait, are there two baby Jesus'? Yes, the angel and Mary each had to have their own.

And now the manger is on Joseph's head...

And here are the wise men!

And Mary and a shepherd.

And the not so happy shepherd...

Then we had our wonderful Neff after Christmas White Elephant exchange! We ended up with some pancake mix and a Utes Cook Book! Can't get any better than that! And a box of goodies for the ride home!

It truly has been a great Christmas! We are so grateful for all the wonderful people in our life! We are grateful for the Christmas season and the fun things we were able to do with family. We are so grateful for the birth of Christ and that we are able to celebrate it every year! Merry Christmas everyone! And a happy new year!:)

Look at all the cool stuff we're doing! :)

So, this last month, I went back to doing full time school. It's been a bit of a challenge getting to know new kids half way through the year. I didn't anticipate this change especially so soon, but we're embracing it and making it work with everything else that we have got going on!

First of all, I am so grateful for the opportunity that we have had to be in a freezer meal group. It has been so nice to be able to exchange meals and have them already in the freezer ready to go with these crazy holidays! It's totally worth a 2 hour cooking session to get this ready so I can have meals throughout the month even though...

...during the whole process of the actual cooking part, it totally sucks! Tons of dishes and cans and chicken! I mean, I am surprised that I survived to be completely honest! This is just a portion of the dishes and I had a full garbage can full of stuff just from this one cooking session!

We got to go and see Catch Me if You Can at Hale Center Theater! This is the last show of our season ticket pass! Loved it this year! And this show in particular was quite fabulous! We are anxiously awaiting the CD from the library so we can listen to the music again! What a fun show! Highly recommend!

I also did an event with my skirts at the Megaplex for Mockingjay Part 1. It wasn't the greatest event, but I met my new best friend Leslie!!! Loved hanging out with her and I think I am going to try a different movie. Skirts are still going strong. Not as strong as I would hope sometimes, but I am for sure going to keep doing this for a while. 

We saw Mocking Jay Part 1. We liked it just fine, but we kind of wish that they would have just done one big 3 hour movie instead of splitting it into two parts. When they do these part one and part two things...it just gets.........a little slow in the first movie. My other comment was that I wish that we would have just waited to see this one until the next one came out.

We of course loved making gingerbread houses with the Neff family! This year, we decided to make a log cabin! So much fun! I loved making this with Christopher! Especially because he made the frosting too runny and it was EVERYWHERE! But, it ended up being a happy accident and ended up being pretty awesome snow on the roof!

Aren't we cute? Loved this day! Fun!

And SELFIE!!! Oh wait...Warren photobombed! :)

And of course we put our Christmas Decorations up for the season!

And we haven't made it to temple square downtown this season, but we did get to go to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and enjoyed the spirit there!!!

My other new favorite thing to do is to make homemade rolls in my breadmaker on Sundays. And of course, you have to have some hot chocolate during the holidays!!! :)

And here is our Christmas card! We were trying to figure out how to print it but the picture resolution wasn't working, so here it is!!! :) Happiness for the holidays!!! :)

Yellowstone with the Neff Family

This summer in June, we had the opportunity to go to Yellowstone with the Neff's! We had so much fun hiking and seeing nature's incredible sights! I really loved being out there!!! Lots of details on the pictures below!!! :)

Zacho Bean HAD to be in front! Or he got a little cranky...

Selfie!

Here's Skylee and Eric's Family!

This is Wolf Creek!!! 

Cindy, Cyrus and Christopher all made forts out of the cushions from the couches in the living room.

Waterfall!!

Buffalo!! No joke, everyone and their dog has to stop and look at any kind of wildlife in yellowstone! So much fun!

All the nieces and nephews!

Look at the flower Cindy found with Christopher!

The Thumb!

This is Mammoth!

Cindy and Grandpa!

Cindy was washing Aunt Nicole's hair. Didn't she do a great job?

Cyrus found a bunny!!

This is the end of our night! We actually got stuck in the park for WAY longer than we wanted to without any food, because there was an accident blocking the road to get home. It was either that or go the LONG way home which would have been probably 5 hours. So we stayed until the sun set and saw some amazing sites!

Love these kiddos!

This is Painter's Rock!.... I think is what it is called! It was seriously beautiful!

And Old Faithful REALLY did spray us! We pretty much got soaked! It was quite the surprise!

Old faithful was our grand finale! We had tons of fun with the family! We can't wait to do it again!