Christmas Eve

Here are some of the pictures from Christmas Eve. We took a lot so the rest will be in the slide show. I hope you all had a great Christmas. The kids ended up with about 10 Webkins between all of them, new clothes, and a lot of cool toys from santa. Their grandparents chipped in and bought them a Wii for Christmas. That has been a lot of fun and used at the other family parties as well.

Malynda and her class Christmas Concert

Malynda bought herself a new red recorder from their "class store". She wanted a red one for her concert. Her class learned how to play the recorders for this concert. She did very well.

Blake and his class Christmas Concert

Here are pics from Blake and Malynda's concert.

Brett & Amberlee's Engagment Photos

Here are my baby brother's engagment photos. My favorite is the one where he is holding and looking at her.

Christmas Memories

Some of my earliest memories of Christmas was Christmas Eve when I was about 7 years old. My Grandpa and Grandma Gray would always come over as well as our siblings. My dad would make a delicious dinner and my mom would have us clean the house before everyone got there. We always drew names to see who would get gifts. My Grandparents would let us open their gifts on Christmas eve as well. This year my grandparents gave each of us a new Sleeping Bag. Of course I yelled out Let's have a sleep over together. Everyone said yes except for my parents. My dad and brother's read the christmas story from the bible and we played games and sang songs. It was so nice and relaxing.
That night, all of us kids slept in the rooms at least we pretended to sleep. Early Christmas morning my siblings always made me go upstairs and wake up our parents. Santa never wrapped our gifts. There were always piles designated for each of us. My parents would send me back down and what seemed like an eternity (probably 30 minutes) they would give us some sort of call or sign to tell us to come up. It was so amazing to see everything. There were christmas's where we didn't have a lot but it didn't matter. Being with my family is what mattered the most.
When Keith and I got married, we spent our first Christmas at my house. He never had Christmas with such a huge group of people and he didn't know what to expect. My siblings made him feel right at home. I told him about not wrapping gifts and he thought that was different. We helped Santa Clause get the piles ready and he had a ball.
I love Christmas!! I love this time of year. Shopping is fun but the best time is when you are able to help somebody or see the faces of the kids lighten up. We have stressed to our kids the importance of giving at Christmas. I am glad to know that they are doing this and love the chance of helping Santa Clause out with a family in need this year.

Sub-For-Santa

I am so excited for Christmas this year. We have been stressing to our kids for as long as I can remember about what Christmas is about. For the most part they understand that Christmas is about Christ. THey know that Christmas is for giving gifts and not receiving them even though getting them is fun to.
This year we are getting the chance to help out a family who needs some help. They are also investigating the church as well. When we found out what has happend to this family, we found our chance to help them.
My kids have gotten into the spirit of the season and have been going through their books and toys and clothes and bringing them out to me. Malynda wants to give just about all of her old stuff to them.
I love Christmas and I am glad for this chance to help out a family who needs some extra help.

Farewell to an Apostle

Most of you already know but Elder Wirthlin passed away Monday night. He was a great speaker and was very inspirational.

Post Halloween and Rewards

The kids had excellent report cards so as a reward we took them to the pizza put. They had a ball. I got some really good deals on Halloween costumes after the holiday was done. Ella loves the hannah Montana hair as well as a few other people. Blake is Bumble Bee and Malynda is Hannah Montana.