December

What a busy month!  But I don't mind, it's so nice to do all the fun things with my family and create new traditions for ourselves.  Not gonna lie, tons of pictures!!

We started off the month with breakfast with Santa at Honey's house.  Pat's mom and her sisters always do a cute little breakfast with all the cousins and their kids.  Santa is so nice and Millie is starting to warm up to him.

 Daphne is not!

 We decorated sugar cookies.  It was all I could do not to "fix" Millie's cookies.  She had such a good time and showed a lot of pride for decorating them herself.  I did fix Pat's cookies though!

 

 Our elf, Shabadoo, kept busy too.  

While it was still warm we went to Gardner Village with my mom and Mormor to find the elves and have a picnic.  Millie didn't understand where the witches were.  She kept asking about the witches because they do a witch hunt during October.

One night each December we go up to meet Pat, have dinner and see the lights at Temple Square.  We pack hot chocolate and cookies.  It has become one of our favorite traditions.  Millie absolutely loves running around and next year Daphne will be able to join her.  This year was so nice.  We went to dinner at Kneaders and lucked out.  Santa was there.  This time Daphne would sit on his lap (he sucked her in with a stuffed puppy!) but Millie was a little weary of him.  They were also selling their french toast, yeah for me!!!!  

There was no snow (kind of a bummer) but the nice part was it was soooo warm!  It was quite pleasant.
 

While we were getting the girls into pj's for our drive home Daphne got to play in the back of her daddy's truck (HEAVEN!!!) and Millie made our hearts melt by exclaiming that this was a magical night.  She later described to my mom the lights - "Oh Mormor, they were so much more than pretty."  Where does that girl come up with her sentences!

 

We went to visit Poppy's grave.

 

 

We made canday trains (I always did this growing up and have been patiently waiting until Millie was old enough to make one too).  I had to pass the reigns over to Pat though so that I wouldn't take over Millie's train!

 

Celebrated Mormor's birthday:

Christmas Adam at the Riches.  Honey always decorates so nice.  We had dinner and a nativity (I think Millie wants to have a speaking part next year Honey!!) and then just hung out.

 

My two beautiful angels:

Christmas Eve was with the Osmond/Olafssons (seriously one of my favorite meals of the entire year!!!)  The kids worked hard to complete a nativity scavenger hunt.  They are so smart!!

The kids got to open some presents:

 And on Christmas morning we woke up to this!!!!  Seriously, the best Christmas morning EVER!!!

Pat got to go skiing with our brother-in-law, Dave, our friend Wade and one of his pals up Big Cottonwood Canyon.  The weather was gorgeous and the snow was AWESOME!!  Very lucky indeed!  (He was also lucky because with my brother-in-law, someone actually took some pictures of him!

Millie got to see lots of her cousin Abby.  Abby is awesome!!  Here they are in dress-ups that Aunt Sarah sent them.  The fairy dress is so dang cute!!!

 Wow!  Busy month, now it's time to take a break!!