Snow, snow, snow...

I figure I had better post some of our Christmas activities before the list starts piling up so much that I get too overwhelmed to blog it all... so here goes--

It has been snowing here non-stop since last Wednesday!!! We usually get a little bit of snow before Christmas, off and on from October through December, but the big snow fall usually comes in January and February. Not this year. Last Wednesday night we were headed up to a friends house to make a gingerbread house, and thought it looked so cool because it was snowing so hard and it was all sticking. I stuck my hand out the window and snapped this picture. You can't even really tell that it is snowing that hard in this picture, but it was.

We then woke up the next morning to 24 inches of snow!!! In less than 24 hours! I love the snow, I think it's beautiful, but this was too much!!! :) I kept on telling Ben that I wish it was Christmas morning with that beautiful white blanket of snow. He told me that it probably would still be white on Christmas day, but I told him by then it will probably be all brown and muddy. I love it only when it is freshly fallen and like a beautiful white blanket! Little did I know that it would be snowing non-stop for the next week!!!

I am kicking myself that I hadn't put up the trampoline yet for the winter. I kept putting it off and am now praying that it holds up this winter!!!

Snow fall like this for most meant a day off from work. Ben indeed didn't go to work that day, but snowfall like this for Ben meant a day of snow blowing ours and many others peoples drive-ways! Him and his friend Jason, loaded up my parents snow blower and went to work, ALL DAY!!!

You can see here that the snow is actually higher than our deck!

And this is our neighbor boy, who is 9 years old, you can see that the snow by the afternoon was clearly up to his shoulders! And look how high it is on our fence!

Tucker loved to just stare out the window and watch it fall. We mostly stayed inside all day and made yummy Christmas-time treats! :) No complaints from me about the snow! :)

We have not let the snow dampen our Christmas spirit! :) We went up to the Enloe's house for gingerbread houses and Hot Chocolate:

The Whole gang

Carter & Tucker

These two boys are the cutest:

After we made the house, they pretty much stayed here the rest of the night and picked off every bit of candy they could find! :)

I can't even tell you how much Tucker loves our 'Chrisam' tree. Every afternoon when he wakes up from his nap he wants to just rock in the chair next to the tree and look at the lights. He even asked me one day to take a picture of him next to the tree. You can tell he just woke up in these pictures. And you can tell that it is the winter time since it is like pitch-black outside at 4 o'clock in the afternoon!!!

We had our ward Elders Quorum Christmas party last week and we had a 'White Elephant' gift exchange. It was the craziest thing in the world...one of Ben's friends in the ward found this doll at White Elephant and had to get it in hopes that Ben would open it!

Obviously, the doll bears a little resemblance to Ben, and on top of it all, the name of the doll is, 'My Friend Ben'. So he buys it, wraps it up and brings it to the party. We chose the number 13 out of 21, I think! And you will never guess who opened up the gift! Watching Ben open the gift was probably one of the funniest things I have ever seen! It was so crazy, first of all, that no one before us had opened the gift, and that out of all the gifts that were left when it was our turn, that THAT was the one that Ben chose to open! We were at the Mortensen's house, and Aaron just happened to have an outfit that was pretty similar to the one that the doll was wearing. Some old Halloween costume or something. We had to get a picture of them being twins!

We, of course, had to take Tucker to see Santa. It was great, Tucker loved him. I have to tell you a secret that I learned this year...take your own camera and ask them if you can take your own picture. A few friends of mine had told me that if you ask them, they will let you. I certainly didn't want to spend $25 for 3 pictures. So, I asked them if I could take my own and at first they told me that I had to make a minimum purchase from one of their pictures, but I just told them that I have had friends who had done it in the past, and they let me. He told me I could only take 3 pictures, but that was fine with me! So, I was able to take my own picture, I printed out like 10 of them for family and friends and it cost me a total of $3! I'm sure every place is different, it's worth a shot! I think that some of my family members were embarrassed of my frugality. I just learned my lesson last year when we paid a TON of money for Santa pictures and it was probably one of the worst Santa pictures of all time. It could seriously win contests! I didn't want that to happen again! This year, I thought, if it didn't turn out, at least I didn't pay an arm and a leg for it!

Ben is a gingerbread house making fool, and gets really into it and has to make them perfect. My mom got Tucker a gingerbread Train and we invited her over to build it together!

I had to post this picture because I thought it was so funny that in the background my mom is feeding Tucker the icing straight into his mouth from the tube! I didn't realize that she had done that until I saw this picture! I swear that child is so spoiled by her, she gives him whatever he wants!!!

And the finished product:

Sorry for the long post. (who am I kidding, all of my posts are long) I really hope that everyone is enjoying their Holiday's!! We have loved having all of my family in town and are glad that they even made it, with all of this bad weather! Allen and Kelli and Keyton had to drive in it-and that was pretty scary-but they made it! And Kayla and Jason were stranded in the Boise Airport for like 13 hours flying up here from Salt Lake and didn't have any of their luggage for a few days-it was a mess!!! But they all made it safe and sound and we have been having a great time with them here and are looking forward to Ben's parents flying in on Christmas day to spend the week with us!