Posada...

Our branch had it's annual Posada. I love our Indiana branch. Our two branches combined for this Christmas feast. It is a Mexican tradition. We all meet in the Chapel, in Sunday clothes. Take off our shoes, and then kids from the primary dressed as Mary and Joseph  walk through the building knocking on doors looking for a place to stay and are always turned away. We follow them through the dark halls holding tea light candles while a person behind us plays a hymn on the violin. It is a really beautiful program. Finally at the last door, our Branch President, President Condon is there, and welcomes us to the 'Inn'. And there is a great feast prepared and set up for us. 

I grabbed a photo of President Condon from inside the feast:

And I just loved this picture of Sister Condon, this is TOTALLY her, always serving, always taking care of everyone. I love this lady.

It was so much fun to see all of our friends from the branch who are still downtown. We miss so many of our friends out there! 

Sweet Josephine serving dessert. Love her.

Maria Vazquez holding Jackson for me while I snap pictures. I'm so grateful for our wonderful branch family.

My friend, Angela, had her sweet little baby boy. Little Peter is so sweet. It was so good to her her again.

My sweet little Taylor Rae...

And of course, no Spanish branch party is complete without a pinata!!!

Luckily, my friend, Melissa from our new Valley branch was there and got a good piece of the pinata. Makes a beautiful hat! :)

We love our Spanish Branch friends.

Sunrise Superstar...

Going through pictures, I realized that I failed to post Tucker's first grade class picture this year. This, believe it or not, is his re-take photo! :) My poor boy is just going through that not-so-great smile phase. :) We try to do his hair. He desperately wants spiky hair like his friends some days and his horse hair just won't let that happen! He has the thickest and coarsest hair of anyone I know!

We still love him toothless smile and all! :)

And, after getting the picture back, I realized he's wearing the same shirt as he wore in his pictures last year! :) oops!

Here he is with his friends, Ezra and Amy from his class. He is such a social little guy. Every day he comes home and tells me about everyone wanting him to be their best friend. He always gets picked to do fun things, by his friends. We had a Sunrise family night and it was seriously like a mixer. They had a DJ, and the lights were low and they were rockin' it! :) They were having fun dancing. There was also a book fair, and Santa was there, and Pretzels and Nachos and Hot Coco! It was a party, that's for sure!

Tucker wouldn't leave the dance floor to come in to get a picture with Santa, so I took these two in. :)  Cutest picture ever! :)

He loves school though. He loves his teacher, he loves his classmates and he loves learning. He is reading at a 3rd grade level right now, and his teacher is impressed with the way that he soaks up information. Here are just a few gems from his school work from the past few weeks.

He had to color and decorate a gingerbread man, and write a story about an adventure he went on. He drew a ninja and wrote this story. All on his own. "Hi. my name is ninja. I am a gingerbread man, come explore. I was in the woods, it was dark and I was all alone. It was so scary. A leopard was chasing me. He almost got me but I got away. I was lucky.'

He loves to work on 'fonts' on the computer. That's what he calls them. That must be what they call them at school. I open up a word document and he just types away, making sentences, most of them silly. One day I heard him call out from the computer room, 'Mom, did you know there is a key for the money sign!!!' He was very excited. I came in a  few minutes later, and this is what I saw:

Apparently boys are born this way and never grow out of it! :) Money and poop. Ben's two favorite subjects, passed down to his son.

This is what he wrote about his best friend, Carson G.: 'Carson G. and I are best friends. We are alike because we are both six, we like sweatshirts and wall ball. We are different because I like Caramel.'

I took a picture of this for my mom. I knew she would be proud. Nothing tears her up like Veterans day and Memorial day. My grandpa would be proud,too! :) It made me think of him.

This little one sure loves painting right now. That is what she wants to do every single day. I need to take a picture of all of her masterpieces. She is a good little artist! :) I give her a stack of paper plates and she goes to town!

Nothing better than a fresh new packet of paints and a blank canvas to create on...

My two little buddies while big brother is in school:

Decking the Halls...

Usually we get our tree and decorate the house Thanksgiving weekend. I am ready for Christmas as soon as Thanksgiving is officially over! This year, we didn't do it Thanksgiving weekend, but we did do it as soon as we could in December! :)

{I love me a house decorated for Christmas!}

We got our tree this year at Costco. Not the most beautiful tree we've ever had, but once it's decorated, it was just as charming!

Our statue of Christ and Olive wood Nativity set from Jerusalem make their way out this time of year...

Ben had called Kathryn to see if she had any extra white lights around her house so we could finish off just one last little bit of the outside of our house. She brought these big bulb ones which didn't really go with all of our other little bulb ones, so I put them to good use with this adorable new Merry Christmas sign.

I inherited some Santa's from Kathryn, as well. It is so nice being friends with someone with such great taste! :) I appreciate all of her hand me downs! :) I added them to our existing table centerpiece...

And some Santa on the other side, too.

This is how my kids cope with Christmas decorating:

They are all gung-ho getting everything out of the boxes, but then are over it while I'm trying to decide where to put everything! :)

They do love decorating the tree, though! :) Of course!

This was going to be the front of my Christmas card this year. I was going to attempt to make one, but soon lost the drive. Sorry folks, this is as good as it gets this year: :)

This is how 99% of my pictures turn out:

This boy sure does love his first Christmas tree:

And I sure do love this little boy!

And this crazy one, too!

Since I had taken some cute pics of Tucker in the Santa hat, I thought I'd try to do some other cute Christmasey pics of the other two, (also, for the possibility of just making a last minute Christmas card) 

So, I plopped a naked baby on the ground with a cute little bell rattler, and got this cute one of Jackson:

Then I was stumped with Taylor. One morning I saw her eating a big huge lollipop we have had at our house for like a year now, and thought that it may make a cute photo. But then after I took them lost all interest and desire to do anything good to it. Plus it didn't turn out the greatest (this is unedited) So, this is what we've got. One cute one of Jackson, one semi-cute one of Tucker and one not so great one of Taylor, and that is one of the many reasons I just didn't get cards out this year. 

But we do wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! :)

Thanksgiving...

I always feel kind of bad for Thanksgiving being right in between very commercialized holiday's and all! :) But I usually always try and make the whole month of November all about Thanksgiving, and not getting all Christmasy too early. (I do love Christmas, however!) 

I was a total slacker this year and didn't get our Thankful board up, and when I would think of it, I wouldn't be at the house or something. Then all the sudden it was like the 17th of the month and I figured that maybe we had missed our opportunity. Next year, I can't forget! It adds so much to the season having that daily reminder of things we are grateful for.

On Thanksgiving day, we just relaxed and hung out at home. Snacked on appetizer foods most of the day, watched the parade. It was actually really fabulous! We went and saw the movie Frozen with my dad. I thought it was so cute. We all really liked it. It was more like the older Disney movies with the songs throughout. Ben could have done without the songs, but other than that, we all really liked it. It was just fun to all get out together as a family. We hardly ever do that with Ben's super long work days. Even Jackson had a great time. :)

We waited until Friday to have our Thanksgiving feast, so that Kathryn's boys could be there. They were with their dad on Thanksgiving day. It was well worth the wait. Kathryn, of course, had her house all decorated and it looked so cute.

Delicious food!!!

It was just Jon and Andrew since Chris and Britney live in AZ, now. And Andrew's friend, Jay Paventy joined us.

And, of course, after the meal, lots of football was watched and lots of lounging and napping. It was a perfect day! And I didn't have to cook one thing which was an extra bonus!!

This guy enjoyed himself:

All the food was homemade by Kathryn! And it was so good!

Thanks Kathryn, for having us, and for spoiling us with such great food and even better company! :)

It was a great day to be thankful for all that I have. I am seriously, SO blessed! :) haha