Christmas Celebrations Begin!

Every year we have a Christmas celebration with the Whittemore's. This year we had to plan it a few days before Christmas and it started our festivities for the rest of the week!

 And then on Christmas Eve we headed over to my parents house to celebrate. We of course had to continue the Christmas story play tradition. This year Mark filled in  as "Joseph". :)

 All the kids had a great time and received great gifts!!

 My dad built (but was Mom's idea :)) Isabelle her very own kid size picnic table. She loved it and right away set up her new tea set.

 Cadence received a new big bike. She has been asking for a bike without training wheels for over a month now, so she was super excited about learning how to ride.

Lights

 We went out one driving one evening last week to look at Christmas lights. Last year we found a house that has a major light display near our house, so we returned again this year and it again was the highlight of the evening. :)

Earlier in the day Dylan had his Christmas party at school. They had a great time making gingerbread houses.

More Christmas fun

 Cadence had her Christmas musical for her preschool, super cute! She had one part of a song where she sang with one other little girl...they were the "red & white cows" :)

 

 Dylan also had a small Christmas performance in the morning at school. They sang 2 fun Christmas songs one included some air guitar time. It was really funny!

 Isabelle actually asked me to take a picture of her (she usually hides from the camera). She thought she looked so silly with the elf hat on.  And Cadence looking super cute in her Santa hat. :)

Isabelle Dance Recital

 Isabelle had her 1st dance recital last Friday. She has loved going to class every week but we walked into class and she saw that all the families were there to watch the class and she wanted nothing to do with it. She refused to wear her dance shoes and I basically just had to leave the room in the beginning in order for her to stay with her teacher...which she held her hand during almost the whole recital.

 She was still so cute! :)

Grandma Day

 Last week for Grandma B. Day (every Tuesday) we went to the train park. Isabelle is so shy...with everyone until she is totally comfortable. Shy to the point where she hides and I think at this point it is just her habit with my mom and sister. She didn't want to do anything unless it was with me but I made her ride the merry go round with my mom...and then it was funny because she was hiding from me and didn't want me to take a picture of her. :)

 We rode the little train together and the pictue below captures her somberness (look at her sleepy eye)! :)

  I loved the simplicity of her holding my finger the entire ride...

 

 

 

Fun picture of Jolene and Mom :)

 

 

 



Looking like Christmas

Aunt Michelle continued the tradition of advent calendars for the kids. They love getting a package in the mail! This year the girls got chocolates and Dylan received a super cool Star Wars lego calendar where every day he either gets a new guy or little figurine. He says every day he can't wait to see what he will get the next day. :)

 

And last weekend we finally started decorating for Christmas!

 We went and picked out a nice small tree to fit in our nice small house.

Picture courtesy of Cadence :)

 Gotta love Phoenix winters...decorating our tree with the girls in their swimsuits!!

No they weren't swimming, just LOVE their suits.

 It was really fun decorating this year because the kids would remember specific ornaments from last year and had such a great time...and we only had 3 ornaments fatalities.

The morning ended with a great pancake breakfast. It was a super fun morning!

Randomness of this last week

 Dylan LOVES egg nog! So I thought we would give a try at making some homemade. The fist batch burned (you have to bring milk to boil on stove) so we tried again and we made it correctly but it was so thick that we couldn't drink it because of the texture. Dylan said he thought we should just stick with buying it from the store and I have to say that I agree. :)

 Wanted to capture how much Isabelle loves having "homework" time when the older ones are doing theirs. She is doing great with tracing, she just started making stick people with circle body with legs & arms, uses scissors great and is working on coloring within the lines.

We went to dinner one night last week to one of the kids' favorite places...Souper Salad :). I had to take a picture of the outfit that Cadence choose to wear! I'm pretty good with letting the kids pick their own clothes out and usually not making them change (of course it all depends on where we are going :)). This evening choice of clothes included a plaid shirt that was buttoned uneven with a pink t-shirt under, a flower multi colored skirt, tights and brown cowboy boots. Gotta love it!

 

 Dylan started having practice for basketball this week. We actually were too late to sign him up but his friends team is short one player and they asked if he could come do the practice with them so they could play 5 on 5. He isn't allowed to play the games...but he still loves just being able to play.

 Dylan, Cadence and myself went to the Christmas play at 1st Assembly church this weekend. It is a tradition for us to go every year. It was nice to spend time with the two of them without Isabelle crawling all over me :).

Fun Pictures of the Month

Fall carnival at Dylan's school

 Thanksgiving meal at Cadence's preschool.

Her Native American name was, "she who loves her sister"...How cute. :)

 Ava's princess birthday party

 Some snuggle time on our chair swing in our backyard.

 Relaxing time with Daddy watching football.

 "All grown up"

 Tempe Town Lake, enjoying the grass and sun!