New Years Eve

On New Year's Eve we went to my parents' house and partied with them and Ashlee, Konrad, Alli, and Camryn. We played games, ate yummy food, did puzzles, and watched sports and the New Years Eve countdown shows. It was a great day! We spent the night at my at parents house and did the same things the next day. Other than the countdown shows of course.

Kenzie got a bird feeder for Christmas and it's been so fun to have birds flying around all the time. It took them awhile to start flying into the bird feeder. There's usually some food on the deck so they would just eat that, but now there's often one in the feeder too now. I also like learning which birds are coming. So far we've identified a lot of Dark-eyed Juncos, a House Finch, and a Steller's Jay. 

Hearts 

Misc. Pictures From December

Jordan took an online car class this month and so I have lots of pictures of the inside of the car. 

He also took this picture... It's really weird :) 

Jordan and Jackson made these gingerbread houses in their baked good class at co-op. 

Kenzie drew herself a nativity scene. 

Doug and I always write different names on our gift tags to each other ones like to Leaf, from Sienna, or to basketball from volleyball. It keeps things interesting and is a tradition passed on from my parents. Jordan likes it and made up his own for his siblings. For Kenzie he wrote to Henry Huggins, from Harry Potter. 

We went to see the musical lights in Maple Valley. 

Jordan made a water filter for his engineering class. 

Doug and I went to Bellevue for a weekend without the kids. We saw Jumanji 2, ate out, shopped at the mall, and watched several Christmas movies. When we ate at the Cheesecake Factory, it was at the same time as Snowflake lane so while we waited for our table we went out and watched the snow fall. We were glad we got there before Snowflake Lane was over because as soon as it was over the wait time at Cheesecake Factory tripled.

Our freezer broke so we got a new and improved fridge! We love it! It seems to keep our food more fresh and it has so much more room. 

Doug invented something at work and got it patented! We went to Taco Time to celebrate. 

Kenzie got an email address and instant messaging on google. She was able to talk to Nati and after declared she missed Nati even more. She immediately sat down and drew a picture of Nati and her typing to each other: 

Kenzie and Coleman snuggled up watching Rudolph together. 

Kenzie and I went to Ashlee's ornament party. We had so much fun and came home with some cute ornaments!

Jordan loves playing Doug's new exercise game, Ring Fit Adventure.

Kenzie is still missing Nati so much and is excited to see her in about a month!

Coleman came downstairs yesterday and saw me undecorating the Christmas tree. He said "that's dumb." I told him that wasn't very nice especially since I was doing something nice by taking the lights off myself instead of having him do it. He said he wanted to do it. So I let him help. And I told him we had to do it since the yard waste people were going to be picking it up in the morning, so he didn't think it was quite so dumb:)

New Sunday Clothes

The kids all got new church clothes for Christmas. Jackson and Coleman have been wearing too short of pants for quite awhile (although Coleman has some longer ones, but he didn't like how they fit in the waste.) The previous week, Doug's aunt, Cindy, stopped me and said he and another lady in the ward had a good chuckle over Coleman's outfit. His pants were a couple inches short, he had low Mario socks on, his vest and shirt didn't go well together. He was quite the site :) Kenzie wanted a long sleeve dress so she'd be warmer. And Jordan's been wearing the same outfit for at least 2 years I think and was ready for a normal black pants/white shirt and tie look.

They all look great! 

It was Jordan's last day in primary. He's so excited to go to Young Men's and get the priesthood next Sunday.

More Roller Skating

We went roller skating again last Friday. The time, Alli and Cam, the Winters, and Merrills joined us. It was so fun!

Coleman brought $5 so he could play the games. 

Kenzie, Cam, Alli 

Doug came with us. When we were doing the Hokey Pokey, he said he doesn't remember ever doing the Hokey Pokey before! (Although Jordan reminding us that he did do it at a work party once.)  

It was also Coleman's first time doing the Hokey Pokey.  He loved skating this time and said it's only "a little worse" than ice skating.

The 12 Days of Christmas; Coleman's Version

Coleman loves the 12 days of Christmas song. He also loves to sing loud for us all to hear, even when he doesn't know the words.

Here's his version of a few of the verses of the 12 days of Christmas:

On the 4th day of Christmas my true love gave to me: 

4 jolly birds

3 French toast

2 Turtle backs

and a partridge in a bear tree

It makes us laugh every time. I especially love the 4 jolly birds part :)

Christmas Lists and Pictures

Kenzie made me many, many Christmas lists this year. Most of them had kitty written at least 3 or 4 times.

Here's 4 of her lists. 

And this one is Jordan's. He only had 6 items. It's not surprising he got everything he wanted, but Kenzie didn't :) 

And here's a picture from Kenzie...

The Day After Christmas

We always schedule the day after Christmas to be a play all day kind of day. So that's what we did. The kids played with their new toys, we played our new games, and played our new video games.

I'm happy two of our new games are drawing games. They are my favorite kind! 

Jordan worked many hours on his Gearjits. We figure over the two days he spent at least 6 hours building it. 

He finished it in the evening. This one is a marble run that works when he turns a handle that turns all the gears.

Christmas!!!

We had a fantastic Christmas!  It was such a fun day! Jordan was the first one up and came in our room a little after 7, Jackson and Kenzie were both around 7:30, and Coleman came in a little before 8. We read the Christmas story and watched a few short movies about Jesus as well as the Christmas Coat movie about Heber J. Grant. 

Then we went down to the basement to open presents.

Santa left a message for the kids. 

Coleman's presents 

Jordan's 

The family's 

Kenzie's 

Jackson's 

Mine and Doug's 

Coleman's presents are usually next to me, so he walked in and looked at the hoverboard, and walked right past it. He almost started opening Jackson's presents until I told him to look at the name on the stocking and he realized it was Jackson's. He was so excited to find out the hoverboard was his! 

Jordan waited awhile before he started opening his. He was watching everyone else and walking around a bit. He wanted to make sure he would be last opening his presents :) 

Jackson was so surprised to find he got a computer. 

Kenzie looking through her new calendar. 

Kenzie giving Jordan a big hug. 

Pokemon cards! 

Jordan showing Doug his new calendar. 

  

Kenzie was really, really excited about her leopard jacket. 

As soon as she was done opening presents, she ran to wash her new kitty.

All the kids got some new books. Jordan got a series Spy School. 

Coleman put on his new clothes over his jammies. 

Double dutch jump ropes! This is what he wanted most! 

Trying to jump rope with his new long jump ropes. He wasn't very successful :) 

Coleman was thrilled to get a pinball machine. Doug asked him what it was. Coleman said. "It's a pinball machine! Not a huge one, but.... one!" 

Kenzie washing her puppy. 

Jordan got a computer to build! He's excited to build it and has already read a lot in the How to Build a Computer book we got him. 

 

Doug got new ear muffs. He also got sweatpants (his favorite present :)), a keyboard vacuum, shoes, Nintendo gift cards, candy, an exercising (confession time: I can never spell exercising right the first time) game for his Switch, and a few other things. 

Since there's no picture of my presents, I'll just say a few here: a Rubik's Cube, pots and pans, a pan shield thing so oil doesn't splash out when I cook, a water bottle, some clothes, a shower curtain and rug for the kids' bathroom, can organizer, candy, a new Pictionary game, and an Amazon gift card.  

We found some family presents to open. 

We got a cool outdoor/beach blanket from the Kenyons. We're excited to try it out in Hawaii this summer. 

And a family Nintendo Switch! The kids were so excited! Kenzie kept saying something like "did we really just get a Nintendo Switch?" They were especially happy to find some games already loaded onto the Switch.

Kenzie and her presents. Her big one in the box is a desk.

Jack's presents. 

Jordan's presents. 

Coleman and his presents. 

My parents came over to see our presents and us for awhile. Then we went back to their house for the rest of the afternoon/evening.

Kenzie's outfit was pretty great. 

The boys played Hearts. Jordan also worked on building his Gearjits. 

My mom and I did her new puzzle. Kenzie helped at the end. 

Jordan's Gearjits. 

Me and Doug