How about a quick back log picture blitz! I always love looking at pictures. Maybe it's because I am not a gifted writer so my posts don't capture and keep people's attention like others of you I know or maybe it's because a picture speaks a thousand words. Either way....
The Holidays
The Christmas holiday started early this year. Due to the fact that Matt and Nancy's family came for Thanksgiving this year instead of Christmas, we did some fun Christmas things so they could enjoy them with us.
First up: The Nutcracker!
Grandma Taggart treated all her girls to a fun day at the ballet. It was my girls' first time and I think Hannah summed it up for us by saying, "I just loved it so, so much!"
My little sister Shanna has made it a tradition to take all the adults in our family out to a fancy dinner as her Christmas present to us. She calls it her gift of time. We love it and look forward to it every year. She sends out invitations, gets babysitters for us that need them and we have a glorious time out on the town.
This year we went to The Roof!
The view from our table.
Enjoying Temple Square with Ethan after his first experience doing baptisms for the dead. It was awesome! And raining.
One of the first weeks in December we trucked ourselves up to Idaho to go on a Christmas tree cutting expedition with our good friends the Thompsons. They got the permits, we got cold but it was so fun cutting our own tree. We always buy a live tree but cutting our own was worth the trek to Idaho. I hope this can become a tradition.
We loved it so much we made this our
Christmas card picture.
My favorite angle of our tree. I love sitting on the love seat right next to it! So cozy! I also love that it is not fancy. We have some special ornaments that have meaning for our family but it's all done by the children. Does it look perfect? No. But it feels perfect.
Ethan took after his Aunt Shanna this December and wanted to take our family out to dinner as his gift to us. It was a little less fancy but meant more. Sweet kid.
Emma had her very first piano recital Dec. 19th. It was at the Layton Library. Grandma and Grandpa Taggart came as well as Aunt BriAnne and Aunt Shanna. They were all on time, the one person who wasn't....Dad! Emma was supposed to play 2nd and ended up playing 2nd to last because Dad was stuck in traffic. He finally made it and was as proud of Emma as I was. She was REALLY scared but met that fear and did great. She played two pieces, Time to Celebrate and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.
December went by in a flash! I found myself at school almost every day again. It took up a lot of time but I loved being able help a teacher who was going through a really difficult time.
She has an awesome class and I had a lot of fun with them all the way up to Christmas break.
Christmas Day
Christmas came like always. This year I was soooo excited. Surprises are one of my very favorite things in the world and this Christmas was full of them! One not so fun surprise was for Ethan this year. We decided that he was old enough to know the Christmas secret. He has never asked once about it. We always thought it was because he is so innocent and tender and quick to believe but after divulging "the secret" I asked him if he already knew. He said he kind of did but he never asked for confirmation because he didn't want to grow up. I was so sad. What a sweetie. I just had to give him a big huge hug. Now that Ethan was in the club, he got to help Christmas Eve and be an elf.
He was sure to clarify that he was only helping with the younger ones' gifts but NOT his. He loves surprises as much as I do!
Ethan's BIG surprise...a Ruger 1022 rifle. Yep, a real gun. He didn't ask for one but Dad decided he was ready for one. It was definitely a surprise!
The other really big surprise of Christmas was for JayDee. He's really taken to golfing this past year or two and has been using his Dad's old (and I mean old) set of clubs. When I found out a friend in our ward had Callaway connections and could get me a really sweet set of clubs for a great deal, I couldn't pass up the chance. I bought them with my subbing money, JayDee had absolutely no idea. It was awesome especially because we had promised we wouldn't buy each other presents this year because of our new window purchase. I didn't lie however, I had already purchased the clubs before we made the deal so they didn't count. :) It was also awesome because I gave JayDee a really hard time about buying me something when he left a bag in the car I wasn't supposed to see.
JayDee said he hadn't been that surprised since being a child. It just makes me absolutely giddy to pull off really great surprises!
Christmas Break
It seems that every Christmas break JayDee and I have some kind of house project to complete. Since, JayDee always has the week between Christmas and New Year's off it's a good time. This year it was painting. When we got our new windows in late Sept. we had to take down all the window coverings and when doing this we found some lovely wallpaper left over from a previous owner. It was not awesome but it forced our hand to do the necessary. I absolutely hate painting. I think it is complete torture but it needed to be done so we did it.
Family Room
Living Room
It's a good thing I have JayDee around or none of this would have been done. He's a go-getter for sure.
Luckily, paint has to dry between coats. We didn't neglect our children all week. Quite on the contrary. We got some new sleds for Christmas and thanks to the mountains of snow that arrived post Christmas we had some quite spectacular fun playing in the new fallen snow.
Once the snow stopped long enough to travel, we drove up to Grandpa Gunnell's farm and had a great time being pulled behind the 4 wheeler and shooting Ethan's new gun. All that wide open space is perfect for safe shooting.
Isaac even got to "shoot" the gun.
We went to Logan another day to visit Grandma Gunnell and sled the ultimate of sledding hills, Old Main. This was by far the funnest day of Christmas break. On this trip we got a story that will be remembered and told for years to come.
Isaac turned out to be the ultimate sledder. Who knew?
Have I mentioned how much I love Logan? Well I love it!
And after this day, I loved it some more.
This p
icture of Isaac and I was taken just after he had taken the ride of his life. It was Isaac's first ride of the day, he was riding on the sled with Ethan. If anyone has been to Old Main Hill you know it is pretty steep and there is nothing at the bottom to stop you from sailing into the street if you've got enough momentum. So before the kids started down, we trained them in the art of "bailing off." If you're going too fast and get scared, bail off. If you are going to hit a tree, bail off. If you are going to go into the street, bail off. Before we let Ethan and Isaac go, we reminded them about bailing off and instructed Ethan further that if he bailed off he needed to take Isaac with him. Off they went. Sailing down fast from the very top. I was about 3/4 of the way down waiting for a picture op. I was also standing about 10 ft away from a jump. As Ethan and Isaac got closer I could see they were headed straight for the jump. Ethan saw it too just as he and Isaac's sled decided to turn around backwards. Ethan decided to bail. He tried to grab Isaac but missed so Isaac stayed on the sled. He hit the jump backward, got some good air and landed perfectly. Isaac laughed the whole time but he didn't stop. I saw a tree coming up fast. I began yelling at Isaac to jump off but he just kept right on laughing. He narrowly missed the tree and then headed straight for the road. Now I was really screaming. "Isaac, roll off! Roll off!" He just kept right on laughing and sailed right over the edge and into the street. There is a 2-3 foot drop from the hill to the road and when Isaac hit the edge his sled flew up into the air and he disappeared. I was freaking out thinking that he was lying in the road dead, bleeding or broken. If not that, than at least shaken up enough to never sled again. As I ran down to get him, he was climbing up the embankment smiling ear to ear. When he saw me he said, "Mom! Did you see me! That was awesome!" I told him that I did see him and that he scared me. I asked him if he was okay and if he landed on his head. He said, "I did a flip! It was so awesome!" I was so relieved. He was absolutely fine and just wanted to get right back to sledding. When it was time to leave he didn't want to go and ever since he's been asking to go back to the "big hill." We've sledded a couple more spots since this incident but none of them have measured up for Isaac. He just isn't satisfied unless it's the big hill. Crazy kid.
Me and the Grinch had something in common this holiday season, both our hearts grew 3 sizes. Truly. Lovely.
