We celebrated Maden's 9th birthday on December 1st! He was thrilled that he got the candles all blown out in one breath! Such a cute boy.
On December 5th, the actual birthday, he got to go to Pizza Pie Cafe and a movie with his family and two of his good friends. I still can't believe he's 9! Love you Maden.
These littles were so fun with the Christmas trees this year. Clark was so excited that he made some ornaments for their tree, and Molly loved decorating her tree. She made some ornaments too, but I didn't get a picture. Such exciting things for 3 year olds.
Ryder got to make some ornaments too. Whenever we go to A&W, Ryder has to take a picture with the bear. Annie got to go to an ISU Women's basketball game with her mom. She loved it, and even got a shirt.
We took a little drive over to Rupert to see my brother, Randy and sister-in-law Julie. They are living in Nikelle's childhood home overseeing some repairs and projects to the house. Jared was doing some work in the garage, or as we like to say, he was "lighting the world". Molly was the only little one there, and she loved having Grandpa Chin Chopper read her some stories.
We celebrated Jared's 28th birthday on the 9th. (His real day is the 11th.) I can't believe my baby is 28! Annie and Molly love to be together, and always have a great time.
One day when I was tending Ryder, I had a dentist appointment, so Grandpa Chin Chopper (or my Dad, Paul Chambers) got to take care of Ryder for about an hour. They both seemed to enjoy eating lunch and playing air hockey together.
This is what happened on Jared's real day, the first snowstorm of the year that Blake had to plow.
Jared and Nikelle were Mary and Joseph for their ward party. Molly was a cute little shepherd girl. So cute, all of them.
I added some snowflakes to my tree this year. They are actually temples! I got one for each temple we have been inside! I love them!
And then there's this! My friend from High School, Renae Cramer Hill is an amazing artist, and had a drawing for a print of this amazing painting! And, I won!!!!! She was kind enough to bring it to me in person!!! I just feel bad that I didn't get a picture of her. I absolutely love it! It goes perfectly in this space with my other decorations.
Molly had her first real dance recital. She looked so darling and danced so well for a 3 year old. It was so fun to go watch her. She had a lot of supporters there, she's very loved.
I love these pictures of Molly and Ryder with Santa. Nikelle loved seeing Santa's reaction when Molly told him that she wanted a light switch and a ding dong (meaning doorbell) for her playhouse. Ryder was really brave and almost kind of liked sitting on his lap.
I love this picture of Annie reading a story to Molly. Maden was very intrigued with the game Jared was playing.
I also love this picture! Such a sweet forever family.
Jared is pretty happy with his early Christmas present! Brian's family came down to stay for Christmas Eve. We had dinner, made a gingerbread house, and played games.
One tradition we started a few years ago was having Monkey Bread on Christmas morning. I put the dough in the pans the night before and let it rise all night, then cook it on Christmas morning. Ken heard about this and they decided to make their own. So I call this Monkey Bread Wars. Ours are on the left, Cindy and Ken's on the right. I think we are all winners of this war!
I only got pictures of Randy and Maden eating the monkey bread, this is Maden's second helping, he loves it! Randy loves it too, Ken and Cindy loved it too, it's good stuff!
Molly is thrilled with her light switch! The kids love opening the presents they've been so curious about.
More present opening fun. Maden, Annie and Clark made me some ceramic snowmen. I love them! And I love that they were so excited to give them to me, and that they worked so hard to make them beautiful. I'm just not very good about making sure to get good pictures.
Blake got everyone some cool, non glare sunglasses. Now everyone is cool!
Clark loves his truck and trailer, that's one of his favorite things to do, play with trucks that have trailers. Christmas can tucker everyone out. Ryder got a turn at playing the Hungry Hippo game, pretty fun.
I'm happy that Ryder likes the writing board thing we gave him. Grandma Purcell really liked the book that Cindy put together for her. It has pictures of everyone that visited her during the year. It was a lot of work getting all the pictures from everyone and getting them sent in to be printed in the book. Everyone really likes it and has look to see if they made the book.
There was plenty of rabbit hunting in December. The new guns work really good. They went so much, that they didn't take pictures every time. Sure has been a fun pastime this year.
