Merry Christmas!

I didn't take pictures of the kids with their presents this year, but don't worry, Santa didn't forget them.  Here is our tree after all the presents were cleared out, since I forgot to take one before Christmas.  It always looks a little lonely after Christmas is over, but it's still the last part of my Christmas decor that I take down.  I always hate to see it go.  'Til next year!

Christmas Eve

 Christmas Eve Prime Rib dinner with Grandma and Grandpa O. and Mommer and Grandpa L.

 New PJs were BYU sweats this year

 Obligatory asleep on the stairs picture.  This worked better when they were a little shorter.

 I'm not sure what prompted this picture.  They look like they're guarding the Christmas tree, but I think it's one of Scott's tough guy poses and everyone else is copying him.

Finally, everyone is smiling normally! These pictures can be hard to come by.  Merry Christmas!

Camille's Home!

...And she gets a turn at gingerbread house making, too!

Matthew's Choir Concert

Matthew performed in an awesome Christmas Choir Concert.  Even Santa thought so!

Lasagna Party

We had our annual Lasagna Party with the Lane family at our house but I didn't get a lot of pictures -just this one of a newspaper search game.  One highlight -Steve and Karleen (far left in the above picture) announced their engagement!

It was our last time seeing Olga before she returns to Russia.

Heartbeats

This year I had the opportunity to sing with a choir called the Heartbeats.  It is made up of volunteers from the Weber County Medical Alliance, which is made up of spouses of doctors in Weber county.  We started practicing in September and spent the first three weeks of December singing at various senior centers and other locations around Ogden.  It was a lot of fun and very rewarding.  I made many new friends and spread some Christmas cheer.

Gingerbread Houses

Mmmm...merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve dinner -I tried something different than the usual ham -prime rib. Yum. As you can see Scott ate so much it put him in a coma.

Chime carols. Sometime you do something so many years in a row you just can't stop. :) And we're finally getting good enough that you can almost recognize the songs.

Like I said, sometimes you just can't stop. It's probably been at least 10 years that we've taken the "falling asleep on the stairs in Christmas pajamas" photo and I don't even know how it got started.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!!

Christmas Season Catch-up

Gingerbread decorating

Let it snow!

Our flickering lights inside the house made it look like it was on fire.

Temple Square a few days before Christmas with lots of beautiful lights, but no snow!

Beautiful!

Christmas Eve

Even though we were saddened by the situation with Kelly, we left the hospital in the afternoon to come home to have Christmas Eve with our family.

It was time to destroy/enjoy the kids' gingerbread masterpiece.

Since three of our 4 kids thought they were too old to act out the nativity scene this year we watched the "Joy to the World" DVD instead. It was a good alternative. The Christmas story is read from Luke with scenes from Christ's birth interspersed with scenes of modern families around the world reading or acting out the story.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

All ready for bed...

The kids always sleep together on Christmas Eve. This year it was in the basement. Matt is really serious about letting me know he's asleep!

A Different Kind of Christmas

We knew that this Christmas would be a little different than usual, because my parents are on their mission and we would miss spending time with them, but we didn't realize just how different this Christmas would be. On the evening of the 23rd, our brother-in-law, Kelly was in a severe 4-wheeler accident while on an outing with his family and he died late in the evening on Christmas Eve. He was a wonderful man, a father of 8, new grandfather of one, former bishop, hardworking doctor, and loving husband. He was soft-spoken, had a dry sense of humor, patient and very kind. He will be greatly missed. We are so grateful for the knowledge that families are eternal.

Lasagna Party

Sunday we had our annual "Lasagna Party" for my mom's side of the family. It's usually at my mom and dad's house, but since they're in Russia, we had it at our house. We had 46 (and 1/2) people here and it was a lot of fun.

Camille making a veggie tree while one of three huge lasagnas cook behind her

It wasn't the same without Mom and Dad, but they woke up at 3:15 am their time to greet everyone on Skype. Everyone had a great time talking to them, especially Aunt Pat. We missed them and look forward to having them back with us next year. Hopefully they were able to go back to sleep!

There was lots of food...

silly games, of course...

and awesome presents. All in all a great evening. Thanks for coming, everyone!