Christmas Time

I tried to come up with some fun things to do with the family this Christmas season. One place we went was....Zoo Lights with the Hulmes. It was freezing but I think the girls liked it.

Christmas morning was fun. The second Gracyn rounded the corner to the living room she spotted her {cheapo}kitchen from Santa and went straight for it. She ran so fast. Patrick was waiting in the living room with the video camera and got it all on tape.

Zoiee asked Santa for an IPOD. She is our little singer. So we thought why not!? She was so excited.

Patrick finally got his in wall speakers for the surround sound. No more wires hanging on the walls. They are installed and look quite nice. We have had the surround sound hooked up since we moved in but it is totally different watching a movie now that we have the "real" thing.

I love the puzzles Gracyn got. They help us with her speech/communication. She is making a lot of progress lately with her speech therapist. She attempts to say words, although you really can't recognize what she is saying. Amy {the speech therapist} has helped us identify words, sounds, gestures that Gracy might be using or use to communicate with us.

We all got great gifts this year. Thank you so much to families for spoiling our girls and US. We love all of you.

Then finally, Christmas afternoon we drove to Cheyenne {not a very relaxing drive this time} to see our families. We loved having Christmas at our house with our little family and then seeing the rest of the family. One thing my mom always gets the kids for Christmas...Pajamas. I love having matching jammies. Little tidbit...Cilla is only 9 mths and mom bought her 2t PJs. Everyone thought they would be toooooo big. But nothing about this little girl is little so those 2t jammies fit her quite nicely. Even a little tight in some areas. We love squishy fat babies.

One tradition that we started this year is "Gifts for the Savior." My VT's came to visit and gave me a little white box with a nice story from the Ensign "Gifts for the Savior." This came at a great time because we have been trying to teach Zoiee that Christmas isn't just about Santa and getting gifts, But about our Saviors Birth. So with this little white box, on Christmas Eve we wrote gifts we could give to the Savior this next coming year and then Christmas morning you open that gift and read all the gifts. A few we came up with are better temple attendance, more routine scripture study, daily prayers {family and personal} etc. This little "gift" from my lovely VT's helped our focus on the Savior. Thank you so much. I am not a word smith so I hope it all made sense.