Dance season

It's that time of year...half-time show season.  Courtney has performed a few times.  They have been mixing it up this year.  Courtney is on the Jr. All Starzz team and also the 6-12th team.  The first performance was just the Jr. All Starzz.  The next performance was just the 6-12th team.  The last performance was everyone. This makes it a bit tough because she has one costume for Jr. All Starzz and another one for the 6-12th class.  So she climbs under the bleachers and changes clothes in the 3 minutes between her dances.  It has worked so far but she is a bit stressed each time she has to change.

This is their 6-12th dance.

Here are the videos of both dances:

She won!

We play a family game on Sunday and Bryan usually chooses one that has a map.  This isn't the favorite of the kids but when we vote they are always outvoted (parents votes count for 2 each while kid votes only count for 1 each, that's fair, right?!).

This particular Sunday, Courtney won!!!  She was so excited because she "never, ever wins!"  We had to take a picture for posterity.

Progress

We have been very slowly making progress on the remodeling.  Here is the new door in the hallway.  Eventually, the plan is to make this a toilet room but we are going to work on the downstairs before doing that.

This is the view from inside the doorway just before we put the door on.

This is after we hung the door.

We have a couple of coats of mud on the joints.  We need to do another coat, texturize and then paint.  It's coming along.

Magic Popcorn Box

I bet you don't have one of these...

It may look like a plain old Quarter Oats, Flavor Variety box of instant oatmeal but it is really the "magic popcorn box!"  Yup, most nights at around 8 p.m., microwave popcorn will magically appear inside this box.  Just ask the kids!  They will look in the box at 7:45 and there won't be any popcorn.  When they check it at 8:15...BAM...popcorn!  The kids can't figure it out.  They watch Bryan and I like hawks but it still remains a mystery.

Yup, our house is magic.

Snow Flurries

When we came out of Church there were snow flurries.  It didn't stick at all and I'm not sure how much of it actually made it to the ground, but Courtney took my phone to take pictures.

Christmas Morning!

The kids woke us up at 6 a.m. to see what Santa had brought them.

Courtney got a new bike!

 Ethan got a Drone with a camera!

Then we started opening gifts.  We were finished with presents and breakfast by 7:30.  Not bad for a Christmas morning!

At about 11 a.m., Grandma and Grandpa Oman and Aunt Leigh Ann came over for round 2 of presents.  Ethan got a really heavy ammo box (wonder what that is for?!).

Oh, that's what all those bullets are for.  Ethan got Grandpa Oman's old gun and he was really happy!

They all left, we got ready and went to Church.  It was a great Sacrament Meeting with a lot of music.  Courtney sang in the Primary choir and the Ward choir.  Then we went home and started dinner.  Everyone came back and we ate dinner.  It was just like Thanksgiving!

We had a great Christmas!  Thank you everyone!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve afternoon was so long for the kids!  They were bored and had nothing to do.  They were also pretty anxious for Christmas.

Bryan tried to help Ethan out by playing a domination game of Risk.  As you can tell, Bryan was beating him when Ethan finally decided it wasn't worth it and quit the game.  I think Ethan was doing fine but the game was going on and on and on and on....

Our Christmas Eve dinner tradition is to order Pizza Hut and sit under the Christmas tree to eat it.  While Bryan and I went to get the pizza, Courtney got the blanket all ready.  The kids love that we get pizza but Pizza Hut isn't their favorite pizza.

They convinced us that we needed to get ready to do our other traditions...i.e. they wanted to open their Christmas pjs.  We held them off for a while and then decided we would do it.

Ethan got Denver Bronco pjs.

And Courtney got owl pjs.

The traditional pj picture on Christmas Eve.

It was then time to read the Christmas stories.

Ethan read "Davey and the First Christmas"

Bryan read the "Christmas Sweater"

Courtney read "The Queen of Christmas"

And I read the account of the Savior's birth from the Bible.

The kids then decorated some sugar cookies for Santa and put the cookies, with some carrots for Rudolph, on a plate for Santa.  Then they went to bed....and couldn't sleep for a long time.

Here are a couple of the decorations on our tree that I like.