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.

Run Run Reindeer

It's our tradition to run in the Run Run Reindeer.  We have run this almost every year since they started it in Ivins.  It has grown and this year there were 500 people. They also made some changes to the run.  It used to be on the first Saturday of December and was the way we brought in the Christmas season.  But they changed it this year and it will always be the Saturday before Christmas.  They also changed it from a 1 mile kids run, 5K and 10K to a straight 5K.  And you don't have to donate a toy to Toys for Tots.  You pay the entry fee (which was higher this year) and then you can choose to donate a toy or not.  They had nice t-shirts and huge finisher medals this year for everyone, along with Chick Filet giving out chicken sandwiches afterward.  A local radio station was also there.  It is really getting big.

Anyway, back to the story.  We woke up on Christmas Eve and it was raining.  Not really what you would want to run in.  Ethan decided he didn't want to run and I decided that I would go up and watch but I didn't want to get all wet.  We went to Ivins City Park and it was a zoo.  I should have picked up our packet the day before,  So we had to wait in line to pick up our packets with our t-shirts and numbers.

When we were all set we saw our neighbors who are our good friends.  She asked me to walk the 5K with her because her foot has been acting up.  Well, I couldn't say no, so I decided to walk it with her.

 Bryan and Courtney were ready to go.

When they started the race my friend looked at me and said, "Well, we can't go through the starting gate without running."  So we ended up running for a bit....but my foot was killing me and her foot wasn't doing too great.  Ends up that I have plantar fascitis which is really painful.  But we did the walk and it was a lot of fun to walk and chat with my friend.  There were so many people behind us that we didn't feel like we were going slow and we were getting great exercise.

We finished, got our medals, picked up our Chick Filet and our donuts, then huddled by the fire to get warm and dry.  We were really wet but it wasn't too bad. 

Courtney beat Bryan and she is very proud of that.  She has now challenged Grandpa Pack foolishly thinking she can beat him.  Hahaha!  We have a race almost every weekend in St. George so they will be racing sometime.

Cookie Time

Courtney's primary teacher wanted to do a small party for the kids in her class.  She asked if I would make sugar cookies and frosting.  I was happy to help.  She then asked if we could do the party at our house.  It was fine with me.  The power outage delayed our plans by one day because I couldn't make the frosting with no electricity but, luckily, I had the cookies ready to go.  So we waited a day and then had them all over.

There were 5 girls and 1 boy who came.  They decorated 5 plates of cookies to deliver.

This is the "sprinkle cookie" plate.

When they had the cookies decorated, we loaded in our van and drove them to 5 homes to deliver the cookies.  It was hilarious because they were a loud bunch of kids!  But they had so much fun.

We went back to our house and played "Skittle Bowling" with a toy bowling set.  They had a lot of fun doing that down our hallway.  The winner (Courtney) got to choose a prize first and then the 2nd place winner got to choose, and on down the line until everyone had a gift.

They love this teacher because they had her when they were Sunbeams so they have good memories of her.  And she will be their teacher again next year because she was recently called and wanted to stay with them.

It was a fun morning/afternoon.

Flash Mob

Courtney wanted to demonstrate the flash mob dance the orchestra/choir/band students did on the last day of school before the break.

Power Outage

We had a power outage for about an hour the week before Christmas.  It had been raining a lot and it was cold.  I had just gone grocery shopping so we hurried and put the groceries away and kept the fridge shut so the food wouldn't thaw out.

Ethan was hungry and so I decided that I would be resourceful and make him breakfast on the grill outside.  It had a burner on the side which we hadn't ever used and so now was the time to use it.  I got the pan out, fired up the burner and made breakfast.  I thought I was very resourceful.  I couldn't make pancakes, crepes or German pancakes, but I could make eggs and bacon on the grill.

 As I was patting myself on the back after Ethan ate his breakfast Courtney said, "Uh, Mom.  Isn't our stove gas?"  Why yes it is...ugh.  I guess I could have made him breakfast just fine on the stove in the house but in case that ever goes out, we know that I can cook outside.

It was really rainy.

Because the electricity was out and the kids couldn't use electronics, Courtney decided to teach Ethan how to play the violin.

It didn't take long for her to get frustrated because he wasn't listening and obeying her the way she wanted him too.  So that didn't last long.

The power company said it would take about 2 hours to get the electricity back on, but it only ended up taking an hour.  We were grateful when it came back on because I was starting to get cold.