A WONDERFUL 2 months!!

The past 2 months have been so fun!! The hightlight for me: NO SCHOOL for 2.5 weeks!!! It was so fun! And Andrew was off of that for over a week! It was so fun! Here are some highlights!:

We got A LOT of games for Christmas and we played A LOT of games over the past few months :) Here Daddy and Angela are celebrating winning first place during one of the games:

Emily celebrating me and her getting in 2nd place during that same game:

And Carolyn lost during that game :( Good sad face, Carolyn. Haha:)

Angela got a mini-ish trampoline for Christmas. Lots of fun jumping!

Tommy got a race track. The race track and the magna tiles (from Nana, Ponka, and Andrea) are the most played with Christmas toys.

MORE GAMES!!! Aunt Chantal gave us a really fun pie in the face game :)

Tommy LOVED to read. He will follow you around holding books in his hand asking for you to read to him :) He esp loves books with animals in it.

We love Daddy!

Emily got more parts to go with her marble set! We have been creating lots of awesomeness with it!

Emily and I read her first chapter book together during break!!! And we are on our second now! She loved it!

The girls got to go on the basketball court and hold a huge flag while the star spangle banner was sung. They were very close to the basketball players on the court. What a fun experience!

Tommy watching his sisters on the court:

During the break, Carolyn took it upon herself to go shovel 6 driveways for the neighbors. Emily and Angela joined her for some of it, too. So happy that the girls fill their lives with things that bring happiness.

We love living next to a huge field. And love that we can head out sledding at any point. They spend lots of time when it snows sledding!

For one of our FHE lessons, we talked about a few examples our our Savior showing love. We then began a heart wall where everything we catch someone in the family doing something that shows love, we write on a heart and put it on the wall (or if we do something ourselves). Emily especially is inlove with filling out hearts. Sometimes she'll do something sweet and say to me, "Mom, that was a heart, right?" I love it! So grateful for our Savior's example and the gospel of Jesus Christ that we have.

I was trying to capture a picture of Tommy bringing a book to me since he loves grabbing a book and bringing it to people.

One of his FAVORITE FAVORITE series is the "Brown Bear" series. And he loves the snakes in the books. He loves saying "sssss" when he finds the snake in the book. I love this boy! He also is really good at "moo"ing, "Bark"ing, "Growl"ing, etc

One of the girls took pictures of me and Tommy snuggling one day.

Emily and me after we read Emily's first chapter book together :) She loved it! We are now reading a Polar Bear Magic Tree House Book together.

Angela and I do a lot of reading together too. One awesome quality about Angela is she works hard - she is working really hard at her reading right now and reads with me just about every day!

Tommy and I reading together:

Carolyn working hard on her science experiment!

Carolyn gave an FHE lesson we loved. We talked about being thankful and she read a story from the "friend" magazine. Then we all wrote "thank you" notes to each other.

We also played a very fun kim family trivial game made by Andrew for our FHE activity! It was so fun!

Emily helped me make a Family Home Evening board ....

Emily and I were happy with how it turned out. We got an old frame from a thrift store and painted the glass with chalkboard paint.

Our Family Home Evening Wall! We have the FHE assignment board and then we hang up pictures/scriptures to help us remember all week what we talked about during FHE.

Puzzles! We love doing puzzles together!

More science experiment:

For our ward Christmas Party, it was the Polar Express Theme. Andrew grew a mustage for it :) I have never seen him grow facial hair before :) He's pretty awesome and was the best conductor ever. Along with the best husband and dad ever!

Carolyn took the picture. But this is us heading to an Ugly Sweater party!

For our Family Christmas Eve Program, Angela and Emily did a gymnastics performance for us!

Christmas Eve: Acting out the Christmas story

Tommy didn't want to be a sheep.

So Tommy ended up being Joseph. And Carolyn was Mary. And Daddy of course was the donkey (what he is every year :)

Shepard and wise man:

Cookies for Santa

Daddy's traditional pepperment shake:

This year we did "Homemade" gifts. It touched my heart that they girls opened cards they made for each other for their Christmas Eve gift. The next day on Christmas they told me they wanted to do homemade gifts again next year. It was the best. Lots of sweet cards and sweet gifts!

Those glasses were the only thing Emily asked for Christmas. Love. that. girl.

Angela got to have her best friend, Emily Hood over to play

Emily had a playdate with Violet, her friend.

In November, Angela had a Rec Show. We got to go see her show off her amazing amazing moves!!!

We made a THANKFUL poster for November. WE traced our hands and thought of 5 things we are thankful for each day (we remembered).

FALL FUN!

What Angela is using doing around the house.

Putting up the tree!

For the month of December, we did the 25 days of Service from lds.org. It was so amazing to focus on our Savior and trying to follow His example. Some of the highlights: getting food and bringing it too a food donation, donating coats, inviting people over to our home, calling people and sending out letters, sharing the gospel with our neighbors and friends, etc.

We had fun putting together a package for our sweet Great Grandma (Grandma Della Hansen). We did the 12 days of Christmas for her so she could have a gift to open every day. We are so grateful to have AMAZING people like Della Hansen who sets such an amazing example for us of living a life full of service and love towards others and being faithful.

More pictures from the Polar Express Party :)

Carolyn had a GREAT session of Basketball! She was aggressive!!!! And the fun part was Andrew was the coach this year! I thought it was the best coach ever. They wanted to stay together as a team and him to be the coach again!! It was fun!

Andrew gave fun awards to all the kids that played. Carolyn did so awesome!!!

Angela was in choir and we loved hearing her sing!