Finishing out 2017

The kids had fun making some gingerbread trains and houses.  

Gideon loves olives, and was very happy to be able to stack cans of olives in the back of the van.  (he had a little help)

Austin loves playing in Orchestra, and enjoys teaching herself how to play and improve

Malachi had crazy hair day at school, and Caleb and Malachi had me fix their hair all sticking up.  Malachi got mad, and returned his hair to normal before he went to school.  But it was fun for a few minutes

Visiting Santa Claus at Operation North Pole

Malachi making faces during church

Betsy's choir concert

Samuel received his arrow of light and officially became a Boy Scout (11 year old scout)

Such a mischievous grin

Gideon enjoyed seeing Santa at our Branch Christmas party

Gideon's 2nd birthday!  He had fun opening presents, and loved getting some new toys

Malachi had a hard time with understanding that the gifts were for Gideon and not for him

Such a sweet, happy boy

Playing at the mall

Betsy is really good at unwrapping Hershey's kisses, so we can use them to make cookies

Christmas morning!  

Gideon loves his new sunglasses

Keeping Malachi in his seat during church can be very difficult.  I was playing the organ, and one of the kids had my phone and was taking pictures, and got this one of Malachi as he was leaping over the pews.  

I can't remember everything that happened around Christmas time, but we did have a good Christmas.  We didn't get as many things done as we usually do around Christmas time, but we did some of them.  We did two families for the twelve days of Christmas, so we enjoyed doing that.  The boys especially enjoyed running things to the doorsteps.   One of the families that we did was really hurting financially, and I know our 12 days of Christmas really helped them out.   I had a Chaplain spouse dinner at our house, that took a lot of work, but it was fun.  We had fun at our branch Christmas party.  They had a talent show with it, and they had a delay in the program waiting for the primary children, so Austin got up and sang "Mary, Did You Know".  She was dared by the missionaries, so she got up and did it, it was awesome!  I was so proud of her, she has a great singing voice, but usually is too scared to sing in front of people.  During Christmas break we made cookies and delivered them to everyone Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve, Austin sang "O Holy Night" in Sacrament meeting, I was so excited that she was willing to sing a solo again.   We did get snow, so it was hard to deliver to some people's houses, but we made it.  It was too cold, so we didn't carol, but we did make some treats.  Christmas morning was fun.  Gideon was so excited to see all the presents under the tree, he just laid down in the midst of all the presents and had a wonderful look of joy on his face.  The kids all liked their presents, and we had a wonderful day, eating cinnamon rolls and playing games.  I always enjoy Christmas break because we don't have a ton of appointments and we just get to hang out and spend time with each other.  Although by the time school starts up again, I'm ready for them to go back to school, because they keep fighting!  Each year I try more and more to focus our Christmas on Christ, and less on the more secular things of Christmas.  We try to do a lot of service as well, and not too many activities.  We missed having Travis around, but spent a lot of time FaceTiming with him.