Christmas morning 2013

Christmas morning was SO much fun this year. Our kids are still the perfect ages. They get so excited and it is so much fun to watch them. My favorite part of Christmas this year was what my parents did for us. I'm so sad I don't have pictures of any of this. After the kids opened all of their presents and we thought we were don't my mom gave us clues for us to find our presents and sent us all on a 'treasure hunt' (she always does stuff like this Christmas morning). We had fun and found some amazing things. My dad had made (welded) us all some cool deep friers out of an old disk from the farm. Then they gave us Camp Chefs. They gave us a big box of things for our food storage including things that my mom had bottled that summer-yummy! Then my mom told us the story about when Grandma died, Grandma Dalton wanted to get my mom something to remember her mom by. She couldn't think of anything so she gave her some money and told her to use it for something that would make her think about her mom. My mom went and got a Pandora Bracelet with charms that remind her of Grandma Darling. Then she decided to get one for Me, Stef, Kenzie, and Bailey. She gave us charms that she thought would fit us. We all have the same stopper charm so that we have something alike. Then she explained why she picked each charm for us. It was special and I won't forget it.

Then for the really fun part…she had wrapped presents that she made us compete for. It was SO SO SO much fun. Mostly because I was the grand champ!! We had to roll ping pong balls into a shot glass using a tape measure and we played a game using jacks. Then we got to pick our prize. She had perfume for the girls and ties for the guys. Our family is very competitive so it was SO much fun. 

The other special thing about Christmas was while we were playing the name game (a family favorite), one of the papers said, "I'm Pregnant". It ended up being what Stef wrote and it was TRUE! She was pregers! We were all so excited!

The lady in the picture above is Chance and Kenzie's friend Tameran. She spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with our family.

It is fun that Madi, Saige, and Mia all got American Girl Dolls and Lego Friends.

They play SO good together, despite their age difference.

I made both girls a school scrapbook for Christmas.

Chance is the #1 wrapper. Ok-maybe #2 behind my mom but he really is meticulous! When the sprinklers ruined all of our presents I didn't sweat it too much because I knew he would help me re-wrap them all!

This was my favorite gift to give this year. I took all of Chance's letters/e-mails to us and our letters/emails to him from his mission and put them in a book. It took FOREVER but was totally worth it. I printed a book for us too since it was a good journal of everything that went on in our family for 2 years.

When we got back to Bakersfield and took our tree down Syd cried and cried. She would say, "I so sad bout Christmas being over." All December long she would say, "Merry Chrisens."

This is the Christmas card we sent out this year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!